_It is not enough that a few children only should be so advanced; but that of impecunious children, who constitute 90 per cent of the population, a sufficient number should be advanced to fill 90 per cent of those positions, in industry, government, and society, which require a higher education._ There is no doubt that this actual equality in the "battle of life" was the expectation and intention of those who settled and built up the western part of the United States, as it has been that of all the democracies of new countries.

But this reform alone would certainly require not one but several billion dollars a year; as much as all the other improvements mentioned by Dr.Eliot put together.

We may estimate, then, that the application of the principle of democracy or equality of opportunity to education in accordance with the present national income, would require the immediate expenditure of three or four billion dollars on the nation's children of school age, or ten times the sum we now expend, and a corresponding increase as the wealth of the nation develops.

This would be a considerable proportion of the nation's income, but not too much to spend on the children, who constitute nearly half the population and are at the age where the money spent is most productive.
Here is a program for the coming generation which would be indorsed by a very large part of the democrats of the past.

But nothing could make it more clear that political democracy is bankrupt even in its new collective form, that it has no notion of the method by which its own ideals are to be obtained.