THE NEW FREEDOM

A CALL FOR THE EMANCIPATIONOF THE GENEROUS ENERGIESOF A PEOPLE

BYWOODROW WILSON

NEW YORK AND GARDEN CITYDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY1913

THIS BOOKI DEDICATE, WITH ALL MY HEART, TO EVERY MAN ORWOMAN WHO MAY DERIVE FROM IT, IN HOWEVERSMALL A DEGREE, THE IMPULSE OFUNSELFISH PUBLIC SERVICE

PREFACE

I have not written a book since the campaign. I did not write this book atall. It is the result of the editorial literary skill of Mr. WilliamBayard Hale, who has put together here in their right sequences the moresuggestive portions of my campaign speeches. 

And yet it is not a book of campaign speeches. It is a discussion of anumber of very vital subjects in the free form of extemporaneously spokenwords. I have left the sentences in the form in which they werestenographically reported. I have not tried to alter the easy-going andoften colloquial phraseology in which they were uttered from the platform, in the hope that they would seem the more fresh and spontaneous because oftheir very lack of pruning and recasting. They have been suffered to runtheir unpremeditated course even at the cost of such repetition andredundancy as the extemporaneous speaker apparently inevitably fallsinto. 

The book is not a discussion of measures or of programs. It is an attemptto express the new spirit of our politics and to set forth, in large termswhich may stick in the imagination, what it is that must be done if we areto restore our politics to their full spiritual vigor again, and ournational life, whether in trade, in industry, or in what concerns us onlyas families and individuals, to its purity, its self-respect, and itspristine strength and freedom. The New Freedom is only the old revived andclothed in the unconquerable strength of modern America. 

WOODROW WILSON. 

CONTENTS

 Preface vii

CHAPTER PAGE

 I. The Old Order Changeth 3 II. What is Progress? 33 III. Freemen Need No Guardians 55 IV. Life Comes from the Soil 79 V. The Parliament of the People 90 VI. Let There Be Light 111 VII. The Tariff-"Protection, " or Special Privilege? 136VIII. Monopoly, or Opportunity? 163 IX. Benevolence, or Justice? 192 X. The Way to Resume is to Resume 223 XI. The Emancipation of Business 257 XII. The Liberation of a People's Vital Energies 277

THE NEW FREEDOM

I

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that arediscussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singularfact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty yearsago. 

We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life hasbroken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it wastwenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We havechanged our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and, withour economic society, the organization of our life. The old politicalformulas do not fit the present problems; they read now like documentstaken out of a forgotten age. The older cries sound as if they belonged toa past age which men have almost forgotten. Things which used to be putinto the party platforms of ten years ago would sound antiquated if putinto a platform now. We are facing the necessity of fitting a new socialorganization, as we did once fit the old organization, to the happinessand prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we are conscious thatthe new order of society has not been made to fit and provide theconvenience or prosperity of the average man. The life of the nation hasgrown infinitely varied. It does not centre now upon questions ofgovernmental structure or of the distribution of governmental powers. Itcentres upon questions of the very structure and operation of societyitself, of which government is only the instrument. Our development hasrun so fast and so far along the lines sketched in the earlier day ofconstitutional definition, has so crossed and interlaced those lines, haspiled upon them such novel structures of trust and combination, haselaborated within them a life so manifold, so full of forces whichtranscend the boundaries of the country itself and fill the eyes of theworld, that a new nation seems to have been created which the old formulasdo not fit or afford a vital interpretation of. 

We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. We havecome upon an age when we do not do business in the way in which we used todo business, --when we do not carry on any of the operations ofmanufacture, sale, transportation, or communication as men used to carrythem on. There is a sense in which in our day the individual has beensubmerged. In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, notas partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally asemployees, --in a higher or lower grade, --of great corporations. There wasa time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants ofcorporations. 

You know what happens when you are the servant of a corporation. You havein no instance access to the men who are really determining the policy ofthe corporation. If the corporation is doing the things that it ought notto do, you really have no voice in the matter and must obey the orders, and you have oftentimes with deep mortification to co-operate in the doingof things which you know are against the public interest. Yourindividuality is swallowed up in the individuality and purpose of a greatorganization. 

It is true that, while most men are thus submerged in the corporation, afew, a very few, are exalted to a power which as individuals they couldnever have wielded. Through the great organizations of which they are theheads, a few are enabled to play a part unprecedented by anything inhistory in the control of the business operations of the country and inthe determination of the happiness of great numbers of people. 

Yesterday, and ever since history began, men were related to one anotheras individuals. To be sure there were the family, the Church, and theState, institutions which associated men in certain wide circles ofrelationship. But in the ordinary concerns of life, in the ordinary work, in the daily round, men dealt freely and directly with one another. To-day, the everyday relationships of men are largely with greatimpersonal concerns, with organizations, not with other individual men. 

Now this is nothing short of a new social age, a new era of humanrelationships, a new stage-setting for the drama of life. 

 * * * * *

In this new age we find, for instance, that our laws with regard to therelations of employer and employee are in many respects wholly antiquatedand impossible. They were framed for another age, which nobody now livingremembers, which is, indeed, so remote from our life that it would bedifficult for many of us to understand it if it were described to us. Theemployer is now generally a corporation or a huge company of some kind;the employee is one of hundreds or of thousands brought together, not byindividual masters whom they know and with whom they have personalrelations, but by agents of one sort or another. Workingmen are marshaledin great numbers for the performance of a multitude of particular tasksunder a common discipline. They generally use dangerous and powerfulmachinery, over whose repair and renewal they have no control. New rulesmust be devised with regard to their obligations and their rights, theirobligations to their employers and their responsibilities to one another. Rules must be devised for their protection, for their compensation wheninjured, for their support when disabled. 

There is something very new and very big and very complex about these newrelations of capital and labor. A new economic society has sprung up, andwe must effect a new set of adjustments. We must not pit power againstweakness. The employer is generally, in our day, as I have said, not anindividual, but a powerful group; and yet the workingman when dealing withhis employer is still, under our existing law, an individual. 

Why is it that we have a labor question at all? It is for the simple andvery sufficient reason that the laboring man and the employer are notintimate associates now as they used to be in time past. Most of our lawswere formed in the age when employer and employees knew each other, kneweach other's characters, were associates with each other, dealt with eachother as man with man. That is no longer the case. You not only do notcome into personal contact with the men who have the supreme command inthose corporations, but it would be out of the question for you to do it. Our modern corporations employ thousands, and in some instances hundredsof thousands, of men. The only persons whom you see or deal with are localsuperintendents or local representatives of a vast organization, which isnot like anything that the workingmen of the time in which our laws wereframed knew anything about. A little group of workingmen, seeing theiremployer every day, dealing with him in a personal way, is one thing, andthe modern body of labor engaged as employees of the huge enterprises thatspread all over the country, dealing with men of whom they can form nopersonal conception, is another thing. A very different thing. You neversaw a corporation, any more than you ever saw a government. Many aworkingman to-day never saw the body of men who are conducting theindustry in which he is employed. And they never saw him. What they knowabout him is written in ledgers and books and letters, in thecorrespondence of the office, in the reports of the superintendents. He isa long way off from them. 

So what we have to discuss is, not wrongs which individuals intentionallydo, --I do not believe there are a great many of those, --but the wrongs ofa system. I want to record my protest against any discussion of thismatter which would seem to indicate that there are bodies of ourfellow-citizens who are trying to grind us down and do us injustice. Thereare some men of that sort. I don't know how they sleep o' nights, butthere are men of that kind. Thank God, they are not numerous. The truthis, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless. Themodern corporation is not engaged in business as an individual. When wedeal with it, we deal with an impersonal element, an immaterial piece ofsociety. A modern corporation is a means of co-operation in the conduct ofan enterprise which is so big that no one man can conduct it, and whichthe resources of no one man are sufficient to finance. A company isformed; that company puts out a prospectus; the promoters expect to raisea certain fund as capital stock. Well, how are they going to raise it?They are going to raise it from the public in general, some of whom willbuy their stock. The moment that begins, there is formed--what? A jointstock corporation. Men begin to pool their earnings, little piles, bigpiles. A certain number of men are elected by the stockholders to bedirectors, and these directors elect a president. This president is thehead of the undertaking, and the directors are its managers. 

Now, do the workingmen employed by that stock corporation deal with thatpresident and those directors? Not at all. Does the public deal with thatpresident and that board of directors? It does not. Can anybody bring themto account? It is next to impossible to do so. If you undertake it youwill find it a game of hide and seek, with the objects of your searchtaking refuge now behind the tree of their individual personality, nowbehind that of their corporate irresponsibility. 

And do our laws take note of this curious state of things? Do they evenattempt to distinguish between a man's act as a corporation director andas an individual? They do not. Our laws still deal with us on the basis ofthe old system. The law is still living in the dead past which we haveleft behind. This is evident, for instance, with regard to the matter ofemployers' liability for workingmen's injuries. Suppose that asuperintendent wants a workman to use a certain piece of machinery whichit is not safe for him to use, and that the workman is injured by thatpiece of machinery. Some of our courts have held that the superintendentis a fellow-servant, or, as the law states it, a fellow-employee, andthat, therefore, the man cannot recover damages for his injury. Thesuperintendent who probably engaged the man is not his employer. Who ishis employer? And whose negligence could conceivably come in there? Theboard of directors did not tell the employee to use that piece ofmachinery; and the president of the corporation did not tell him to usethat piece of machinery. And so forth. Don't you see by that theory that aman never can get redress for negligence on the part of the employer? WhenI hear judges reason upon the analogy of the relationships that used toexist between workmen and their employers a generation ago, I wonder ifthey have not opened their eyes to the modern world. You know, we have aright to expect that judges will have their eyes open, even though the lawwhich they administer hasn't awakened. 

Yet that is but a single small detail illustrative of the difficulties weare in because we have not adjusted the law to the facts of the new order. 

 * * * * *

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to meprivately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field ofcommerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, sowatchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had betternot speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. 

They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it usedto be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far ashis abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enterscertain fields, there are organizations which will use means against himthat will prevent his building up a business which they do not want tohave built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cutfrom under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sellto certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuseto sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the newman's wares. 

And this is the country which has lifted to the admiration of the worldits ideals of absolutely free opportunity, where no man is supposed to beunder any limitation except the limitations of his character and of hismind; where there is supposed to be no distinction of class, nodistinction of blood, no distinction of social status, but where men winor lose on their merits. 

I lay it very close to my own conscience as a public man whether we canany longer stand at our doors and welcome all newcomers upon those terms. American industry is not free, as once it was free; American enterprise isnot free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder to getinto the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow. Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong fromcrushing the weak. That is the reason, and because the strong have crushedthe weak the strong dominate the industry and the economic life of thiscountry. No man can deny that the lines of endeavor have more and morenarrowed and stiffened; no man who knows anything about the development ofindustry in this country can have failed to observe that the larger kindsof credit are more and more difficult to obtain, unless you obtain themupon the terms of uniting your efforts with those who already control theindustries of the country; and nobody can fail to observe that any manwho tries to set himself up in competition with any process of manufacturewhich has been taken under the control of large combinations of capitalwill presently find himself either squeezed out or obliged to sell andallow himself to be absorbed. 

There is a great deal that needs reconstruction in the United States. Ishould like to take a census of the business men, --I mean the rank andfile of the business men, --as to whether they think that businessconditions in this country, or rather whether the organization of businessin this country, is satisfactory or not. I know what they would say ifthey dared. If they could vote secretly they would vote overwhelminglythat the present organization of business was meant for the big fellowsand was not meant for the little fellows; that it was meant for those whoare at the top and was meant to exclude those who are at the bottom; thatit was meant to shut out beginners, to prevent new entries in the race, toprevent the building up of competitive enterprises that would interferewith the monopolies which the great trusts have built up. 

What this country needs above everything else is a body of laws which willlook after the men who are on the make rather than the men who are alreadymade. Because the men who are already made are not going to liveindefinitely, and they are not always kind enough to leave sons as ableand as honest as they are. 

The originative part of America, the part of America that makes newenterprises, the part into which the ambitious and gifted workingman makeshis way up, the class that saves, that plans, that organizes, thatpresently spreads its enterprises until they have a national scope andcharacter, --that middle class is being more and more squeezed out by theprocesses which we have been taught to call processes of prosperity. Itsmembers are sharing prosperity, no doubt; but what alarms me is that theyare not _originating_ prosperity. No country can afford to have itsprosperity originated by a small controlling class. The treasury ofAmerica does not lie in the brains of the small body of men now incontrol of the great enterprises that have been concentrated under thedirection of a very small number of persons. The treasury of America liesin those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a specialfavored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon theoriginations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Everycountry is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranksof those already famous and powerful and in control. 

There has come over the land that un-American set of conditions whichenables a small number of men who control the government to get favorsfrom the government; by those favors to exclude their fellows from equalbusiness opportunity; by those favors to extend a network of control thatwill presently dominate every industry in the country, and so make menforget the ancient time when America lay in every hamlet, when America wasto be seen in every fair valley, when America displayed her great forceson the broad prairies, ran her fine fires of enterprise up over themountain-sides and down into the bowels of the earth, and eager men wereeverywhere captains of industry, not employees; not looking to a distantcity to find out what they might do, but looking about among theirneighbors, finding credit according to their character, not according totheir connections, finding credit in proportion to what was known to be inthem and behind them, not in proportion to the securities they held thatwere approved where they were not known. In order to start an enterprisenow, you have to be authenticated, in a perfectly impersonal way, notaccording to yourself, but according to what you own that somebody elseapproves of your owning. You cannot begin such an enterprise as those thathave made America until you are so authenticated, until you have succeededin obtaining the good-will of large allied capitalists. Is that freedom?That is dependence, not freedom. 

We used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple thatall that government had to do was to put on a policeman's uniform, andsay, "Now don't anybody hurt anybody else. " We used to say that the idealof government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best governmentwas the government that did as little governing as possible. That was theidea that obtained in Jefferson's time. But we are coming now to realizethat life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the oldconditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditionsunder which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable forus to live. 

Let me illustrate what I mean: It used to be true in our cities that everyfamily occupied a separate house of its own, that every family had its ownlittle premises, that every family was separated in its life from everyother family. That is no longer the case in our great cities. Familieslive in tenements, they live in flats, they live on floors; they are piledlayer upon layer in the great tenement houses of our crowded districts, and not only are they piled layer upon layer, but they are associated roomby room, so that there is in every room, sometimes, in our congesteddistricts, a separate family. In some foreign countries they have mademuch more progress than we in handling these things. In the city ofGlasgow, for example (Glasgow is one of the model cities of the world), they have made up their minds that the entries and the hallways of greattenements are public streets. Therefore, the policeman goes up thestairway, and patrols the corridors; the lighting department of the citysees to it that the halls are abundantly lighted. The city does notdeceive itself into supposing that that great building is a unit fromwhich the police are to keep out and the civic authority to be excluded, but it says: "These are public highways, and light is needed in them, andcontrol by the authority of the city. "

I liken that to our great modern industrial enterprises. A corporation isvery like a large tenement house; it isn't the premises of a singlecommercial family; it is just as much a public affair as a tenement houseis a network of public highways. 

When you offer the securities of a great corporation to anybody who wishesto purchase them, you must open that corporation to the inspection ofeverybody who wants to purchase. There must, to follow out the figure ofthe tenement house, be lights along the corridors, there must be policepatrolling the openings, there must be inspection wherever it is knownthat men may be deceived with regard to the contents of the premises. Ifwe believe that fraud lies in wait for us, we must have the means ofdetermining whether our suspicions are well founded or not. Similarly, thetreatment of labor by the great corporations is not what it was inJefferson's time. Whenever bodies of men employ bodies of men, it ceasesto be a private relationship. So that when courts hold that workingmencannot peaceably dissuade other workingmen from taking employment, as washeld in a notable case in New Jersey, they simply show that their mindsand understandings are lingering in an age which has passed away. Thisdealing of great bodies of men with other bodies of men is a matter ofpublic scrutiny, and should be a matter of public regulation. 

Similarly, it was no business of the law in the time of Jefferson to comeinto my house and see how I kept house. But when my house, when myso-called private property, became a great mine, and men went along darkcorridors amidst every kind of danger in order to dig out of the bowels ofthe earth things necessary for the industries of a whole nation, and whenit came about that no individual owned these mines, that they were ownedby great stock companies, then all the old analogies absolutely collapsedand it became the right of the government to go down into these mines tosee whether human beings were properly treated in them or not; to seewhether accidents were properly safeguarded against; to see whether moderneconomical methods of using these inestimable riches of the earth werefollowed or were not followed. If somebody puts a derrick improperlysecured on top of a building or overtopping the street, then thegovernment of the city has the right to see that that derrick is sosecured that you and I can walk under it and not be afraid that theheavens are going to fall on us. Likewise, in these great beehives wherein every corridor swarm men of flesh and blood, it is the privilege of thegovernment, whether of the State or of the United States, as the case maybe, to see that human life is protected, that human lungs have somethingto breathe. 

These, again, are merely illustrations of conditions. We are in a newworld, struggling under old laws. As we go inspecting our lives to-day, surveying this new scene of centralized and complex society, we shall findmany more things out of joint. 

 * * * * *

One of the most alarming phenomena of the time, --or rather it would bealarming if the nation had not awakened to it and shown its determinationto control it, --one of the most significant signs of the new social era isthe degree to which government has become associated with business. Ispeak, for the moment, of the control over the government exercised by BigBusiness. Behind the whole subject, of course, is the truth that, in thenew order, government and business must be associated closely. But thatassociation is at present of a nature absolutely intolerable; theprecedence is wrong, the association is upside down. Our government hasbeen for the past few years under the control of heads of great alliedcorporations with special interests. It has not controlled these interestsand assigned them a proper place in the whole system of business; it hassubmitted itself to their control. As a result, there have grown upvicious systems and schemes of governmental favoritism (the most obviousbeing the extravagant tariff), far-reaching in effect upon the wholefabric of life, touching to his injury every inhabitant of the land, laying unfair and impossible handicaps upon competitors, imposing taxes inevery direction, stifling everywhere the free spirit of Americanenterprise. 

Now this has come about naturally; as we go on we shall see how verynaturally. It is no use denouncing anybody, or anything, except humannature. Nevertheless, it is an intolerable thing that the government ofthe republic should have got so far out of the hands of the people; shouldhave been captured by interests which are special and not general. In thetrain of this capture follow the troops of scandals, wrongs, indecencies, with which our politics swarm. 

There are cities in America of whose government we are ashamed. There arecities everywhere, in every part of the land, in which we feel that, notthe interests of the public, but the interests of special privileges, ofselfish men, are served; where contracts take precedence over publicinterest. Not only in big cities is this the case. Have you not noticedthe growth of socialistic sentiment in the smaller towns? Not many monthsago I stopped at a little town in Nebraska, and while my train lingered Imet on the platform a very engaging young fellow dressed in overalls whointroduced himself to me as the mayor of the town, and added that he wasa Socialist. I said, "What does that mean? Does that mean that this townis socialistic?" "No, sir, " he said; "I have not deceived myself; the voteby which I was elected was about 20 per cent. Socialistic and 80 per cent. Protest. " It was protest against the treachery to the people of those wholed both the other parties of that town. 

All over the Union people are coming to feel that they have no controlover the course of affairs. I live in one of the greatest States in theunion, which was at one time in slavery. Until two years ago we hadwitnessed with increasing concern the growth in New Jersey of a spirit ofalmost cynical despair. Men said: "We vote; we are offered the platform wewant; we elect the men who stand on that platform, and we get absolutelynothing. " So they began to ask: "What is the use of voting? We know thatthe machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, andtherefore it is useless to turn in either direction. "

This is not confined to some of the state governments and those of some ofthe towns and cities. We know that something intervenes between thepeople of the United States and the control of their own affairs atWashington. It is not the people who have been ruling there of late. 

Why are we in the presence, why are we at the threshold, of a revolution?Because we are profoundly disturbed by the influences which we seereigning in the determination of our public life and our public policy. There was a time when America was blithe with self-confidence. She boastedthat she, and she alone, knew the processes of popular government; but nowshe sees her sky overcast; she sees that there are at work forces whichshe did not dream of in her hopeful youth. 

Don't you know that some man with eloquent tongue, without conscience, whodid not care for the nation, could put this whole country into a flame?Don't you know that this country from one end to the other believes thatsomething is wrong? What an opportunity it would be for some man withoutconscience to spring up and say: "This is the way. Follow me!"--and leadin paths of destruction!

The old order changeth--changeth under our very eyes, not quietly andequably, but swiftly and with the noise and heat and tumult ofreconstruction. 

I suppose that all struggle for law has been conscious, that very littleof it has been blind or merely instinctive. It is the fashion to say, asif with superior knowledge of affairs and of human weakness, that everyage has been an age of transition, and that no age is more full of changethan another; yet in very few ages of the world can the struggle forchange have been so widespread, so deliberate, or upon so great a scale asin this in which we are taking part. 

The transition we are witnessing is no equable transition of growth andnormal alteration; no silent, unconscious unfolding of one age intoanother, its natural heir and successor. Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom; is making fresh and critical analysis ofits very elements; is questioning its oldest practices as freely as itsnewest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life; and itstands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction, whichonly frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous co-operation canhold back from becoming a revolution. We are in a temper to reconstructeconomic society, as we were once in a temper to reconstruct politicalsociety, and political society may itself undergo a radical modificationin the process. I doubt if any age was ever more conscious of its task ormore unanimously desirous of radical and extended changes in its economicand political practice. 

We stand in the presence of a revolution, --not a bloody revolution;America is not given to the spilling of blood, --but a silent revolution, whereby America will insist upon recovering in practice those ideals whichshe has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to thegeneral interest and not to special interests. 

We are upon the eve of a great reconstruction. It calls for creativestatesmanship as no age has done since that great age in which we set upthe government under which we live, that government which was theadmiration of the world until it suffered wrongs to grow up under itwhich have made many of our own compatriots question the freedom of ourinstitutions and preach revolution against them. I do not fear revolution. I have unshaken faith in the power of America to keep its self-possession. Revolution will come in peaceful guise, as it came when we put aside thecrude government of the Confederation and created the great Federal Unionwhich governs individuals, not States, and which has been these hundredand thirty years our vehicle of progress. Some radical changes we mustmake in our law and practice. Some reconstructions we must push forward, which a new age and new circumstances impose upon us. But we can do it allin calm and sober fashion, like statesmen and patriots. 

I do not speak of these things in apprehension, because all is open andabove-board. This is not a day in which great forces rally in secret. Thewhole stupendous program must be publicly planned and canvassed. Goodtemper, the wisdom that comes of sober counsel, the energy of thoughtfuland unselfish men, the habit of co-operation and of compromise which hasbeen bred in us by long years of free government, in which reason ratherthan passion has been made to prevail by the sheer virtue of candid anduniversal debate, will enable us to win through to still another great agewithout violence. 

II

WHAT IS PROGRESS?

In that sage and veracious chronicle, "Alice Through the Looking-Glass, "it is recounted how, on a noteworthy occasion, the little heroine isseized by the Red Chess Queen, who races her off at a terrific pace. Theyrun until both of them are out of breath; then they stop, and Alice looksaround her and says, "Why, we are just where we were when we started!""Oh, yes, " says the Red Queen; "you have to run twice as fast as that toget anywhere else. "

That is a parable of progress. The laws of this country have not kept upwith the change of economic circumstances in this country; they have notkept up with the change of political circumstances; and therefore we arenot even where we were when we started. We shall have to run, not until weare out of breath, but until we have caught up with our own conditions, before we shall be where we were when we started; when we started thisgreat experiment which has been the hope and the beacon of the world. Andwe should have to run twice as fast as any rational program I have seen inorder to get anywhere else. 

I am, therefore, forced to be a progressive, if for no other reason, because we have not kept up with our changes of conditions, either in theeconomic field or in the political field. We have not kept up as well asother nations have. We have not kept our practices adjusted to the factsof the case, and until we do, and unless we do, the facts of the case willalways have the better of the argument; because if you do not adjust yourlaws to the facts, so much the worse for the laws, not for the facts, because law trails along after the facts. Only that law is unsafe whichruns ahead of the facts and beckons to it and makes it follow thewill-o'-the-wisps of imaginative projects. 

Business is in a situation in America which it was never in before; it isin a situation to which we have not adjusted our laws. Our laws are stillmeant for business done by individuals; they have not been satisfactorilyadjusted to business done by great combinations, and we have got to adjustthem. I do not say we may or may not; I say we must; there is no choice. If your laws do not fit your facts, the facts are not injured, the law isdamaged; because the law, unless I have studied it amiss, is theexpression of the facts in legal relationships. Laws have never alteredthe facts; laws have always necessarily expressed the facts; adjustedinterests as they have arisen and have changed toward one another. 

Politics in America is in a case which sadly requires attention. Thesystem set up by our law and our usage doesn't work, --or at least it can'tbe depended on; it is made to work only by a most unreasonable expenditureof labor and pains. The government, which was designed for the people, hasgot into the hands of bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy. 

There are serious things to do. Does any man doubt the great discontentin this country? Does any man doubt that there are grounds andjustifications for discontent? Do we dare stand still? Within the past fewmonths we have witnessed (along with other strange political phenomena, eloquently significant of popular uneasiness) on one side a doubling ofthe Socialist vote and on the other the posting on dead walls andhoardings all over the country of certain very attractive and divertingbills warning citizens that it was "better to be safe than sorry" andadvising them to "let well enough alone. " Apparently a good many citizensdoubted whether the situation they were advised to let alone was reallywell enough, and concluded that they would take a chance of being sorry. To me, these counsels of do-nothingism, these counsels of sitting stillfor fear something would happen, these counsels addressed to the hopeful, energetic people of the United States, telling them that they are not wiseenough to touch their own affairs without marring them, constitute themost extraordinary argument of fatuous ignorance I ever heard. Americansare not yet cowards. True, their self-reliance has been sapped by years ofsubmission to the doctrine that prosperity is something that benevolentmagnates provide for them with the aid of the government; theirself-reliance has been weakened, but not so utterly destroyed that you cantwit them about it. The American people are not naturally stand-patters. Progress is the word that charms their ears and stirs their hearts. 

There are, of course, Americans who have not yet heard that anything isgoing on. The circus might come to town, have the big parade and go, without their catching a sight of the camels or a note of the calliope. There are people, even Americans, who never move themselves or know thatanything else is moving. 

A friend of mine who had heard of the Florida "cracker, " as they call acertain ne'er-do-weel portion of the population down there, when passingthrough the State in a train, asked some one to point out a "cracker" tohim. The man asked replied, "Well, if you see something off in the woodsthat looks brown, like a stump, you will know it is either a stump or acracker; if it moves, it is a stump. "

Now, movement has no virtue in itself. Change is not worth while for itsown sake. I am not one of those who love variety for its own sake. If athing is good to-day, I should like to have it stay that way to-morrow. Most of our calculations in life are dependent upon things staying the waythey are. For example, if, when you got up this morning, you had forgottenhow to dress, if you had forgotten all about those ordinary things whichyou do almost automatically, which you can almost do half awake, you wouldhave to find out what you did yesterday. I am told by the psychologiststhat if I did not remember who I was yesterday, I should not know who I amto-day, and that, therefore, my very identity depends upon my being ableto tally to-day with yesterday. If they do not tally, then I am confused;I do not know who I am, and I have to go around and ask somebody to tellme my name and where I came from. 

