for financial operations, for
prosperity, that the people should mind their own business. In short, our
commercial-romantic pilgrimage began to meet with unexpected resistance.
It was as though the nation were entering into a senseless conspiracy to
kill prosperity.

In the first place, in regard to the Presidency of the United States, a
cog had unwittingly been slipped. It had always been recognized--as I
have said--by responsible financial personages that the impulses of the
majority of Americans could not be trusted, that these--who had inherited
illusions of freedom--must be governed firmly yet with delicacy; unknown
to them, their Presidents must be chosen for them, precisely as Mr.
Watling had been chosen for the people of our state, and the popular
enthusiasm manufactured later. There were informal meetings in New York,
in Washington, where candidates were discussed; not that such and such a
man was settled upon,--it was a process of elimination. Usually the
affair had gone smoothly. For instance, a while before, a benevolent
capitalist of the middle west, an intimate of Adolf Scherer, had become
obsessed with the idea that a friend of his was the safest and sanest man
for the head of the nation, had convinced his fellow-capitalists of this,
whereupon he had gone ahead to spend his energy and his money freely to
secure the nomination and election of this gentleman.

The Republican National Committee, the Republican National Convention
were allowed to squabble to their hearts' content as to whether Smith,
Jones or Brown should be nominated, but it was clearly understood that if
Robinson or White were chosen there would be no corporation campaign
funds. This applied also to the Democratic party, on the rare occasions
when it seemed to have an opportunity of winning. Now, however, through
an unpardonable blunder, there had got into the White House a President
who was inclined to ignore advice, who appealed over the heads of the
"advisers" to the populace; who went about tilting at the industrial
structures we had so painfully wrought, and in frequent blasts of
presidential messages enunciated new and heretical doctrines; who
attacked the railroads, encouraged the brazen treason of labour unions,
inspired an army of "muck-rakers" to fill the magazines with the wildest
and most violent of language. State legislatures were emboldened to pass
mischievous and restrictive laws, and much of my time began to be
occupied in