himself an
opinion which is often exaggerated, but is always salutary.
He trusts without fear to his own strength, which appears to
him equal to anything. A private individual conceives some
sort of enterprise. Even if this enterprise have some sort of
connection with the public welfare, it never occurs to him to
address himself to the government in order to obtain its aid.
He makes his plan known, offers to carry it out, calls other
individuals to his aid, and struggles with all his might
against any obstacles there may be in his way. Often,
without doubt, he succeeds less well than the State would in
his place; but in the long run the general result of
individual enterprises far surpasses anything the government
could do."

Now there is no doubt that if this type of character has not passed
away, it has been greatly modified; and it has been modified by two
agencies--the "labor problem," as it is called, and legislative
protection to native industry. I am not going to make an argument about
the value of this protection in promoting native industry, or about its
value from the industrial point of view. We may or we may not owe to it
the individual progress and prosperity of the United States. About that
I do not propose to say anything. What I want to say is that the
doctrine that it is a function of government, not simply to foster
industry in general, but to consider the case of every particular
industry and give it the protection that it needs, could not be preached
and practiced for thirty years in a community like this, without
modifying the old American conception of the relation of the government
to the individual. It makes the government, in a certain sense, a
partner in every industrial enterprise, and makes every Presidential
election an affair of the pocket to every miner and manufacturer and to
his men; for the men have for fully thirty years been told that the
amount of their wages would depend, to a certain extent at least, on the
way the election went. The notion that the government owes assistance to
individuals in carrying on business and making a livelihood has in fact,
largely through the tariff discussions, permeated a very large class of
the community, and has materially changed what I may call the American
outlook. It has greatly reinforced among the foreign-born population the
socialistic ideas which many bring here with them, of