federal power which were requisite before reform could
be achieved, the honest have been compelled to make common cause with
the dishonest, so that the President has, in particular details, been
forced into an attitude of hostility towards all corporations (and the
corporations have for the most part been forced to put themselves in an
attitude of antagonism to him) in spite of their natural sympathies and
common interests.

The result has been unfortunate for business interests generally because
the mere fact that the President was "against the companies" (no matter
on what grounds, or whether he was against them all or only against
some) has encouraged throughout the country the anti-corporation feeling
which needed no encouragement. Any time these forty years, or since the
early days of the Granger agitation, the shortest road to notoriety and
political advancement (at least in any of the Western States) has been
by abuse of the railroad companies. A thousand politicians and
newspapers all over the country are eager to seize on any phrase or
pronouncement of the President which can be interpreted as giving
countenance to the particular anti-railroad campaign at the moment in
progress in their own locality. A vast number of people are interested
in distorting, or in interpreting partially, whatever is said at the
White House, so that any phrase, regardless of its context,--each
individual act, without reference to its conditions,--which could be
represented as an encouragement to the anti-capitalist crusade has been
seized upon and made the most of. All over the West there have always,
in this generation, been a sufficient number of persons only too
anxious, for selfish reasons, to inflame hostility against the railroad
companies or against men of wealth; but only within the last few years
has it been possible for the most unscrupulous demagogue to find colour
and justification for whatever he has chosen to preach in the example
and precept of the President--and of a President whose example and
precept have counted for more with the masses of the people than have
those of any occupant of the White House since the war. In this way Mr.
Roosevelt has done more harm than could have been accomplished by a much
worse man.

If the corporations have suffered, the course of events has been
unfortunate too for Mr. Roosevelt. No one is better aware than he of the
misrepresentation to which he is subjected and the unscrupulous u