ns of unknown men. Every
country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks
of those already famous and powerful and in control.

There has come over the land that un-American set of conditions which
enables a small number of men who control the government to get favors
from the government; by those favors to exclude their fellows from equal
business opportunity; by those favors to extend a network of control that
will presently dominate every industry in the country, and so make men
forget the ancient time when America lay in every hamlet, when America was
to be seen in every fair valley, when America displayed her great forces
on the broad prairies, ran her fine fires of enterprise up over the
mountain-sides and down into the bowels of the earth, and eager men were
everywhere captains of industry, not employees; not looking to a distant
city to find out what they might do, but looking about among their
neighbors, finding credit according to their character, not according to
their connections, finding credit in proportion to what was known to be in
them and behind them, not in proportion to the securities they held that
were approved where they were not known. In order to start an enterprise
now, you have to be authenticated, in a perfectly impersonal way, not
according to yourself, but according to what you own that somebody else
approves of your owning. You cannot begin such an enterprise as those that
have made America until you are so authenticated, until you have succeeded
in obtaining the good-will of large allied capitalists. Is that freedom?
That is dependence, not freedom.

We used to think in the old-fashioned days when life was very simple that
all that government had to do was to put on a policeman's uniform, and
say, "Now don't anybody hurt anybody else." We used to say that the ideal
of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with,
except when he interfered with somebody else; and that the best government
was the government that did as little governing as possible. That was the
idea that obtained in Jefferson's time. But we are coming now to realize
that life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old
conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions
under which we may live, the conditions which will make it tolerable for
us to live.

Let me illustrate what I mean: It used to be true in our cities that every
family occupied a