I am not one of those who wish to break connection with the past; I amnot one of those who wish to change for the mere sake of variety. The onlymen who do that are the men who want to forget something, the men whofilled yesterday with something they would rather not recollect to-day, and so go about seeking diversion, seeking abstraction in something thatwill blot out recollection, or seeking to put something into them whichwill blot out all recollection. Change is not worth while unless it isimprovement. If I move out of my present house because I do not like it, then I have got to choose a better house, or build a better house, tojustify the change. 

It would seem a waste of time to point out that ancientdistinction, --between mere change and improvement. Yet there is a class ofmind that is prone to confuse them. We have had political leaders whoseconception of greatness was to be forever frantically doing something, --itmattered little what; restless, vociferous men, without sense of theenergy of concentration, knowing only the energy of succession. Now, lifedoes not consist of eternally running to a fire. There is no virtue ingoing anywhere unless you will gain something by being there. Thedirection is just as important as the impetus of motion. 

All progress depends on how fast you are going, and where you are going, and I fear there has been too much of this thing of knowing neither howfast we were going or where we were going. I have my private belief thatwe have been doing most of our progressiveness after the fashion of thosethings that in my boyhood days we called "treadmills, "--a treadmill beinga moving platform, with cleats on it, on which some poor devil of a mulewas forced to walk forever without getting anywhere. Elephants and evenother animals have been known to turn treadmills, making a good deal ofnoise, and causing certain wheels to go round, and I daresay grinding outsome sort of product for somebody, but without achieving much progress. Lately, in an effort to persuade the elephant to move, really, his friendstried dynamite. It moved, --in separate and scattered parts, but it moved. 

A cynical but witty Englishman said, in a book, not long ago, that it wasa mistake to say of a conspicuously successful man, eminent in his line ofbusiness, that you could not bribe a man like that, because, he said, thepoint about such men is that they have been bribed--not in the ordinarymeaning of that word, not in any gross, corrupt sense, but they haveachieved their great success by means of the existing order of things andtherefore they have been put under bonds to see that that existing orderof things is not changed; they are bribed to maintain the _status quo_. 

It was for that reason that I used to say, when I had to do with theadministration of an educational institution, that I should like to makethe young gentlemen of the rising generation as unlike their fathers aspossible. Not because their fathers lacked character or intelligence orknowledge or patriotism, but because their fathers, by reason of theiradvancing years and their established position in society, had lost touchwith the processes of life; they had forgotten what it was to begin; theyhad forgotten what it was to rise; they had forgotten what it was to bedominated by the circumstances of their life on their way up from thebottom to the top, and, therefore, they were out of sympathy with thecreative, formative and progressive forces of society. 

Progress! Did you ever reflect that that word is almost a new one? No wordcomes more often or more naturally to the lips of modern man, as if thething it stands for were almost synonymous with life itself, and yet menthrough many thousand years never talked or thought of progress. Theythought in the other direction. Their stories of heroisms and glory weretales of the past. The ancestor wore the heavier armor and carried thelarger spear. "There were giants in those days. " Now all that has altered. We think of the future, not the past, as the more glorious time incomparison with which the present is nothing. Progress, development, --those are modern words. The modern idea is to leave the pastand press onward to something new. 

But what is progress going to do with the past, and with the present? Howis it going to treat them? With ignominy, or respect? Should it break withthem altogether, or rise out of them, with its roots still deep in theolder time? What attitude shall progressives take toward the existingorder, toward those institutions of conservatism, the Constitution, thelaws, and the courts?

Are those thoughtful men who fear that we are now about to disturb theancient foundations of our institutions justified in their fear? If theyare, we ought to go very slowly about the processes of change. If it isindeed true that we have grown tired of the institutions which we have socarefully and sedulously built up, then we ought to go very slowly andvery carefully about the very dangerous task of altering them. We ought, therefore, to ask ourselves, first of all, whether thought in this countryis tending to do anything by which we shall retrace our steps, or by whichwe shall change the whole direction of our development?

I believe, for one, that you cannot tear up ancient rootages and safelyplant the tree of liberty in soil which is not native to it. I believethat the ancient traditions of a people are its ballast; you cannot make a_tabula rasa_ upon which to write a political program. You cannot take anew sheet of paper and determine what your life shall be to-morrow. Youmust knit the new into the old. You cannot put a new patch on an oldgarment without ruining it; it must be not a patch, but something woveninto the old fabric, of practically the same pattern, of the same textureand intention. If I did not believe that to be progressive was to preservethe essentials of our institutions, I for one could not be a progressive. 

 * * * * *

One of the chief benefits I used to derive from being president of auniversity was that I had the pleasure of entertaining thoughtful men fromall over the world. I cannot tell you how much has dropped into my granaryby their presence. I had been casting around in my mind for something bywhich to draw several parts of my political thought together when it wasmy good fortune to entertain a very interesting Scotsman who had beendevoting himself to the philosophical thought of the seventeenth century. His talk was so engaging that it was delightful to hear him speak ofanything, and presently there came out of the unexpected region of histhought the thing I had been waiting for. He called my attention to thefact that in every generation all sorts of speculation and thinking tendto fall under the formula of the dominant thought of the age. For example, after the Newtonian Theory of the universe had been developed, almost allthinking tended to express itself in the analogies of the NewtonianTheory, and since the Darwinian Theory has reigned amongst us, everybodyis likely to express whatever he wishes to expound in terms of developmentand accommodation to environment. 

Now, it came to me, as this interesting man talked, that the Constitutionof the United States had been made under the dominion of the NewtonianTheory. You have only to read the papers of _The Federalist_ to see thatfact written on every page. They speak of the "checks and balances" ofthe Constitution, and use to express their idea the simile of theorganization of the universe, and particularly of the solar system, --howby the attraction of gravitation the various parts are held in theirorbits; and then they proceed to represent Congress, the Judiciary, andthe President as a sort of imitation of the solar system. 

They were only following the English Whigs, who gave Great Britain itsmodern constitution. Not that those Englishmen analyzed the matter, or hadany theory about it; Englishmen care little for theories. It was aFrenchman, Montesquieu, who pointed out to them how faithfully they hadcopied Newton's description of the mechanism of the heavens. 

The makers of our Federal Constitution read Montesquieu with truescientific enthusiasm. They were scientists in their way, --the best way oftheir age, --those fathers of the nation. Jefferson wrote of "the laws ofNature, "--and then by way of afterthought, --"and of Nature's God. " Andthey constructed a government as they would have constructed anorrery, --to display the laws of nature. Politics in their thought was avariety of mechanics. The Constitution was founded on the law ofgravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of theefficacy of "checks and balances. "

The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but aliving thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but underthe theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. Itis modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to itsfunctions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have itsorgans offset against each other, as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick co-operation, their ready responseto the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community ofpurpose. Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated functions, no doubt, in our modern day, ofspecialization, with a common task and purpose. Their co-operation isindispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be no successful governmentwithout the intimate, instinctive co-ordination of the organs of life andaction. This is not theory, but fact, and displays its force as fact, whatever theories may be thrown across its track. Living politicalconstitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is aliving organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it mustdevelop. 

All that progressives ask or desire is permission--in an era when"development, " "evolution, " is the scientific word--to interpret theConstitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask isrecognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine. 

 * * * * *

Some citizens of this country have never got beyond the Declaration ofIndependence, signed in Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776. Their bosoms swellagainst George III, but they have no consciousness of the war for freedomthat is going on to-day. 

The Declaration of Independence did not mention the questions of our day. It is of no consequence to us unless we can translate its general termsinto examples of the present day and substitute them in some vital way forthe examples it itself gives, so concrete, so intimately involved in thecircumstances of the day in which it was conceived and written. It is aneminently practical document, meant for the use of practical men; not athesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; not a theory ofgovernment, but a program of action. Unless we can translate it into thequestions of our own day, we are not worthy of it, we are not the sons ofthe sires who acted in response to its challenge. 

What form does the contest between tyranny and freedom take to-day? Whatis the special form of tyranny we now fight? How does it endanger therights of the people, and what do we mean to do in order to make ourcontest against it effectual? What are to be the items of our newdeclaration of independence?

By tyranny, as we now fight it, we mean control of the law, of legislationand adjudication, by organizations which do not represent the people, bymeans which are private and selfish. We mean, specifically, the conduct ofour affairs and the shaping of our legislation in the interest of specialbodies of capital and those who organize their use. We mean the alliance, for this purpose, of political machines with selfish business. We mean theexploitation of the people by legal and political means. We have seen manyof our governments under these influences cease to be representativegovernments, cease to be governments representative of the people, andbecome governments representative of special interests, controlled bymachines, which in their turn are not controlled by the people. 

Sometimes, when I think of the growth of our economic system, it seems tome as if, leaving our law just about where it was before any of the moderninventions or developments took place, we had simply at haphazard extendedthe family residence, added an office here and a workroom there, and a newset of sleeping rooms there, built up higher on our foundations, and putout little lean-tos on the side, until we have a structure that has nocharacter whatever. Now, the problem is to continue to live in the houseand yet change it. 

Well, we are architects in our time, and our architects are alsoengineers. We don't have to stop using a railroad terminal because a newstation is being built. We don't have to stop any of the processes of ourlives because we are rearranging the structures in which we conduct thoseprocesses. What we have to undertake is to systematize the foundations ofthe house, then to thread all the old parts of the structure with thesteel which will be laced together in modern fashion, accommodated to allthe modern knowledge of structural strength and elasticity, and thenslowly change the partitions, relay the walls, let in the light throughnew apertures, improve the ventilation; until finally, a generation or twofrom now, the scaffolding will be taken away, and there will be the familyin a great building whose noble architecture will at last be disclosed, where men can live as a single community, co-operative as in a perfected, co-ordinated beehive, not afraid of any storm of nature, not afraid ofany artificial storm, any imitation of thunder and lightning, knowing thatthe foundations go down to the bedrock of principle, and knowing thatwhenever they please they can change that plan again and accommodate it asthey please to the altering necessities of their lives. 

But there are a great many men who don't like the idea. Some wit recentlysaid, in view of the fact that most of our American architects are trainedin a certain _École_ in Paris, that all American architecture in recentyears was either bizarre or "Beaux Arts. " I think that our economicarchitecture is decidedly bizarre; and I am afraid that there is a gooddeal to learn about matters other than architecture from the same sourcefrom which our architects have learned a great many things. I don't meanthe School of Fine Arts at Paris, but the experience of France; for fromthe other side of the water men can now hold up against us the reproachthat we have not adjusted our lives to modern conditions to the sameextent that they have adjusted theirs. I was very much interested in someof the reasons given by our friends across the Canadian border for beingvery shy about the reciprocity arrangements. They said: "We are not surewhither these arrangements will lead, and we don't care to associate tooclosely with the economic conditions of the United States until thoseconditions are as modern as ours. " And when I resented it, and asked forparticulars, I had, in regard to many matters, to retire from the debate. Because I found that they had adjusted their regulations of economicdevelopment to conditions we had not yet found a way to meet in the UnitedStates. 

Well, we have started now at all events. The procession is under way. Thestand-patter doesn't know there is a procession. He is asleep in the backpart of his house. He doesn't know that the road is resounding with thetramp of men going to the front. And when he wakes up, the country will beempty. He will be deserted, and he will wonder what has happened. Nothinghas happened. The world has been going on. The world has a habit of goingon. The world has a habit of leaving those behind who won't go with it. The world has always neglected stand-patters. And, therefore, thestand-patter does not excite my indignation; he excites my sympathy. He isgoing to be so lonely before it is all over. And we are good fellows, weare good company; why doesn't he come along? We are not going to do himany harm. We are going to show him a good time. We are going to climb theslow road until it reaches some upland where the air is fresher, where thewhole talk of mere politicians is stilled, where men can look in eachother's faces and see that there is nothing to conceal, that all they haveto talk about they are willing to talk about in the open and talk aboutwith each other; and whence, looking back over the road, we shall see atlast that we have fulfilled our promise to mankind. We had said to all theworld, "America was created to break every kind of monopoly, and to setmen free, upon a footing of equality, upon a footing of opportunity, tomatch their brains and their energies, " and now we have proved that wemeant it. 

III

FREEMEN NEED NO GUARDIANS

There are two theories of government that have been contending with eachother ever since government began. One of them is the theory which inAmerica is associated with the name of a very great man, AlexanderHamilton. A great man, but, in my judgment, not a great American. He didnot think in terms of American life. Hamilton believed that the onlypeople who could understand government, and therefore the only people whowere qualified to conduct it, were the men who had the biggest financialstake in the commercial and industrial enterprises of the country. 

That theory, though few have now the hardihood to profess it openly, hasbeen the working theory upon which our government has lately beenconducted. It is astonishing how persistent it is. It is amazing howquickly the political party which had Lincoln for its firstleader, --Lincoln, who not only denied, but in his own person so completelydisproved the aristocratic theory, --it is amazing how quickly that party, founded on faith in the people, forgot the precepts of Lincoln and fellunder the delusion that the "masses" needed the guardianship of "men ofaffairs. "

For indeed, if you stop to think about it, nothing could be a greaterdeparture from original Americanism, from faith in the ability of aconfident, resourceful, and independent people, than the discouragingdoctrine that somebody has got to provide prosperity for the rest of us. And yet that is exactly the doctrine on which the government of the UnitedStates has been conducted lately. Who have been consulted when importantmeasures of government, like tariff acts, and currency acts, and railroadacts, were under consideration? The people whom the tariff chieflyaffects, the people for whom the currency is supposed to exist, the peoplewho pay the duties and ride on the railroads? Oh, no! What do they knowabout such matters! The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought are thebig manufacturers, the bankers, and the heads of the great railroadcombinations. The masters of the government of the United States are thecombined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is writtenover every intimate page of the records of Congress, it is written allthrough the history of conferences at the White House, that thesuggestions of economic policy in this country have come from one source, not from many sources. The benevolent guardians, the kind-hearted trusteeswho have taken the troubles of government off our hands, have become soconspicuous that almost anybody can write out a list of them. They havebecome so conspicuous that their names are mentioned upon almost everypolitical platform. The men who have undertaken the interesting job oftaking care of us do not force us to requite them with anonymouslydirected gratitude. We know them by name. 

Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You willalways find that while you are politely listened to, the men reallyconsulted are the men who have the biggest stake, --the big bankers, thebig manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroadcorporations and of steamship corporations. I have no objection to thesemen being consulted, because they also, though they do not themselves seemto admit it, are part of the people of the United States. But I do veryseriously object to these gentlemen being _chiefly_ consulted, andparticularly to their being exclusively consulted, for, if the governmentof the United States is to do the right thing by the people of the UnitedStates, it has got to do it directly and not through the intermediation ofthese gentlemen. Every time it has come to a critical question thesegentlemen have been yielded to, and their demands have been treated as thedemands that should be followed as a matter of course. 

The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of thespecial interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own. It is toldat every move: "Don't do that; you will interfere with our prosperity. "And when we ask, "Where is our prosperity lodged?" a certain group ofgentlemen say, "With us. " The government of the United States in recentyears has not been administered by the common people of the United States. You know just as well as I do, --it is not an indictment against anybody, it is a mere statement of the facts, --that the people have stood outsideand looked on at their own government and that all they have had todetermine in past years has been which crowd they would look on at;whether they would look on at this little group or that little group whohad managed to get the control of affairs in its hands. Have you everheard, for example, of any hearing before any great committee of theCongress in which the people of the country as a whole were represented, except it may be by the Congressmen themselves? The men who appear atthose meetings in order to argue for or against a schedule in the tariff, for this measure or against that measure, are men who represent specialinterests. They may represent them very honestly, they may intend no wrongto their fellow-citizens, but they are speaking from the point of viewalways of a small portion of the population. I have sometimes wondered whymen, particularly men of means, men who didn't have to work for theirliving, shouldn't constitute themselves attorneys for the people, andevery time a hearing is held before a committee of Congress should not goand ask: "Gentlemen, in considering these things suppose you consider thewhole country? Suppose you consider the citizens of the United States?"

I don't want a smug lot of experts to sit down behind closed doors inWashington and play Providence to me. There is a Providence to which I amperfectly willing to submit. But as for other men setting up as Providenceover myself, I seriously object. I have never met a political savior inthe flesh, and I never expect to meet one. I am reminded of GilletBurgess' verses:

 I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one, But this I'll tell you anyhow, I'd rather see than be one. 

That is the way I feel about this saving of my fellow-countrymen. I'drather see a savior of the United States than set up to be one; because Ihave found out, I have actually found out, that men I consult with knowmore than I do, --especially if I consult with enough of them. I never cameout of a committee meeting or a conference without seeing more of thequestion that was under discussion than I had seen when I went in. Andthat to my mind is an image of government. I am not willing to be underthe patronage of the trusts, no matter how providential a governmentpresides over the process of their control of my life. 

I am one of those who absolutely reject the trustee theory, theguardianship theory. I have never found a man who knew how to take care ofme, and, reasoning from that point out, I conjecture that there isn't anyman who knows how to take care of all the people of the United States. Isuspect that the people of the United States understand their owninterests better than any group of men in the confines of the countryunderstand them. The men who are sweating blood to get their foothold inthe world of endeavor understand the conditions of business in the UnitedStates very much better than the men who have arrived and are at the top. They know what the thing is that they are struggling against. They knowhow difficult it is to start a new enterprise. They know how far they haveto search for credit that will put them upon an even footing with the menwho have already built up industry in this country. They know thatsomewhere, by somebody, the development of industry is being controlled. 

I do not say this with the slightest desire to create any prejudiceagainst wealth; on the contrary, I should be ashamed of myself if Iexcited class feeling of any kind. But I do mean to suggest this: That thewealth of the country has, in recent years, come from particular sources;it has come from those sources which have built up monopoly. Its point ofview is a special point of view. It is the point of view of those men whodo not wish that the people should determine their own affairs, becausethey do not believe that the people's judgment is sound. They want to becommissioned to take care of the United States and of the people of theUnited States, because they believe that they, better than anybody else, understand the interests of the United States. I do not challenge theircharacter; I challenge their point of view. We cannot afford to begoverned as we have been governed in the last generation, by men whooccupy so narrow, so prejudiced, so limited a point of view. 

The government of our country cannot be lodged in any special class. Thepolicy of a great nation cannot be tied up with any particular set ofinterests. I want to say, again and again, that my arguments do not touchthe character of the men to whom I am opposed. I believe that the verywealthy men who have got their money by certain kinds of corporateenterprise have closed in their horizon, and that they do not see and donot understand the rank and file of the people. It is for that reason thatI want to break up the little coterie that has determined what thegovernment of the nation should do. The list of the men who used todetermine what New Jersey should and should not do did not exceed half adozen, and they were always the same men. These very men now are, some ofthem, frank enough to admit that New Jersey has finer energy in herbecause more men are consulted and the whole field of action is widenedand liberalized. We have got to relieve our government from the dominationof special classes, not because these special classes are bad, necessarily, but because no special class can understand the interests ofa great community. 

I believe, as I believe in nothing else, in the average integrity and theaverage intelligence of the American people, and I do not believe that theintelligence of America can be put into commission anywhere. I do notbelieve that there is any group of men of any kind to whom we can affordto give that kind of trusteeship. 

I will not live under trustees if I can help it. No group of men less thanthe majority has a right to tell me how I have got to live in America. Iwill submit to the majority, because I have been trained to doit, --though I may sometimes have my private opinion even of the majority. I do not care how wise, how patriotic, the trustees may be, I have neverheard of any group of men in whose hands I am willing to lodge theliberties of America in trust. 

If any part of our people want to be wards, if they want to have guardiansput over them, if they want to be taken care of, if they want to bechildren, patronized by the government, why, I am sorry, because it willsap the manhood of America. But I don't believe they do. I believe theywant to stand on the firm foundation of law and right and take care ofthemselves. I, for my part, don't want to belong to a nation, I believethat I do not belong to a nation, that needs to be taken care of byguardians. I want to belong to a nation, and I am proud that I do belongto a nation, that knows how to take care of itself. If I thought that theAmerican people were reckless, were ignorant, were vindictive, I mightshrink from putting the government into their hands. But the beauty ofdemocracy is that when you are reckless you destroy your own establishedconditions of life; when you are vindictive, you wreak vengeance uponyourself; the whole stability of a democratic polity rests upon the factthat every interest is every man's interest. 

The theory that the men of biggest affairs, whose field of operation isthe widest, are the proper men to advise the government is, I am willingto admit, rather a plausible theory. If my business covers the UnitedStates not only, but covers the world, it is to be presumed that I have apretty wide scope in my vision of business. But the flaw is that it is myown business that I have a vision of, and not the business of the men wholie outside of the scope of the plans I have made for a profit out of theparticular transactions I am connected with. And you can't, by puttingtogether a large number of men who understand their own business, nomatter how large it is, make up a body of men who will understand thebusiness of the nation as contrasted with their own interest. 

In a former generation, half a century ago, there were a great many menassociated with the government whose patriotism we are not privileged todeny nor to question, who intended to serve the people, but had become sosaturated with the point of view of a governing class that it wasimpossible for them to see America as the people of America themselves sawit. Then there arose that interesting figure, the immortal figure of thegreat Lincoln, who stood up declaring that the politicians, the men whohad governed this country, did not see from the point of view of thepeople. When I think of that tall, gaunt figure rising in Illinois, I havea picture of a man free, unentangled, unassociated with the governinginfluences of the country, ready to see things with an open eye, to seethem steadily, to see them whole, to see them as the men he rubbedshoulders with and associated with saw them. What the country needed in1860 was a leader who understood and represented the thought of the wholepeople, as contrasted with that of a class which imagined itself theguardian of the country's welfare. 

Now, likewise, the trouble with our present political condition is that weneed some man who has not been associated with the governing classes andthe governing influences of this country to stand up and speak for us; weneed to hear a voice from the outside calling upon the American people toassert again their rights and prerogatives in the possession of their owngovernment. 

My thought about both Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt is that of entirerespect, but these gentlemen have been so intimately associated with thepowers that have been determining the policy of this government for almosta generation, that they cannot look at the affairs of the country with theview of a new age and of a changed set of circumstances. They sympathizewith the people; their hearts no doubt go out to the great masses ofunknown men in this country; but their thought is in close, habitualassociation with those who have framed the policies of the country duringall our lifetime. Those men have framed the protective tariff, havedeveloped the trusts, have co-ordinated and ordered all the great economicforces of this country in such fashion that nothing but an outside forcebreaking in can disturb their domination and control. It is with this inmind, I believe, that the country can say to these gentlemen: "We do notdeny your integrity; we do not deny your purity of purpose; but thethought of the people of the United States has not yet penetrated to yourconsciousness. You are willing to act for the people, but you are notwilling to act _through_ the people. Now we propose to act for ourselves. "

 * * * * *

I sometimes think that the men who are now governing us are unconscious ofthe chains in which they are held. I do not believe that men such as weknow, among our public men at least--most of them--have deliberately putus into leading strings to the special interests. The special interestshave grown up. They have grown up by processes which at last, happily, weare beginning to understand. And, having grown up, having occupied theseats of greatest advantage nearest the ear of those who are conductinggovernment, having contributed the money which was necessary to theelections, and therefore having been kindly thought of after elections, there has closed around the government of the United States a veryinteresting, a very able, a very aggressive coterie of gentlemen who aremost definite and explicit in their ideas as to what they want. 

They don't have to consult us as to what they want. They don't have toresort to anybody. They know their plans, and therefore they know whatwill be convenient for them. It may be that they have really thought whatthey have said they thought; it may be that they know so little of thehistory of economic development and of the interests of the United Statesas to believe that their leadership is indispensable for our prosperityand development. I don't have to prove that they believe that, becausethey themselves admit it. I have heard them admit it on many occasions. 

I want to say to you very frankly that I do not feel vindictive about it. Some of the men who have exercised this control are excellent fellows;they really believe that the prosperity of the country depends upon them. They really believe that if the leadership of economic development inthis country dropped from their hands, the rest of us are toomuddle-headed to undertake the task. They not only comprehend the power ofthe United States within their grasp, but they comprehend it within theirimagination. They are honest men, they have just as much right to expresstheir views as I have to express mine or you to express yours, but it isjust about time that we examined their views for ourselves and determinedtheir validity. 

As a matter of fact, their thought does not cover the processes of theirown undertakings. As a university president, I learned that the men whodominate our manufacturing processes could not conduct their business fortwenty-four hours without the assistance of the experts with whom theuniversities were supplying them. Modern industry depends upon technicalknowledge; and all that these gentlemen did was to manage the externalfeatures of great combinations and their financial operation, which hadvery little to do with the intimate skill with which the enterprises wereconducted. I know men not catalogued in the public prints, men not spokenof in public discussion, who are the very bone and sinew of the industryof the United States. 

Do our masters of industry speak in the spirit and interest even of thosewhom they employ? When men ask me what I think about the labor questionand laboring men, I feel that I am being asked what I know about the vastmajority of the people, and I feel as if I were being asked to separatemyself, as belonging to a particular class, from that great body of myfellow-citizens who sustain and conduct the enterprises of the country. Until we get away from that point of view it will be impossible to have afree government. 

I have listened to some very honest and eloquent orators whose sentimentswere noteworthy for this: that when they spoke of the people, they werenot thinking of themselves; they were thinking of somebody whom they werecommissioned to take care of. They were always planning to do things _for_the American people, and I have seen them visibly shiver when it wassuggested that they arrange to have something done by the people forthemselves. They said, "What do they know about it?" I always feel likereplying, "What do _you_ know about it? You know your own interest, butwho has told you our interests, and what do you know about them?" For thebusiness of every leader of government is to hear what the nation issaying and to know what the nation is enduring. It is not his business tojudge _for_ the nation, but to judge _through_ the nation as its spokesmanand voice. I do not believe that this country could have safely allowed acontinuation of the policy of the men who have viewed affairs in any otherlight. 

The hypothesis under which we have been ruled is that of governmentthrough a board of trustees, through a selected number of the big businessmen of the country who know a lot that the rest of us do not know, and whotake it for granted that our ignorance would wreck the prosperity of thecountry. The idea of the Presidents we have recently had has been thatthey were Presidents of a National Board of Trustees. That is not myidea. I have been president of one board of trustees, and I do not care tohave another on my hands. I want to be President of the people of theUnited States. There was many a time when I was president of the board oftrustees of a university when the undergraduates knew more than thetrustees did; and it has been in my thought ever since that if I couldhave dealt directly with the people who constituted Princeton University Icould have carried it forward much faster than I could dealing with aboard of trustees. 

Mark you, I am not saying that these leaders knew that they were doing usan evil, or that they intended to do us an evil. For my part, I am verymuch more afraid of the man who does a bad thing and does not know it isbad than of the man who does a bad thing and knows it is bad; because Ithink that in public affairs stupidity is more dangerous than knavery, because harder to fight and dislodge. If a man does not know enough toknow what the consequences are going to be to the country, then he cannotgovern the country in a way that is for its benefit. These gentlemen, whatever may have been their intentions, linked the government up with themen who control the finances. They may have done it innocently, or theymay have done it corruptly, without affecting my argument at all. And theythemselves cannot escape from that alliance. 

