But there are a great many men who don’t like the idea.  Some wit recently said, in view of the fact that most of our American architects are trained in a certain Ecole in Paris, that all American architecture in recent years was either bizarre or “Beaux Arts.”  I think that our economic architecture is decidedly bizarre; and I am afraid that there is a good deal to learn about matters other than architecture from the same source from which our architects have learned a great many things.  I don’t mean the School of Fine Arts at Paris, but the experience of France; for from the other side of the water men can now hold up against us the reproach that we have not adjusted our lives to modern conditions to the same extent that they have adjusted theirs.  I was very much interested in some of the reasons given by our friends across the Canadian border for being very shy about the reciprocity arrangements.  They said:  “We are not sure whither these arrangements will lead, and we don’t care to associate too closely with the economic conditions of the United States until those conditions are as modern as ours.”  And when I resented it, and asked for particulars, I had, in regard to many matters, to retire from the debate.  Because I found that they had adjusted their regulations of economic development to conditions we had not yet found a way to meet in the United States.

Well, we have started now at all events.  The procession is under way.  The stand-patter doesn’t know there is a procession.  He is asleep in the back part of his house.  He doesn’t know that the road is resounding with the tramp of men going to the front.  And when he wakes up, the country will be empty.  He will be deserted, and he will wonder what has happened.  Nothing has happened.  The world has been going on.  The world has a habit of going on.  The world has a habit of leaving those behind who won’t go with it.  The world has always neglected stand-patters.  And, therefore, the stand-patter does not excite my indignation; he excites my sympathy.  He is going to be so lonely before it is all over.  And we are good fellows, we are good company; why doesn’t he come along?  We are not going to do him any harm.  We are going to show him a good time.  We are going to climb the slow road until it reaches some upland where the air is fresher, where the whole talk of mere politicians is stilled, where men can look in each other’s faces and see that there is nothing to conceal, that all they have to talk about they are willing to talk about in the open and talk about with each other; and whence, looking back over the road, we shall see at last that we have fulfilled our promise to mankind.  We had said to all the world, “America was created to break every kind of monopoly, and to set men free, upon a footing of equality, upon a footing of opportunity, to match their brains and their energies,” and now we have proved that we meant it.

III