follow these conceptions to
their conclusions with dauntless intrepidity."

When Senator Davis spoke, few men of great power had the sympathy and
the vision necessary to perceive the menace contained in the growth of
corporations; and the men who did see the evil were struggling blindly
to get rid of it, not by frankly meeting the new situation with new
methods, but by insisting upon the entirely futile effort to abolish
what modern conditions had rendered absolutely inevitable. Senator Davis
was under no such illusion. He realized keenly that it was absolutely
impossible to go back to an outworn social status, and that we must
abandon definitely the _laissez-faire_ theory of political economy, and
fearlessly champion a system of increased Governmental control,
paying no heed to the cries of the worthy people who denounce this as
Socialistic. He saw that, in order to meet the inevitable increase in
the power of corporations produced by modern industrial conditions,
it would be necessary to increase in like fashion the activity of the
sovereign power which alone could control such corporations. As has
been aptly said, the only way to meet a billion-dollar corporation is by
invoking the protection of a hundred-billion-dollar government; in other
words, of the National Government, for no State Government is strong
enough both to do justice to corporations and to exact justice from
them. Said Senator Davis in this admirable address, which should be
reprinted and distributed broadcast:

"The liberty of the individual has been annihilated by the logical
process constructed to maintain it. We have come to a political
deification of Mammon. _Laissez-faire_ is not utterly blameworthy. It
begat modern democracy, and made the modern republic possible. There
can be no doubt of that. But there it reached its limit of political
benefaction, and began to incline toward the point where extremes meet.
. . . To every assertion that the people in their collective capacity of
a government ought to exert their indefeasible right of self-defense, it
is said you touch the sacred rights of property."

The Senator then goes on to say that we now have to deal with an
oligarchy of wealth, and that the Government must develop power
sufficient enough to enable it to do the task.

Few will dispute the fact that the present situation is not
satisfactory, and cannot be put on a permanently satisfactory basis
unless we put an end to the period of g