Reform is both meaningless and powerless unless the Jeffersonian principle of non-interference is abandoned.

The experience of the last generation plainly shows that the American economic and social system cannot be allowed to take care of itself, and that the automatic harmony of the individual and the public interest, which is the essence of the Jeffersonian democratic creed, has proved to be an illusion.

Interference with the natural course of individual and popular action there must be in the public interest; and such interference must at least be sufficient to accomplish its purposes.

The house of the American democracy is again by way of being divided against itself, because the national interest has not been consistently asserted as against special and local interests; and again, also, it can be reunited only by being partly reconstructed on better foundations.

If reform does not and cannot mean restoration, it is bound to mean reconstruction.
The reformers have come partly to realize that the Jeffersonian policy of drift must be abandoned.