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50 THE ATHENAEUM ed—if the group causes of poor scholarship are remedied—if the personal causes of deliquent scholarship are remedied—we cannot help but succeed in this great civilization. And when the inevitable end does come we can sit under the blue skies of tranquillity and breathe full of the serene beauties which around us float, because humanity will have been bettered by our having lived. MODERN TREND TOWARD PROGRESSIVEISM W HEN I pause and look out upon the two major parties of the present day, I can see without the aid of a microscope a modern Trend Towards Progressiveism.' New parties are not formed; because some one passes a resolu tion. But history travels in cycles; and it is my opinion that we are getting into the same course sailed by the country just before the formation of the Republican Party. There seem to be the same Great Problems clamoring for Political solution. Whigs, and Demo- crats in the days of Lincoln dodged the issue of the extension of slavery and of the Supreme court. Both were afraid to meet the issue squarely and we find Lincoln carrying the Third (present Re publican) Party to victory. , , Today neither party has any adequate prograiri 'for the relief ot agriculture; nor a real tax program, one which will compel those best able to pay taxes to pay, nor a desire to preserve our national re sources. The oil scandal gave hope to the progressive movement. The idea of the progressive was not to capture the White House in 1924 but to lay the foundations of a new party and to increase appreci ably the radical “Bicameral Bloc” in congress under the open label. It is true that the American scene is littered with skeltons of rick ety third party movements. The Anti-monoply Reform Parties in the seventies the Greenback and Labor Parties in the eighties; then the Populist, the Grangers, the different socialist workers Parties in sporadic succession. But they indicate less the impotence than the extraordinary vitality of our impotence protestancy. They failed simply because in any highly complex culture nothing sfiert pf an overwhelming social issue, such as the slavery question of the last century can nourish a third Party movement into success. Slowly, bitterly, factions^suspiciously discerning its community of interest with the smalb and the tenant .farmer, the radical progres sive and the Negro are developing the Progressive Movement that will gain ground as the issue begins to grow. The Trend towafdjS Progressiveism has come down from Lincoln ^^aFbllette.^ We find-»tl$at Roosevelt advocated several Progressive WB<4ia%.Wfl 2 * • Mfcrr tt i _ b - 2 Tit 0/ ‘6t r sp