is the act of a sovereign people, but we
won't be the sovereign yet; we will postpone that; we will wait until
another time. The managers are still shifting the scenes; we are not ready
for the real thing yet."

My proposal is that we stop going through the mimic play; that we get out
and translate the ideals of American politics into action; so that every
man, when he goes to the polls on election day, will feel the thrill of
executing an actual judgment, as he takes again into his own hands the
great matters which have been too long left to men deputized by their own
choice, and seriously sets about carrying into accomplishment his own
purposes.

XI

THE EMANCIPATION OF BUSINESS

In the readjustments that are about to be undertaken in this country not
one single legitimate or honest arrangement is going to be disturbed; but
every impediment to business is going to be removed, every illegitimate
kind of control is going to be destroyed. Every man who wants an
opportunity and has the energy to seize it, is going to be given a chance.
All that we are going to ask the gentlemen who now enjoy monopolistic
advantages to do is to match their brains against the brains of those who
will then compete with them. The brains, the energy, of the rest of us are
to be set free to go into the game,--that is all. There is to be a general
release of the capital, the enterprise, of millions of people, a general
opening of the doors of opportunity. With what a spring of determination,
with what a shout of jubilance, will the people rise to their
emancipation!

I am one of those who believe that we have had such restrictions upon the
prosperity of this country that we have not yet come into our own, and
that by removing those restrictions we shall set free an energy which in
our generation has not been known. It is for that reason that I feel free
to criticise with the utmost frankness these restrictions, and the means
by which they have been brought about. I do not criticise as one without
hope; in describing conditions which so hamper, impede, and imprison, I am
only describing conditions from which we are going to escape into a
contrasting age. I believe that this is a time when there should be
unqualified frankness. One of the distressing circumstances of our day is
this: I cannot tell you how many men of business, how many important men
of business, have communicated their real opinions about the situation in
the United