There are two theories of government that have been contending with each
other ever since government began. One of them is the theory which in
America is associated with the name of a very great man, Alexander
Hamilton. A great man, but, in my judgment, not a great American. He did
not think in terms of American life. Hamilton believed that the only
people who could understand government, and therefore the only people who
were qualified to conduct it, were the men who had the biggest financial
stake in the commercial and industrial enterprises of the country.
That theory, though few have now the hardihood to profess it openly, has
been the working theory upon which our government has lately been
conducted. It is astonishing how persistent it is. It is amazing how
quickly the political party which had Lincoln for its first
leader,--Lincoln, who not only denied, but in his own person so completely
disproved the aristocratic theory,--it is amazing how quickly that party,
founded on faith in the people, forgot the precepts of Lincoln and fell
under the delusion that the "masses" needed the guardianship of "men of
affairs."
For indeed, if you stop to think about it, nothing could be a greater
departure from original Americanism, from faith in the ability of a
confident, resourceful, and independent people, than the discouraging
doctrine 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 United
States has been conducted lately. Who have been consulted when important
measures of government, like tariff acts, and currency acts, and railroad
acts, were under consideration? The people whom the tariff chiefly
affects, the people for whom the currency is supposed to exist, the people
who pay the duties and ride on the railroads? Oh, no! What do they know
about such matters! The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought are the
big manufacturers, the bankers, and the heads of the great railroad
combinations. The masters of the government of the United States are the
combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is written
over every intimate page of the records of Congress, it is written all
through the history of conferences at the White House, that the
suggestions of economic policy in this country have come from one source,
not from many sources. The benevolent guardians, the kind-hearted trustees
who have taken the troubles of government off our hands, have become so
conspicuous that almost anybody can write out a list of them. They have
become so conspicuous that their names are mentioned upon almost every
political platform. The men who have undertaken the interesting job of
taking care of us do not force us to requite them with anonymously
directed gratitude. We know them by name.
Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government. You will
always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really
consulted are the men who have the biggest stake,--the big bankers, the
big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad
corporations and of steamship corporations. I have no objection to these
men being consulted, because they also, though they do not themselves seem
to admit it, are part of the people of the United States. But I do very
seriously object to these gentlemen being _chiefly_ consulted, and
particularly to their being exclusively consulted, for, if the government
of the United States is to do the right thing by the people of the United
States, it has got to do it directly and not through the intermediation of
these gentlemen. Every time it has come to a critical question these
gentlemen have been yielded to, and their demands have been treated as the
demands that should be followed as a matter of course.
The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the
special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own. It is told
at every move: "Don't do that; you will interfere with our prosperity."
And when we ask, "Where is our prosperity lodged?" a certain group of
gentlemen say, "With us." The government of the United States in recent
years 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 outside
and looked on at their own government and that all they have had to
determine 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 who
had managed to get the control of affairs in its hands. Have you ever
heard, for example, of any hearing before any great committee of the
Congress in which the people of the country as a whole were represented,
except it may be by the Congressmen themselves? The men who appear at
those meetings in order to argue for or against a schedule in the tariff,
for this measure or against that measure, are men who represent special
interests. They may represent them very honestly, they may intend no wrong
to their fellow-citizens, but they are speaking from the point of view
always of a small portion of the population. I have sometimes wondered why
men, particularly men of means, men who didn't have to work for their
living, shouldn't constitute themselves attorneys for the people, and
every time a hearing is held before a committee of Congress should not go
and ask: "Gentlemen, in considering these things suppose you consider the
whole 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 in
Washington and play Providence to me. There is a Providence to which I am
perfectly willing to submit. But as for other men setting up as Providence
over myself, I seriously object. I have never met a political savior in
the flesh, and I never expect to meet one. I am reminded of Gillet
Burgess' 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'd
rather see a savior of the United States than set up to be one; because I
have found out, I have actually found out, that men I consult with know
more than I do,--especially if I consult with enough of them. I never came
out of a committee meeting or a conference without seeing more of the
question that was under discussion than I had seen when I went in. And
that to my mind is an image of government. I am not willing to be under
the patronage of the trusts, no matter how providential a government
presides over the process of their control of my life.
