en points. Lend them a little money.
They can't get any now. See to it that when they have got a local market
they can't be squeezed out of it. Give them a chance to capture that
market and then see them capture another one and another one, until these
men who are carrying an intolerable load of artificial securities find
that they have got to get down to hard pan to keep their foothold at all.
I am willing to let Jack come into the field with the giant, and if Jack
has the brains that some Jacks that I know in America have, then I should
like to see the giant get the better of him, with the load that he, the
giant, has to carry,--the load of water. For I'll undertake to put a
water-logged giant out of business any time, if you will give me a fair
field and as much credit as I am entitled to, and let the law do what from
time immemorial law has been expected to do,--see fair play.

As for watered stock, I know all the sophistical arguments, and they are
many, for capitalizing earning capacity. It is a very attractive and
interesting argument, and in some instances it is legitimately used. But
there is a line you cross, above which you are not capitalizing your
earning capacity, but capitalizing your control of the market,
capitalizing the profits which you got by your control of the market, and
didn't get by efficiency and economy. These things are not hidden even
from the layman. These are not half-hidden from college men. The college
men's days of innocence have passed, and their days of sophistication have
come. They know what is going on, because we live in a talkative world,
full of statistics, full of congressional inquiries, full of trials of
persons who have attempted to live independently of the statutes of the
United States; and so a great many things have come to light under oath,
which we must believe upon the credibility of the witnesses who are,
indeed, in many instances very eminent and respectable witnesses.

I take my stand absolutely, where every progressive ought to take his
stand, on the proposition that private monopoly is indefensible and
intolerable. And there I will fight my battle. And I know how to fight it.
Everybody who has even read the newspapers knows the means by which these
men built up their power and created these monopolies. Any decently
equipped lawyer can suggest to you statutes by which the whole business
can be stopped. What these gentlemen do not want is this: they do not want
to