that monopoly be maintained. They cannot rule the markets
of the world in any way but by monopoly. It is not surprising to find them
helping to found a new party with a fine program of benevolence, but also
with a tolerant acceptance of monopoly.

* * * * *

There is another matter to which we must direct our attention, whether we
like or not. I do not take these things into my mouth because they please
my palate; I do not talk about them because I want to attack anybody or
upset anything; I talk about them because only by open speech about them
among ourselves shall we learn what the facts are.

You will notice from a recent investigation that things like this take
place: A certain bank invests in certain securities. It appears from
evidence that the handling of these securities was very intimately
connected with the maintenance of the price of a particular commodity.
Nobody ought, and in normal circumstances nobody would, for a moment think
of suspecting the managers of a great bank of making such an investment in
order to help those who were conducting a particular business in the
United States maintain the price of their commodity; but the circumstances
are not normal. It is beginning to be believed that in the big business of
this country nothing is disconnected from anything else. I do not mean in
this particular instance to which I have referred, and I do not have in
mind to draw any inference at all, for that would be unjust; but take any
investment of an industrial character by a great bank. It is known that
the directorate of that bank interlaces in personnel with ten, twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty, sixty boards of directors of all sorts, of railroads
which handle commodities, of great groups of manufacturers which
manufacture commodities, and of great merchants who distribute
commodities; and the result is that every great bank is under suspicion
with regard to the motive of its investments. It is at least considered
possible that it is playing the game of somebody who has nothing to do
with banking, but with whom some of its directors are connected and joined
in interest. The ground of unrest and uneasiness, in short, on the part of
the public at large, is the growing knowledge that many large undertakings
are interlaced with one another, are indistinguishable from one another in
personnel.

Therefore, when a small group of men approach Congress in order to induce
the committ