I am one of those who absolutely reject the trustee theory, the
guardianship theory. I have never found a man who knew how to take care of
me, and, reasoning from that point out, I conjecture that there isn't any
man who knows how to take care of all the people of the United States. I
suspect that the people of the United States understand their own
interests better than any group of men in the confines of the country
understand them. The men who are sweating blood to get their foothold in
the world of endeavor understand the conditions of business in the United
States 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 know
how difficult it is to start a new enterprise. They know how far they have
to search for credit that will put them upon an even footing with the men
who have already built up industry in this country. They know that
somewhere, by somebody, the development of industry is being controlled.
I do not say this with the slightest desire to create any prejudice
against wealth; on the contrary, I should be ashamed of myself if I
excited class feeling of any kind. But I do mean to suggest this: That the
wealth of the country has, in recent years, come from particular sources;
it has come from those sources which have built up monopoly. Its point of
view is a special point of view. It is the point of view of those men who
do not wish that the people should determine their own affairs, because
they do not believe that the people's judgment is sound. They want to be
commissioned to take care of the United States and of the people of the
United States, because they believe that they, better than anybody else,
understand the interests of the United States. I do not challenge their
character; I challenge their point of view. We cannot afford to be
governed as we have been governed in the last generation, by men who
occupy so narrow, so prejudiced, so limited a point of view.
The government of our country cannot be lodged in any special class. The
policy of a great nation cannot be tied up with any particular set of
interests. I want to say, again and again, that my arguments do not touch
the character of the men to whom I am opposed. I believe that the very
wealthy men who have got their money by certain kinds of corporate
enterprise have closed in their horizon, and that they do not see and do
not understand the rank and file of the people. It is for that reason that
I want to break up the little coterie that has determined what the
government of the nation should do. The list of the men who used to
determine what New Jersey should and should not do did not exceed half a
dozen, and they were always the same men. These very men now are, some of
them, frank enough to admit that New Jersey has finer energy in her
because more men are consulted and the whole field of action is widened
and liberalized. We have got to relieve our government from the domination
of special classes, not because these special classes are bad,
necessarily, but because no special class can understand the interests of
a great community.
I believe, as I believe in nothing else, in the average integrity and the
average intelligence of the American people, and I do not believe that the
intelligence of America can be put into commission anywhere. I do not
believe that there is any group of men of any kind to whom we can afford
to give that kind of trusteeship.
I will not live under trustees if I can help it. No group of men less than
the majority has a right to tell me how I have got to live in America. I
will submit to the majority, because I have been trained to do
it,--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 never
heard of any group of men in whose hands I am willing to lodge the
liberties of America in trust.
If any part of our people want to be wards, if they want to have guardians
put over them, if they want to be taken care of, if they want to be
children, patronized by the government, why, I am sorry, because it will
sap the manhood of America. But I don't believe they do. I believe they
want to stand on the firm foundation of law and right and take care of
themselves. I, for my part, don't want to belong to a nation, I believe
that I do not belong to a nation, that needs to be taken care of by
guardians. I want to belong to a nation, and I am proud that I do belong
to a nation, that knows how to take care of itself. If I thought that the
American people were reckless, were ignorant, were vindictive, I might
shrink from putting the government into their hands. But the beauty of
democracy is that when you are reckless you destroy your own established
conditions of life; when you are vindictive, you wreak vengeance upon
yourself; the whole stability of a democratic polity rests upon the fact
that every interest is every man's interest.
The theory that the men of biggest affairs, whose field of operation is
the widest, are the proper men to advise the government is, I am willing
to admit, rather a plausible theory. If my business covers the United
States not only, but covers the world, it is to be presumed that I have a
pretty wide scope in my vision of business. But the flaw is that it is my
own business that I have a vision of, and not the business of the men who
lie outside of the scope of the plans I have made for a profit out of the
particular transactions I am connected with. And you can't, by putting
together a large number of men who understand their own business, no
matter how large it is, make up a body of men who will understand the
business of the nation as contrasted with their own interest.