Here, for example, is the old question of campaign funds: If I take ahundred thousand dollars from a group of men representing a particularinterest that has a big stake in a certain schedule of the tariff, I takeit with the knowledge that those gentlemen will expect me not to forgettheir interest in that schedule, and that they will take it as a point ofimplicit honor that I should see to it that they are not damaged by toogreat a change in that schedule. Therefore, if I take their money, I ambound to them by a tacit implication of honor. Perhaps there is no groundfor objection to this situation so long as the function of government isconceived to be to look after the trustees of prosperity, who in turn willlook after the people; but on any other theory than that of trusteeshipno interested campaign contributions can be tolerated for a moment, --savethose of the millions of citizens who thus support the doctrines theybelieve and the men whom they recognized as their spokesmen. 

I tell you the men I am interested in are the men who, under theconditions we have had, never had their voices heard, who never got a linein the newspapers, who never got a moment on the platform, who never hadaccess to the ears of Governors or Presidents or of anybody who wasresponsible for the conduct of public affairs, but who went silently andpatiently to their work every day carrying the burden of the world. Howare they to be understood by the masters of finance, if only the mastersof finance are consulted?

 * * * * *

That is what I mean when I say, "Bring the government back to the people. "I do not mean anything demagogic; I do not mean to talk as if we wanted agreat mass of men to rush in and destroy something. That is not the idea. I want the people to come in and take possession of their own premises;for I hold that the government belongs to the people, and that they have aright to that intimate access to it which will determine every turn of itspolicy. 

America is never going to submit to guardianship. America is never goingto choose thralldom instead of freedom. Look what there is to decide!There is the tariff question. Can the tariff question be decided in favorof the people, so long as the monopolies are the chief counselors atWashington? There is the currency question. Are we going to settle thecurrency question so long as the government listens only to the counsel ofthose who command the banking situation?

Then there is the question of conservation. What is our fear aboutconservation? The hands that are being stretched out to monopolize ourforests, to prevent or pre-empt the use of our great power-producingstreams, the hands that are being stretched into the bowels of the earthto take possession of the great riches that lie hidden in Alaska andelsewhere in the incomparable domain of the United States, are the handsof monopoly. Are these men to continue to stand at the elbow of governmentand tell us how we are to save ourselves, --from themselves? You can notsettle the question of conservation while monopoly is close to the ears ofthose who govern. And the question of conservation is a great deal biggerthan the question of saving our forests and our mineral resources and ourwaters; it is as big as the life and happiness and strength and elasticityand hope of our people. 

There are tasks awaiting the government of the United States which itcannot perform until every pulse of that government beats in unison withthe needs and the desires of the whole body of the American people. Shallwe not give the people access of sympathy, access of authority, to theinstrumentalities which are to be indispensable to their lives?

IV

LIFE COMES FROM THE SOIL

When I look back on the processes of history, when I survey the genesis ofAmerica, I see this written over every page: that the nations are renewedfrom the bottom, not from the top; that the genius which springs up fromthe ranks of unknown men is the genius which renews the youth and energyof the people. Everything I know about history, every bit of experienceand observation that has contributed to my thought, has confirmed me inthe conviction that the real wisdom of human life is compounded out of theexperiences of ordinary men. The utility, the vitality, the fruitage oflife does not come from the top to the bottom; it comes, like the naturalgrowth of a great tree, from the soil, up through the trunk into thebranches to the foliage and the fruit. The great struggling unknown massesof the men who are at the base of everything are the dynamic force thatis lifting the levels of society. A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file. 

So the first and chief need of this nation of ours to-day is to include inthe partnership of government all those great bodies of unnamed men whoare going to produce our future leaders and renew the future energies ofAmerica. And as I confess that, as I confess my belief in the common man, I know what I am saying. The man who is swimming against the stream knowsthe strength of it. The man who is in the męlée knows what blows are beingstruck and what blood is being drawn. The man who is on the make is thejudge of what is happening in America, not the man who has made good; notthe man who has emerged from the flood; not the man who is standing on thebank looking on, but the man who is struggling for his life and for thelives of those who are dearer to him than himself. That is the man whosejudgment will tell you what is going on in America; that is the man bywhose judgment I, for one, wish to be guided. 

We have had the wrong jury; we have had the wrong group, --no, I will notsay the wrong group, but too small a group, --in control of the policies ofthe United States. The average man has not been consulted, and his hearthad begun to sink for fear he never would be consulted again. Therefore, we have got to organize a government whose sympathies will be open to thewhole body of the people of the United States, a government which willconsult as large a proportion of the people of the United States aspossible before it acts. Because the great problem of government is toknow what the average man is experiencing and is thinking about. Most ofus are average men; very few of us rise, except by fortunate accident, above the general level of the community about us; and therefore the manwho thinks common thoughts, the man who has had common experiences, isalmost always the man who interprets America aright. Isn't that the reasonthat we are proud of such stories as the story of Abraham Lincoln, --a manwho rose out of the ranks and interpreted America better than any man hadinterpreted it who had risen out of the privileged classes or the educatedclasses of America?

The hope of the United States in the present and in the future is the samethat it has always been: it is the hope and confidence that out of unknownhomes will come men who will constitute themselves the masters of industryand of politics. The average hopefulness, the average welfare, the averageenterprise, the average initiative, of the United States are the onlythings that make it rich. We are not rich because a few gentlemen directour industry; we are rich because of our own intelligence and our ownindustry. America does not consist of men who get their names into thenewspapers; America does not consist politically of the men who setthemselves up to be political leaders; she does not consist of the men whodo most of her talking, --they are important only so far as they speak forthat great voiceless multitude of men who constitute the great body andthe saving force of the nation. Nobody who cannot speak the commonthought, who does not move by the common impulse, is the man to speak forAmerica, or for any of her future purposes. Only he is fit to speak whoknows the thoughts of the great body of citizens, the men who go abouttheir business every day, the men who toil from morning till night, themen who go home tired in the evenings, the men who are carrying on thethings we are so proud of. 

You know how it thrills our blood sometimes to think how all the nationsof the earth wait to see what America is going to do with her power, herphysical power, her enormous resources, her enormous wealth. The nationshold their breath to see what this young country will do with her youngunspoiled strength; we cannot help but be proud that we are strong. Butwhat has made us strong? The toil of millions of men, the toil of men whodo not boast, who are inconspicuous, but who live their lives humbly fromday to day; it is the great body of toilers that constitutes the might ofAmerica. It is one of the glories of our land that nobody is able topredict from what family, from what region, from what race, even, theleaders of the country are going to come. The great leaders of thiscountry have not come very often from the established, "successful"families. 

I remember speaking at a school not long ago where I understood thatalmost all the young men were the sons of very rich people, and I toldthem I looked upon them with a great deal of pity, because, I said: "Mostof you fellows are doomed to obscurity. You will not do anything. You willnever try to do anything, and with all the great tasks of the countrywaiting to be done, probably you are the very men who will decline to dothem. Some man who has been 'up against it, ' some man who has come out ofthe crowd, somebody who has had the whip of necessity laid on his back, will emerge out of the crowd, will show that he understands the crowd, understands the interests of the nation, united and not separated, andwill stand up and lead us. "

If I may speak of my own experience, I have found audiences made up of the"common people" quicker to take a point, quicker to understand anargument, quicker to discern a tendency and to comprehend a principle, than many a college class that I have lectured to, --not because thecollege class lacked the intelligence, but because college boys are not incontact with the realities of life, while "common" citizens are in contactwith the actual life of day by day; you do not have to explain to themwhat touches them to the quick. 

There is one illustration of the value of the constant renewal of societyfrom the bottom that has always interested me profoundly. The only reasonwhy government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under thearistocratic system which then prevailed was that so many of the men whowere efficient instruments of government were drawn from the church, --fromthat great religious body which was then the only church, that body whichwe now distinguish from other religious bodies as the Roman CatholicChurch. The Roman Catholic Church was then, as it is now, a greatdemocracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become apriest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope ofChristendom; and every chancellery in Europe, every court in Europe, wasruled by these learned, trained and accomplished men, --the priesthood ofthat great and dominant body. What kept government alive in the MiddleAges was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank andfile of the great body of the people through the open channels of thepriesthood. That, it seems to me, is one of the most interesting andconvincing illustrations that could possibly be adduced of the thing thatI am talking about. 

The only way that government is kept pure is by keeping these channelsopen, so that nobody may deem himself so humble as not to constitute apart of the body politic, so that there will constantly be coming newblood into the veins of the body politic; so that no man is so obscurethat he may not break the crust of any class he may belong to, may notspring up to higher levels and be counted among the leaders of the state. Anything that depresses, anything that makes the organization greater thanthe man, anything that blocks, discourages, dismays the humble man, isagainst all the principles of progress. When I see alliances formed, asthey are now being formed, by successful men of business with successfulorganizers of politics, I know that something has been done that checksthe vitality and progress of society. Such an alliance, made at the top, is an alliance made to depress the levels, to hold them where they are, ifnot to sink them; and, therefore, it is the constant business of goodpolitics to break up such partnerships, to re-establish and reopen theconnections between the great body of the people and the offices ofgovernment. 

To-day, when our government has so far passed into the hands of specialinterests; to-day, when the doctrine is implicitly avowed that only selectclasses have the equipment necessary for carrying on government; to-day, when so many conscientious citizens, smitten with the scene of socialwrong and suffering, have fallen victims to the fallacy that benevolentgovernment can be meted out to the people by kind-hearted trustees ofprosperity and guardians of the welfare of dutiful employees, --to-day, supremely, does it behoove this nation to remember that a people shall besaved by the power that sleeps in its own deep bosom, or by none; shall berenewed in hope, in conscience, in strength, by waters welling up from itsown sweet, perennial springs. Not from above; not by patronage of itsaristocrats. The flower does not bear the root, but the root the flower. Everything that blooms in beauty in the air of heaven draws its fairness, its vigor, from its roots. Nothing living can blossom into fruitage unlessthrough nourishing stalks deep-planted in the common soil. The rose ismerely the evidence of the vitality of the root; and the real source ofits beauty, the very blush that it wears upon its tender cheek, comes fromthose silent sources of life that lie hidden in the chemistry of the soil. Up from that soil, up from the silent bosom of the earth, rise thecurrents of life and energy. Up from the common soil, up from the quietheart of the people, rise joyously to-day streams of hope anddetermination bound to renew the face of the earth in glory. 

I tell you, the so-called radicalism of our times is simply the effort ofnature to release the generous energies of our people. This great Americanpeople is at bottom just, virtuous, and hopeful; the roots of its beingare in the soil of what is lovely, pure, and of good report, and the needof the hour is just that radicalism that will clear a way for therealization of the aspirations of a sturdy race. 

V

THE PARLIAMENT OF THE PEOPLE

For a long time this country of ours has lacked one of the institutionswhich freemen have always and everywhere held fundamental. For a long timethere has been no sufficient opportunity of counsel among the people; noplace and method of talk, of exchange of opinion, of parley. Communitieshave outgrown the folk-moot and the town-meeting. Congress, in accordancewith the genius of the land, which asks for action and is impatient ofwords, --Congress has become an institution which does its work in theprivacy of committee rooms and not on the floor of the Chamber; a bodythat makes laws, --a legislature; not a body that debates, --not aparliament. Party conventions afford little or no opportunity fordiscussion; platforms are privately manufactured and adopted with a whoop. It is partly because citizens have foregone the taking of counseltogether that the unholy alliances of bosses and Big Business have beenable to assume to govern for us. 

I conceive it to be one of the needs of the hour to restore the processesof common counsel, and to substitute them for the processes of privatearrangement which now determine the policies of cities, states, andnation. We must learn, we freemen, to meet, as our fathers did, somehow, somewhere, for consultation. There must be discussion and debate, in whichall freely participate. 

It must be candid debate, and it must have for its honest purpose theclearing up of questions and the establishing of the truth. Too muchpolitical discussion is not to honest purpose, but only for theconfounding of an opponent. I am often reminded, when political debategets warm and we begin to hope that the truth is making inroads on thereason of those who have denied it, of the way a debate in Virginia onceseemed likely to end:

When I was a young man studying at Charlottesville, there were twofactions in the Democratic party in the State of Virginia which werehaving a pretty hot contest with each other. In one of the counties one ofthese factions had practically no following at all. A man named Massey, one of its redoubtable debaters, though a little, slim, insignificant-looking person, sent a messenger up into this county andchallenged the opposition to debate with him. They didn't quite like theidea, but they were too proud to decline, so they put up their bestdebater, a big, good-natured man whom everybody was familiar with as"Tom, " and it was arranged that Massey should have the first hour and thatTom Whatever-his-name-was should succeed him the next hour. When theoccasion came, Massey, with his characteristic shrewdness, began to getunderneath the skins of the audience, and he hadn't made more than halfhis speech before it was evident that he was getting that hostile crowdwith him; whereupon one of Tom's partisans in the back of the room, seeinghow things were going, cried out: "Tom, call him a liar and make it afight!"

Now, that kind of debate, that spirit in discussion, gets us nowhere. Ournational affairs are too serious, they lie too close to the well-being ofeach one of us, to excuse our talking about them except in earnestness andcandor and a willingness to speak and listen with open minds. It is amisfortune that attends the party system that in the heat of a campaignpartisan passions are so aroused that we cannot have frank discussion. YetI am sure that I observe, and that all citizens must observe, an almoststartling change in the temper of the people in this respect. The campaignjust closed was markedly different from others that had preceded it in thedegree to which party considerations were forgotten in the seriousness ofthe things we had to discuss as common citizens of an endangered country. 

There is astir in the air of America something that I for one never sawbefore, never felt before. I have been going to political meetings all mylife, though not all my life playing an immodestly conspicuous part inthem; and there is a spirit in our political meetings now that I neversaw before. It hasn't been very many years, let me say for example, thatwomen attended political meetings. And women are attending politicalmeetings now not simply because there is a woman question in politics;they are attending them because the modern political meeting is not likethe political meeting of five or ten years ago. That was a mereratification rally. That was a mere occasion for "whooping it up" forsomebody. That was merely an occasion upon which one party was denouncedunreasonably and the other was lauded unreasonably. No party has everdeserved quite the abuse that each party has got in turn, and nobody hasever deserved the praise that both parties have got in turn. The oldpolitical meeting was a wholly irrational performance; it was got togetherfor the purpose of saying things that were chiefly not so and that wereknown by those who heard them not to be so, and were simply to be taken asa tonic in order to produce cheers. 

But I am very much mistaken in the temper of my fellow-countrymen if themeetings I have seen in the last two years bear any resemblance to thoseolder meetings. Men now get together in a political meeting in order tohear things of the deepest consequence discussed. And you will find almostas many Republicans in a Democratic meeting as you will find Democrats ina Republican meeting; the spirit of frank discussion, of common counsel, is abroad. 

Good will it be for the country if the interest in public concernsmanifested so widely and so sincerely be not suffered to expire with theelection! Why should political debate go on only when somebody is to beelected? Why should it be confined to campaign time?

 * * * * *

There is a movement on foot in which, in common with many men and womenwho love their country, I am greatly interested, --the movement to open theschoolhouse to the grown-up people in order that they may gather and talkover the affairs of the neighborhood and the state. There are schoolhousesall over the land which are not used by the teachers and children in thesummer months, which are not used in the winter time in the evening forschool purposes. These buildings belong to the public. Why not insisteverywhere that they be used as places of discussion, such as of old tookplace in the town-meetings to which everybody went and where every publicofficer was freely called to account? The schoolhouse, which belongs toall of us, is a natural place in which to gather to consult over ourcommon affairs. 

I was very much interested in the remark of a fellow-citizen of ours whohad been born on the other side of the water. He said that not long ago hewandered into one of those neighborhood schoolhouse meetings, and therefound himself among people who were discussing matters in which they wereall interested; and when he came out he said to me: "I have been living inAmerica now ten years, and to-night for the first time I saw America as Ihad imagined it to be. This gathering together of men of all sorts upon aperfect footing of equality to discuss frankly with one another whatconcerned them all, --that is what I dreamed America was. "

That set me to thinking. He hadn't seen the America he had come to finduntil that night. Had he not felt like a neighbor? Had men not consultedhim? He had felt like an outsider. Had there been no little circles inwhich public affairs were discussed?

You know that the great melting-pot of America, the place where we are allmade Americans of, is the public school, where men of every race and ofevery origin and of every station in life send their children, or ought tosend their children, and where, being mixed together, the youngsters areall infused with the American spirit and developed into American men andAmerican women. When, in addition to sending our children to school topaid teachers, we go to school to one another in those same schoolhouses, then we shall begin more fully to realize than we ever have realizedbefore what American life is. And let me tell you this, confidentially, that wherever you find school boards that object to opening theschoolhouses in the evening for public meetings of every proper sort, youhad better look around for some politician who is objecting to it; becausethe thing that cures bad politics is talk by the neighbors. The thing thatbrings to light the concealed circumstances of our political life is thetalk of the neighborhood; and if you can get the neighbors together, getthem frankly to tell everything they know, then your politics, your wardpolitics, and your city politics, and your state politics, too, will beturned inside out, --in the way they ought to be. Because the chiefdifficulty our politics has suffered is that the inside didn't look likethe outside. Nothing clears the air like frank discussion. 

One of the valuable lessons of my life was due to the fact that at acomparatively early age in my experience as a public speaker I had theprivilege of speaking in Cooper Union in New York. The audience in CooperUnion is made up of every kind of man and woman, from the poor devil whosimply comes in to keep warm up to the man who has come in to take aserious part in the discussion of the evening. I want to tell you this, that in the questions that are asked there after the speech is over, themost penetrating questions that I have ever had addressed to me came fromsome of the men who were the least well-dressed in the audience, came fromthe plain fellows, came from the fellows whose muscle was daily up againstthe whole struggle of life. They asked questions which went to the heartof the business and put me to my mettle to answer them. I felt as if thosequestions came as a voice out of life itself, not a voice out of anyschool less severe than the severe school of experience. And what I likeabout this social centre idea of the schoolhouse is that there is theplace where the ordinary fellow is going to get his innings, going to askhis questions, going to express his opinions, going to convince those whodo not realize the vigor of America that the vigor of America pulses inthe blood of every true American, and that the only place he can find thetrue American is in this clearing-house of absolutely democratic opinion. 

No one man understands the United States. I have met some gentlemen whoprofessed they did. I have even met some business men who professed theyheld in their own single comprehension the business of the United States;but I am educated enough to know that they do not. Education has thisuseful effect, that it narrows of necessity the circles of one's egotism. No student knows his subject. The most he knows is where and how to findout the things he does not know with regard to it. That is also theposition of a statesman. No statesman understands the whole country. Heshould make it his business to find out where he will get the informationnecessary to understand at least a part of it at a time when dealing withcomplex affairs. What we need is a universal revival of common counsel. 

I have sometimes reflected on the lack of a body of public opinion in ourcities, and once I contrasted the habits of the city man with those of thecountryman in a way which got me into trouble. I described what a man in acity generally did when he got into a public vehicle or sat in a publicplace. He doesn't talk to anybody, but he plunges his head into anewspaper and presently experiences a reaction which he calls his opinion, but which is not an opinion at all, being merely the impression that apiece of news or an editorial has made upon him. He cannot be said to beparticipating in public opinion at all until he has laid his mindalongside the minds of his neighbors and discussed with them the incidentsof the day and the tendencies of the time. 

Where I got into trouble was, that I ventured on a comparison. I said thatpublic opinion was not typified on the streets of a busy city, but wastypified around the stove in a country store where men sat and probablychewed tobacco and spat into a sawdust box, and made up, before they gotthrough, what was the neighborhood opinion both about persons and events;and then, inadvertently, I added this philosophical reflection, that, whatever might be said against the chewing of tobacco, this at least couldbe said for it: that it gave a man time to think between sentences. Eversince then I have been represented, particularly in the advertisements oftobacco firms, as in favor of the use of chewing tobacco!

The reason that some city men are not more catholic in their ideas is thatthey do not share the opinion of the country, and the reason that somecountrymen are rustic is that they do not know the opinion of the city;they are both hampered by their limitations. I heard the other day of awoman who had lived all her life in a city and in an hotel. She made afirst visit to the country last summer, and spent a week in a farmhouse. Asked afterward what had interested her most about her experience, shereplied that it was hearing the farmer "page his cows!"

A very urban point of view with regard to a common rustic occurrence, andyet that language showed the sharp, the inelastic limits of her thought. She was provincial in the extreme; she thought even more narrowly than inthe terms of a city; she thought in the terms of an hotel. In proportionas we are confined within the walls of one hostelry or one city or onestate, we are provincial. We can do nothing more to advance our country'swelfare than to bring the various communities within the counsels of thenation. The real difficulty of our nation has been that not enough of usrealized that the matters we discussed were matters of common concern. Wehave talked as if we had to serve now this part of the country and againthat part, now this interest and again that interest; as if all interestswere not linked together, provided we understood them and knew how theywere related to one another. 

If you would know what makes the great river as it nears the sea, you musttravel up the stream. You must go up into the hills and back into theforests and see the little rivulets, the little streams, all gathering inhidden places to swell the great body of water in the channel. And so withthe making of public opinion: Back in the country, on the farms, in theshops, in the hamlets, in the homes of cities, in the schoolhouses, wheremen get together and are frank and true with one another, there cometrickling down the streams which are to make the mighty force of theriver, the river which is to drive all the enterprises of human life as itsweeps on into the great common sea of humanity. 

I feel nothing so much as the intensity of the common man. I can pick outin any audience the men who are at ease in their fortunes: they are seeinga public man go through his stunts. But there are in every crowd other menwho are not doing that, --men who are listening as if they were waiting tohear if there were somebody who could speak the thing that is stirring intheir own hearts and minds. It makes a man's heart ache to think that hecannot be sure that he is doing it for them; to wonder whether they arelonging for something that he does not understand. He prays God thatsomething will bring into his consciousness what is in theirs, so that thewhole nation may feel at last released from its dumbness, feel at lastthat there is no invisible force holding it back from its goal, feel atlast that there is hope and confidence and that the road may be trodden asif we were brothers, shoulder to shoulder, not asking each other anythingabout differences of class, not contesting for any selfish advance, butunited in the common enterprise. 

The burden that is upon the heart of every conscientious public man is theburden of the thought that perhaps he does not sufficiently comprehend thenational life. For, as a matter of fact, no single man does comprehend it. The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with oneanother, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man, but todepend upon the counsel of all. For only as men are brought into counsel, and state their own needs and interests, can the general interests of agreat people be compounded into a policy that will be suitable to all. 

I have realized all my life, as a man connected with the tasks ofeducation, that the chief use of education is to open the understanding tocomprehend as many things as possible. That it is not what a manknows, --for no man knows a great deal, --but what a man has upon his mindto find out; it is his ability to understand things, it is his connectionwith the great masses of men that makes him fit to speak for others, --andonly that. I have associated with some of the gentlemen who are connectedwith the special interests of this country (and many of them are prettyfine men, I can tell you), but, fortunately for me, I have associated witha good many other persons besides; I have not confined my acquaintance tothese interesting groups, and I can actually tell those gentlemen somethings that they have not had time to find out. It has been my great goodfortune not to have had my head buried in special undertakings, and, therefore, I have had an occasional look at the horizon. Moreover, I foundout, a long time ago, fortunately for me, when I was a boy, that theUnited States did not consist of that part of it in which I lived. Therewas a time when I was a very narrow provincial, but happily thecircumstances of my life made it necessary that I should go to a verydistant part of the country, and I early found out what a very limitedacquaintance I had with the United States, found out that the only thingthat would give me any sense at all in discussing the affairs of theUnited States was to know as many parts of the United States as possible. 

 * * * * *

The men who have been ruling America must consent to let the majority intothe game. We will no longer permit any system to go uncorrected which isbased upon private understandings and expert testimony; we will not allowthe few to continue to determine what the policy of the country is to be. It is a question of access to our own government. There are very few of uswho have had any real access to the government. It ought to be a matter ofcommon counsel; a matter of united counsel; a matter of mutualcomprehension. 

So, keep the air clear with constant discussion. Make every public servantfeel that he is acting in the open and under scrutiny; and, above allthings else, take these great fundamental questions of your lives withwhich political platforms concern themselves and search them through andthrough by every process of debate. Then we shall have a clear air inwhich we shall see our way to each kind of social betterment. When we havefreed our government, when we have restored freedom of enterprise, when wehave broken up the partnerships between money and power which now block usat every turn, then we shall see our way to accomplish all the handsomethings which platforms promise in vain if they do not start at the pointwhere stand the gates of liberty. 

I am not afraid of the American people getting up and doing something. Iam only afraid they will not; and when I hear a popular vote spoken of asmob government, I feel like telling the man who dares so to speak that hehas no right to call himself an American. You cannot make a reckless, passionate force out of a body of sober people earning their living in afree country. Just picture to yourselves the voting population of thisgreat land, from the sea to the far borders in the mountains, goingcalmly, man by man, to the polls, expressing its judgment about publicaffairs: is that your image of "a mob?"

What is a mob? A mob is a body of men in hot contact with one another, moved by ungovernable passion to do a hasty thing that they will regretthe next day. Do you see anything resembling a mob in that votingpopulation of the countryside, men tramping over the mountains, men goingto the general store up in the village, men moving in little talkinggroups to the corner grocery to cast their ballots, --is that your notionof a mob? Or is that your picture of a free, self-governing people? I amnot afraid of the judgments so expressed, if you give men time to think, if you give them a clear conception of the things they are to vote for;because the deepest conviction and passion of my heart is that the commonpeople, by which I mean all of us, are to be absolutely trusted. 

So, at this opening of a new age, in this its day of unrest anddiscontent, it is our part to clear the air, to bring about commoncounsel; to set up the parliament of the people; to demonstrate that weare fighting no man, that we are trying to bring all men to understandone another; that we are not the friends of any class against any otherclass, but that our duty is to make classes understand one another. Ourpart is to lift so high the incomparable standards of the common interestand the common justice that all men with vision, all men with hope, allmen with the convictions of America in their hearts, will crowd to thatstandard and a new day of achievement may come for the liberty which welove. 

VI

LET THERE BE LIGHT

The concern of patriotic men is to put our government again on its rightbasis, by substituting the popular will for the rule of guardians, theprocesses of common counsel for those of private arrangement. In order todo this, a first necessity is to open the doors and let in the light onall affairs which the people have a right to know about. 

In the first place, it is necessary to open up all the processes of ourpolitics. They have been too secret, too complicated, too roundabout; theyhave consisted too much of private conferences and secret understandings, of the control of legislation by men who were not legislators, but whostood outside and dictated, controlling oftentimes by very questionablemeans, which they would not have dreamed of allowing to become public. Thewhole process must be altered. We must take the selection of candidatesfor office, for example, out of the hands of small groups of men, oflittle coteries, out of the hands of machines working behind closed doors, and put it into the hands of the people themselves again by means ofdirect primaries and elections to which candidates of every sort anddegree may have free access. We must substitute public for privatemachinery. 

It is necessary, in the second place, to give society command of its owneconomic life again by denying to those who conduct the great modernoperations of business the privacy that used to belong properly enough tomen who used only their own capital and their individual energy inbusiness. The processes of capital must be as open as the processes ofpolitics. Those who make use of the great modern accumulations of wealth, gathered together by the dragnet process of the sale of stocks and bonds, and piling up of reserves, must be treated as under a public obligation;they must be made responsible for their business methods to the greatcommunities which are in fact their working partners, so that the handwhich makes correction shall easily reach them and a new principle ofresponsibility be felt throughout their structure and operation. 

