ee concerned to concur in certain legislation, nobody knows the
ramifications of the interests which those men represent; there seems no
frank and open action of public opinion in public counsel, but every man
is suspected of representing some other man and it is not known where his
connections begin or end.

I am one of those who have been so fortunately circumstanced that I have
had the opportunity to study the way in which these things come about in
complete disconnection from them, and I do not suspect that any man has
deliberately planned the system. I am not so uninstructed and misinformed
as to suppose that there is a deliberate and malevolent combination
somewhere to dominate the government of the United States. I merely say
that, by certain processes, now well known, and perhaps natural in
themselves, there has come about an extraordinary and very sinister
concentration in the control of business in the country.

However it has come about, it is more important still that the control of
credit also has become dangerously centralized. It is the mere truth to
say that the financial resources of the country are not at the command of
those who do not submit to the direction and domination of small groups of
capitalists who wish to keep the economic development of the country under
their own eye and guidance. The great monopoly in this country is the
monopoly of big credits. So long as that exists, our old variety and
freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. A
great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system
of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore,
and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their
action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily
concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is
involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations,
chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatest
question of all, and to this statesmen must address themselves with an
earnest determination to serve the long future and the true liberties of
men.

This money trust, or, as it should be more properly called, this credit
trust, of which Congress has begun an investigation, is no myth; it is no
imaginary thing. It is not an ordinary trust like another. It doesn't do
business every day. It does business only when there is occasion to do