The man of conservative ideas and interests means by the rights, which are to be equally exercised, only those rights which are defined and protected by the law--the more fundamental of which are the rights to personal freedom and to private property.

The man of radical ideas, on the other hand, observing, as he may very clearly, that these equal rights cannot possibly be made really equivalent to equal opportunities, bases upon the same doctrine a more or less drastic criticism of the existing economic and social order and sometimes of the motives of its beneficiaries and conservators.

The same principle, differently interpreted, is the foundation of American political orthodoxy and American political heterodoxy.

The same measure of reforming legislation, such as the new Inter-state Commerce Law, seems to one party a wholly inadequate attempt to make the exercise of individual rights a little more equal, while it seems to others an egregious violation of the principle itself.

What with reforming legislation on the one hand and the lack of it on the other, the once sweet air of the American political mansion is soured by complaints.