What are the right methods of politics? Why, the right methods are thoseof public discussion: the methods of leadership open and above board, notcloseted with "boards of guardians" or anybody else, but brought out underthe sky, where honest eyes can look upon them and honest eyes can judge ofthem. 

If there is nothing to conceal, then why conceal it? If it is a publicgame, why play it in private? If it is a public game, then why not comeout into the open and play it in public? You have got to cure diseasedpolitics as we nowadays cure tuberculosis, by making all the people whosuffer from it live out of doors; not only spend their days out of doorsand walk around, but sleep out of doors; always remain in the open, wherethey will be accessible to fresh, nourishing, and revivifying influences. 

I, for one, have the conviction that government ought to be all outsideand no inside. I, for my part, believe that there ought to be no placewhere anything can be done that everybody does not know about. It would bevery inconvenient for some gentlemen, probably, if government were alloutside, but we have consulted their susceptibilities too long already. Itis barely possible that some of these gentlemen are unjustly suspected; inthat case they owe it to themselves to come out and operate in the light. The very fact that so much in politics is done in the dark, behind closeddoors, promotes suspicion. Everybody knows that corruption thrives insecret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fairpresumption that secrecy means impropriety. So, our honest politicians andour honorable corporation heads owe it to their reputations to bring theiractivities out into the open. 

At any rate, whether they like it or not, these affairs are going to bedragged into the open. We are more anxious about their reputations thanthey are themselves. We are too solicitous for their morals, --if they arenot, --to permit them longer to continue subject to the temptations ofsecrecy. You know there is temptation in loneliness and secrecy. Haven'tyou experienced it? I have. We are never so proper in our conduct as wheneverybody can look and see exactly what we are doing. If you are off insome distant part of the world and suppose that nobody who lives within amile of your home is anywhere around, there are times when you adjournyour ordinary standards. You say to yourself: "Well, I'll have a flingthis time; nobody will know anything about it. " If you were on the desertof Sahara, you would feel that you might permit yourself, --well, say, someslight latitude in conduct; but if you saw one of your immediate neighborscoming the other way on a camel, --you would behave yourself until he gotout of sight. The most dangerous thing in the world is to get off wherenobody knows you. I advise you to stay around among the neighbors, andthen you may keep out of jail. That is the only way some of us can keepout of jail. 

Publicity is one of the purifying elements of politics. The best thingthat you can do with anything that is crooked is to lift it up wherepeople can see that it is crooked, and then it will either straightenitself out or disappear. Nothing checks all the bad practices of politicslike public exposure. You can't be crooked in the light. I don't knowwhether it has ever been tried or not; but I venture to say, purely fromobservation, that it can't be done. 

And so the people of the United States have made up their minds to do ahealthy thing for both politics and big business. Permit me to mix a fewmetaphors: They are going to open doors; they are going to let up blinds;they are going to drag sick things into the open air and into the light ofthe sun. They are going to organize a great hunt, and smoke certainanimals out of their burrows. They are going to unearth the beast in thejungle in which when they hunted they were caught by the beast instead ofcatching him. They have determined, therefore, to take an axe and raze thejungle, and then see where the beast will find cover. And I, for my part, bid them God-speed. The jungle breeds nothing but infection and sheltersnothing but the enemies of mankind. 

And nobody is going to get caught in our hunt except the beasts thatprey. Nothing is going to be cut down or injured that anybody ought towish preserved. 

You know the story of the Irishman who, while digging a hole, was asked, "Pat, what are you doing, --digging a hole?" And he replied, "No, sir; I amdigging the dirt, and laying the hole. " It was probably the same Irishmanwho, seen digging around the wall of a house, was asked, "Pat, what areyou doing?" And he answered, "Faith, I am letting the dark out of thecellar. " Now, that's exactly what we want to do, --let the dark out of thecellar. 

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Take, first, the relations existing between politics and business. 

It is perfectly legitimate, of course, that the business interests of thecountry should not only enjoy the protection of the law, but that theyshould be in every way furthered and strengthened and facilitated bylegislation. The country has no jealousy of any connection betweenbusiness and politics which is a legitimate connection. It is not in theleast averse from open efforts to accommodate law to the materialdevelopment which has so strengthened the country in all that it hasundertaken by supplying its extraordinary life with its necessary physicalfoundations. 

But the illegitimate connections between business and legislation areanother matter. I would wish to speak on this subject with soberness andcircumspection. I have no desire to excite anger against anybody. Thatwould be easy, but it would do no particular good. I wish, rather, toconsider an unhappy situation in a spirit that may enable us to accountfor it, to some extent, and so perhaps get at the causes and the remedy. Mere denunciation doesn't help much to clear up a matter so involved as isthe complicity of business with evil politics in America. 

Every community is vaguely aware that the political machine upon which itlooks askance has certain very definite connections with men who areengaged in business on a large scale, and the suspicion which attaches tothe machine itself has begun to attach also to business enterprises, justbecause these connections are known to exist. If these connections wereopen and avowed, if everybody knew just what they involved and just whatuse was being made of them, there would be no difficulty in keeping an eyeupon affairs and in controlling them by public opinion. But, unfortunately, the whole process of law-making in America is a veryobscure one. There is no highway of legislation, but there are manyby-ways. Parties are not organized in such a way in our legislatures as tomake any one group of men avowedly responsible for the course oflegislation. The whole process of discussion, if any discussion at alltakes place, is private and shut away from public scrutiny and knowledge. There are so many circles within circles, there are so many indirect andprivate ways of getting at legislative action, that our communities areconstantly uneasy during legislative sessions. It is this confusion andobscurity and privacy of our legislative method that gives the politicalmachine its opportunity. There is no publicly responsible man or group ofmen who are known to formulate legislation and to take charge of it fromthe time of its introduction until the time of its enactment. It has, therefore, been possible for an outside force, --the political machine, thebody of men who nominated the legislators and who conducted the contestfor their election, --to assume the rôle of control. Business men whodesired something done in the way of changing the law under which theywere acting, or who wished to prevent legislation which seemed to them tothreaten their own interests, have known that there was this definite bodyof persons to resort to, and they have made terms with them. They haveagreed to supply them with money for campaign expenses and to stand bythem in all other cases where money was necessary if in return they mightresort to them for protection or for assistance in matters of legislation. Legislators looked to a certain man who was not even a member of theirbody for instructions as to what they were to do with particular bills. The machine, which was the centre of party organization, was the naturalinstrument of control, and men who had business interests to promotenaturally resorted to the body which exercised the control. 

There need have been nothing sinister about this. If the whole matter hadbeen open and candid and honest, public criticism would not have centredupon it. But the use of money always results in demoralization, and goesbeyond demoralization to actual corruption. There are two kinds ofcorruption, --the crude and obvious sort, which consists in direct bribery, and the much subtler, more dangerous, sort, which consists in a corruptionof the will. Business men who have tried to set up a control in politicsthrough the machine have more and more deceived themselves, have allowedthemselves to think that the whole matter was a necessary means ofself-defence, have said that it was a necessary outcome of our politicalsystem. Having reassured themselves in this way, they have drifted fromone thing to another until the questions of morals involved have becomehopelessly obscured and submerged. How far away from the ideals of theiryouth have many of our men of business drifted, enmeshed in the vicioussystem, --how far away from the days when their fine young manhood waswrapped in "that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound!"

It is one of the happy circumstances of our time that the most intelligentof our business men have seen the mistake as well as the immorality of thewhole bad business. The alliance between business and politics has been aburden to them, --an advantage, no doubt, upon occasion, but a veryquestionable and burdensome advantage. It has given them great power, butit has also subjected them to a sort of slavery and a bitter sort ofsubserviency to politicians. They are as anxious to be freed from bondageas the country is to be rid of the influences and methods which itrepresents. Leading business men are now becoming great factors in theemancipation of the country from a system which was leading from bad toworse. There are those, of course, who are wedded to the old ways and whowill stand out for them to the last, but they will sink into a minorityand be overcome. The rest have found that their old excuse (namely, thatit was necessary to defend themselves against unfair legislation) is nolonger a good excuse; that there is a better way of defending themselvesthan through the private use of money. That better way is to take thepublic into their confidence, to make absolutely open all their dealingswith legislative bodies and legislative officers, and let the public judgeas between them and those with whom they are dealing. 

 * * * * *

This discovery on their part of what ought to have been obvious all alongpoints out the way of reform; for undoubtedly publicity comes very nearbeing the cure-all for political and economic maladies of this sort. Butpublicity will continue to be very difficult so long as our methods oflegislation are so obscure and devious and private. I think it will becomemore and more obvious that the way to purify our politics is to simplifythem, and that the way to simplify them is to establish responsibleleadership. We now have no leadership at all inside our legislativebodies, --at any rate, no leadership which is definite enough to attractthe attention and watchfulness of the country. Our only leadership beingthat of irresponsible persons outside the legislatures who constitute thepolitical machines, it is extremely difficult for even the most watchfulpublic opinion to keep track of the circuitous methods pursued. Thisundoubtedly lies at the root of the growing demand on the part of Americancommunities everywhere for responsible leadership, for putting inauthority and keeping in authority those whom they know and whom they canwatch and whom they can constantly hold to account. The business of thecountry ought to be served by thoughtful and progressive legislation, butit ought to be served openly, candidly, advantageously, with a carefulregard to letting everybody be heard and every interest be considered, theinterest which is not backed by money as well as the interest which is;and this can be accomplished only by some simplification of our methodswhich will centre the public trust in small groups of men who will lead, not by reason of legal authority, but by reason of their contact with andamenability to public opinion. 

I am striving to indicate my belief that our legislative methods may wellbe reformed in the direction of giving more open publicity to every act, in the direction of setting up some form of responsible leadership on thefloor of our legislative halls so that the people may know who is back ofevery bill and back of the opposition to it, and so that it may be dealtwith in the open chamber rather than in the committee room. The light mustbe let in on all processes of law-making. 

Legislation, as we nowadays conduct it, is not conducted in the open. Itis not threshed out in open debate upon the floors of our assemblies. Itis, on the contrary, framed, digested, and concluded in committee rooms. It is in committee rooms that legislation not desired by the interestsdies. It is in committee rooms that legislation desired by the interestsis framed and brought forth. There is not enough debate of it in openhouse, in most cases, to disclose the real meaning of the proposals made. Clauses lie quietly unexplained and unchallenged in our statutes whichcontain the whole gist and purpose of the act; qualifying phrases whichescape the public attention, casual definitions which do not attractattention, classifications so technical as not to be generally understood, and which every one most intimately concerned is careful not to explain orexpound, contain the whole purpose of the law. Only after it has beenenacted and has come to adjudication in the courts is its scheme as awhole divulged. The beneficiaries are then safe behind their bulwarks. 

Of course, the chief triumphs of committee work, of covert phrase andunexplained classification, are accomplished in the framing of tariffs. Ever since the passage of the outrageous Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act ourpeople have been discovering the concealed meanings and purposes which layhidden in it. They are discovering item by item how deeply anddeliberately they were deceived and cheated. This did not happen byaccident; it came about by design, by elaborated, secret design. Questionsput upon the floor in the House and Senate were not frankly or trulyanswered, and an elaborate piece of legislation was foisted on the countrywhich could not possibly have passed if it had been generallycomprehended. 

And we know, those of us who handle the machinery of politics, that thegreat difficulty in breaking up the control of the political boss is thathe is backed by the money and the influence of these very people who areintrenched in these very schedules. The tariff could never have been builtup item by item by public discussion, and it never could have passed, ifitem by item it had been explained to the people of this country. It wasbuilt up by arrangement and by the subtle management of a politicalorganization represented in the Senate of the United States by the seniorSenator from Rhode Island, and in the House of Representatives by one ofthe Representatives from Illinois. These gentlemen did not build thattariff upon the evidence that was given before the Committee on Ways andMeans as to what the manufacturer and the workingmen, the consumers andthe producers, of this country want. It was not built upon what theinterests of the country called for. It was built upon understandingsarrived at outside of the rooms where testimony was given and debate washeld. 

I am not even now suggesting corrupt influence. That is not my point. Corruption is a very difficult thing to manage in its literal sense. Thepayment of money is very easily detected, and men of this kind who controlthese interests by secret arrangement would not consent to receive adollar in money. They are following their own principles, --that is to say, the principles which they think and act upon, --and they think that theyare perfectly honorable and incorruptible men; but they believe one thingthat I do not believe and that it is evident the people of the country donot believe: they believe that the prosperity of the country depends uponthe arrangements which certain party leaders make with certain businessleaders. They believe that, but the proposition has merely to be statedto the jury to be rejected. The prosperity of this country depends uponthe interests of all of us and cannot be brought about by arrangementbetween any groups of persons. Take any question you like out to thecountry, --let it be threshed out in public debate, --and you will have madethese methods impossible. 

This is what sometimes happens: They promise you a particular piece oflegislation. As soon as the legislature meets, a bill embodying thatlegislation is introduced. It is referred to a committee. You never hearof it again. What happened? Nobody knows what happened. 

I am not intimating that corruption creeps in; I do not know what creepsin. The point is that we not only do not know, but it is intimated, if weget inquisitive, that it is none of our business. My reply is that it isour business, and it is the business of every man in the state; we have aright to know all the particulars of that bill's history. There is not anylegitimate privacy about matters of government. Government must, if it isto be pure and correct in its processes, be absolutely public ineverything that affects it. I cannot imagine a public man with aconscience having a secret that he would keep from the people about theirown affairs. 

I know how some of these gentlemen reason. They say that the influences towhich they are yielding are perfectly legitimate influences, but that ifthey were disclosed they would not be understood. Well, I am very sorry, but nothing is legitimate that cannot be understood. If you cannot explainit properly, then there is something about it that cannot _be_ explainedat all. I know from the circumstances of the case, not what is happening, but that something private is happening, and that every time one of thesebills gets into committee, something private stops it, and it never comesout again unless forced out by the agitation of the press or the courageand revolt of brave men in the legislature. I have known brave men of thatsort. I could name some splendid examples of men who, as representativesof the people, demanded to be told by the chairman of the committee whythe bill was not reported, and who, when they could not find out from him, investigated and found out for themselves and brought the bill out bythreatening to tell the reason on the floor of the House. 

Those are private processes. Those are processes which stand between thepeople and the things that are promised them, and I say that until youdrive all of those things into the open, you are not connected with yourgovernment; you are not represented; you are not participants in yourgovernment. Such a scheme of government by private understanding deprivesyou of representation, deprives the people of representative institutions. It has got to be put into the heads of legislators that public business ispublic business. I hold the opinion that there can be no confidences asagainst the people with respect to their government, and that it is theduty of every public officer to explain to his fellow-citizens whenever hegets a chance, --explain exactly what is going on inside of his own office. 

There is no air so wholesome as the air of utter publicity. 

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There are other tracts of modern life where jungles have grown up thatmust be cut down. Take, for example, the entirely illegitimate extensionsmade of the idea of private property for the benefit of moderncorporations and trusts. A modern joint stock corporation cannot in anyproper sense be said to base its rights and powers upon the principles ofprivate property. Its powers are wholly derived from legislation. Itpossesses them for the convenience of business at the sufferance of thepublic. Its stock is widely owned, passes from hand to hand, bringsmultitudes of men into its shifting partnerships and connects it with theinterests and the investments of whole communities. It is a segment of thepublic; bears no analogy to a partnership or to the processes by whichprivate property is safeguarded and managed, and should not be suffered toafford any covert whatever to those who are managing it. Its management isof public and general concern, is in a very proper sense everybody'sbusiness. The business of many of those corporations which we callpublic-service corporations, and which are indispensable to our dailylives and serve us with transportation and light and water andpower, --their business, for instance, is clearly public business; and, therefore, we can and must penetrate their affairs by the light ofexamination and discussion. 

In New Jersey the people have realized this for a long time, and a year ortwo ago we got our ideas on the subject enacted into legislation. Thecorporations involved opposed the legislation with all their might. Theytalked about ruin, --and I really believe they did think they would besomewhat injured. But they have not been. And I hear I cannot tell you howmany men in New Jersey say: "Governor, we were opposed to you; we did notbelieve in the things you wanted to do, but now that you have done them, we take off our hats. That was the thing to do, it did not hurt us a bit;it just put us on a normal footing; it took away suspicion from ourbusiness. " New Jersey, having taken the cold plunge, cries out to the restof the states, "Come on in! The water's fine!" I wonder whether these menwho are controlling the government of the United States realize how theyare creating every year a thickening atmosphere of suspicion, in whichpresently they will find that business cannot breathe?

So I take it to be a necessity of the hour to open up all the processes ofpolitics and of public business, --open them wide to public view; to makethem accessible to every force that moves, every opinion that prevails inthe thought of the people; to give society command of its own economiclife again, not by revolutionary measures, but by a steady application ofthe principle that the people have a right to look into such matters andto control them; to cut all privileges and patronage and private advantageand secret enjoyment out of legislation. 

Wherever any public business is transacted, wherever plans affecting thepublic are laid, or enterprises touching the public welfare, comfort, orconvenience go forward, wherever political programs are formulated, orcandidates agreed on, --over that place a voice must speak, with the divineprerogative of a people's will, the words: "Let there be light!"

VII

THE TARIFF--"PROTECTION, " OR SPECIAL PRIVILEGE?

Every business question, in this country, comes back, sooner or later, tothe question of the tariff. You cannot escape from it, no matter in whichdirection you go. The tariff is situated in relation to other questionslike Boston Common in the old arrangement of that interesting city. Iremember seeing once, in _Life_, a picture of a man standing at the doorof one of the railway stations in Boston and inquiring of a Bostonian theway to the Common. "Take any of these streets, " was the reply, "in eitherdirection. " Now, as the Common was related to the winding streets ofBoston, so the tariff question is related to the economic questions of ourday. Take any direction and you will sooner or later get to the Common. And, in discussing the tariff you may start at the centre and go in anydirection you please. 

Let us illustrate by standing at the centre, the Common itself. As farback as 1828, when they knew nothing about "practical politics" ascompared with what we know now, a tariff bill was passed which was calledthe "Tariff of Abominations, " because it had no beginning nor end norplan. It had no traceable pattern in it. It was as if the demands ofeverybody in the United States had all been thrown indiscriminately intoone basket and that basket presented as a piece of legislation. It hadbeen a general scramble and everybody who scrambled hard enough had beentaken care of in the schedules resulting. It was an abominable thing tothe thoughtful men of that day, because no man guided it, shaped it, ortried to make an equitable system out of it. That was bad enough, but atleast everybody had an open door through which to scramble for hisadvantage. It was a go-as-you-please, free-for-all struggle, and anybodywho could get to Washington and say he represented an important businessinterest could be heard by the Committee on Ways and Means. 

We have a very different state of affairs now. The Committee on Ways andMeans and the Finance Committee of the Senate in these sophisticated dayshave come to discriminate by long experience among the persons whosecounsel they are to take in respect of tariff legislation. There has beensubstituted for the unschooled body of citizens that used to clamor at thedoors of the Finance Committee and the Committee on Ways and Means, one ofthe most interesting and able bodies of expert lobbyists that has everbeen developed in the experience of any country, --men who know so muchabout the matters they are talking of that you cannot put your knowledgeinto competition with theirs. They so overwhelm you with their familiaritywith detail that you cannot discover wherein their scheme lies. Theysuggest the change of an innocent fraction in a particular schedule andexplain it to you so plausibly that you cannot see that it means millionsof dollars additional from the consumers of this country. They propose, for example, to put the carbon for electric lights in two-foot piecesinstead of one-foot pieces, --and you do not see where you are gettingsold, because you are not an expert. If you will get some expert to gothrough the schedules of the present Payne-Aldrich tariff, you will find a"nigger" concealed in almost every woodpile, --some little word, somelittle clause, some unsuspected item, that draws thousands of dollars outof the pockets of the consumer and yet does not seem to mean anything inparticular. They have calculated the whole thing beforehand; they haveanalyzed the whole detail and consequence, each one in his specialty. Withthe tariff specialist the average business man has no possibility ofcompetition. Instead of the old scramble, which was bad enough, we get thepresent expert control of the tariff schedules. Thus the relation betweenbusiness and government becomes, not a matter of the exposure of all thesensitive parts of the government to all the active parts of the people, but the special impression upon them of a particular organized force inthe business world. 

Furthermore, every expedient and device of secrecy is brought into use tokeep the public unaware of the arguments of the high protectionists, andignorant of the facts which refute them; and uninformed of the intentionsof the framers of the proposed legislation. It is notorious, even, thatmany members of the Finance Committee of the Senate did not know thesignificance of the tariff schedules which were reported in the presenttariff bill to the Senate, and that members of the Senate who asked Mr. Aldrich direct questions were refused the information they sought;sometimes, I dare say, because he could not give it, and sometimes, Iventure to say, because disclosure of the information would haveembarrassed the passage of the measure. There were essential papers, moreover, which could not be got at. 

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Take that very interesting matter, that will-o'-the-wisp, known as "thecost of production. " It is hard for any man who has ever studiedeconomics at all to restrain a cynical smile when he is told that anintelligent group of his fellow-citizens are looking for "the cost ofproduction" as a basis for tariff legislation. It is not the same in anyone factory for two years together. It is not the same in one industryfrom one season to another. It is not the same in one country at twodifferent epochs. It is constantly eluding your grasp. It nowhere exists, as a scientific, demonstrable fact. But, in order to carry out thepretences of the "protective" program, it was necessary to go through themotions of finding out what it was. I am credibly informed that thegovernment of the United States requested several foreign governments, among others the government of Germany, to supply it with as reliablefigures as possible concerning the cost of producing certain articlescorresponding with those produced in the United States. The Germangovernment put the matter into the hands of certain of her manufacturers, who sent in just as complete answers as they could procure from theirbooks. The information reached our government during the course of thedebate on the Payne-Aldrich Bill and was transmitted, --for the bill bythat time had reached the Senate, --to the Finance Committee of the Senate. But I am told, --and I have no reason to doubt it, --that it never came outof the pigeonholes of the committee. I don't know, and that committeedoesn't know, what the information it contained was. When Mr. Aldrich wasasked about it, he first said it was not an official report from theGerman government. Afterward he intimated that it was an impudent attempton the part of the German government to interfere with tariff legislationin the United States. But he never said what the cost of productiondisclosed by it was. If he had, it is more than likely that some of theschedules would have been shown to be entirely unjustifiable. 

Such instances show you just where the centre of gravity is, --and it is amatter of gravity indeed, for it is a very grave matter! It lay during thelast Congress in the one person who was the accomplished intermediarybetween the expert lobbyists and the legislation of Congress. I am notsaying this in derogation of the character of Mr. Aldrich. It is noconcern of mine what kind of man Mr. Aldrich is; now, particularly, whenhe has retired from public life, is it a matter of indifference. The pointis that he, because of his long experience, his long handling of thesedelicate and private matters, was the usual and natural instrument bywhich the Congress of the United States informed itself, not as to thewishes of the people of the United States or of the rank and file ofbusiness men of the country, but as to the needs and arguments of theexperts who came to arrange matters with the committees. 

The moral of the whole matter is this: The business of the United Statesis not as a whole in contact with the government of the United States. Sosoon as it is, the matters which now give you, and justly give you, causefor uneasiness will disappear. Just so soon as the business of thiscountry has general, free, welcome access to the councils of Congress, allthe friction between business and politics will disappear. 

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The tariff question is not the question that it was fifteen or twenty orthirty years ago. It used to be said by the advocates of the tariff thatit made no difference even if there were a great wall separating us fromthe commerce of the world, because inside the United States there was soenormous an area of absolute free trade that competition within thecountry kept prices down to a normal level; that so long as one statecould compete with all the others in the United States, and all the otherscompete with it, there would be only that kind of advantage gained whichis gained by superior brain, superior economy, the better plant, thebetter administration; all of the things that have made America supreme, and kept prices in America down, because American genius was competingwith American genius. I must add that so long as that was true, there wasmuch to be said in defence of the protective tariff. 

But the point now is that the protective tariff has been taken advantageof by some men to destroy domestic competition, to combine all existingrivals within our free-trade area, and to make it impossible for new mento come into the field. Under the high tariff there has been formed anetwork of factories which in their connection dominate the market of theUnited States and establish their own prices. Whereas, therefore, it wasonce arguable that the high tariff did not create the high cost of living, it is now no longer arguable that these combinations do not, --not byreason of the tariff, but by reason of their combination under thetariff, --settle what prices shall be paid; settle how much the productshall be; and settle, moreover, what shall be the market for labor. 

The "protective" policy, as we hear it proclaimed to-day, bears norelation to the original doctrine enunciated by Webster and Clay. The"infant industries, " which those statesmen desired to encourage, havegrown up and grown gray, but they have always had new arguments forspecial favors. Their demands have gone far beyond what they dared ask forin the days of Mr. Blaine and Mr. McKinley, though both those apostles of"protection" were, before they died, ready to confess that the time hadeven then come to call a halt on the claims of the subsidized industries. William McKinley, before he died, showed symptoms of adjustment to the newage such as his successors have not exhibited. You remember what theutterances of Mr. McKinley's last month were with regard to the policywith which his name is particularly identified; I mean the policy of"protection. " You remember how he joined in opinion with what Mr. Blainebefore him had said--namely, that we had devoted the country to a policywhich, too rigidly persisted in, was proving a policy of restriction; andthat we must look forward to a time that ought to come very soon when weshould enter into reciprocal relations of trade with all the countries ofthe world. This was another way of saying that we must substituteelasticity for rigidity; that we must substitute trade for closed ports. McKinley saw what his successors did not see. He saw that we had made forourselves a strait-jacket. 

When I reflect upon the "protective" policy of this country, and observethat it is the later aspects and the later uses of that policy which havebuilt up trusts and monopoly in the United States, I make this contrast inmy thought: Mr. McKinley had already uttered his protest against what heforesaw; his successor saw what McKinley had only foreseen, but he took noaction. His successor saw those very special privileges, which Mr. McKinley himself began to suspect, used by the men who had obtained themto build up a monopoly for themselves, making freedom of enterprise inthis country more and more difficult. I am one of those who have theutmost confidence that Mr. McKinley would not have sanctioned the laterdevelopments of the policy with which his name stands identified. 

What is the present tariff policy of the protectionists? It is not theancient protective policy to which I would give all due credit, but anentirely new doctrine. I ask anybody who is interested in the history ofhigh "protective" tariffs to compare the latest platforms of the two"protective" tariff parties with the old doctrine. Men have been struck, students of this matter, by an entirely new departure. The new doctrine ofthe protectionist is that the tariff should represent the differencebetween the cost of production in America and the cost of production inother countries, _plus_ a reasonable profit to those who are engaged inindustry. This is the new part of the protective doctrine: "_plus_ areasonable profit. " It openly guarantees profit to the men who come andask favors of Congress. The old idea of a protective tariff was designedto keep American industries alive and, therefore, keep American laboremployed. But the favors of protection have become so permanent that thisis what has happened: Men, seeing that they need not fear foreigncompetition, have drawn together in great combinations. These combinationsinclude factories (if it is a combination of factories) of all grades: oldfactories and new factories, factories with antiquated machinery andfactories with brand-new machinery; factories that are economically andfactories that are not economically administered; factories that havebeen long in the family, which have been allowed to run down, andfactories with all the new modern inventions. As soon as the combinationis effected the less efficient factories are generally put out ofoperation. But the stock issued in payment for them has to pay dividends. And the United States government guarantees profit on investment infactories that have gone out of business. As soon as these combinationssee prices falling they reduce the hours of labor, they reduce production, they reduce wages, they throw men out of employment, --in order to do what?In order to keep the prices up in spite of their lack of efficiency. 

