man
who tries to set himself up in competition with any process of manufacture
which has been taken under the control of large combinations of capital
will presently find himself either squeezed out or obliged to sell and
allow himself to be absorbed.

There is a great deal that needs reconstruction in the United States. I
should like to take a census of the business men,--I mean the rank and
file of the business men,--as to whether they think that business
conditions in this country, or rather whether the organization of business
in this country, is satisfactory or not. I know what they would say if
they dared. If they could vote secretly they would vote overwhelmingly
that the present organization of business was meant for the big fellows
and was not meant for the little fellows; that it was meant for those who
are at the top and was meant to exclude those who are at the bottom; that
it was meant to shut out beginners, to prevent new entries in the race, to
prevent the building up of competitive enterprises that would interfere
with the monopolies which the great trusts have built up.

What this country needs above everything else is a body of laws which will
look after the men who are on the make rather than the men who are already
made. Because the men who are already made are not going to live
indefinitely, and they are not always kind enough to leave sons as able
and as honest as they are.

The originative part of America, the part of America that makes new
enterprises, the part into which the ambitious and gifted workingman makes
his way up, the class that saves, that plans, that organizes, that
presently spreads its enterprises until they have a national scope and
character,--that middle class is being more and more squeezed out by the
processes which we have been taught to call processes of prosperity. Its
members are sharing prosperity, no doubt; but what alarms me is that they
are not _originating_ prosperity. No country can afford to have its
prosperity originated by a small controlling class. The treasury of
America does not lie in the brains of the small body of men now in
control of the great enterprises that have been concentrated under the
direction of a very small number of persons. The treasury of America lies
in those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a special
favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the
originations of unknown men, upon the ambitio