They would merely excite a crisis, which they were intended to allay, and strengthen the hands of the more radical critics of the existing political system.
VI AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM The changes which have been taking place in industrial and political and social conditions have all tended to impair the consistency of feeling characteristic of the first phase of American national democracy.
Americans are divided from one another much more than they were during the Middle Period by differences of interest, of intellectual outlook, of moral and technical standards, and of manner of life.

Grave inequalities of power and deep-lying differences of purpose have developed in relation of the several primary American activities.

The millionaire, the "Boss," the union laborer, and the lawyer, have all taken advantage of the loose American political organization to promote somewhat unscrupulously their own interests, and to obtain special sources of power and profit at the expense of a wholesome national balance.

But the foregoing examples of specialized organization and purposes do not stand alone.

They are the most conspicuous and the most troublesome because of the power wielded by those particular classes, and because they can claim for their purposes the support of certain aspects of the American national tradition.