Congress as follows: “The progressives in the next Congress propose to reduce the ruinous existing freight rates; to reduce the burden of taxation on the common people—the consumers; to enact and enforce absolute publicity of all income tax returns and stop dishonest tax dodging by trusts and millionaires; to deal firmly with the monopolies in oil, coal, steel, lumber, sugar, meats, and other necessaries of life; to call the gambling organizations to account and insure fair prices in grain and other farm products; and to mete out merited punishment to the profiteers and grafters.”
The terms “progressive” and “progressivism” imply a forward movement for human betterment. Conversely the reactionary is understood to be one who does not want to have things improved, but desires to revert to the bad state of affairs formerly prevailing. Than such conceptions nothing could be more foolish. Neither of them may be what is commonly thought. Rather may they be very far from it.
I do not suppose that there is any intelligent person who does not want to improve everything from the general state of human welfare down to the organization of his own business. The greatest progress makers that I know have been men whom the “progressives” call “reactionaries.” If two men are travelling an unchartered road and in their ignorance have taken a course that soon proves to be dangerous, the nick-named reactionary says “Let us retrace our steps to the main road and then move on again,” but the soi-disant progressive says “Not so. Let us keep right on in the dark, through the quagmires and quicksands, and perhaps after a while we shall find good going again.”