There may have been a time when the tariff did not raise prices, but thattime is past; the tariff is now taken advantage of by the greatcombinations in such a way as to give them control of prices. These thingsdo not happen by chance. It does not happen by chance that prices are andhave been rising faster here than in any other country. That river thatdivides us from Canada divides us from much cheaper living, notwithstanding that the Canadian Parliament levies duties onimportations. 

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But "Ah!" exclaim those who do not understand what is going on; "you willruin the country with your free trade!" Who said free trade? Who proposedfree trade? You can't have free trade in the United States, because thegovernment of the United States is of necessity, with our present divisionof the field of taxation between the federal and state governments, supported in large part by the duties collected at the ports. I shouldlike to ask some gentlemen if very much is collected in the way of dutiesat the ports under the particular tariff schedules under which theyoperate. Some of the duties are practically prohibitive, and there is notariff to be got from them. 

When you buy an imported article, you pay a part of the price to theFederal government in the form of customs duty. But, as a rule, what youbuy is, not the imported article, but a domestic article, the price ofwhich the manufacturer has been able to raise to a point equal to, orhigher than, the price of the foreign article _plus the duty_. But whogets the tariff tax in this case? The government? Oh, no; not at all. Themanufacturer. The American manufacturer, who says that while he can't sellgoods as low as the foreign manufacturer, all good Americans ought to buyof him and pay him a tax on every article for the privilege. Perhaps weought. The original idea was that, when he was just starting and neededsupport, we ought to buy of him, even if we had to pay a higher price, till he could get on his feet. Now it is said that we ought to buy of himand pay him a price 15 to 120 per cent. Higher than we need pay theforeign manufacturer, even if he is a six-foot, bearded "infant, " becausethe cost of production is necessarily higher here than anywhere else. Idon't know why it should be. The American workingman used to be able to doso much more and better work than the foreigner that that more thancompensated for his higher wages and made him a good bargain at any wage. 

Of course, if we are going to agree to give any fellow-citizen who takesa notion to go into some business or other for which the country is notespecially adapted, --if we are going to give him a bonus on every articlehe produces big enough to make up for the handicap he labors under becauseof some natural reason or other, --why, we may indeed gloriously diversifyour industries, but we shall beggar ourselves. On this principle, we shallhave in Connecticut, or Michigan, or somewhere else, miles of hothouses inwhich thousands of happy American workingmen, with full dinner-pails, willbe raising bananas, --to be sold at a quarter apiece. Some foolish person, a benighted Democrat like as not, might timidly suggest that bananas werea greater public blessing when they came from Jamaica and were three for anickel, but what patriotic citizen would listen for a moment to thecriticisms of a person without any conception of the beauty and glory ofthe great American banana industry, without realization of the proudsignificance of the fact that Old Glory floats over the biggest bananahothouses in the world!

But that is a matter on one side. What I am trying to point out to younow is that this "protective" tariff, so-called, has become a means offostering the growth of particular groups of industry at the expense ofthe economic vitality of the rest of the country. What the people nowpropose is a very practical thing indeed: They propose to unearth thesespecial privileges and to cut them out of the tariff. They propose not toleave a single concealed private advantage in the statutes concerning theduties that can possibly be eradicated without affecting the part of thebusiness that is sound and legitimate and which we all wish to seepromoted. 

Some men talk as if the tariff-reformers, as if the Democrats, weren'tpart of the United States. I met a lady the other day, not an elderlylady, who said to me with pride: "Why, I have been a Democrat ever sincethey hunted them with dogs. " And you would really suppose, to hear somemen talk, that Democrats were outlaws and did not share the life of theUnited States. Why, Democrats constitute nearly one half the voters ofthis country. They are engaged in all sorts of enterprises, big andlittle. There isn't a walk of life or a kind of occupation in which youwon't find them; and, as a Philadelphia paper very wittily said the otherday, they can't commit economic murder without committing economicsuicide. Do you suppose, therefore, that half of the population of theUnited States is going about to destroy the very foundations of oureconomic life by simply running amuck amidst the schedules of the tariff?Some of the schedules are so tough that they wouldn't be hurt, if it did. But that isn't the program, and anybody who says that it is simply doesn'tunderstand the situation at all. All that the tariff-reformers claim isthis: that the partnership ought to be bigger than it is. Just becausethere are so many of them, they know how many are outside. And let me tellyou, just as many Republicans are outside. The only thing I have againstmy protectionist fellow-citizens is that they have allowed themselves tobe imposed upon so many years. Think of saying that the "protective"tariff is for the benefit of the workingman, in the presence of all thosefacts that have just been disclosed in Lawrence, Mass. , where the worstschedule of all--"Schedule K"--operates to keep men on wages on which theycannot live. Why, the audacity, the impudence, of the claim is whatstrikes one; and in face of the fact that the workingmen of this countrywho are in unprotected industries are better paid than those who are in"protected" industries; at any rate, in the conspicuous industries! TheSteel schedule, I dare say, is rather satisfactory to those whomanufacture steel, but is it satisfactory to those who make the steel withtheir own tired hands? Don't you know that there are mills in which menare made to work seven days in the week for twelve hours a day, and in thethree hundred and sixty-five weary days of the year can't make enough topay their bills? And this in one of the giants among our industries, oneof the undertakings which have thriven to gigantic size upon this verysystem. 

Ah, the whole mass of the fraud is falling away, and men are beginning tosee disclosed little groups of persons maintaining a control over thedominant party and through the dominant party over the government, intheir own interest, and not in the interest of the people of the UnitedStates!

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Let me repeat: There cannot be free trade in the United States so long asthe established fiscal policy of the federal government is maintained. Thefederal government has chosen throughout all the generations that havepreceded us to maintain itself chiefly on indirect instead of directtaxation. I dare say we shall never see a time when it can alter thatpolicy in any substantial degree; and there is no Democrat ofthoughtfulness that I have met who contemplates a program of free trade. 

But what we intend to do, what the House of Representatives has beenattempting to do and will attempt to do again, and succeed in doing, is toweed this garden that we have been cultivating. Because, if we have beenlaying at the roots of our industrial enterprises this fertilization ofprotection, if we have been stimulating it by this policy, we have foundthat the stimulation was not equal in respect of all the growths in thegarden, and that there are some growths, which every man can distinguishwith the naked eye, which have so overtopped the rest, which have sothrown the rest into destroying shadow, that it is impossible for theindustries of the United States as a whole to prosper under theirblighting shade. In other words, we have found out that this thatprofesses to be a process of protection has become a process offavoritism, and that the favorites of this policy have flourished at theexpense of all the rest. And now we are going into this garden and weedit. We are going into this garden and give the little plants air and lightin which to grow. We are going to pull up every root that has so spreaditself as to draw the nutriment of the soil from the other roots. We aregoing in there to see to it that the fertilization of intelligence, ofinvention, of origination, is once more applied to a set of industries nowthreatening to be stagnant, because threatening to be too muchconcentrated. The policy of freeing the country from the restrictivetariff will so variegate and multiply the undertakings in the country thatthere will be a wider market and a greater competition for labor; it willlet the sun shine through the clouds again as once it shone on the free, independent, unpatronized intelligence and energy of a great people. 

One of the counts of the indictment against the so-called "protective"tariff is that it has robbed Americans of their independence, resourcefulness, and self-reliance. Our industry has grown invertebrate, cowardly, dependent on government aid. When I hear the argument of some ofthe biggest business men in this country, that if you took the"protection" of the tariff off they would be overcome by the competitionof the world, I ask where and when it happened that the boasted genius ofAmerica became afraid to go out into the open and compete with the world?Are we children, are we wards, are we still such puerile infants that wehave to be fed out of a bottle? Isn't it true that we know how to makesteel in America better than anybody else in the world? Yet they say, "ForHeaven's sake don't expose us to the chill of prices coming from any otherquarter of the globe. " Mind you, we can compete with those prices. Steelis sold abroad, steel made in America is sold abroad in many of its forms, much cheaper than it is sold in America. It is so hard for people to getthat into their heads!

We set up a kindergarten in New York. We called it the Chamber of Horrors. We exhibited there a great many things manufactured in the United States, with the prices at which they were sold in the United States, and theprices at which they were sold outside of the United States, marked onthem. If you tell a woman that she can buy a sewing machine for eighteendollars in Mexico that she has to pay thirty dollars for in the UnitedStates, she will not heed it or she will forget it unless you take her andshow her the machine with the price marked on it. My very distinguishedfriend, Senator Gore, of Oklahoma, made this interesting proposal: thatwe should pass a law that every piece of goods sold in the United Statesshould have on it a label bearing the price at which it sells under thetariff and the price at which it would sell if there were no tariff, andthen the Senator suggests that we have a very easy solution for the tariffquestion. He does not want to oblige that great body of ourfellow-citizens who have a conscientious belief in "protection" to turnaway from it. He proposes that everybody who believes in the "protective"tariff should pay it and the rest of us should not; if they want tosubscribe, it is open to them to subscribe. 

As for the rest of us, the time is coming when we shall not have tosubscribe. The people of this land have made up their minds to cut allprivilege and patronage out of our fiscal legislation, particularly out ofthat part of it which affects the tariff. We have come to recognize in thetariff as it is now constructed, not a system of protection, but a systemof favoritism, of privilege, too often granted secretly and by subterfuge, instead of openly and frankly and legitimately, and we have determined toput an end to the whole bad business, not by hasty and drastic changes, but by the adoption of an entirely new principle, --by the reformation ofthe whole purpose of legislation of that kind. We mean that our tarifflegislation henceforth shall have as its object, not private profit, butthe general public development and benefit. We shall make our fiscal laws, not like those who dole out favors, but like those who serve a nation. Weare going to begin with those particular items where we find specialprivilege intrenched. We know what those items are; these gentlemen havebeen kind enough to point them out themselves. What we are interested infirst of all with regard to the tariff is getting the grip of specialinterests off the throat of Congress. We do not propose that specialinterests shall any longer camp in the rooms of the Committee on Ways andMeans of the House and the Finance Committee of the Senate. We mean thatthose shall be places where the people of the United States shall come andbe represented, in order that everything may be done in the generalinterest, and not in the interest of particular groups of persons whoalready dominate the industries and the industrial development of thiscountry. Because no matter how wise these gentlemen may be, no matter howpatriotic, no matter how singularly they may be gifted with the power todivine the right courses of business, there isn't any group of men in theUnited States or in any other country who are wise enough to have thedestinies of a great people put into their hands as trustees. We mean thatbusiness in this land shall be released, emancipated. 

VIII

MONOPOLY, OR OPPORTUNITY?

Gentlemen say, they have been saying for a long time, and, therefore, Iassume that they believe, that trusts are inevitable. They don't say thatbig business is inevitable. They don't say merely that the elaboration ofbusiness upon a great co-operative scale is characteristic of our time andhas come about by the natural operation of modern civilization. We wouldadmit that. But they say that the particular kind of combinations that arenow controlling our economic development came into existence naturally andwere inevitable; and that, therefore, we have to accept them asunavoidable and administer our development through them. They take theanalogy of the railways. The railways were clearly inevitable if we wereto have transportation, but railways after they are once built stay put. You can't transfer a railroad at convenience; and you can't shut up onepart of it and work another part. It is in the nature of what economists, those tedious persons, call natural monopolies; simply because the wholecircumstances of their use are so stiff that you can't alter them. Suchare the analogies which these gentlemen choose when they discuss themodern trust. 

I admit the popularity of the theory that the trusts have come aboutthrough the natural development of business conditions in the UnitedStates, and that it is a mistake to try to oppose the processes by whichthey have been built up, because those processes belong to the very natureof business in our time, and that therefore the only thing we can do, andthe only thing we ought to attempt to do, is to accept them as inevitablearrangements and make the best out of it that we can by regulation. 

I answer, nevertheless, that this attitude rests upon a confusion ofthought. Big business is no doubt to a large extent necessary and natural. The development of business upon a great scale, upon a great scale ofco-operation, is inevitable, and, let me add, is probably desirable. Butthat is a very different matter from the development of trusts, becausethe trusts have not grown. They have been artificially created; they havebeen put together, not by natural processes, but by the will, thedeliberate planning will, of men who were more powerful than theirneighbors in the business world, and who wished to make their power secureagainst competition. 

The trusts do not belong to the period of infant industries. They are notthe products of the time, that old laborious time, when the greatcontinent we live on was undeveloped, the young nation struggling to finditself and get upon its feet amidst older and more experiencedcompetitors. They belong to a very recent and very sophisticated age, whenmen knew what they wanted and knew how to get it by the favor of thegovernment. 

Did you ever look into the way a trust was made? It is very natural, inone sense, in the same sense in which human greed is natural. If Ihaven't efficiency enough to beat my rivals, then the thing I am inclinedto do is to get together with my rivals and say: "Don't let's cut eachother's throats; let's combine and determine prices for ourselves;determine the output, and thereby determine the prices: and dominate andcontrol the market. " That is very natural. That has been done ever sincefreebooting was established. That has been done ever since power was usedto establish control. The reason that the masters of combination havesought to shut out competition is that the basis of control undercompetition is brains and efficiency. I admit that any large corporationbuilt up by the legitimate processes of business, by economy, byefficiency, is natural; and I am not afraid of it, no matter how big itgrows. It can stay big only by doing its work more thoroughly than anybodyelse. And there is a point of bigness, --as every business man in thiscountry knows, though some of them will not admit it, --where you pass thelimit of efficiency and get into the region of clumsiness andunwieldiness. You can make your combine so extensive that you can'tdigest it into a single system; you can get so many parts that you can'tassemble them as you would an effective piece of machinery. The point ofefficiency is overstepped in the natural process of developmentoftentimes, and it has been overstepped many times in the artificial anddeliberate formation of trusts. 

A trust is formed in this way: a few gentlemen "promote" it--that is tosay, they get it up, being given enormous fees for their kindness, whichfees are loaded on to the undertaking in the form of securities of onekind or another. The argument of the promoters is, not that every one whocomes into the combination can carry on his business more efficiently thanhe did before; the argument is: we will assign to you as your share in thepool twice, three times, four times, or five times what you could havesold your business for to an individual competitor who would have to runit on an economic and competitive basis. We can afford to buy it at such afigure because we are shutting out competition. We can afford to make thestock of the combination half a dozen times what it naturally would beand pay dividends on it, because there will be nobody to dispute theprices we shall fix. 

Talk of that as sound business? Talk of that as inevitable? It is basedupon nothing except power. It is not based upon efficiency. It is nowonder that the big trusts are not prospering in proportion to suchcompetitors as they still have in such parts of their business ascompetitors have access to; they are prospering freely only in thosefields to which competition has no access. Read the statistics of theSteel Trust, if you don't believe it. Read the statistics of any trust. They are constantly nervous about competition, and they are constantlybuying up new competitors in order to narrow the field. The United StatesSteel Corporation is gaining in its supremacy in the American market onlywith regard to the cruder manufactures of iron and steel, but wherever, asin the field of more advanced manufactures of iron and steel, it hasimportant competitors, its portion of the product is not increasing, butis decreasing, and its competitors, where they have a foothold, are oftenmore efficient than it is. 

Why? Why, with unlimited capital and innumerable mines and plantseverywhere in the United States, can't they beat the other fellows in themarket? Partly because they are carrying too much. Partly because they areunwieldy. Their organization is imperfect. They bought up inefficientplants along with efficient, and they have got to carry what they havepaid for, even if they have to shut some of the plants up in order to makeany interest on their investments; or, rather, not interest on theirinvestments, because that is an incorrect word, --on their allegedcapitalization. Here we have a lot of giants staggering along under analmost intolerable weight of artificial burdens, which they have put ontheir own backs, and constantly looking about lest some little pigmy witha round stone in a sling may come out and slay them. 

For my part, I want the pigmy to have a chance to come out. And I foreseea time when the pigmies will be so much more athletic, so much moreastute, so much more active, than the giants, that it will be a case ofJack the giant-killer. Just let some of the youngsters I know have achance and they'll give these gentlemen points. Lend them a little money. They can't get any now. See to it that when they have got a local marketthey can't be squeezed out of it. Give them a chance to capture thatmarket and then see them capture another one and another one, until thesemen who are carrying an intolerable load of artificial securities findthat they have got to get down to hard pan to keep their foothold at all. I am willing to let Jack come into the field with the giant, and if Jackhas the brains that some Jacks that I know in America have, then I shouldlike to see the giant get the better of him, with the load that he, thegiant, has to carry, --the load of water. For I'll undertake to put awater-logged giant out of business any time, if you will give me a fairfield and as much credit as I am entitled to, and let the law do what fromtime immemorial law has been expected to do, --see fair play. 

As for watered stock, I know all the sophistical arguments, and they aremany, for capitalizing earning capacity. It is a very attractive andinteresting argument, and in some instances it is legitimately used. Butthere is a line you cross, above which you are not capitalizing yourearning capacity, but capitalizing your control of the market, capitalizing the profits which you got by your control of the market, anddidn't get by efficiency and economy. These things are not hidden evenfrom the layman. These are not half-hidden from college men. The collegemen's days of innocence have passed, and their days of sophistication havecome. They know what is going on, because we live in a talkative world, full of statistics, full of congressional inquiries, full of trials ofpersons who have attempted to live independently of the statutes of theUnited States; and so a great many things have come to light under oath, which we must believe upon the credibility of the witnesses who are, indeed, in many instances very eminent and respectable witnesses. 

I take my stand absolutely, where every progressive ought to take hisstand, on the proposition that private monopoly is indefensible andintolerable. And there I will fight my battle. And I know how to fight it. Everybody who has even read the newspapers knows the means by which thesemen built up their power and created these monopolies. Any decentlyequipped lawyer can suggest to you statutes by which the whole businesscan be stopped. What these gentlemen do not want is this: they do not wantto be compelled to meet all comers on equal terms. I am perfectly willingthat they should beat any competitor by fair means; but I know the foulmeans they have adopted, and I know that they can be stopped by law. Ifthey think that coming into the market upon the basis of mere efficiency, upon the mere basis of knowing how to manufacture goods better thananybody else and to sell them cheaper than anybody else, they can carrythe immense amount of water that they have put into their enterprises inorder to buy up rivals, then they are perfectly welcome to try it. Butthere must be no squeezing out of the beginner, no crippling his credit;no discrimination against retailers who buy from a rival; no threatsagainst concerns who sell supplies to a rival; no holding back of rawmaterial from him; no secret arrangements against him. All the faircompetition you choose, but no unfair competition of any kind. And thenwhen unfair competition is eliminated, let us see these gentlemen carrytheir tanks of water on their backs. All that I ask and all I shall fightfor is that they shall come into the field against merit and brainseverywhere. If they can beat other American brains, then they have got thebest brains. 

But if you want to know how far brains go, as things now are, suppose youtry to match your better wares against these gentlemen, and see themundersell you before your market is any bigger than the locality and makeit absolutely impossible for you to get a fast foothold. If you want toknow how brains count, originate some invention which will improve thekind of machinery they are using, and then see if you can borrow enoughmoney to manufacture it. You may be offered something for your patent bythe corporation, --which will perhaps lock it up in a safe and go on usingthe old machinery; but you will not be allowed to manufacture. I know menwho have tried it, and they could not get the money, because the greatmoney lenders of this country are in the arrangement with the greatmanufacturers of this country, and they do not propose to see theircontrol of the market interfered with by outsiders. And who are outsiders?Why, all the rest of the people of the United States are outsiders. 

They are rapidly making us outsiders with respect even of the things thatcome from the bosom of the earth, and which belong to us in a peculiarsense. Certain monopolies in this country have gained almost completecontrol of the raw material, chiefly in the mines, out of which the greatbody of manufactures are carried on, and they now discriminate, when theywill, in the sale of that raw material between those who are rivals of themonopoly and those who submit to the monopoly. We must soon come to thepoint where we shall say to the men who own these essentials of industrythat they have got to part with these essentials by sale to all citizensof the United States with the same readiness and upon the same terms. Orelse we shall tie up the resources of this country under private controlin such fashion as will make our independent development absolutelyimpossible. 

There is another injustice that monopoly engages in. The trust that dealsin the cruder products which are to be transformed into the more elaboratemanufactures often will not sell these crude products except upon theterms of monopoly, --that is to say, the people that deal with them mustbuy exclusively from them. And so again you have the lines of developmenttied up and the connections of development knotted and fastened so thatyou cannot wrench them apart. 

Again, the manufacturing monopolies are so interlaced in their personalrelationships with the great shipping interests of this country, and withthe great railroads, that they can often largely determine the rates ofshipment. 

The people of this country are being very subtly dealt with. You know, ofcourse, that, unless our Commerce Commissions are absolutely sleepless, you can get rebates without calling them such at all. The most complicatedstudy I know of is the classification of freight by the railway company. If I wanted to make a special rate on a special thing, all I should haveto do is to put it in a special class in the freight classification, andthe trick is done. And when you reflect that the twenty-four men whocontrol the United States Steel Corporation, for example, are eitherpresidents or vice-presidents or directors in 55 per cent. Of the railwaysof the United States, reckoning by the valuation of those railroads andthe amount of their stock and bonds, you know just how close the wholething is knitted together in our industrial system, and how great thetemptation is. These twenty-four gentlemen administer that corporation asif it belonged to them. The amazing thing to me is that the people of theUnited States have not seen that the administration of a great businesslike that is not a private affair; it is a public affair. 

I have been told by a great many men that the idea I have, that byrestoring competition you can restore industrial freedom, is based upon afailure to observe the actual happenings of the last decades in thiscountry; because, they say, it is just free competition that has made itpossible for the big to crush the little. 

I reply, it is not free competition that has done that; it is illicitcompetition. It is competition of the kind that the law ought to stop, andcan stop, --this crushing of the little man. 

You know, of course, how the little man is crushed by the trusts. He getsa local market. The big concerns come in and undersell him in his localmarket, and that is the only market he has; if he cannot make a profitthere, he is killed. They can make a profit all through the rest of theUnion, while they are underselling him in his locality, and recoupingthemselves by what they can earn elsewhere. Thus their competitors can beput out of business, one by one, wherever they dare to show a head. Inasmuch as they rise up only one by one, these big concerns can see to itthat new competitors never come into the larger field. You have to beginsomewhere. You can't begin in space. You can't begin in an airship. Youhave got to begin in some community. Your market has got to be yourneighbors first and those who know you there. But unless you haveunlimited capital (which of course you wouldn't have when you werebeginning) or unlimited credit (which these gentlemen can see to it thatyou shan't get), they can kill you out in your local market any time theytry, on the same basis exactly as that on which they beat organized labor;for they can sell at a loss in your market because they are selling at aprofit everywhere else, and they can recoup the losses by which they beatyou by the profits which they make in fields where they have beaten otherfellows and put them out. If ever a competitor who by good luck has plentyof money does break into the wider market, then the trust has to buy himout, paying three or four times what the business is worth. Followingsuch a purchase it has got to pay the interest on the price it has paidfor the business, and it has got to tax the whole people of the UnitedStates, in order to pay the interest on what it borrowed to do that, or onthe stocks and bonds it issued to do it with. Therefore the big trusts, the big combinations, are the most wasteful, the most uneconomical, and, after they pass a certain size, the most inefficient, way of conductingthe industries of this country. 

A notable example is the way in which Mr. Carnegie was bought out of thesteel business. Mr. Carnegie could build better mills and make bettersteel rails and make them cheaper than anybody else connected with whatafterward became the United States Steel Corporation. They didn't dareleave him outside. He had so much more brains in finding out the bestprocesses; he had so much more shrewdness in surrounding himself with themost successful assistants; he knew so well when a young man who came intohis employ was fit for promotion and was ripe to put at the head of somebranch of his business and was sure to make good, that he could undersellevery mother's son of them in the market for steel rails. And they boughthim out at a price that amounted to three or four times, --I believeactually five times, --the estimated value of his properties and of hisbusiness, because they couldn't beat him in competition. And then in whatthey charged afterward for their product, --the product of his millsincluded, --they made us pay the interest on the four or five times thedifference. 

That is the difference between a big business and a trust. A trust is anarrangement to get rid of competition, and a big business is a businessthat has survived competition by conquering in the field of intelligenceand economy. A trust does not bring efficiency to the aid of business; it_buys efficiency out of business_. I am for big business, and I am againstthe trusts. Any man who can survive by his brains, any man who can put theothers out of the business by making the thing cheaper to the consumer atthe same time that he is increasing its intrinsic value and quality, Itake off my hat to, and I say: "You are the man who can build up theUnited States, and I wish there were more of you. "

There will not be more, unless we find a way to prevent monopoly. You knowperfectly well that a trust business staggering under a capitalizationmany times too big is not a business that can afford to admit competitorsinto the field; because the minute an economical business, a business withits capital down to hard pan, with every ounce of its capital working, comes into the field against such an overloaded corporation, it willinevitably beat it and undersell it; therefore it is to the interest ofthese gentlemen that monopoly be maintained. They cannot rule the marketsof the world in any way but by monopoly. It is not surprising to find themhelping to found a new party with a fine program of benevolence, but alsowith a tolerant acceptance of monopoly. 

 * * * * *

There is another matter to which we must direct our attention, whether welike or not. I do not take these things into my mouth because they pleasemy palate; I do not talk about them because I want to attack anybody orupset anything; I talk about them because only by open speech about themamong ourselves shall we learn what the facts are. 

You will notice from a recent investigation that things like this takeplace: A certain bank invests in certain securities. It appears fromevidence that the handling of these securities was very intimatelyconnected with the maintenance of the price of a particular commodity. Nobody ought, and in normal circumstances nobody would, for a moment thinkof suspecting the managers of a great bank of making such an investment inorder to help those who were conducting a particular business in theUnited States maintain the price of their commodity; but the circumstancesare not normal. It is beginning to be believed that in the big business ofthis country nothing is disconnected from anything else. I do not mean inthis particular instance to which I have referred, and I do not have inmind to draw any inference at all, for that would be unjust; but take anyinvestment of an industrial character by a great bank. It is known thatthe directorate of that bank interlaces in personnel with ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty boards of directors of all sorts, of railroadswhich handle commodities, of great groups of manufacturers whichmanufacture commodities, and of great merchants who distributecommodities; and the result is that every great bank is under suspicionwith regard to the motive of its investments. It is at least consideredpossible that it is playing the game of somebody who has nothing to dowith banking, but with whom some of its directors are connected and joinedin interest. The ground of unrest and uneasiness, in short, on the part ofthe public at large, is the growing knowledge that many large undertakingsare interlaced with one another, are indistinguishable from one another inpersonnel. 

Therefore, when a small group of men approach Congress in order to inducethe committee concerned to concur in certain legislation, nobody knows theramifications of the interests which those men represent; there seems nofrank and open action of public opinion in public counsel, but every manis suspected of representing some other man and it is not known where hisconnections begin or end. 

I am one of those who have been so fortunately circumstanced that I havehad the opportunity to study the way in which these things come about incomplete disconnection from them, and I do not suspect that any man hasdeliberately planned the system. I am not so uninstructed and misinformedas to suppose that there is a deliberate and malevolent combinationsomewhere to dominate the government of the United States. I merely saythat, by certain processes, now well known, and perhaps natural inthemselves, there has come about an extraordinary and very sinisterconcentration in the control of business in the country. 

