Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/14

 make the book of real service to good government, and this purpose, in my judgment, he has admirably fulfilled. It is a well reasoned and thoughtful exposition of how sane radicalism can be successfully applied in practice. His writings have nothing whatever in common with the mere hysterics out of which some well meaning, but not very efficient, radicals seem to get such curious mental satisfaction. Mr. McCarthy not only shows how Wisconsin has proceeded in specific instances to accomplish specific results, but he has so interwoven his studies of those separate results as to make the volume into a connected whole. Through his account of actual accomplishment in the field of political and industrial reform in Wisconsin, there runs a strain of philosophy that it would be well for every practical reformer to master. As Professor Simon N. Patten says: "Without means of attainment and measures of result an ideal becomes meaningless. The real idealist is a pragmatist and an economist. He demands measurable results and reaches them by means made available by economic efficiency. Only in this way is social progress possible." Mr. McCarthy's purpose is to impress not only every real reformer, but every capable politician, with the fact that the people are more concerned about "good works" than about "faith."

The Wisconsin reformers have accomplished the extraordinary results for which the whole nation owes them so much, primarily because they have not confined themselves to dreaming dreams and then to talking about them. They have had power to see the vision, of course; if they did not have in them the possibility