In a former generation, half a century ago, there were a great many men
associated with the government whose patriotism we are not privileged to
deny nor to question, who intended to serve the people, but had become so
saturated with the point of view of a governing class that it was
impossible for them to see America as the people of America themselves saw
it. Then there arose that interesting figure, the immortal figure of the
great Lincoln, who stood up declaring that the politicians, the men who
had governed this country, did not see from the point of view of the
people. When I think of that tall, gaunt figure rising in Illinois, I have
a picture of a man free, unentangled, unassociated with the governing
influences of the country, ready to see things with an open eye, to see
them steadily, to see them whole, to see them as the men he rubbed
shoulders with and associated with saw them. What the country needed in
1860 was a leader who understood and represented the thought of the whole
people, as contrasted with that of a class which imagined itself the
guardian of the country's welfare.
Now, likewise, the trouble with our present political condition is that we
need some man who has not been associated with the governing classes and
the governing influences of this country to stand up and speak for us; we
need to hear a voice from the outside calling upon the American people to
assert again their rights and prerogatives in the possession of their own
government.
My thought about both Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt is that of entire
respect, but these gentlemen have been so intimately associated with the
powers that have been determining the policy of this government for almost
a generation, that they cannot look at the affairs of the country with the
view of a new age and of a changed set of circumstances. They sympathize
with the people; their hearts no doubt go out to the great masses of
unknown men in this country; but their thought is in close, habitual
association with those who have framed the policies of the country during
all our lifetime. Those men have framed the protective tariff, have
developed the trusts, have co-ordinated and ordered all the great economic
forces of this country in such fashion that nothing but an outside force
breaking in can disturb their domination and control. It is with this in
mind, I believe, that the country can say to these gentlemen: "We do not
deny your integrity; we do not deny your purity of purpose; but the
thought of the people of the United States has not yet penetrated to your
consciousness. You are willing to act for the people, but you are not
willing 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 of
the chains in which they are held. I do not believe that men such as we
know, among our public men at least--most of them--have deliberately put
us into leading strings to the special interests. The special interests
have grown up. They have grown up by processes which at last, happily, we
are beginning to understand. And, having grown up, having occupied the
seats of greatest advantage nearest the ear of those who are conducting
government, having contributed the money which was necessary to the
elections, and therefore having been kindly thought of after elections,
there has closed around the government of the United States a very
interesting, a very able, a very aggressive coterie of gentlemen who are
most 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 to
resort to anybody. They know their plans, and therefore they know what
will be convenient for them. It may be that they have really thought what
they have said they thought; it may be that they know so little of the
history of economic development and of the interests of the United States
as to believe that their leadership is indispensable for our prosperity
and development. I don't have to prove that they believe that, because
they 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 in
this country dropped from their hands, the rest of us are too
muddle-headed to undertake the task. They not only comprehend the power of
the United States within their grasp, but they comprehend it within their
imagination. They are honest men, they have just as much right to express
their views as I have to express mine or you to express yours, but it is
just about time that we examined their views for ourselves and determined
their validity.
As a matter of fact, their thought does not cover the processes of their
own undertakings. As a university president, I learned that the men who
dominate our manufacturing processes could not conduct their business for
twenty-four hours without the assistance of the experts with whom the
universities were supplying them. Modern industry depends upon technical
knowledge; and all that these gentlemen did was to manage the external
features of great combinations and their financial operation, which had
very little to do with the intimate skill with which the enterprises were
conducted. I know men not catalogued in the public prints, men not spoken
of in public discussion, who are the very bone and sinew of the industry
of the United States.
Do our masters of industry speak in the spirit and interest even of those
whom they employ? When men ask me what I think about the labor question
and laboring men, I feel that I am being asked what I know about the vast
majority of the people, and I feel as if I were being asked to separate
myself, as belonging to a particular class, from that great body of my
fellow-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 a
free government.
I have listened to some very honest and eloquent orators whose sentiments
were noteworthy for this: that when they spoke of the people, they were
not thinking of themselves; they were thinking of somebody whom they were
commissioned to take care of. They were always planning to do things _for_
the American people, and I have seen them visibly shiver when it was
suggested that they arrange to have something done by the people for
themselves. They said, "What do they know about it?" I always feel like
replying, "What do _you_ know about it? You know your own interest, but
who has told you our interests, and what do you know about them?" For the
business of every leader of government is to hear what the nation is
saying and to know what the nation is enduring. It is not his business to
judge _for_ the nation, but to judge _through_ the nation as its spokesman
and voice. I do not believe that this country could have safely allowed a
continuation of the policy of the men who have viewed affairs in any other
light.
