If it be true that democracy is based upon the assumption that every man shall serve his fellow man, the organization of democracy should be gradually adapted to that assumption.

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.

Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility. If human nature cannot be improved by institutions, democracy is at best a more than usually safe form of political organization . . . . But if it is to work better as well as merely longer, it must have some leavening effect on human nature; and the sincere democrat is obliged to assume the power of the leaven. [Progressive]

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.

If it be true that democracy is based upon the assumption that every man shall serve his fellow man, the organization of democracy should be gradually adapted to that assumption.

In the long run men inevitably become the victims of their wealth. They adapt their lives and habits to their money, not their money to their lives. It preoccupies their thoughts, creates artificial needs, and draws a curtain between them and the world.

So long as the great majority of the poor in any country are inert and are laboring without any hope in this world, the whole associated life of that community rests on an equivocal foundation. Its moral and social order is tied to an economic system which starves and mutilates the great majority of the population, and under such conditions its religion necessarily becomes a spiritual drug, administered for the purpose of subduing the popular discontent and relieving the popular misery.