of industry must suffer by whatever impedes the formation of large capitals through the aggregation of smaller

ones.

SENATOR: That the more perfect the power of association the greater the power of production, and the larger the production of the product which falls to the laborer's share.

PRESIDENT: We are in the presence of stupendous forces set in motion by the inequitable, cunning legislation of the Power-holding Class under Republican administration. But under a conservative Democratic administration they will end in the emancipation of Industry, just as feudal tenure and Magna Charta wrought the emancipation of commerce.

SENATOR: American civilization knows no American force which cannot be ruled by law. Law should be found to protect all classes from the encroachments of combinations of capital. The fangs will be extirpated from Trust. These are all momentous problems and involve momentous results. There can be in America no intangible and impalpable creations of law with unlimited powers and without limited liabilities. The struggle between equal opportunity and the special privileges of the Power-holding Class ceases with a Democratic administration. In a short time it will be seen money is a pygmy, law a giant. The safety of the middle classes cannot be confided to the Powcr-holding Class.

PRESIDENT: When they discover best how to use it the people will make Trust their servant. In the near future the doctrine of natural selection in Industry will make an unexpected revolution and evolution which will lessen the profit of the manufacturer and lessen the cost of production. The feudal king of the Power-holding Class of to-day little dreams of the significance of Trust.

When under a conservative Democratic administration it is surrounded with industrial enterprise, with maximum freedom and maximum protection to all, with uneconomic privilege to any, and by fair statesmanship and political wisdom which looks with an eye single to conservative public welfare, Trust can then no longer be capable of creating corruption, injustice, favoritism, business demoralization, oppressive dealing, uneconomic discrimination, and trade restrictions, as if under the dominion of and administered by the Power-holding Class.

SENATOR: As a statesman I confess the essence of civilization is the doing of justice, and a nation's standing must be measured by its ability to administer justice. Likewise with a system of industry. But all this has nothing to do with the business of politics. I know that an analysis of the character and objects of Trust cannot but convince any unbiased and patriotic mind that they are inimical to our popular form of government, subversive of our institutions, tyrannical in their methods, antagonistic to the common welfare, the common enemy of society, and should be treated as an invader or armed revolutionist aspiring to dictatorial power.

PRESIDENT: Their aggression is against society, against the established social and political conditions, which guarantees to every citizen the right and opportunity to labor in any field of industry he may find most favorable to his pursuit of happiness and the enjoyment of his liberty. What more nearly concerns the happiness of man than the enjoyment of the full return of his industry, or his liberty, more than the access to any field of industry nature has provided, from which he may gather the necessities and comforts which minister to his happiness and the happiness of those depending upon him? It is the duty of society and government to foster and encourage produc

tion, to guard every field of industry for the common good of society, and to develop the producing energy to the greatest extent possible.

SENATOR: This was the rock upon which old Greece and Carthage were wrecked, but the bedrock of the American state places the man before the state.

PRESIDENT: Still, the natural advantage of great combinations of wealth and influence is too great to be rivaled in an open field. The earthen pot may sail with the brazen pot on an open sea and with equal winds, but when the storm dashes them together it is easy to predict which will go to the bottom.

SENATOR: The surest way, however, to meet and minimize these evils is through a rational and intelligent application of the fundamental principles of right and justice, and next in importance to a clear appreciation of these principles and of their relation to the problem before us is the removal, as completely as may be, of the obstacles which obstruct the application of them.

PRESIDENT: That would mean the temporary retirement of the colossal gossamers of the Republican party.

SENATOR: Remember we are now discussing these questions not from a partisan standpoint, but as economists, publicists, and patriots.

PRESIDENT: The public will make such rapid strides in the next twenty years that it will look back and wonder why the wisdom of their incubation was ever questioned.

SENATOR: But in the meantime Trust and our Powerholding Class would feel like Jonah after being vomited from the whale's belly.

As Republicans we must not make the mistake of statesmen who are the representatives of the old order of things at the time when that order is doomed.

PRESIDENT: Our interchange of views shows that we

have not lost sight of the signs of the times. We have viewed the Republican policy as Democratic statesmen and lawyers should regard it.

SENATOR: For the building up of vast fortunes the Republican party is the greatest instrument ever devised by man, but the people already regard us as a mere agency of the Power-holding Class for the assessment and collection of taxes.

PRESIDENT: Richard the Conqueror partitioned England more equitably than have the Conquerors of America. SENATOR: Yes, William the Conqueror-Trust, the Republican commander, has divided American wealth among his followers thus: 125 families have been allotted $33,000,000,000 income over $50,000; 1,375 have $23,000,000,000 income from $5,000 to $50,000; and the grand apex rests upon the industries of the balance of the eighty millions.

PRESIDENT: Wisely enough, you postponed the opening of the Republican campaign until August. We can then hear the opening statements of the people's counsel.

SENATOR: Amid the revolutionary throes of Imperialism, Cæsarism, Militarism, our hope is the enemy may overlook those centralizations of fiscal policy of our Powerholding Class which form the keystone to Trust.

PRESIDENT: Imperialism, Expansion, and Prosperity booms are barren deserts of unreality, but they fire the public heart, divert the hue and cry, and lull the public into security.

The question is how long you and I can prolong the sickly days of the Republican party.

SENATOR: I am not growing weary of undesirable preeminence in partisan profligacy.

PRESIDENT: If the barking babel of Prosperity fails us, the fall of the Republican party in November will resemble Wolsey's, as a great historian has described it:

But the time of reckoning at length was arrived; slowly the hand had crawled along the dial-plate; slowly, as if the event would never come; and wrong was heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of iniquity was shivered into ruins.

SENATOR: It is history which teaches the Republican party to hope. Was it not Macaulay who said:

If in 1527 a political astrologer had foretold that within two years of that time the pope and the emperor who had imprisoned him would be cordial allies, that the positions of England and Spain toward the papacy would be diametrically reversed, and that the two countries were on the point of taking their posts, which they would ever afterward maintain as the champions respectively of the opposite principles to those which at that time they seemed to represent, the prophecy would have been held scarcely less insane than a prophecy six or even three years before the event, that in the year 1854 England would be united with an Emperor Napoleon for the preservation of European order.

PRESIDENT: Upon the decline and fall of the Republican party the golden splendor of Trust's manhood will be found sullenly clouding.

SENATOR: In the few days left us we must study the economic outlook, present and prospective, as an entirety. The recognition of a cause universal or its influence is necessary to explain the universal phenomena of the inequality in the distribution of American wealth.

PRESIDENT: Have you considered recent economic changes occasioned by the machine displacement of labor? SENATOR: Yes, sir. I have read volumes upon the evolution of modern capitalism and the structural changes it