Indeed, they have become extremely self-conscious in relation to their present standing and their future responsibilities.
They are beginning to predict the most abundant results from the "uplift" movement, of which they are the leaders.

They confidently anticipate that they are destined to make a much more salient and significant contribution to the history of their country than has been made by any group of political leaders since the Civil War.
It is in a sense a misnomer to write of "Reform" as a single thing.
Reform is, as a matter of fact, all sorts of things.

The name has been applied to a number of separate political agitations, which have been started by different people at different times in different parts of the country, and these separate movements have secured very different kinds of support, and have run very different courses.

Tariff reform, for instance, was an early and popular agitation whose peculiarity has consisted in securing the support of one of the two national parties, but which in spite of that support has so far made little substantial progress.

Civil service reform, on the other hand, was the first agitation looking in the direction of political purification.