The labour unions are afraid and say, “We will not work,” to their employers, “You cannot make us work.”  The President hears this.  It is about all they say.

The capitalists and employers are afraid and they say, “We will not pay,” “You cannot make us pay.”

Shall the President act as if these men represent Labor and Capital?

We say, “No.”

Neither of these groups of men express real live American labour or real live characteristic American money.

American money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to a fault.  American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdly believing things, imperiously singing things out of its way.

A singing people want a singing government.  How is our President going to hear our labour and our money sing?

Pinchot expressed us, not Ballinger.

Mr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary.  He is an artist in expressing America to a President.  If we have a President who will not listen to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will.

Pinchot—­an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, who is spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is the kind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say what Americans are like.  Millions of men stand by Pinchot.  We like the way he makes money sing.

Tom L. Johnson—­an American millionaire who made his money in the ordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises out of a city for nothing—­has the courage to turn around, spend his fortune and spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it.

America presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments and says, “This is what America is like.”

It may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America—­America in miniature.  But millions of us say he is.  He makes money sing.

We want a President—­millions of us want him—­and this is the most important news about us, who expects money in this country to sing.

We want our money and expect our money in this country to stop saying mean things about us, things that make us ashamed to look a true newspaper in the face, or one another in the face, and that humiliate us before the world.

* * * * *

And now I have come to an awkward place in this book where I hope the reader will help me all he can.

There is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music.  The fact is, Gentle Reader—­perhaps you have suspected it all along—­that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up with him and making it a kind of arena or tournament instead of a book, I would have mentioned ex-President Roosevelt before this.  He has been getting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far, but of course I knew, as any one would, that he would spoil all the calm equipoise, the quiet onward flowing of