"Well, gentlemen, you have talked this matter over pretty thoroughly and have come to no decision. And now I will tell you what I am going to do. My minister is in danger, and I am going to Peking." Wherefore they all

went.

I had to cheer then, and I have to give a cheer off and on yet for the man at the helm, and to thank God that he sent me over the sea to cast in my lot with a country and with a people that do not everlastingly follow wormeaten precedent, but are young enough and strong enough and daring enough to make it when need be.

"But about his financial policy, about his war upon the trusts, the corporations, which they say is going to defeat him for reëlection, you have said nothing. You have offered no defense." Well, good friend, if you have found nothing in these pages that answers your question, I am afraid there is little use in my saying anything now on the subject. Defense I have not offered, because, in the first place, I am quite unable to see that there is need of any. If there were, I should think the coal strike experience, or, later yet, the disclosures

in the ship-building trust case as to what it is that ails Wall Street, would have given everybody all the information he could wish. The President is not, Congress is not, making war upon corporations, upon capital. They are trying to hold them-through publicity, by compelling them to obey the laws their smaller competitors have to bow to, and in any other lawful and reasonable way-to such responsibility that they shall not become a power full of peril to the people and to themselves. For that might mean much and grave mischief,—would mean, indeed, unless the people were willing to abdicate, which I think they are not. That mischief I should like to see averted.

"It is not designed to restrict or control the fullest liberty of legitimate business action," I quote from the President's last message,and none such can follow. "Publicity can do no harm to the honest corporation. The only corporation that has cause to dread it is the corporation which shrinks from the light, and about the welfare of such we need not be over-sensitive. The work of the Department of Commerce and Labor has been conditioned

upon this theory, of securing fair treatment alike for labor and capital."

That is all, and nothing has been done that is not in that spirit. Perhaps it is natural that a corporation like the Standard Oil Company, which has amassed enormous wealth through a monopoly that enabled it to dictate its own freight rates to the utter annihilation of its competitors, should object to have the government step in and try to curtail unfair profits. Perhaps it is natural for it to object to the antirebate law, though it comes too late to check its greed.

Perhaps it is natural for some speculating concerns to wish to keep their business to themselves; but it seems to me we have seen enough swindling exposed, to be plain about it, these last few months, to make a good many people wish there had been some way of finding out the facts before it was too late. That, again, is all there is to that. Nobody is to be hurt, nobody can be hurt, except the one that deserves to be. I have faith enough in the American people to believe that the time has not yet come, and will not soon come, when the speculators can defeat a man running for the Presi

dency on the platform of an equal chance to all and special favors to none. If they can, it is time we knew it.

And, in the next place, I have not the least idea in the world that the men who are plotting against the President do, or ever did, seriously question the fairness of his policy. It is him they do not want. Let a witness that is certainly on the inside tell why. I quote from an editorial in the " Wall Street News "—another newspaper that dares to tell the truth, it seems:

It is not because President Roosevelt is antagonistic to capital, or a partner in that hatred of wealth which is so odious and so threatening, that certain financial interests, expert in the manipulation of the markets, are scheming to prevent his election to a second term. They know very well that he is no enemy to capital. They know that by birthright, by education and by long political training he is a supporter of sound money, an advocate of a protective tariff, a firm upholder of the rights of property. They know that he is the last man in the world to lead in an assault on capital lawfully applied to the development of the commercial enterprises of the country. They have no fear that he will be led by ambition or impulse into paths of socialism, or that he will, for one moment, give the authority of his name and

:

office to the aid of organized labor in any movement to crush out competition, and thus to establish a monopoly more destructive to the interests of the country than even the most corrupt, oppressive, and powerful trust.

What, then, is the reason why these financial interests are scheming to defeat him? The answer is plain.

They cannot control him.

All efforts to control him through his ambition have failed. Any attempt to control him by grosser forms of bribery would, of course, be useless. Effort to move him by sophistical arguments framed by clever corporation lawyers into departure from the paths of duty and law have not succeeded. He is a friend of capital. He is a friend of labor. But he is no slave of either.

And so those Wall Street interests have decided that he is to be driven out of office. They will prevent his renomination, if they can. If not, they will try to beat him at the polls with money. "All the money is to be on the other side this year." They made the beginning in New York this last fall. It is no secret that enormous amounts of money were thrown into the campaign in the last two weeks to turn the election. Low and reform were sacrificed.