However it has come about, it is more important still that the control ofcredit also has become dangerously centralized. It is the mere truth tosay that the financial resources of the country are not at the command ofthose who do not submit to the direction and domination of small groups ofcapitalists who wish to keep the economic development of the country undertheir own eye and guidance. The great monopoly in this country is themonopoly of big credits. So long as that exists, our old variety andfreedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. Agreat industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our systemof credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if theiraction be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarilyconcentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money isinvolved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatestquestion of all, and to this statesmen must address themselves with anearnest determination to serve the long future and the true liberties ofmen. 

This money trust, or, as it should be more properly called, this credittrust, of which Congress has begun an investigation, is no myth; it is noimaginary thing. It is not an ordinary trust like another. It doesn't dobusiness every day. It does business only when there is occasion to dobusiness. You can sometimes do something large when it isn't watching, butwhen it is watching, you can't do much. And I have seen men squeezed byit; I have seen men who, as they themselves expressed it, were put "out ofbusiness by Wall Street, " because Wall Street found them inconvenient anddidn't want their competition. 

Let me say again that I am not impugning the motives of the men in WallStreet. They may think that that is the best way to create prosperity forthe country. When you have got the market in your hand, does honestyoblige you to turn the palm upside down and empty it? If you have got themarket in your hand and believe that you understand the interest of thecountry better than anybody else, is it patriotic to let it go? I canimagine them using this argument to themselves. 

The dominating danger in this land is not the existence of greatindividual combinations, --that is dangerous enough in all conscience, --butthe combination of the combinations, --of the railways, the manufacturingenterprises, the great mining projects, the great enterprises for thedevelopment of the natural water-powers of the country, threaded togetherin the personnel of a series of boards of directors into a "community ofinterest" more formidable than any conceivable single combination thatdare appear in the open. 

The organization of business has become more centralized, vastly morecentralized, than the political organization of the country itself. Corporations have come to cover greater areas than states; have come tolive under a greater variety of laws than the citizen himself, haveexcelled states in their budgets and loomed bigger than wholecommonwealths in their influence over the lives and fortunes of entirecommunities of men. Centralized business has built up vast structures oforganization and equipment which overtop all states and seem to have nomatch or competitor except the federal government itself. 

What we have got to do, --and it is a colossal task not to be undertakenwith a light head or without judgment, --what we have got to do is todisentangle this colossal "community of interest. " No matter how we maypurpose dealing with a single combination in restraint of trade, you willagree with me in this, that no single, avowed, combination is big enoughfor the United States to be afraid of; but when all the combinations arecombined and this final combination is not disclosed by any process ofincorporation or law, but is merely an identity of personnel, or ofinterest, then there is something that even the government of the nationitself might come to fear, --something for the law to pull apart, andgently, but firmly and persistently, dissect. 

You know that the chemist distinguishes between a chemical combination andan amalgam. A chemical combination has done something which I cannotscientifically describe, but its molecules have become intimate with oneanother and have practically united, whereas an amalgam has a merephysical union created by pressure from without. Now, you can destroy thatmere physical contact without hurting the individual elements, and thiscommunity of interest is an amalgam; you can break it up without hurtingany one of the single interests combined. Not that I am particularlydelicate of some of the interests combined, --I am not under bonds to beunduly polite to them, --but I am interested in the business of thecountry, and believe its integrity depends upon this dissection. I do notbelieve any one group of men has vision enough or genius enough todetermine what the development of opportunity and the accomplishment byachievement shall be in this country. 

The facts of the situation amount to this: that a comparatively smallnumber of men control the raw material of this country; that acomparatively small number of men control the water-powers that can bemade useful for the economical production of the energy to drive ourmachinery; that that same number of men largely control the railroads;that by agreements handed around among themselves they control prices, andthat that same group of men control the larger credits of the country. 

 * * * * *

When we undertake the strategy which is going to be necessary to overcomeand destroy this far-reaching system of monopoly, we are rescuing thebusiness of this country, we are not injuring it; and when we separate theinterests from each other and dismember these communities of connection, we have in mind a greater community of interest, a vaster community ofinterest, the community of interest that binds the virtues of all mentogether, that community of mankind which is broad and catholic enough totake under the sweep of its comprehension all sorts and conditions of men;that vision which sees that no society is renewed from the top but thatevery society is renewed from the bottom. Limit opportunity, restrict thefield of originative achievement, and you have cut out the heart and rootof all prosperity. 

The only thing that can ever make a free country is to keep a free andhopeful heart under every jacket in it. Honest American industry hasalways thriven, when it has thriven at all, on freedom; it has neverthriven on monopoly. It is a great deal better to shift for yourselvesthan to be taken care of by a great combination of capital. I, for mypart, do not want to be taken care of. I would rather starve a free manthan be fed a mere thing at the caprice of those who are organizingAmerican industry as they please to organize it. I know, and every man inhis heart knows, that the only way to enrich America is to make itpossible for any man who has the brains to get into the game. I am notjealous of the size of any business that has _grown_ to that size. I amnot jealous of any process of growth, no matter how huge the result, provided the result was indeed obtained by the processes of wholesomedevelopment, which are the processes of efficiency, of economy, ofintelligence, and of invention. 

IX

BENEVOLENCE, OR JUSTICE?

The doctrine that monopoly is inevitable and that the only course open tothe people of the United States is to submit to and regulate it found achampion during the campaign of 1912 in the new party, or branch of theRepublican party, founded under the leadership of Mr. Roosevelt, with theconspicuous aid, --I mention him with no satirical intention, but merely toset the facts down accurately, --of Mr. George W. Perkins, organizer of theSteel Trust and the Harvester Trust, and with the support of more thanthree millions of citizens, many of them among the most patriotic, conscientious and high-minded men and women of the land. The fact that itsacceptance of monopoly was a feature of the new party platform from whichthe attention of the generous and just was diverted by the charm of asocial program of great attractiveness to all concerned for theamelioration of the lot of those who suffer wrong and privation, and thefurther fact that, even so, the platform was repudiated by the majority ofthe nation, render it no less necessary to reflect on the significance ofthe confession made for the first time by any party in the country'shistory. It may be useful, in order to the relief of the minds of manyfrom an error of no small magnitude, to consider now, the heat of apresidential contest being past, exactly what it was that Mr. Rooseveltproposed. 

Mr. Roosevelt attached to his platform some very splendid suggestions asto noble enterprises which we ought to undertake for the uplift of thehuman race; but when I hear an ambitious platform put forth, I am verymuch more interested in the dynamics of it than in the rhetoric of it. Ihave a very practical mind, and I want to know who are going to do thosethings and how they are going to be done. If you have read the trust plankin that platform as often as I have read it, you have found it very long, but very tolerant. It did not anywhere condemn monopoly, except in words;its essential meaning was that the trusts have been bad and must be madeto be good. You know that Mr. Roosevelt long ago classified trusts for usas good and bad, and he said that he was afraid only of the bad ones. Nowhe does not desire that there should be any more bad ones, but proposesthat they should all be made good by discipline, directly applied by acommission of executive appointment. All he explicitly complains of islack of publicity and lack of fairness; not the exercise of power, forthroughout that plank the power of the great corporations is accepted asthe inevitable consequence of the modern organization of industry. Allthat it is proposed to do is to take them under control and regulation. The national administration having for sixteen years been virtually underthe regulation of the trusts, it would be merely a family matter were theparts reversed and were the other members of the family to exercise theregulation. And the trusts, apparently, which might, in suchcircumstances, comfortably continue to administer our affairs under themollifying influences of the federal government, would then, if youplease, be the instrumentalities by which all the humanistic, benevolentprogram of the rest of that interesting platform would be carried out!

I have read and reread that plank, so as to be sure that I get it right. All that it complains of is, --and the complaint is a just one, surely, --that these gentlemen exercise their power in a way that issecret. Therefore, we must have publicity. Sometimes they are arbitrary;therefore they need regulation. Sometimes they do not consult the generalinterests of the community; therefore they need to be reminded of thosegeneral interests by an industrial commission. But at every turn it is thetrusts who are to do us good, and not we ourselves. 

Again, I absolutely protest against being put into the hands of trustees. Mr. Roosevelt's conception of government is Mr. Taft's conception, thatthe Presidency of the United States is the presidency of a board ofdirectors. I am willing to admit that if the people of the United Statescannot get justice for themselves, then it is high time that they shouldjoin the third party and get it from somebody else. The justice proposedis very beautiful; it is very attractive; there were planks in thatplatform which stir all the sympathies of the heart; they proposed thingsthat we all want to do; but the question is, Who is going to do them?Through whose instrumentality? Are Americans ready to ask the trusts togive us in pity what we ought, in justice, to take?

The third party says that the present system of our industry and trade hascome to stay. Mind you, these artificially built up things, these thingsthat can't maintain themselves in the market without monopoly, have cometo stay, and the only thing that the government can do, the only thingthat the third party proposes should be done, is to set up a commission toregulate them. It accepts them. It says: "We will not undertake, it werefutile to undertake, to prevent monopoly, but we will go into anarrangement by which we will make these monopolies kind to you. We willguarantee that they shall be pitiful. We will guarantee that they shallpay the right wages. We will guarantee that they shall do everything kindand public-spirited, which they have never heretofore shown the leastinclination to do. "

Don't you realize that that is a blind alley? You can't find your way toliberty that way. You can't find your way to social reform through theforces that have made social reform necessary. 

The fundamental part of such a program is that the trusts shall berecognized as a permanent part of our economic order, and that thegovernment shall try to make trusts the ministers, the instruments, through which the life of this country shall be justly and happilydeveloped on its industrial side. Now, everything that touches our livessooner or later goes back to the industries which sustain our lives. Ihave often reflected that there is a very human order in the petitions inour Lord's prayer. For we pray first of all, "Give us this day our dailybread, " knowing that it is useless to pray for spiritual graces on anempty stomach, and that the amount of wages we get, the kind of clothes wewear, the kind of food we can afford to buy, is fundamental to everythingelse. 

Those who administer our physical life, therefore, administer ourspiritual life; and if we are going to carry out the fine purpose of thatgreat chorus which supporters of the third party sang almost withreligious fervor, then we have got to find out through whom these purposesof humanity are going to be realized. It is a mere enterprise, so far asthat part of it is concerned, of making the monopolies philanthropic. 

I do not want to live under a philanthropy. I do not want to be taken careof by the government, either directly, or by any instruments through whichthe government is acting. I want only to have right and justice prevail, so far as I am concerned. Give me right and justice and I will undertaketo take care of myself. If you enthrone the trusts as the means of thedevelopment of this country under the supervision of the government, thenI shall pray the old Spanish proverb, "God save me from my friends, andI'll take care of my enemies. " Because I want to be saved from thesefriends. Observe that I say these friends, for I am ready to admit that agreat many men who believe that the development of industry in thiscountry through monopolies is inevitable intend to be the friends of thepeople. Though they profess to be my friends, they are undertaking a wayof friendship which renders it impossible that they should do me thefundamental service that I demand--namely, that I should be free andshould have the same opportunities that everybody else has. 

For I understand it to be the fundamental proposition of American libertythat we do not desire special privilege, because we know special privilegewill never comprehend the general welfare. This is the fundamental, spiritual difference between adherents of the party now about to takecharge of the government and those who have been in charge of it in recentyears. They are so indoctrinated with the idea that only the big businessinterests of this country understand the United States and can make itprosperous that they cannot divorce their thoughts from that obsession. They have put the government into the hands of trustees, and Mr. Taft andMr. Roosevelt were the rival candidates to preside over the board oftrustees. They were candidates to serve the people, no doubt, to the bestof their ability, but it was not their idea to serve them directly; theyproposed to serve them indirectly through the enormous forces already setup, which are so great that there is almost an open question whether thegovernment of the United States with the people back of it is strongenough to overcome and rule them. 

 * * * * *

Shall we try to get the grip of monopoly away from our lives, or shall wenot? Shall we withhold our hand and say monopoly is inevitable, that allthat we can do is to regulate it? Shall we say that all that we can do isto put government in competition with monopoly and try its strengthagainst it? Shall we admit that the creature of our own hands is strongerthan we are? We have been dreading all along the time when the combinedpower of high finance would be greater than the power of the government. Have we come to a time when the President of the United States or any manwho wishes to be the President must doff his cap in the presence of thishigh finance, and say, "You are our inevitable master, but we will see howwe can make the best of it?"

We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, butmany, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restrictedcredit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completelycontrolled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no longer agovernment by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and thevote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress ofsmall groups of dominant men. 

If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don't you see that big business men have to get closer to thegovernment even than they are now? Don't you see that they must capturethe government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capturethe government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invitethose inside to stay inside? They don't have to get there. They are there. Are you going to own your own premises, or are you not? That is yourchoice. Are you going to say: "You didn't get into the house the rightway, but you are in there, God bless you; we will stand out here in thecold and you can hand us out something once in a while?"

At the least, under the plan I am opposing, there will be an avowedpartnership between the government and the trusts. I take it that the firmwill be ostensibly controlled by the senior member. For I take it that thegovernment of the United States is at least the senior member, though theyounger member has all along been running the business. But when all themomentum, when all the energy, when a great deal of the genius, as sooften happens in partnerships the world over, is with the junior partner, I don't think that the superintendence of the senior partner is going toamount to very much. And I don't believe that benevolence can be read intothe hearts of the trusts by the superintendence and suggestions of thefederal government; because the government has never within myrecollection had its suggestions accepted by the trusts. On the contrary, the suggestions of the trusts have been accepted by the government. 

There is no hope to be seen for the people of the United States until thepartnership is dissolved. And the business of the party now entrusted withpower is going to be to dissolve it. 

 * * * * *

Those who supported the third party supported, I believe, a programperfectly agreeable to the monopolies. How those who have been fightingmonopoly through all their career can reconcile the continuation of thebattle under the banner of the very men they have been fighting, I cannotimagine. I challenge the program in its fundamentals as not a progressiveprogram at all. Why did Mr. Gary suggest this very method when he was atthe head of the Steel Trust? Why is this very method commended here, there, and everywhere by the men who are interested in the maintenance ofthe present economic system of the United States? Why do the men who donot wish to be disturbed urge the adoption of this program? The rest ofthe program is very handsome; there is beating in it a great pulse ofsympathy for the human race. But I do not want the sympathy of the trustsfor the human race. I do not want their condescending assistance. 

And I warn every progressive Republican that by lending his assistance tothis program he is playing false to the very cause in which he hadenlisted. That cause was a battle against monopoly, against control, against the concentration of power in our economic development, againstall those things that interfere with absolutely free enterprise. I believethat some day these gentlemen will wake up and realize that they havemisplaced their trust, not in an individual, it may be, but in a programwhich is fatal to the things we hold dearest. 

If there is any meaning in the things I have been urging, it is this: thatthe incubus that lies upon this country is the present monopolisticorganization of our industrial life. That is the thing which certainRepublicans became "insurgents" in order to throw off. And yet some ofthem allowed themselves to be so misled as to go into the camp of thethird party in order to remove what the third party proposed to legalize. My point is that this is a method conceived from the point of view of thevery men who are to be controlled, and that this is just the wrong pointof view from which to conceive it. 

I said not long ago that Mr. Roosevelt was promoting a plan for thecontrol of monopoly which was supported by the United States SteelCorporation. Mr. Roosevelt denied that he was being supported by more thanone member of that corporation. He was thinking of money. I was thinkingof ideas. I did not say that he was getting money from these gentlemen; itwas a matter of indifference to me where he got his money; but it was amatter of a great deal of difference to me where he got his ideas. He gothis idea with regard to the regulation of monopoly from the gentlemen whoform the United States Steel Corporation. I am perfectly ready to admitthat the gentlemen who control the United States Steel Corporation have aperfect right to entertain their own ideas about this and to urge themupon the people of the United States; but I want to say that their ideasare not my ideas; and I am perfectly certain that they would not promoteany idea which interfered with their monopoly. Inasmuch, therefore, as Ihope and intend to interfere with monopoly just as much as possible, Icannot subscribe to arrangements by which they know that it will not bedisturbed. 

The Roosevelt plan is that there shall be an industrial commission chargedwith the supervision of the great monopolistic combinations which havebeen formed under the protection of the tariff, and that the government ofthe United States shall see to it that these gentlemen who have conqueredlabor shall be kind to labor. I find, then, the proposition to be this:That there shall be two masters, the great corporation, and over it thegovernment of the United States; and I ask who is going to be master ofthe government of the United States? It has a master now, --those who incombination control these monopolies. And if the government controlled bythe monopolies in its turn controls the monopolies, the partnership isfinally consummated. 

I don't care how benevolent the master is going to be, I will not liveunder a master. That is not what America was created for. America wascreated in order that every man should have the same chance as every otherman to exercise mastery over his own fortunes. What I want to do isanalogous to what the authorities of the city of Glasgow did with tenementhouses. I want to light and patrol the corridors of these greatorganizations in order to see that nobody who tries to traverse them iswaylaid and maltreated. If you will but hold off the adversaries, if youwill but see to it that the weak are protected, I will venture a wagerwith you that there are some men in the United States, now weak, economically weak, who have brains enough to compete with these gentlemenand who will presently come into the market and put these gentlemen ontheir mettle. And the minute they come into the market there will be abigger market for labor and a different wage scale for labor. 

Because it is susceptible of convincing proof that the high-paid labor ofAmerica, --where it is high paid, --is cheaper than the low-paid labor ofthe continent of Europe. Do you know that about ninety per cent. Of thosewho are employed in labor in this country are not employed in the"protected" industries, and that their wages are almost without exceptionhigher than the wages of those who are employed in the "protected"industries? There is no corner on carpenters, there is no corner onbricklayers, there is no corner on scores of individual classes of skilledlaborers; but there is a corner on the poolers in the furnaces, there is acorner on the men who dive down into the mines; they are in the grip of acontrolling power which determines the market rates of wages in the UnitedStates. Only where labor is free is labor highly paid in America. 

When I am fighting monopolistic control, therefore, I am fighting for theliberty of every man in America, and I am fighting for the liberty ofAmerican industry. 

It is significant that the spokesman for the plan of adopting monopolydeclares his devoted adherence to the principle of "protection. " Onlythose duties which are manifestly too high even to serve the interests ofthose who are directly "protected" ought in his view to be lowered. Hedeclares that he is not troubled by the fact that a very large amount ofmoney is taken out of the pocket of the general taxpayer and put into thepocket of particular classes of "protected" manufacturers, but that hisconcern is that so little of this money gets into the pocket of thelaboring man and so large a proportion of it into the pockets of theemployers. I have searched his program very thoroughly for an indicationof what he expects to do in order to see to it that a larger proportionof this "prize" money gets into the pay envelope, and have found none. Mr. Roosevelt, in one of his speeches, proposed that manufacturers who did notshare their profits liberally enough with their workmen should bepenalized by a sharp cut in the "protection" afforded them; but theplatform, so far as I could see, proposed nothing. 

Moreover, under the system proposed, most employers, --at any rate, practically all of the most powerful of them, --would be, to all intentsand purposes, wards and protégés of the government which is the master ofus all; for no part of this program can be discussed intelligently withoutremembering that monopoly, as handled by it, is not to be prevented, butaccepted. It is to be accepted and regulated. All attempt to resist it isto be given up. It is to be accepted as inevitable. The government is toset up a commission whose duty it will be, not to check or defeat it, butmerely to regulate it under rules which it is itself to frame and develop. So that the chief employers will have this tremendous authority behindthem: what they do, they will have the license of the federal governmentto do. 

And it is worth the while of the workingmen of the country to recall whatthe attitude toward organized labor has been of these masters ofconsolidated industries whom it is proposed that the federal governmentshould take under its patronage as well as under its control. They havebeen the stoutest and most successful opponents of organized labor, andthey have tried to undermine it in a great many ways. Some of the waysthey have adopted have worn the guise of philanthropy and good-will, andhave no doubt been used, for all I know, in perfect good faith. Here andthere they have set up systems of profit sharing, of compensation forinjuries, and of bonuses, and even pensions; but every one of these planshas merely bound their workingmen more tightly to themselves. Rights underthese various arrangements are not legal rights. They are merelyprivileges which employees enjoy only so long as they remain in theemployment and observe the rules of the great industries for which theywork. If they refuse to be weaned away from their independence theycannot continue to enjoy the benefits extended to them. 

 * * * * *

When you have thought the whole thing out, therefore, you will find thatthe program of the new party legalizes monopolies and systematicallysubordinates workingmen to them and to plans made by the government bothwith regard to employment and with regard to wages. Take the thing as awhole, and it looks strangely like economic mastery over the very livesand fortunes of those who do the daily work of the nation; and all thisunder the overwhelming power and sovereignty of the national government. What most of us are fighting for is to break up this very partnershipbetween big business and the government. We call upon all intelligent mento bear witness that if this plan were consummated, the great employersand capitalists of the country would be under a more overpoweringtemptation than ever to take control of the government and keep itsubservient to their purpose. 

What a prize it would be to capture! How unassailable would be themajesty and the tyranny of monopoly if it could thus get sanction of lawand the authority of government! By what means, except open revolt, couldwe ever break the crust of our life again and become free men, breathingan air of our own, living lives that we wrought out for ourselves?

You cannot use monopoly in order to serve a free people. You cannot usegreat combinations of capital to be pitiful and righteous when theconsciences of great bodies of men are enlisted, not in the promotion ofspecial privilege, but in the realization of human rights. When I readthose beautiful portions of the program of the third party devoted to theuplift of mankind and see noble men and women attaching themselves to thatparty in the hope that regulated monopoly may realize these dreams ofhumanity, I wonder whether they have really studied the instrumentsthrough which they are going to do these things. The man who is leadingthe third party has not changed his point of view since he was Presidentof the United States. I am not asking him to change it. I am not sayingthat he has not a perfect right to retain it. But I do say that it is notsurprising that a man who had the point of view with regard to thegovernment of this country which he had when he was President was notchosen as President again, and allowed to patent the present processes ofindustry and personally direct them how to treat the people of the UnitedStates. 

There has been a history of the human race, you know, and a history ofgovernment; it is recorded; and the kind of thing proposed has been triedagain and again and has always led to the same result. History is strewnall along its course with the wrecks of governments that tried to behumane, tried to carry out humane programs through the instrumentality ofthose who controlled the material fortunes of the rest of theirfellow-citizens. 

I do not trust any promises of a change of temper on the part of monopoly. Monopoly never was conceived in the temper of tolerance. Monopoly neverwas conceived with the purpose of general development. It was conceivedwith the purpose of special advantage. Has monopoly been very benevolentto its employees? Have the trusts had a soft heart for the working peopleof America? Have you found trusts that cared whether women were sapped oftheir vitality or not? Have you found trusts who are very scrupulous aboutusing children in their tender years? Have you found trusts that were keento protect the lungs and the health and the freedom of their employees?Have you found trusts that thought as much of their men as they did oftheir machinery? Then who is going to convert these men into the chiefinstruments of justice and benevolence?

If you will point me to the least promise of disinterestedness on the partof the masters of our lives, then I will conceive you some ray of hope;but only upon this hypothesis, only upon this conjecture: that the historyof the world is going to be reversed, and that the men who have the powerto oppress us will be kind to us, and will promote our interests, whetherour interests jump with theirs or not. 

After you have made the partnership between monopoly and your governmentpermanent, then I invite all the philanthropists in the United States tocome and sit on the stage and go through the motions of finding out howthey are going to get philanthropy out of their masters. 

I do not want to see the special interests of the United States take careof the workingmen, women, and children. I want to see justice, righteousness, fairness and humanity displayed in all the laws of theUnited States, and I do not want any power to intervene between the peopleand their government. Justice is what we want, not patronage andcondescension and pitiful helpfulness. The trusts are our masters now, butI for one do not care to live in a country called free even under kindmasters. I prefer to live under no masters at all. 

 * * * * *

I agree that as a nation we are now about to undertake what may beregarded as the most difficult part of our governmental enterprises. Wehave gone along so far without very much assistance from our government. We have felt, and felt more and more in recent months, that the Americanpeople were at a certain disadvantage as compared with the people of othercountries, because of what the governments of other countries were doingfor them and our government omitting to do for us. 

It is perfectly clear to every man who has any vision of the immediatefuture, who can forecast any part of it from the indications of thepresent, that we are just upon the threshold of a time when the systematiclife of this country will be sustained, or at least supplemented, at everypoint by governmental activity. And we have now to determine what kind ofgovernmental activity it shall be; whether, in the first place, it shallbe direct from the government itself, or whether it shall be indirect, through instrumentalities which have already constituted themselves andwhich stand ready to supersede the government. 

I believe that the time has come when the governments of this country, both state and national, have to set the stage, and set it very minutelyand carefully, for the doing of justice to men in every relationship oflife. It has been free and easy with us so far; it has been go as youplease; it has been every man look out for himself; and we have continuedto assume, up to this year when every man is dealing, not with anotherman, in most cases, but with a body of men whom he has not seen, that therelationships of property are the same that they always were. We havegreat tasks before us, and we must enter on them as befits men chargedwith the responsibility of shaping a new era. 

We have a great program of governmental assistance ahead of us in theco-operative life of the nation; but we dare not enter upon that programuntil we have freed the government. That is the point. Benevolence neverdeveloped a man or a nation. We do not want a benevolent government. Wewant a free and a just government. Every one of the great schemes ofsocial uplift which are now so much debated by noble people amongst us isbased, when rightly conceived, upon justice, not upon benevolence. It isbased upon the right of men to breathe pure air, to live; upon the rightof women to bear children, and not to be overburdened so that disease andbreakdown will come upon them; upon the right of children to thrive andgrow up and be strong; upon all these fundamental things which appeal, indeed, to our hearts, but which our minds perceive to be part of thefundamental justice of life. 

Politics differs from philanthropy in this: that in philanthropy wesometimes do things through pity merely, while in politics we act always, if we are righteous men, on grounds of justice and large expediency formen in the mass. Sometimes in our pitiful sympathy with our fellow-men wemust do things that are more than just. We must forgive men. We must helpmen who have gone wrong. We must sometimes help men who have gonecriminally wrong. But the law does not forgive. It is its duty to equalizeconditions, to make the path of right the path of safety and advantage, tosee that every man has a fair chance to live and to serve himself, to seethat injustice and wrong are not wrought upon any. 

We ought not to permit passion to enter into our thoughts or our heartsin this great matter; we ought not to allow ourselves to be governed byresentment or any kind of evil feeling, but we ought, nevertheless, torealize the seriousness of our situation. That seriousness consists, singularly enough, not in the malevolence of the men who preside over ourindustrial life, but in their genius and in their honest thinking. Thesemen believe that the prosperity of the United States is not safe unless itis in their keeping. If they were dishonest, we might put them out ofbusiness by law; since most of them are honest, we can put them out ofbusiness only by making it impossible for them to realize their genuineconvictions. I am not afraid of a knave. I am not afraid of a rascal. I amafraid of a strong man who is wrong, and whose wrong thinking can beimpressed upon other persons by his own force of character and force ofspeech. If God had only arranged it that all the men who are wrong wererascals, we could put them out of business very easily, because they wouldgive themselves away sooner or later; but God has made our task heavierthan that, --he has made some good men who think wrong. We cannot fightthem because they are bad, but because they are wrong. We must overcomethem by a better force, the genial, the splendid, the permanent force of abetter reason. 

