As for watered stock, I know all the sophistical arguments, and they are many, for capitalizing earning capacity.  It is a very attractive and interesting argument, and in some instances it is legitimately used.  But there is a line you cross, above which you are not capitalizing your earning capacity, but capitalizing your control of the market, capitalizing the profits which you got by your control of the market, and didn’t get by efficiency and economy.  These things are not hidden even from the layman.  These are not half-hidden from college men.  The college men’s days of innocence have passed, and their days of sophistication have come.  They know what is going on, because we live in a talkative world, full of statistics, full of congressional inquiries, full of trials of persons who have attempted to live independently of the statutes of the United 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 his stand, on the proposition that private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable.  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 these men built up their power and created these monopolies.  Any decently equipped lawyer can suggest to you statutes by which the whole business can be stopped.  What these gentlemen do not want is this:  they do not want to be compelled to meet all comers on equal terms.  I am perfectly willing that they should beat any competitor by fair means; but I know the foul means they have adopted, and I know that they can be stopped by law.  If they think that coming into the market upon the basis of mere efficiency, upon the mere basis of knowing how to manufacture goods better than anybody else and to sell them cheaper than anybody else, they can carry the immense amount of water that they have put into their enterprises in order to buy up rivals, then they are perfectly welcome to try it.  But there must be no squeezing out of the beginner, no crippling his credit; no discrimination against retailers who buy from a rival; no threats against concerns who sell supplies to a rival; no holding back of raw material from him; no secret arrangements against him.  All the fair competition you choose, but no unfair competition of any kind.  And then when unfair competition is eliminated, let us see these gentlemen carry their tanks of water on their backs.  All that I ask and all I shall fight for is that they shall come into the field against merit and brains everywhere.  If they can beat other American brains, then they have got the best brains.