have set ourselves to fight.

This is the doctrine of the Square Deal. It contains the germ of
industrial liberty. Its partisans are the many, its opponents are the
few. I am firm in the faith that the great majority of our people are
Square Dealers.

CHAPTER VI

BUSINESS

The business of the people of the United States, performed by the
Government of the United States, is a vast and a most important one; it
is the house-keeping of the American Nation. As a business proposition
it does not attract anything like the attention that it ought.
Unfortunately we have come into the habit of considering the Government
of the United States as a political organization rather than as a
business organization.

Now this question, which the Governors of the States and the
representatives of great interests were called to Washington to consider
in 1908, is fundamentally a business question, and it is along business
lines that it must be considered and solved, if the problem is to be
solved at all. Manufacturers are dealing with the necessity for
producing a definite output as a result of definite expenditure and
definite effort. The Government of the United States is doing exactly
the same thing. The manufacturer's product can be measured in dollars
and cents. The product of the Government of the United States can be
measured partly in dollars and cents, but far more importantly in the
welfare and contentment and happiness of the people over which it is
called upon to preside.

The keynote of that Conservation Conference in Washington was
forethought and foresight. The keynote of success in any line of life,
or one of the great keynotes, must be forethought and foresight. If we,
as a Nation, are to continue the wonderful growth we have had, it is
forethought and foresight which must give us the capacity to go on as we
have been going. I dwell on this because it seems to me to be one of
the most curious of all things in the history of the United States
to-day that we should have grasped this principle so tremendously and so
vigorously in our daily lives, in the conduct of our own business, and
yet have failed so completely to make the obvious application in the
things which concern the Nation.

It is curiously true that great aggregations of individuals and
organized bodies are apt to be less far-sighted, less moral, less
intelligent along certain lines than the individual citizen; or at least
that their standards ar