The reason that America was set up was that she might be different fromall the nations of the world in this: that the strong could not put theweak to the wall, that the strong could not prevent the weak from enteringthe race. America stands for opportunity. America stands for a free fieldand no favor. America stands for a government responsive to the interestsof all. And until America recovers those ideals in practice, she will nothave the right to hold her head high again amidst the nations as she usedto hold it. 

 * * * * *

It is like coming out of a stifling cellar into the open where we canbreathe again and see the free spaces of the heavens to turn away fromsuch a doleful program of submission and dependence toward the other plan, the confident purpose for which the people have given their mandate. Ourpurpose is the restoration of freedom. We purpose to prevent privatemonopoly by law, to see to it that the methods by which monopolies havebeen built up are legally made impossible. We design that the limitationson private enterprise shall be removed, so that the next generation ofyoungsters, as they come along, will not have to become protégés ofbenevolent trusts, but will be free to go about making their own liveswhat they will; so that we shall taste again the full cup, not of charity, but of liberty, --the only wine that ever refreshed and renewed the spiritof a people. 

X

THE WAY TO RESUME IS TO RESUME

One of the wonderful things about America, to my mind, is this: that formore than a generation it has allowed itself to be governed by persons whowere not invited to govern it. A singular thing about the people of theUnited States is their almost infinite patience, their willingness tostand quietly by and see things done which they have voted against and donot want done, and yet never lay the hand of disorder upon any arrangementof government. 

There is hardly a part of the United States where men are not aware thatsecret private purposes and interests have been running the government. They have been running it through the agency of those interesting personswhom we call political "bosses. " A boss is not so much a politician as thebusiness agent in politics of the special interests. The boss is not apartisan; he is quite above politics! He has an understanding with theboss of the other party, so that, whether it is heads or tails, we lose. The two receive contributions from the same sources, and they spend thosecontributions for the same purposes. 

Bosses are men who have worked their way by secret methods to the place ofpower they occupy; men who were never elected to anything; men who werenot asked by the people to conduct their government, and who are very muchmore powerful than if you had asked them, so long as you leave them wherethey are, behind closed doors, in secret conference. They are notpoliticians; they have no policies, --except concealed policies of privateaggrandizement. A boss isn't a leader of a party. Parties do not meet inback rooms; parties do not make arrangements which do not get into thenewspapers. Parties, if you reckon them by voting strength, are greatmasses of men who, because they can't vote any other ticket, vote theticket that was prepared for them by the aforesaid arrangement in theaforesaid back room in accordance with the aforesaid understanding. A bossis the manipulator of a "machine. " A "machine" is that part of a politicalorganization which has been taken out of the hands of the rank and file ofthe party, captured by half a dozen men. It is the part that has ceased tobe political and has become an agency for the purposes of unscrupulousbusiness. 

Do not lay up the sins of this kind of business to politicalorganizations. Organization is legitimate, is necessary, is evendistinguished, when it lends itself to the carrying out of great causes. Only the man who uses organization to promote private purposes is a boss. Always distinguish between a political leader and a boss. I honor the manwho makes the organization of a great party strong and thorough, in orderto use it for public service. But he is not a boss. A boss is a man whouses this splendid, open force for secret purposes. 

One of the worst features of the boss system is this fact, that it workssecretly. I would a great deal rather live under a king whom I should atleast know, than under a boss whom I don't know. A boss is a much moreformidable master than a king, because a king is an obvious master, whereas the hands of the boss are always where you least expect them tobe. 

When I was in Oregon, not many months ago, I had some very interestingconversations with Mr. U'Ren, who is the father of what is called theOregon System, a system by which he has put bosses out of business. He isa member of a group of public-spirited men who, whenever they cannot getwhat they want through the legislature, draw up a bill and submit it tothe people, by means of the initiative, and generally get what they want. The day I arrived in Portland, a morning paper happened to say, veryironically, that there were two legislatures in Oregon, one at Salem, thestate capital, and the other going around under the hat of Mr. U'Ren. Icould not resist the temptation of saying, when I spoke that evening, that, while I was the last man to suggest that power should beconcentrated in any single individual or group of individuals, I would, nevertheless, after my experience in New Jersey, rather have a legislaturethat went around under the hat of somebody in particular whom I knew Icould find than a legislature that went around under God knows who's hat;because then you could at least put your finger on your governing force;you would know where to find it. 

Why do we continue to permit these things? Isn't it about time that wegrew up and took charge of our own affairs? I am tired of being under agein politics. I don't want to be associated with anybody except those whoare politically over twenty-one. I don't wish to sit down and let any mantake care of me without my having at least a voice in it; and if hedoesn't listen to my advice, I am going to make it as unpleasant for himas I can. Not because my advice is necessarily good, but because nogovernment is good in which every man doesn't insist upon his advice beingheard, at least, whether it is heeded or not. 

Some persons have said that representative government has proved tooindirect and clumsy an instrument, and has broken down as a means ofpopular control. Others, looking a little deeper, have said that it wasnot representative government that had broken down, but the effort to getit. They have pointed out that, with our present methods of machinenomination and our present methods of election, which give us nothing morethan a choice between one set of machine nominees and another, we do notget representative government at all, --at least not governmentrepresentative of the people, but merely government representative ofpolitical managers who serve their own interests and the interests ofthose with whom they find it profitable to establish partnerships. 

Obviously, this is something that goes to the root of the whole matter. Back of all reform lies the method of getting it. Back of the question, What do you want, lies the question, --the fundamental question of allgovernment, --How are you going to get it? How are you going to get publicservants who will obtain it for you? How are you going to get genuinerepresentatives who will serve your interests, and not their own or theinterests of some special group or body of your fellow-citizens whosepower is of the few and not of the many? These are the queries which havedrawn the attention of the whole country to the subject of the directprimary, the direct choice of their officials by the people, without theintervention of the nominating machine; to the subject of the directelection of United States Senators; and to the question of the initiative, referendum, and recall. 

 * * * * *

The critical moment in the choosing of officials is that of theirnomination more often than that of their election. When two partyorganizations, nominally opposing each other but actually working inperfect understanding and co-operation, see to it that both tickets havethe same kind of men on them, it is Tweedledum or Tweedledee, so far asthe people are concerned; the political managers have us coming and going. We may delude ourselves with the pleasing belief that we are electing ourown officials, but of course the fact is we are merely making anindifferent and ineffectual choice between two sets of men named byinterests which are not ours. 

So that what we establish the direct primary for is this: to break up theinside and selfish determination of the question who shall be elected toconduct the government and make the laws of our commonwealths and ournation. Everywhere the impression is growing stronger that there can be nomeans of dominating those who have dominated us except by taking thisprocess of the original selection of nominees into our own hands. Doesthat upset any ancient foundations? Is it not the most natural and simplething in the world? You say that it does not always work; that the peopleare too busy or too lazy to bother about voting at primary elections?True, sometimes the people of a state or a community do let a directprimary go by without asserting their authority as against the bosses. Theelectorate of the United States is occasionally like the god Baal: it issometimes on a journey or it is sometimes asleep; but when it does awake, it does not resemble the god Baal in the slightest degree. It is a greatself-possessed power which effectually takes control of its own affairs. Iam willing to wait. I am among those who believe so firmly in theessential doctrines of democracy that I am willing to wait on theconvenience of this great sovereign, provided I know that he has got theinstrument to dominate whenever he chooses to grasp it. 

Then there is another thing that the conservative people are concernedabout: the direct election of United States Senators. I have seen somethoughtful men discuss that with a sort of shiver, as if to disturb theoriginal constitution of the United States Senate was to do somethingtouched with impiety, touched with irreverence for the Constitutionitself. But the first thing necessary to reverence for the United StatesSenate is respect for United States Senators. I am not one of those whocondemn the United States Senate as a body; for, no matter what hashappened there, no matter how questionable the practices or how corruptthe influences which have filled some of the seats in that high body, itmust in fairness be said that the majority in it has all the years throughbeen untouched by stain, and that there has always been there a sufficientnumber of men of integrity to vindicate the self-respect and thehopefulness of America with regard to her institutions. 

But you need not be told, and it would be painful to repeat to you, howseats have been bought in the Senate; and you know that a little group ofSenators holding the balance of power has again and again been able todefeat programs of reform upon which the whole country had set its heart;and that whenever you analyzed the power that was behind those littlegroups you have found that it was not the power of public opinion, butsome private influence, hardly to be discerned by superficial scrutiny, that had put those men there to do that thing. 

Now, returning to the original principles upon which we profess to stand, have the people of the United States not the right to see to it that everyseat in the Senate represents the unbought United States of America? Doesthe direct election of Senators touch anything except the private controlof seats in the Senate? We remember another thing: that we have not beenwithout our suspicions concerning some of the legislatures which electSenators. Some of the suspicions which we entertained in New Jersey aboutthem turned out to be founded upon very solid facts indeed. Until twoyears ago New Jersey had not in half a generation been represented in theUnited States Senate by the men who would have been chosen if the processof selecting them had been free and based upon the popular will. 

We are not to deceive ourselves by putting our heads into the sand andsaying, "Everything is all right. " Mr. Gladstone declared that theAmerican Constitution was the most perfect instrument ever devised by thebrain of man. We have been praised all over the world for our singulargenius for setting up successful institutions, but a very thoughtfulEnglishman, and a very witty one, said a very instructive thing aboutthat: he said that to show that the American Constitution had worked wellwas no proof that it is an excellent constitution, because Americans couldrun any constitution, --a compliment which we laid like sweet unction toour soul; and yet a criticism which ought to set us thinking. 

While it is true that when American forces are awake they can conductAmerican processes without serious departure from the ideals of theConstitution, it is nevertheless true that we have had many shamefulinstances of practices which we can absolutely remove by the directelection of Senators by the people themselves. And therefore I, for one, will not allow any man who knows his history to say to me that I am actinginconsistently with either the spirit or the essential form of theAmerican government in advocating the direct election of United StatesSenators. 

Take another matter. Take the matter of the initiative and referendum, and the recall. There are communities, there are states in the Union, inwhich I am quite ready to admit that it is perhaps premature, that perhapsit will never be necessary, to discuss these measures. But I want to callyour attention to the fact that they have been adopted to the generalsatisfaction in a number of states where the electorate had becomeconvinced that they did not have representative government. 

Why do you suppose that in the United States, the place in all the worldwhere the people were invited to control their own government, we shouldset up such an agitation as that for the initiative and referendum and therecall. When did this thing begin? I have been receiving circulars anddocuments from little societies of men all over the United States withregard to these matters, for the last twenty-five years. But the circularsfor a long time kindled no fire. Men felt that they had representativegovernment and they were content. But about ten or fifteen years ago thefire began to burn, --and it has been sweeping over wider and wider areasof the country, because of the growing consciousness that somethingintervenes between the people and the government, and that there must besome arm direct enough and strong enough to thrust aside the somethingthat comes in the way. 

I believe that we are upon the eve of recovering some of the mostimportant prerogatives of a free people, and that the initiative andreferendum are playing a great part in that recovery. I met a man theother day who thought that the referendum was some kind of an animal, because it had a Latin name; and there are still people in this countrywho have to have it explained to them. But most of us know and are deeplyinterested. Why? Because we have felt that in too many instances ourgovernment did not represent us, and we have said: "We have got to have akey to the door of our own house. The initiative and referendum and therecall afford such a key to our own premises. If the people inside thehouse will run the place as we want it run, they may stay inside and wewill keep the latchkeys in our pockets. If they do not, we shall have tore-enter upon possession. "

Let no man be deceived by the cry that somebody is proposing to substitutedirect legislation by the people, or the direct reference of laws passedin the legislature, to the vote of the people, for representativegovernment. The advocates of these reforms have always declared, anddeclared in unmistakable terms, that they were intending to recoverrepresentative government, not supersede it; that the initiative andreferendum would find no use in places where legislatures were reallyrepresentative of the people whom they were elected to serve. Theinitiative is a means of seeing to it that measures which the people wantshall be passed, --when legislatures defy or ignore public opinion. Thereferendum is a means of seeing to it that the unrepresentative measureswhich they do not want shall not be placed upon the statute book. 

When you come to the recall, the principle is that if an administrativeofficer, --for we will begin with the administrative officer, --is corruptor so unwise as to be doing things that are likely to lead to all sorts ofmischief, it will be possible by a deliberate process prescribed by thelaw to get rid of that officer before the end of his term. You must admitthat it is a little inconvenient sometimes to have what has been called anastronomical system of government, in which you can't change anythinguntil there has been a certain number of revolutions of the seasons. Inmany of our oldest states the ordinary administrative term is a singleyear. The people of those states have not been willing to trust anofficial out of their sight more than twelve months. Elections there are asort of continuous performance, based on the idea of the constant touch ofthe hand of the people on their own affairs. That is exactly the principleof the recall. I don't see how any man grounded in the traditions ofAmerican affairs can find any valid objection to the recall ofadministrative officers. The meaning of the recall is merely this, --notthat we should have unstable government, not that officials should notknow how long their power might last, --but that we might have governmentexercised by officials who know whence their power came and that if theyyield to private influences they will presently be displaced by publicinfluences. 

You will of course understand that, both in the case of the initiative andreferendum and in that of the recall, the very existence of these powers, the very possibilities which they imply, are half, --indeed, much more thanhalf, --the battle. They rarely need to be actually exercised. The factthat the people may initiate keeps the members of the legislature awake tothe necessity of initiating themselves; the fact that the people have theright to demand the submission of a legislative measure to popular voterenders the members of the legislature wary of bills that would not passthe people; the very possibility of being recalled puts the official onhis best behavior. 

It is another matter when we come to the judiciary. I myself have neverbeen in favor of the recall of judges. Not because some judges have notdeserved to be recalled. That isn't the point. The point is that therecall of judges is treating the symptom instead of the disease. Thedisease lies deeper, and sometimes it is very virulent and very dangerous. There have been courts in the United States which were controlled byprivate interests. There have been supreme courts in our states beforewhich plain men could not get justice. There have been corrupt judges;there have been controlled judges; there have been judges who acted asother men's servants and not as the servants of the public. Ah, there aresome shameful chapters in the story! The judicial process is the ultimatesafeguard of the things that we must hold stable in this country. Butsuppose that that safeguard is corrupted; suppose that it does not guardmy interests and yours, but guards merely the interests of a very smallgroup of individuals; and, whenever your interest clashes with theirs, yours will have to give way, though you represent ninety per cent. Of thecitizens, and they only ten per cent. Then where is your safeguard?

The just thought of the people must control the judiciary, as it controlsevery other instrument of government. But there are ways and ways ofcontrolling it. If, --mark you, I say _if_, --at one time the SouthernPacific Railroad owned the supreme court of the State of California, wouldyou remedy that situation by recalling the judges of the court? What goodwould that do, so long as the Southern Pacific Railroad could substituteothers for them? You would not be cutting deep enough. Where you want togo is to the process by which those judges were selected. And when you getthere, you will reach the moral of the whole of this discussion, becausethe moral of it all is that the people of the United States havesuspected, until their suspicions have been justified by all sorts ofsubstantial and unanswerable evidence, that, in place after place, atturning-points in the history of this country, we have been controlled byprivate understandings and not by the public interest; and that influenceswhich were improper, if not corrupt, have determined everything from themaking of laws to the administration of justice. The disease lies in theregion where these men get their nominations; and if you can recover forthe people the _selecting_ of judges, you will not have to trouble abouttheir recall. Selection is of more radical consequence than election. 

 * * * * *

I am aware that those who advocate these measures which we have beendiscussing are denounced as dangerous radicals. I am particularlyinterested to observe that the men who cry out most loudly against whatthey call radicalism are the men who find that their private game inpolitics is being spoiled. Who are the arch-conservatives nowadays? Whoare the men who utter the most fervid praise of the Constitution of theUnited States and the constitutions of the states? They are the gentlemenwho used to get behind those documents to play hide-and-seek with thepeople whom they pretended to serve. They are the men who entrenchedthemselves in the laws which they misinterpreted and misused. If now theyare afraid that "radicalism" will sweep them away, --and I believe itwill, --they have only themselves to thank. 

Yet how absurd is the charge that we who are demanding that our governmentbe made representative of the people and responsive to their demands, --howfictitious and hypocritical is the charge that we are attacking thefundamental principles of republican institutions! These very men whohysterically profess their alarm would declaim loudly enough on the Fourthof July of the Declaration of Independence; they would go on and talk ofthose splendid utterances in our earliest state constitutions, which havebeen copied in all our later ones, taken from the Petition of Rights, orthe Declaration of Rights, those great fundamental documents of thestruggle for liberty in England; and yet in these very documents we readsuch uncompromising statements as this: that, when at any time the peopleof a commonwealth find that their government is not suitable to thecircumstances of their lives or the promotion of their liberties, it istheir privilege to alter it at their pleasure, and alter it in anydegree. That is the foundation, that is the very central doctrine, that isthe ground principle, of American institutions. 

I want you to read a passage from the Virginia Bill of Rights, thatimmortal document which has been a model for declarations of libertythroughout the rest of the continent:

 That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them. 

 That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is the best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of mal-administration; and that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community bath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. 

I have heard that read a score of times on the Fourth of July, but I neverheard it read where actual measures were being debated. No man whounderstands the principles upon which this Republic was founded has theslightest dread of the gentle, --though very effective, --measures by whichthe people are again resuming control of their own affairs. 

 * * * * *

Nor need any lover of liberty be anxious concerning the outcome of thestruggle upon which we are now embarked. The victory is certain, and thebattle is not going to be an especially sanguinary one. It is hardly goingto be worth the name of a battle. Let me tell the story of theemancipation of one State, --New Jersey:

It has surprised the people of the United States to find New Jersey at thefront in enterprises of reform. I, who have lived in New Jersey thegreater part of my mature life, know that there is no state in the Unionwhich, so far as the hearts and intelligence of its people are concerned, has more earnestly desired reform than has New Jersey. There are men whohave been prominent in the affairs of the State who again and againadvocated with all the earnestness that was in them the things that wehave at last been able to do. There are men in New Jersey who have spentsome of the best energies of their lives in trying to win elections inorder to get the support of the citizens of New Jersey for programs ofreform. 

The people had voted for such things very often before the autumn of 1910, but the interesting thing is that nothing had happened. They weredemanding the benefit of remedial measures such as had been passed inevery progressive state of the Union, measures which had proved not onlythat they did not upset the life of the communities to which they wereapplied but that they quickened every force and bettered every conditionin those communities. But the people of New Jersey could not get them, andthere had come upon them a certain pessimistic despair. I used to meet menwho shrugged their shoulders and said: "What difference does it make howwe vote? Nothing ever results from our votes. " The force that is behindthe new party that has recently been formed, the so-called "ProgressiveParty, " is a force of discontent with the old parties of the UnitedStates. It is the feeling that men have gone into blind alleys oftenenough, and that somehow there must be found an open road through whichmen may pass to some purpose. 

In the year 1910 there came a day when the people of New Jersey took heartto believe that something could be accomplished. I had no merit as acandidate for Governor, except that I said what I really thought, and thecompliment that the people paid me was in believing that I meant what Isaid. Unless they had believed in the Governor whom they then elected, unless they had trusted him deeply and altogether, he could have doneabsolutely nothing. The force of the public men of a nation lies in thefaith and the backing of the people of the country, rather than in anygifts of their own. In proportion as you trust them, in proportion as youback them up, in proportion as you lend them your strength, are theystrong. The things that have happened in New Jersey since 1910 havehappened because the seed was planted in this fine fertile soil ofconfidence, of trust, of renewed hope. 

The moment the forces in New Jersey that had resisted reform realized thatthe people were backing new men who meant what they had said, theyrealized that they dare not resist them. It was not the personal force ofthe new officials; it was the moral strength of their backing thataccomplished the extraordinary result. 

And what was accomplished? Mere justice to classes that had not beentreated justly before. 

Every schoolboy in the State of New Jersey, if he cared to look into thematter, could comprehend the fact that the laws applying to laboring-menwith respect of compensation when they were hurt in their variousemployments had originated at a time when society was organized verydifferently from the way in which it is organized now, and that becausethe law had not been changed, the courts were obliged to go blindly onadministering laws which were cruelly unsuitable to existing conditions, so that it was practically impossible for the workingmen of New Jersey toget justice from the courts; the legislature of the commonwealth had notcome to their assistance with the necessary legislation. Nobody seriouslydebated the circumstances; everybody knew that the law was antiquated andimpossible; everybody knew that justice waited to be done. Very well, then, why wasn't it done?

There was another thing that we wanted to do: We wanted to regulate ourpublic service corporations so that we could get the proper service fromthem, and on reasonable terms. That had been done elsewhere, and where ithad been done it had proved just as much for the benefit of thecorporations themselves as for the benefit of the people. Of course it wassomewhat difficult to convince the corporations. It happened that one ofthe men who knew the least about the subject was the president of thePublic Service Corporation of New Jersey. I have heard speeches from thatgentleman that exhibited a total lack of acquaintance with thecircumstances of our times. I have never known ignorance so complete inits detail; and, being a man of force and ignorance, he naturally set allhis energy to resist the things that he did not comprehend. 

I am not interested in questioning the motives of men in such positions. Iam only sorry that they don't know more. If they would only join theprocession they would find themselves benefited by the healthful exercise, which, for one thing, would renew within them the capacity to learn whichI hope they possessed when they were younger. We were not trying to doanything novel in New Jersey in regulating the Public Service Corporation;we were simply trying to adopt there a tested measure of public justice. We adopted it. Has anybody gone bankrupt since? Does anybody now doubtthat it was just as much for the benefit of the Public Service Corporationas for the people of the State?

Then there was another thing that we modestly desired: We wanted fairelections; we did not want candidates to buy themselves into office. Thatseemed reasonable. So we adopted a law, unique in one particular, namely:that if you bought an office, you didn't get it. I admit that that iscontrary to all commercial principles, but I think it is pretty goodpolitical doctrine. It is all very well to put a man in jail for buying anoffice, but it is very much better, besides putting him in jail, to showhim that if he has paid out a single dollar for that office, he does notget it, though a huge majority voted for him. We reversed the laws oftrade; when you buy something in politics in New Jersey, you do not getit. It seemed to us that that was the best way to discourage improperpolitical argument. If your money does not produce the goods, then you arenot tempted to spend your money. 

We adopted a Corrupt Practices Act, the reasonable foundation of which noman could question, and an Election Act, which every man predicted was notgoing to work, but which did work, --to the emancipation of the voters ofNew Jersey. 

All these things are now commonplaces with us. We like the laws that wehave passed, and no man ventures to suggest any material change in them. Why didn't we get them long ago? What hindered us? Why, because we had aclosed government; not an open government. It did not belong to us. It wasmanaged by little groups of men whose names we knew, but whom somehow wedidn't seem able to dislodge. When we elected men pledged to dislodgethem, they only went into partnership with them. Apparently what wasnecessary was to call in an amateur who knew so little about the game thathe supposed that he was expected to do what he had promised to do. 

There are gentlemen who have criticised the Governor of New Jersey becausehe did not do certain things, --for instance, bring a lot of indictments. The Governor of New Jersey does not think it necessary to defend himself;but he would like to call attention to a very interesting thing thathappened in his State: When the people had taken over control of thegovernment, a curious change was wrought in the souls of a great many men;a sudden moral awakening took place, and we simply could not findculprits against whom to bring indictments; it was like a Sunday school, the way they obeyed the laws. 

 * * * * *

So I say, there is nothing very difficult about resuming our owngovernment. There is nothing to appall us when we make up our minds to setabout the task. "The way to resume is to resume, " said Horace Greeley, once, when the country was frightened at a prospect which turned out to benot in the least frightful; it was at the moment of the resumption ofspecie payments for Treasury notes. The Treasury simply resumed, --therewas not a ripple of danger or excitement when the day of resumption camearound. 

It will be precisely so when the people resume control of their owngovernment. The men who conduct the political machines are a smallfraction of the party they pretend to represent, and the men who exercisecorrupt influences upon them are only a small fraction of the business menof the country. What we are banded together to fight is not a party, isnot a great body of citizens; we have to fight only little coteries, groups of men here and there, a few men, who subsist by deceiving us andcannot subsist a moment after they cease to deceive us. 

I had occasion to test the power of such a group in the State of NewJersey, and I had the satisfaction of discovering that I had been right insupposing that they did not possess any power at all. It looked as if theywere entrenched in a fortress; it looked as if the embrasures of thefortress showed the muzzles of guns; but, as I told my goodfellow-citizens, all they had to do was to press a little upon it and theywould find that the fortress was a mere cardboard fabric; that it was apiece of stage property; that just so soon as the audience got ready tolook behind the scenes they would learn that the army which had beenmarching and counter-marching in such terrifying array consisted of asingle company that had gone in one wing and around and out at the otherwing, and could have thus marched in procession for twenty-four hours. Youonly need about twenty-four men to do the trick. These men are impostors. They are powerful only in proportion as we are susceptible to absurd fearof them. Their capital is our ignorance and our credulity. 

To-day we are seeing something that some of us have waited all of ourlives to see. We are witnessing a rising of the country. We are seeing awhole people stand up and decline any longer to be imposed upon. The dayhas come when men are saying to each other: "It doesn't make apeppercorn's difference to me what party I have voted with. I am going topick out the men I want and the policies I want, and let the label takecare of itself. I do not find any great difference between my table ofcontents and the table of contents of those who have voted with the otherparty, and who, like me, are very much dissatisfied with the way in whichtheir party has rewarded their faithfulness. They want the same thingsthat I want, and I don't know of anything under God's heaven to preventour getting together. We want the same things, we have the same faith inthe old traditions of the American people, and we have made up our mindsthat we are going to have now at last the reality instead of the shadow. "

We Americans have been too long satisfied with merely going through themotions of government. We have been having a mock game. We have been goingto the polls and saying: "This is the act of a sovereign people, but wewon't be the sovereign yet; we will postpone that; we will wait untilanother time. The managers are still shifting the scenes; we are not readyfor the real thing yet. "

My proposal is that we stop going through the mimic play; that we get outand translate the ideals of American politics into action; so that everyman, when he goes to the polls on election day, will feel the thrill ofexecuting an actual judgment, as he takes again into his own hands thegreat matters which have been too long left to men deputized by their ownchoice, and seriously sets about carrying into accomplishment his ownpurposes. 

XI

THE EMANCIPATION OF BUSINESS

In the readjustments that are about to be undertaken in this country notone single legitimate or honest arrangement is going to be disturbed; butevery impediment to business is going to be removed, every illegitimatekind of control is going to be destroyed. Every man who wants anopportunity and has the energy to seize it, is going to be given a chance. All that we are going to ask the gentlemen who now enjoy monopolisticadvantages to do is to match their brains against the brains of those whowill then compete with them. The brains, the energy, of the rest of us areto be set free to go into the game, --that is all. There is to be a generalrelease of the capital, the enterprise, of millions of people, a generalopening of the doors of opportunity. With what a spring of determination, with what a shout of jubilance, will the people rise to theiremancipation!

I am one of those who believe that we have had such restrictions upon theprosperity of this country that we have not yet come into our own, andthat by removing those restrictions we shall set free an energy which inour generation has not been known. It is for that reason that I feel freeto criticise with the utmost frankness these restrictions, and the meansby which they have been brought about. I do not criticise as one withouthope; in describing conditions which so hamper, impede, and imprison, I amonly describing conditions from which we are going to escape into acontrasting age. I believe that this is a time when there should beunqualified frankness. One of the distressing circumstances of our day isthis: I cannot tell you how many men of business, how many important menof business, have communicated their real opinions about the situation inthe United States to me privately and confidentially. They are afraid ofsomebody. They are afraid to make their real opinions known publicly;they tell them to me behind their hand. That is very distressing. Thatmeans that we are not masters of our own opinions, except when we vote, and even then we are careful to vote very privately indeed. 