The hypothesis under which we have been ruled is that of government
through a board of trustees, through a selected number of the big business
men of the country who know a lot that the rest of us do not know, and who
take it for granted that our ignorance would wreck the prosperity of the
country. The idea of the Presidents we have recently had has been that
they were Presidents of a National Board of Trustees. That is not my
idea. I have been president of one board of trustees, and I do not care to
have another on my hands. I want to be President of the people of the
United States. There was many a time when I was president of the board of
trustees of a university when the undergraduates knew more than the
trustees did; and it has been in my thought ever since that if I could
have dealt directly with the people who constituted Princeton University I
could have carried it forward much faster than I could dealing with a
board of trustees.
Mark you, I am not saying that these leaders knew that they were doing us
an evil, or that they intended to do us an evil. For my part, I am very
much more afraid of the man who does a bad thing and does not know it is
bad than of the man who does a bad thing and knows it is bad; because I
think that in public affairs stupidity is more dangerous than knavery,
because harder to fight and dislodge. If a man does not know enough to
know what the consequences are going to be to the country, then he cannot
govern the country in a way that is for its benefit. These gentlemen,
whatever may have been their intentions, linked the government up with the
men who control the finances. They may have done it innocently, or they
may have done it corruptly, without affecting my argument at all. And they
themselves cannot escape from that alliance.
Here, for example, is the old question of campaign funds: If I take a
hundred thousand dollars from a group of men representing a particular
interest that has a big stake in a certain schedule of the tariff, I take
it with the knowledge that those gentlemen will expect me not to forget
their interest in that schedule, and that they will take it as a point of
implicit honor that I should see to it that they are not damaged by too
great a change in that schedule. Therefore, if I take their money, I am
bound to them by a tacit implication of honor. Perhaps there is no ground
for objection to this situation so long as the function of government is
conceived to be to look after the trustees of prosperity, who in turn will
look after the people; but on any other theory than that of trusteeship
no interested campaign contributions can be tolerated for a moment,--save
those of the millions of citizens who thus support the doctrines they
believe and the men whom they recognized as their spokesmen.
I tell you the men I am interested in are the men who, under the
conditions we have had, never had their voices heard, who never got a line
in the newspapers, who never got a moment on the platform, who never had
access to the ears of Governors or Presidents or of anybody who was
responsible for the conduct of public affairs, but who went silently and
patiently to their work every day carrying the burden of the world. How
are they to be understood by the masters of finance, if only the masters
of 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 a
great 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 a
right to that intimate access to it which will determine every turn of its
policy.
America is never going to submit to guardianship. America is never going
to choose thralldom instead of freedom. Look what there is to decide!
There is the tariff question. Can the tariff question be decided in favor
of the people, so long as the monopolies are the chief counselors at
Washington? There is the currency question. Are we going to settle the
currency question so long as the government listens only to the counsel of
those who command the banking situation?
Then there is the question of conservation. What is our fear about
conservation? The hands that are being stretched out to monopolize our
forests, to prevent or pre-empt the use of our great power-producing
streams, the hands that are being stretched into the bowels of the earth
to take possession of the great riches that lie hidden in Alaska and
elsewhere in the incomparable domain of the United States, are the hands
of monopoly. Are these men to continue to stand at the elbow of government
and tell us how we are to save ourselves,--from themselves? You can not
settle the question of conservation while monopoly is close to the ears of
those who govern. And the question of conservation is a great deal bigger
than the question of saving our forests and our mineral resources and our
waters; it is as big as the life and happiness and strength and elasticity
and hope of our people.
There are tasks awaiting the government of the United States which it
cannot perform until every pulse of that government beats in unison with
the needs and the desires of the whole body of the American people. Shall
we not give the people access of sympathy, access of authority, to the
instrumentalities which are to be indispensable to their lives?