e the great disturbing factors in
politics. The protective theory will go down: it is based on a
privilege; and the new war, like the old war, is going to be against
all kinds of special privileges."

It was with a peculiar feeling of pain and relief that he read Miss
Wilbur's renunciation of her home-market idea. It seemed as if
something sweet and fine had gone with it; and yet it strengthened him,
for he had come to believe that a home-market built up by legislation
was unnatural and a mistake. Judge Brown's constant hammerings had left
a mark.

He wrote to her something of his hesitation, and she replied
substantially that there was no abandonment of the home-market idea;
only the method of bringing it about had changed. She had come to
believe in what was free and natural, not what was artificial and
forced.

"If you will study the past," she went on, "you will find that advance
in legislation has always been in the direction of less law, less
granting of special privileges. Take the time of the Stuarts, for
example, when the king granted monopolies in the sale of all kinds of
goods. It is abhorrent to us, and yet I suppose those protected
merchants believed their monopolies to be rights. Slowly these rights
have come to be considered wrongs, and the people have abolished them.
So all other monopolies will be abolished, when people come to see that
it is an infringement of liberty to have a class of men enjoying any
special privilege whatever. The way to build up a home-market is to
make our own people able to buy what they want.

"There never was a time when our own people were not too poor to buy
what they wanted. Goods lie rotting in our Eastern factories, and we
export many products which the farmer would be very glad to consume, if
he were able. The farmer is poor; but it isn't because he needs
protection, it isn't because he doesn't produce enough--it's because
what he does produce is taken from him by bankers and corporations."

Bradley read her letters over and over again. Every word which she
uttered had more significance than words from any one else. She seemed
a marvellous being to him. He looked eagerly in every letter for some
personal expression, but she seemed carefully to avoid that; and though
his own letters were filled with personalities, she remained studiously
impersonal. She replied cordially and kindly, but with a reserve that
should have been a warning to him; but he would not accept w