For I understand it to be the fundamental proposition of American liberty that we do not desire special privilege, because we know special privilege will never comprehend the general welfare.  This is the fundamental, spiritual difference between adherents of the party now about to take charge of the government and those who have been in charge of it in recent years.  They are so indoctrinated with the idea that only the big business interests of this country understand the United States and can make it prosperous that they cannot divorce their thoughts from that obsession.  They have put the government into the hands of trustees, and Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt were the rival candidates to preside over the board of trustees.  They were candidates to serve the people, no doubt, to the best of their ability, but it was not their idea to serve them directly; they proposed to serve them indirectly through the enormous forces already set up, which are so great that there is almost an open question whether the government of the United States with the people back of it is strong enough to overcome and rule them.

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Shall we try to get the grip of monopoly away from our lives, or shall we not?  Shall we withhold our hand and say monopoly is inevitable, that all that we can do is to regulate it?  Shall we say that all that we can do is to put government in competition with monopoly and try its strength against it?  Shall we admit that the creature of our own hands is stronger than we are?  We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power 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 man who wishes to be the President must doff his cap in the presence of this high finance, and say, “You are our inevitable master, but we will see how we can make the best of it?”

We are at the parting of the ways.  We have, not one or two or three, but many, 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 restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—­no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small 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 the government even than they are now?  Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it?  Must capture the government?  They have already captured it.  Are you going to invite those 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 your choice.  Are you going to say:  “You didn’t get into the house the right way, but you are in there, God bless you; we will stand out here in the cold and you can hand us out something once in a while?”