ment, there can be
no fair play between individuals and such powerful institutions as the
trusts. Freedom to-day is something more than being let alone. The program
of a government of freedom must in these days be positive, not negative
merely.

* * * * *

Well, then, in this new sense and meaning of it, are we preserving freedom
in this land of ours, the hope of all the earth?

Have we, inheritors of this continent and of the ideals to which the
fathers consecrated it,--have we maintained them, realizing them, as each
generation must, anew? Are we, in the consciousness that the life of man
is pledged to higher levels here than elsewhere, striving still to bear
aloft the standards of liberty and hope, or, disillusioned and defeated,
are we feeling the disgrace of having had a free field in which to do new
things and of not having done them?

The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair way of
failure,--tragic failure. And we stand in danger of utter failure yet
except we fulfil speedily the determination we have reached, to deal with
the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts. Don't deceive
yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now
dominate our development. They are so great that it is almost an open
question whether the government of the United States can dominate them or
not. Go one step further, make their organized power permanent, and it may
be too late to turn back. The roads diverge at the point where we stand.
They stretch their vistas out to regions where they are very far separated
from one another; at the end of one is the old tiresome scene of
government tied up with special interests; and at the other shines the
liberating light of individual initiative, of individual liberty, of
individual freedom, the light of untrammeled enterprise. I believe that
that light shines out of the heavens itself that God has created. I
believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no
salvation for men in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters.
Guardians have no place in a land of freemen. Prosperity guaranteed by
trustees has no prospect of endurance. Monopoly means the atrophy of
enterprise. If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of
the government. I do not expect to see monopoly restrain itself. If there
are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United
States,