away with one
hand what it gave with the other.

Taking American political traditions, ideals, institutions, and
practices as a whole, there is no reason to believe that the American
democracy cannot and will not combine sufficient opportunities for
individual political distinction with an effective ultimate popular
political responsibility. The manner in which the combination has been
made hitherto is far from flawless, and the American democracy has much
to learn before it reaches an organization adequate to its own proper
purposes. It must learn, above all, that the state, and the individuals
who are temporarily responsible for the action of the state, must be
granted all the power necessary to redeem that responsibility.
Individual opportunity and social welfare both depend upon the learning
of this lesson; and while it is still very far from being learned, the
obstacles in the way are not of a disheartening nature.

With the economic liberty of the individual the case is different. The
Federalists refrained from protecting individual political rights by
incorporating in the Constitution any limitation of the suffrage; but
they sought to protect the property rights of the individual by the most
absolute constitutional guarantees. Moreover, American practice has
allowed the individual a far larger measure of economic liberty than is
required by the Constitution; and this liberty was granted in the
expectation that it would benefit, not the individual as such, but the
great mass of the American people. It has undoubtedly benefited the
great mass of the American people; but it has been of far more benefit
to a comparatively few individuals. Americans are just beginning to
learn that the great freedom which the individual property-owner has
enjoyed is having the inevitable result of all unrestrained exercise of
freedom. It has tended to create a powerful but limited class whose
chief object it is to hold and to increase the power which they have
gained; and this unexpected result has presented the American democracy
with the most difficult and radical of its problems. Is it to the
interest of the American people as a democracy to permit the increase or
the perpetuation of the power gained by this aristocracy of money?

A candid consideration of the foregoing question will, I believe, result
in a negative answer. A democracy has as much interest in regulating for
its own benefit the distribution of economic power as it