It is alarming that this should be the case. Why should any man in freeAmerica be afraid of any other man? Or why should any man fearcompetition, --competition either with his fellow-countrymen or withanybody else on earth?

It is part of the indictment against the protective policy of the UnitedStates that it has weakened and not enhanced the vigor of our people. American manufacturers who know that they can make better things than aremade elsewhere in the world, that they can sell them cheaper in foreignmarkets than they are sold in these very markets of domestic manufacture, are afraid, --afraid to venture out into the great world on their ownmerits and their own skill. Think of it, a nation full of genius and yetparalyzed by timidity! The timidity of the business men of America is tome nothing less than amazing. They are tied to the apron strings of thegovernment at Washington. They go about to seek favors. They say: "Forpity's sake, don't expose us to the weather of the world; put somehomelike cover over us. Protect us. See to it that foreign men don't comein and match their brains with ours. " And, as if to enhance thispeculiarity of ours, the strongest men amongst us get the biggest favors;the men of peculiar genius for organizing industries, the men who couldrun the industries of any country, are the men who are most stronglyintrenched behind the highest rates in the schedules of the tariff. Theyare so timid morally, furthermore, that they dare not stand up before theAmerican people, but conceal these favors in the verbiage of the tariffschedule itself, --in "jokers. " Ah! but it is a bitter joke when men whoseek favors are so afraid of the best judgment of their fellow-citizensthat they dare not avow what they take. 

Happily, the general revival of conscience in this country has not beenconfined to those who were consciously fighting special privilege. Theawakening of conscience has extended to those who were _enjoying_ specialprivileges, and I thank God that the business men of this country arebeginning to see our economic organization in its true light, as adeadening aristocracy of privilege from which they themselves must escape. The small men of this country are not deluded, and not all of the bigbusiness men of this country are deluded. Some men who have been led intowrong practices, who have been led into the practices of monopoly, becausethat seemed to be the drift and inevitable method of supremacy, are justas ready as we are to turn about and adopt the process of freedom. ForAmerican hearts beat in a lot of these men, just as they beat under ourjackets. They will be as glad to be free as we shall be to set them free. And then the splendid force which has lent itself to things that hurt uswill lend itself to things that benefit us. 

And we, --we who are not great captains of industry or business, --shall dothem more good than we do now, even in a material way. If you have to besubservient, you are not even making the rich fellows as rich as theymight be, because you are not adding your originative force to theextraordinary production of wealth in America. America is as rich, not asWall Street, not as the financial centres in Chicago and St. Louis and SanFrancisco; it is as rich as the people that make those centres rich. Andif those people hesitate in their enterprise, cower in the face of power, hesitate to originate designs of their own, then the very fountains whichmake these places abound in wealth are dried up at the source. By settingthe little men of America free, you are not damaging the giants. 

It may be that certain things will happen, for monopoly in this country iscarrying a body of water such as men ought not to be asked to carry. Whenby regulated competition, --that is to say, fair competition, competitionthat fights fair, --they are put upon their mettle, they will have toeconomize, and they cannot economize unless they get rid of that water. Ido not know how to squeeze the water out, but they will get rid of it, ifyou will put them to the necessity. They will have to get rid of it, orthose of us who don't carry tanks will outrun them in the race. Put allthe business of America upon the footing of economy and efficiency, andthen let the race be to the strongest and the swiftest. 

Our program is a program of prosperity; a program of prosperity that is tobe a little more pervasive than the present prosperity, --and pervasiveprosperity is more fruitful than that which is narrow and restrictive. Icongratulate the monopolies of the United States that they are not goingto have their way, because, quite contrary to their own theory, the factis that the people are wiser than they are. The people of the UnitedStates understand the United States as these gentlemen do not, and if theywill only give us leave, we will not only make them rich, but we will makethem happy. Because, then, their conscience will have less to carry. Ihave lived in a state that was owned by a series of corporations. Theyhanded it about. It was at one time owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad;then it was owned by the Public Service Corporation. It was owned by thePublic Service Corporation when I was admitted, and that corporation hasbeen resentful ever since that I interfered with its tenancy. But I reallydid not see any reason why the people should give up their own residenceto so small a body of men to monopolize; and, therefore, when I asked themfor their title deeds and they couldn't produce them, and there was nocourt except the court of public opinion to resort to, they moved out. Nowthey eat out of our hands; and they are not losing flesh either. They aremaking just as much money as they made before, only they are making it ina more respectable way. They are making it without the constant assistanceof the legislature of the State of New Jersey. They are making it in thenormal way, by supplying the people of New Jersey with the service in theway of transportation and gas and water that they really need. I do notbelieve that there are any thoughtful officials of the Public ServiceCorporation of New Jersey that now seriously regret the change that hascome about. We liberated government in my state, and it is an interestingfact that we have not suffered one moment in prosperity. 

 * * * * *

What we propose, therefore, in this program of freedom, is a program ofgeneral advantage. Almost every monopoly that has resisted dissolution hasresisted the real interests of its own stockholders. Monopoly alwayschecks development, weighs down natural prosperity, pulls against naturaladvance. 

Take but such an everyday thing as a useful invention and the putting ofit at the service of men. You know how prolific the American mind has beenin invention; how much civilization has been advanced by the steamboat, the cotton-gin, the sewing-machine, the reaping-machine, the typewriter, the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph. Do you know, have youhad occasion to learn, that there is no hospitality for inventionnowadays? There is no encouragement for you to set your wits at work toimprove the telephone, or the camera, or some piece of machinery, or somemechanical process; you are not invited to find a shorter and cheaper wayto make things or to perfect them, or to invent better things to taketheir place. There is too much money invested in old machinery; too muchmoney has been spent advertising the old camera; the telephone plants, asthey are, cost too much to permit their being superseded by somethingbetter. Wherever there is monopoly, not only is there no incentive toimprove, but, improvement being costly in that it "scraps" old machineryand destroys the value of old products, there is a positive motive againstimprovement. The instinct of monopoly is against novelty, the tendency ofmonopoly is to keep in use the old thing, made in the old way; itsdisposition is to "standardize" everything. Standardization may be allvery well, --but suppose everything had been standardized thirty yearsago, --we should still be writing by hand, by gas-light, we should bewithout the inestimable aid of the telephone (sometimes, I admit, it is anuisance), without the automobile, without wireless telegraphy. Personally, I could have managed to plod along without the aeroplane, andI could have been happy even without moving-pictures. 

Of course, I am not saying that all invention has been stopped by thegrowth of trusts, but I think it is perfectly clear that invention in manyfields has been discouraged, that inventors have been prevented fromreaping the full fruits of their ingenuity and industry, and that mankindhas been deprived of many comforts and conveniences, as well as of theopportunity of buying at lower prices. 

The damper put on the inventive genius of America by the trusts operatesin half a dozen ways: The first thing discovered by the genius whosedevice extends into a field controlled by a trust is that he can't getcapital to make and market his invention. If you want money to build yourplant and advertise your product and employ your agents and make a marketfor it, where are you going to get it? The minute you apply for money orcredit, this proposition is put to you by the banks: "This invention willinterfere with the established processes and the market control of certaingreat industries. We are already financing those industries, theirsecurities are in our hands; we will consult them. "

It may be, as a result of that consultation, you will be informed that itis too bad, but it will be impossible to "accommodate" you. It may be youwill receive a suggestion that if you care to make certain arrangementswith the trust, you will be permitted to manufacture. It may be you willreceive an offer to buy your patent, the offer being a poor consolationdole. It may be that your invention, even if purchased, will never beheard of again. 

That last method of dealing with an invention, by the way, is aparticularly vicious misuse of the patent laws, which ought not to allowproperty in an idea which is never intended to be realized. One of thereforms waiting to be undertaken is a revision of our patent laws. 

In any event, if the trust doesn't want you to manufacture yourinvention, you will not be allowed to, unless you have money of your ownand are willing to risk it fighting the monopolistic trust with its vastresources. I am generalizing the statement, but I could particularize it. I could tell you instances where exactly that thing happened. By thecombination of great industries, manufactured products are not only beingstandardized, but they are too often being kept at a single point ofdevelopment and efficiency. The increase of the power to produce inproportion to the cost of production is not studied in America as it usedto be studied, because if you don't have to improve your processes inorder to excel a competitor, if you are human you aren't going to improveyour processes; and if you can prevent the competitor from coming into thefield, then you can sit at your leisure, and, behind this wall ofprotection which prevents the brains of any foreigner competing with you, you can rest at your ease for a whole generation. 

Can any one who reflects on merely this attitude of the trusts towardinvention fail to understand how substantial, how actual, how great willbe the effect of the release of the genius of our people to originate, improve, and perfect the instruments and circumstances of our lives? Whocan say what patents now lying, unrealized, in secret drawers andpigeonholes, will come to light, or what new inventions will astonish andbless us, when freedom is restored?

Are you not eager for the time when the genius and initiative of all thepeople shall be called into the service of business? when newcomers withnew ideas, new entries with new enthusiasms, independent men, shall bewelcomed? when your sons shall be able to look forward to becoming, notemployees, but heads of some small, it may be, but hopeful, business, where their best energies shall be inspired by the knowledge that they aretheir own masters, with the paths of the world open before them? Have youno desire to see the markets opened to all? to see credit available in dueproportion to every man of character and serious purpose who can use itsafely and to advantage? to see business disentangled from its unholyalliance with politics? to see raw material released from the control ofmonopolists, and transportation facilities equalized for all? and everyavenue of commercial and industrial activity levelled for the feet of allwho would tread it? Surely, you must feel the inspiration of such a newdawn of liberty!

 * * * * *

There is the great policy of conservation, for example; and I do notconceive of conservation in any narrow sense. There are forests toconserve, there are great water powers to conserve, there are mines whosewealth should be deemed exhaustible, not inexhaustible, and whoseresources should be safeguarded and preserved for future generations. Butthere is much more. There are the lives and energies of the people to bephysically safeguarded. 

You know what has been the embarrassment about conservation. The federalgovernment has not dared relax its hold, because, not _bona fide_settlers, not men bent upon the legitimate development of great states, but men bent upon getting into their own exclusive control great mineral, forest, and water resources, have stood at the ear of the government andattempted to dictate its policy. And the government of the United Stateshas not dared relax its somewhat rigid policy because of the fear thatthese forces would be stronger than the forces of individual communitiesand of the public interest. What we are now in dread of is that thissituation will be made permanent. Why is it that Alaska has lagged in herdevelopment? Why is it that there are great mountains of coal piled up inthe shipping places on the coast of Alaska which the government atWashington will not permit to be sold? It is because the government is notsure that it has followed all the intricate threads of intrigue by whichsmall bodies of men have tried to get exclusive control of the coal fieldsof Alaska. The government stands itself suspicious of the forces by whichit is surrounded. 

The trouble about conservation is that the government of the United Stateshasn't any policy at present. It is simply marking time. It is simplystanding still. Reservation is not conservation. Simply to say, "We arenot going to do anything about the forests, " when the country needs to usethe forests, is not a practicable program at all. To say that the peopleof the great State of Washington can't buy coal out of the Alaskan coalfields doesn't settle the question. You have got to have that coal sooneror later. And if you are so afraid of the Guggenheims and all the rest ofthem that you can't make up your mind what your policies are going to beabout those coal fields, how long are we going to wait for the governmentto throw off its fear? There can't be a working program until there is afree government. The day when the government is free to set about a policyof positive conservation, as distinguished from mere negative reservation, will be an emancipation day of no small importance for the development ofthe country. 

But the question of conservation is a very much bigger question than theconservation of our natural resources; because in summing up our naturalresources there is one great natural resource which underlies them all, and seems to underlie them so deeply that we sometimes overlook it. I meanthe people themselves. 

What would our forests be worth without vigorous and intelligent men tomake use of them? Why should we conserve our natural resources, unless wecan by the magic of industry transmute them into the wealth of the world?What transmutes them into that wealth, if not the skill and the touch ofthe men who go daily to their toil and who constitute the great body ofthe American people? What I am interested in is having the government ofthe United States more concerned about human rights than about propertyrights. Property is an instrument of humanity; humanity isn't aninstrument of property. And yet when you see some men riding their greatindustries as if they were driving a car of juggernaut, not looking to seewhat multitudes prostrate themselves before the car and lose their livesin the crushing effect of their industry, you wonder how long men aregoing to be permitted to think more of their machinery than they think oftheir men. Did you never think of it, --men are cheap, and machinery isdear; many a superintendent is dismissed for overdriving a delicatemachine, who wouldn't be dismissed for overdriving an overtaxed man. Youcan discard your man and replace him; there are others ready to come intohis place; but you can't without great cost discard your machine and put anew one in its place. You are less apt, therefore, to look upon your menas the essential vital foundation part of your whole business. It is timethat property, as compared with humanity, should take second place, notfirst place. We must see to it that there is no over-crowding, that thereis no bad sanitation, that there is no unnecessary spread of avoidablediseases, that the purity of food is safeguarded, that there is everyprecaution against accident, that women are not driven to impossibletasks, nor children permitted to spend their energy before it is fit to bespent. The hope and elasticity of the race must be preserved; men must bepreserved according to their individual needs, and not according to theprograms of industry merely. What is the use of having industry, if weperish in producing it? If we die in trying to feed ourselves, why shouldwe eat? If we die trying to get a foothold in the crowd, why not let thecrowd trample us sooner and be done with it? I tell you that there isbeginning to beat in this nation a great pulse of irresistible sympathywhich is going to transform the processes of government amongst us. Thestrength of America is proportioned only to the health, the energy, thehope, the elasticity, the buoyancy of the American people. 

Is not that the greatest thought that you can have of freedom, --thethought of it as a gift that shall release men and women from all thatpulls them back from being their best and from doing their best, thatshall liberate their energy to its fullest limit, free their aspirationstill no bounds confine them, and fill their spirits with the jubilance ofrealizable hope?

XII

THE LIBERATION OF A PEOPLE'S VITAL ENERGIES

No matter how often we think of it, the discovery of America must eachtime make a fresh appeal to our imaginations. For centuries, indeed fromthe beginning, the face of Europe had been turned toward the east. All theroutes of trade, every impulse and energy, ran from west to east. TheAtlantic lay at the world's back-door. Then, suddenly, the conquest ofConstantinople by the Turk closed the route to the Orient. Europe hadeither to face about or lack any outlet for her energies; the unknown seaat the west at last was ventured upon, and the earth learned that it wastwice as big as it had thought. Columbus did not find, as he had expected, the civilization of Cathay; he found an empty continent. In that part ofthe world, upon that new-found half of the globe, mankind, late in itshistory, was thus afforded an opportunity to set up a new civilization;here it was strangely privileged to make a new human experiment. 

Never can that moment of unique opportunity fail to excite the emotion ofall who consider its strangeness and richness; a thousand fancifulhistories of the earth might be contrived without the imagination daringto conceive such a romance as the hiding away of half the globe until thefulness of time had come for a new start in civilization. A mere seacaptain's ambition to trace a new trade route gave way to a moraladventure for humanity. The race was to found a new order here on thisdelectable land, which no man approached without receiving, as the oldvoyagers relate, you remember, sweet airs out of woods aflame with flowersand murmurous with the sound of pellucid waters. The hemisphere laywaiting to be touched with life, --life from the old centres of living, surely, but cleansed of defilement, and cured of weariness, so as to befit for the virgin purity of a new bride. The whole thing springs into theimagination like a wonderful vision, an exquisite marvel which once onlyin all history could be vouchsafed. 

One other thing only compares with it; only one other thing touches thesprings of emotion as does the picture of the ships of Columbus drawingnear the bright shores, --and that is the thought of the choke in thethroat of the immigrant of to-day as he gazes from the steerage deck atthe land where he has been taught to believe he in his turn shall find anearthly paradise, where, a free man, he shall forget the heartaches of theold life, and enter into the fulfilment of the hope of the world. For hasnot every ship that has pointed her prow westward borne hither the hopesof generation after generation of the oppressed of other lands? How alwayshave men's hearts beat as they saw the coast of America rise to theirview! How it has always seemed to them that the dweller there would atlast be rid of kings, of privileged classes, and of all those bonds whichhad kept men depressed and helpless, and would there realize the fullfruition of his sense of honest manhood, would there be one of a greatbody of brothers, not seeking to defraud and deceive one another, butseeking to accomplish the general good!

What was in the writings of the men who founded America, --to serve theselfish interests of America? Do you find that in their writings? No; toserve the cause of humanity, to bring liberty to mankind. They set uptheir standards here in America in the tenet of hope, as a beacon ofencouragement to all the nations of the world; and men came thronging tothese shores with an expectancy that never existed before, with aconfidence they never dared feel before, and found here for generationstogether a haven of peace, of opportunity, of equality. 

God send that in the complicated state of modern affairs we may recoverthe standards and repeat the achievements of that heroic age!

For life is no longer the comparatively simple thing it was. Our relationsone with another have been profoundly modified by the new agencies ofrapid communication and transportation, tending swiftly to concentratelife, widen communities, fuse interests, and complicate all the processesof living. The individual is dizzily swept about in a thousand newwhirlpools of activities. Tyranny has become more subtle, and has learnedto wear the guise of mere industry, and even of benevolence. Freedom hasbecome a somewhat different matter. It cannot, --eternal principle that itis, --it cannot have altered, yet it shows itself in new aspects. Perhapsit is only revealing its deeper meaning. 

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What is liberty?

I have long had an image in my mind of what constitutes liberty. Supposethat I were building a great piece of powerful machinery, and suppose thatI should so awkwardly and unskilfully assemble the parts of it that everytime one part tried to move it would be interfered with by the others, andthe whole thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the severalparts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of themall, would it not? If you want the great piston of the engine to run withabsolute freedom, give it absolutely perfect alignment and adjustmentwith the other parts of the machine, so that it is free, not because it islet alone or isolated, but because it has been associated most skilfullyand carefully with the other parts of the great structure. 

What it liberty? You say of the locomotive that it runs free. What do youmean? You mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted that frictionis reduced to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjustment. We say of aboat skimming the water with light foot, "How free she runs, " when wemean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, howperfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills hersails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt andstagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame be shaken, howinstantly she is "in irons, " in the expressive phrase of the sea. She isfree only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered oncemore her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy. 

Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests andhuman activities and human energies. 

Now, the adjustments necessary between individuals, between individualsand the complex institutions amidst which they live, and between thoseinstitutions and the government, are infinitely more intricate to-day thanever before. No doubt this is a tiresome and roundabout way of saying thething, yet perhaps it is worth while to get somewhat clearly in our mindwhat makes all the trouble to-day. Life has become complex; there are manymore elements, more parts, to it than ever before. And, therefore, it isharder to keep everything adjusted, --and harder to find out where thetrouble lies when the machine gets out of order. 

You know that one of the interesting things that Mr. Jefferson said inthose early days of simplicity which marked the beginnings of ourgovernment was that the best government consisted in as little governingas possible. And there is still a sense in which that is true. It is stillintolerable for the government to interfere with our individualactivities except where it is necessary to interfere with them in order tofree them. But I feel confident that if Jefferson were living in our dayhe would see what we see: that the individual is caught in a greatconfused nexus of all sorts of complicated circumstances, and that to lethim alone is to leave him helpless as against the obstacles with which hehas to contend; and that, therefore, law in our day must come to theassistance of the individual. It must come to his assistance to see thathe gets fair play; that is all, but that is much. Without the watchfulinterference, the resolute interference, of the government, there can beno fair play between individuals and such powerful institutions as thetrusts. Freedom to-day is something more than being let alone. The programof a government of freedom must in these days be positive, not negativemerely. 

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Well, then, in this new sense and meaning of it, are we preserving freedomin this land of ours, the hope of all the earth?

Have we, inheritors of this continent and of the ideals to which thefathers consecrated it, --have we maintained them, realizing them, as eachgeneration must, anew? Are we, in the consciousness that the life of manis pledged to higher levels here than elsewhere, striving still to bearaloft the standards of liberty and hope, or, disillusioned and defeated, are we feeling the disgrace of having had a free field in which to do newthings and of not having done them?

The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair way offailure, --tragic failure. And we stand in danger of utter failure yetexcept we fulfil speedily the determination we have reached, to deal withthe new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts. Don't deceiveyourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which nowdominate our development. They are so great that it is almost an openquestion whether the government of the United States can dominate them ornot. Go one step further, make their organized power permanent, and it maybe too late to turn back. The roads diverge at the point where we stand. They stretch their vistas out to regions where they are very far separatedfrom one another; at the end of one is the old tiresome scene ofgovernment tied up with special interests; and at the other shines theliberating light of individual initiative, of individual liberty, ofindividual freedom, the light of untrammeled enterprise. I believe thatthat light shines out of the heavens itself that God has created. Ibelieve in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is nosalvation for men in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen. Prosperity guaranteed bytrustees has no prospect of endurance. Monopoly means the atrophy ofenterprise. If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm ofthe government. I do not expect to see monopoly restrain itself. If thereare men in this country big enough to own the government of the UnitedStates, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whetherwe are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own. We haven'thad free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guidance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing less than therecovery of what was made with our own hands, and acts only by ourdelegated authority. 

I tell you, when you discuss the question of the tariffs and of thetrusts, you are discussing the very lives of yourselves and your children. I believe that I am preaching the very cause of some of the gentlemen whomI am opposing when I preach the cause of free industry in the UnitedStates, for I think they are slowly girding the tree that bears theinestimable fruits of our life, and that if they are permitted to gird itentirely nature will take her revenge and the tree will die. 

I do not believe that America is securely great because she has great menin her now. America is great in proportion as she can make sure of havinggreat men in the next generation. She is rich in her unborn children;rich, that is to say, if those unborn children see the sun in a day ofopportunity, see the sun when they are free to exercise their energies asthey will. If they open their eyes in a land where there is no specialprivilege, then we shall come into a new era of American greatness andAmerican liberty; but if they open their eyes in a country where they mustbe employees or nothing, if they open their eyes in a land of merelyregulated monopoly, where all the conditions of industry are determined bysmall groups of men, then they will see an America such as the founders ofthis Republic would have wept to think of. The only hope is in the releaseof the forces which philanthropic trust presidents want to monopolize. Only the emancipation, the freeing and heartening of the vital energies ofall the people will redeem us. In all that I may have to do in publicaffairs in the United States I am going to think of towns such as I haveseen in Indiana, towns of the old American pattern, that own and operatetheir own industries, hopefully and happily. My thought is going to bebent upon the multiplication of towns of that kind and the prevention ofthe concentration of industry in this country in such a fashion and uponsuch a scale that towns that own themselves will be impossible. You knowwhat the vitality of America consists of. Its vitality does not lie in NewYork, nor in Chicago; it will not be sapped by anything that happens inSt. Louis. The vitality of America lies in the brains, the energies, theenterprise of the people throughout the land; in the efficiency of theirfactories and in the richness of the fields that stretch beyond theborders of the town; in the wealth which they extract from nature andoriginate for themselves through the inventive genius characteristic ofall free American communities. 

That is the wealth of America, and if America discourages the locality, the community, the self-contained town, she will kill the nation. A nationis as rich as her free communities; she is not as rich as her capital cityor her metropolis. The amount of money in Wall Street is no indication ofthe wealth of the American people. That indication can be found only inthe fertility of the American mind and the productivity of Americanindustry everywhere throughout the United States. If America were not richand fertile, there would be no money in Wall Street. If Americans were notvital and able to take care of themselves, the great money exchanges wouldbreak down. The welfare, the very existence of the nation, rests at lastupon the great mass of the people; its prosperity depends at last upon thespirit in which they go about their work in their several communitiesthroughout the broad land. In proportion as her towns and hercountry-sides are happy and hopeful will America realize the highambitions which have marked her in the eyes of all the world. 

The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men and women whodo the daily work in our mines and factories, on our railroads, in ouroffices and ports of trade, on our farms and on the sea, is the underlyingnecessity of all prosperity. There can be nothing wholesome unless theirlife is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented. Their physical welfare affects the soundness of the whole nation. Howwould it suit the prosperity of the United States, how would it suitbusiness, to have a people that went every day sadly or sullenly to theirwork? How would the future look to you if you felt that the aspiration hadgone out of most men, the confidence of success, the hope that they mightimprove their condition? Do you not see that just so soon as the oldself-confidence of America, just so soon as her old boasted advantage ofindividual liberty and opportunity, is taken away, all the energy of herpeople begins to subside, to slacken, to grow loose and pulpy, withoutfibre, and men simply cast about to see that the day does not enddisastrously with them?

So we must put heart into the people by taking the heartlessness out ofpolitics, business, and industry. We have got to make politics a thing inwhich an honest man can take his part with satisfaction because he knowsthat his opinion will count as much as the next man's, and that the bossand the interests have been dethroned. Business we have got to untrammel, abolishing tariff favors, and railroad discrimination, and credit denials, and all forms of unjust handicaps against the little man. Industry we havegot to humanize, --not through the trusts, --but through the direct actionof law guaranteeing protection against dangers and compensation forinjuries, guaranteeing sanitary conditions, proper hours, the right toorganize, and all the other things which the conscience of the countrydemands as the workingman's right. We have got to cheer and inspirit ourpeople with the sure prospects of social justice and due reward, with thevision of the open gates of opportunity for all. We have got to set theenergy and the initiative of this great people absolutely free, so thatthe future of America will be greater than the past, so that the pride ofAmerica will grow with achievement, so that America will know as sheadvances from generation to generation that each brood of her sons isgreater and more enlightened than that which preceded it, know that she isfulfilling the promise that she has made to mankind. 

Such is the vision of some of us who now come to assist in itsrealization. For we Democrats would not have endured this long burden ofexile if we had not seen a vision. We could have traded; we could have gotinto the game; we could have surrendered and made terms; we could haveplayed the rôle of patrons to the men who wanted to dominate the interestsof the country, --and here and there gentlemen who pretended to be of usdid make those arrangements. They couldn't stand privation. You never canstand it unless you have within you some imperishable food upon which tosustain life and courage, the food of those visions of the spirit where atable is set before us laden with palatable fruits, the fruits of hope, the fruits of imagination, those invisible things of the spirit which arethe only things upon which we can sustain ourselves through this wearyworld without fainting. We have carried in our minds, after you hadthought you had obscured and blurred them, the ideals of those men whofirst set their foot upon America, those little bands who came to make afoothold in the wilderness, because the great teeming nations that theyhad left behind them had forgotten what human liberty was, liberty ofthought, liberty of religion, liberty of residence, liberty of action. 

Since their day the meaning of liberty has deepened. But it has not ceasedto be a fundamental demand of the human spirit, a fundamental necessityfor the life of the soul. And the day is at hand when it shall be realizedon this consecrated soil, --a New Freedom, --a Liberty widened and deepenedto match the broadened life of man in modern America, restoring to him invery truth the control of his government, throwing wide all gates oflawful enterprise, unfettering his energies, and warming the generousimpulses of his heart, --a process of release, emancipation, andinspiration, full of a breath of life as sweet and wholesome as the airsthat filled the sails of the caravels of Columbus and gave the promise andboast of magnificent Opportunity in which America _dare not fail_. 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.