They are to social reform just what bigots are to religious liberalization.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
gutenberg.org
The wealthy classes are systematically conservative; and by instinct they are opposed to all movements which tend to equalization.
It is among them that nearly all social reforms begin, and among them that all governmental reforms first find moving power.
Perhaps there is a no more suggestive or instructive fact in all the realm of society than that the laboring classes are the liberal classes.
This condition the present inequalities between labor and capital forbid, and hence the importance of their harmonization.
All minor ones are insignificant beside it, because the corner stones of this foundation must consist of a perfect individual justice, which will not be inconsistent nor at war with perfect collective justice.
The sphere of government must be enlarged and made to include very many questions which are now utterly ignored, before society can ever be considered as resting upon a surely permanent foundation.
Political parties have been in the hands of such leaders, and have been used for such corrupt purposes, that the people have lost all confidence in them, and they demand A NEW ORDER OF THINGS, in which common honesty may properly find a…
The terrific strifes that have been waged, and are being waged, lift the weight from the strata, and it begins to rise into demanding such recognition as has not been accorded it.
It would arise as if by magic out of the conditions of the times, and leaders will rise and come to the front as though Heaven-directed, and they will be received by the people by acclamation.
The policy of a party that would be permanently successful must be one that will include all of the great principles of reform.
Why should not this party organize upon some such radical principles of reform that will reach the roots of the ills they feel society labors under?