Likewise, there would have been very little curiosity about the President's message if it had been known in January that he could by any possibility nominate for a place on the Interstate Commerce Commission such a man as Garrison of New Jersey or that his Attorney General, apparently with his approval, could ever seek to crawfish out of the prosecution of the gang that wrecked the New Haven.

But in January none of these things was known, and consequently the whole country was eager to learn what were the views of the President on this great problem of the Trusts and accumulated wealth. The leader that had been put into this high office because of his fervent denunciations of these evil combinations was now about to reveal his way to eliminate them from the nation's life.

So he came down to the House of Representatives on that day and to both houses in joint sessions he read his momentous message and this is what he said:

Legislation has its atmosphere like everything else, and the atmosphere of accommodation and mutual understanding which we now breathe with so much refreshment is matter of sincere congratulation. * * *

The great business men who organized and financed monopoly and those who administered it in

actual everyday transactions have year after year, until now, either denied its existence or justified it as necessary for the effective maintenance and development of the vast business processes of the country in the modern circumstances of trade and manufacture and finance; but all the while opinion has made head against them. The average business man is convinced that the ways of liberty are also the ways of peace and the ways of success as well; and at last the masters of business on the great scale have begun to yield their preference and purpose, perhaps their judgment also, in honorable surrender.

What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily, not to hamper or interfere with business as enlightened business men prefer to do it, or in any sense to put it under the ban. The antagonism between business and government is over. We are now about to give expression to the best business judgment of America, to what we know to be the business conscience and honor of the land.

The government and business men are ready to meet each other half way in a common effort to square business methods with both public opinion and the law. The best informed men of the business world condemn the methods and processes and consequences of monopoly as we condemn them; and the instinctive judgment of the vast majority of business men everywhere goes with them. We shall now be their spokesmen. That is the strength of our position and the sure prophecy of what will ensue when our reasonable work is done.

When serious contest ends, when men unite in opinion and purpose, those who are to change their ways of business joining with those who ask for the change, it is possible to effect it in the way in

which prudent and thoughtful and patriotic men would wish to see it brought about, with as few, as slight, as easy and simple business readjustments as possible in the circumstances, nothing essential disturbed, nothing torn up by the roots, no parts rent asunder which can be left in wholesome combination.

Until these things are done, conscientious business men the country over will be unsatisfied. They are in these things our mentors and colleagues. We are now about to write the additional articles of our constitution of peacethe peace

that is honor and freedom and prosperity.

In other words, Mr. Wilson's answer to the Trust problem was that there wasn't any Trust problem. There used to be in days gone by, but the old conditions had vanished now and no longer need any citizen be concerned about the power of accumulated wealth. All such difficulties, thank God, had been removed from the nation's path. Every cloud had been cleared away. Bright and beaming showed the future.

Why was that? Why, Big Business had reformed. The Trusts had become good. The octopus had turned angel. The monster had become as a little child. Once from its baleful presence emanated perils that threatened to blast the Republic; now from its gentle soul arose an aureola of sweet and precious influ

ences. Have no fear, fellow citizens! All is well with us. The Trusts have become good. Their only desire now is to live down their past and prove by kindly and pious deeds the sincerity of their their conversion. No need of strengthening the Sherman law; no need, to be sure, of any law. Big Business has seen the error of its ways and is now determined to be righteous. Perhaps they have been sitting at the feet of Billy Sunday. Anyway, they have repented and are now become good.

This isn't exactly in line with the remarks in "The New Freedom," in which valuable work I find the following with other gems:

There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago.

We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past. The life of America is not the life that it was twenty years ago; it is not the life that it was ten years ago. We have changed our economic conditions, absolutely, from top to bottom; and with our economic society, the organization of our life.

We are facing the necessity of fitting a new social organization. . . to the happiness and prosperity of the great body of citizens; for we are conscious that the new order of society has not been made to fit and provide the convenience or

prosperity of the average man. The life of the nation has grown infinitely varied. It does not centre now upon questions of governmental structure or of the distribution of government powers. It centres upon questions of the very structure and operation of society itself, of which government is only the instrument.

Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom; is making fresh and critical analysis of its very elements; is questioning its oldest practices as freely as its newest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life; and it stands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction, which only frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous co-operation can hold back from becoming a revolution. We are in a temper to reconstruct economic society, as we were once in a temper to reconstruct political society, and political society may itself undergo a radical modification in the process.

But when you came to contemplate the President's Trust message it didn't seem as if anything had been changed. On the contrary that seemed to be just the same old bunk put over in the same old way. That was the peculiar part of it. Everything had changed in the United States except bunk, and that hadn't changed a bit. Even the idea of a gentleman that was a roaring champion of the people against the robbers so long as he was a candidate and when he got into office turned his back so he could not see the robbers at work even that was