and that the amount of wages we get, the kind of clothes we
wear, the kind of food we can afford to buy, is fundamental to everything
else.

Those who administer our physical life, therefore, administer our
spiritual life; and if we are going to carry out the fine purpose of that
great chorus which supporters of the third party sang almost with
religious fervor, then we have got to find out through whom these purposes
of humanity are going to be realized. It is a mere enterprise, so far as
that part of it is concerned, of making the monopolies philanthropic.

I do not want to live under a philanthropy. I do not want to be taken care
of by the government, either directly, or by any instruments through which
the government is acting. I want only to have right and justice prevail,
so far as I am concerned. Give me right and justice and I will undertake
to take care of myself. If you enthrone the trusts as the means of the
development of this country under the supervision of the government, then
I shall pray the old Spanish proverb, "God save me from my friends, and
I'll take care of my enemies." Because I want to be saved from these
friends. Observe that I say these friends, for I am ready to admit that a
great many men who believe that the development of industry in this
country through monopolies is inevitable intend to be the friends of the
people. Though they profess to be my friends, they are undertaking a way
of friendship which renders it impossible that they should do me the
fundamental service that I demand--namely, that I should be free and
should have the same opportunities that everybody else has.

For I understand it to be the fundamental proposition of American liberty
that we do not desire special privilege, because we know special privilege
will never comprehend the general welfare. This is the fundamental,
spiritual difference between adherents of the party now about to take
charge of the government and those who have been in charge of it in recent
years. They are so indoctrinated with the idea that only the big business
interests of this country understand the United States and can make it
prosperous that they cannot divorce their thoughts from that obsession.
They have put the government into the hands of trustees, and Mr. Taft and
Mr. Roosevelt were the rival candidates to preside over the board of
trustees. They were candidates to serve the people, no doubt, to the best
of their ability, but it was n