efly had men's views confided to me
privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of
commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something.
They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so
watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better
not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used
to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as
his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters
certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him
that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to
have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut
from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell
to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse
to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new
man's wares.

And this is the country which has lifted to the admiration of the world
its ideals of absolutely free opportunity, where no man is supposed to be
under any limitation except the limitations of his character and of his
mind; where there is supposed to be no distinction of class, no
distinction of blood, no distinction of social status, but where men win
or lose on their merits.

I lay it very close to my own conscience as a public man whether we can
any longer stand at our doors and welcome all newcomers upon those terms.
American industry is not free, as once it was free; American enterprise is
not free; the man with only a little capital is finding it harder to get
into the field, more and more impossible to compete with the big fellow.
Why? Because the laws of this country do not prevent the strong from
crushing the weak. That is the reason, and because the strong have crushed
the weak the strong dominate the industry and the economic life of this
country. No man can deny that the lines of endeavor have more and more
narrowed and stiffened; no man who knows anything about the development of
industry in this country can have failed to observe that the larger kinds
of credit are more and more difficult to obtain, unless you obtain them
upon the terms of uniting your efforts with those who already control the
industries of the country; and nobody can fail to observe that any