come into a new era of American greatness and American liberty; but if they open their eyes in a country where they must be employees or nothing, if they open their eyes in a land of merely regulated monopoly, where all the conditions of industry are determined by small groups of men, then they will see an America such as the founders of this Republic would have wept to think of.  The only hope is in the release of the forces which philanthropic trust presidents want to monopolize.  Only the emancipation, the freeing and heartening of the vital energies of all the people will redeem us.  In all that I may have to do in public affairs in the United States I am going to think of towns such as I have seen in Indiana, towns of the old American pattern, that own and operate their own industries, hopefully and happily.  My thought is going to be bent upon the multiplication of towns of that kind and the prevention of the concentration of industry in this country in such a fashion and upon such a scale that towns that own themselves will be impossible.  You know what the vitality of America consists of.  Its vitality does not lie in New York, nor in Chicago; it will not be sapped by anything that happens in St. Louis.  The vitality of America lies in the brains, the energies, the enterprise of the people throughout the land; in the efficiency of their factories and in the richness of the fields that stretch beyond the borders of the town; in the wealth which they extract from nature and originate for themselves through the inventive genius characteristic of all 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 nation is as rich as her free communities; she is not as rich as her capital city or her metropolis.  The amount of money in Wall Street is no indication of the wealth of the American people.  That indication can be found only in the fertility of the American mind and the productivity of American industry everywhere throughout the United States.  If America were not rich and fertile, there would be no money in Wall Street.  If Americans were not vital and able to take care of themselves, the great money exchanges would break down.  The welfare, the very existence of the nation, rests at last upon the great mass of the people; its prosperity depends at last upon the spirit in which they go about their work in their several communities throughout the broad land.  In proportion as her towns and her country-sides are happy and hopeful will America realize the high ambitions which have marked her in the eyes of all the world.