States to me privately and confidentially. They are afraid of
somebody. They are afraid to make their real opinions known publicly;
they tell them to me behind their hand. That is very distressing. That
means that we are not masters of our own opinions, except when we vote,
and even then we are careful to vote very privately indeed.

It is alarming that this should be the case. Why should any man in free
America be afraid of any other man? Or why should any man fear
competition,--competition either with his fellow-countrymen or with
anybody else on earth?

It is part of the indictment against the protective policy of the United
States that it has weakened and not enhanced the vigor of our people.
American manufacturers who know that they can make better things than are
made elsewhere in the world, that they can sell them cheaper in foreign
markets than they are sold in these very markets of domestic manufacture,
are afraid,--afraid to venture out into the great world on their own
merits and their own skill. Think of it, a nation full of genius and yet
paralyzed by timidity! The timidity of the business men of America is to
me nothing less than amazing. They are tied to the apron strings of the
government at Washington. They go about to seek favors. They say: "For
pity's sake, don't expose us to the weather of the world; put some
homelike cover over us. Protect us. See to it that foreign men don't come
in and match their brains with ours." And, as if to enhance this
peculiarity of ours, the strongest men amongst us get the biggest favors;
the men of peculiar genius for organizing industries, the men who could
run the industries of any country, are the men who are most strongly
intrenched behind the highest rates in the schedules of the tariff. They
are so timid morally, furthermore, that they dare not stand up before the
American people, but conceal these favors in the verbiage of the tariff
schedule itself,--in "jokers." Ah! but it is a bitter joke when men who
seek favors are so afraid of the best judgment of their fellow-citizens
that they dare not avow what they take.

Happily, the general revival of conscience in this country has not been
confined to those who were consciously fighting special privilege. The
awakening of conscience has extended to those who were _enjoying_ special
privileges, and I thank God that the business men of this country are
beginning to see our economic organization in its true light, as