me was this: I had heard from a good many sources that you were
a little loose on the relations of capital and labor, on trusts and
combinations, and, indeed, on those numerous questions which have
recently arisen in politics affecting the security of earnings and the
right of a man to run his own business in his own way, with due respect
of course to the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code. Or, to get at it
even more clearly, I understood from a number of business men, and among
them many of your own personal friends, that you entertained various
altruistic ideas, all very well in their way, but which before they
could safely be put into law needed very profound consideration. . . .
You have just adjourned a Legislature which created a good opinion
throughout the State. I congratulate you heartily upon this fact because
I sincerely believe, as everybody else does, that this good impression
exists very largely as a result of your personal influence in the
Legislative chambers. But at the last moment, and to my very great
surprise, you did a thing which has caused the business community of New
York to wonder how far the notions of Populism, as laid down in Kansas
and Nebraska, have taken hold upon the Republican party of the State of
New York."

In my answer I pointed out to the Senator that I had as Governor
unhesitatingly acted, at Buffalo and elsewhere, to put down mobs,
without regard to the fact that the professed leaders of labor furiously
denounced me for so doing; but that I could no more tolerate wrong
committed in the name of property than wrong committed against property.
My letter ran in part as follows:

"I knew that you had just the feelings that you describe; that is, apart
from my 'impulsiveness,' you felt that there was a justifiable anxiety
among men of means, and especially men representing large corporate
interests, lest I might feel too strongly on what you term the
'altruistic' side in matters of labor and capital and as regards the
relations of the State to great corporations. . . . I know that when
parties divide on such issues [as Bryanism] the tendency is to force
everybody into one of two camps, and to throw out entirely men like
myself, who are as strongly opposed to Populism in every stage as the
greatest representative of corporate wealth, but who also feel strongly
that many of these representatives of enormous corporate wealth have
themselves been responsible for a portion of the conditio