as come to a critical question these
gentlemen have been yielded to, and their demands have been treated as the
demands that should be followed as a matter of course.

The government of the United States at present is a foster-child of the
special interests. It is not allowed to have a will of its own. It is told
at every move: "Don't do that; you will interfere with our prosperity."
And when we ask, "Where is our prosperity lodged?" a certain group of
gentlemen say, "With us." The government of the United States in recent
years has not been administered by the common people of the United States.
You know just as well as I do,--it is not an indictment against anybody,
it is a mere statement of the facts,--that the people have stood outside
and looked on at their own government and that all they have had to
determine in past years has been which crowd they would look on at;
whether they would look on at this little group or that little group who
had managed to get the control of affairs in its hands. Have you ever
heard, for example, of any hearing before any great committee of the
Congress in which the people of the country as a whole were represented,
except it may be by the Congressmen themselves? The men who appear at
those meetings in order to argue for or against a schedule in the tariff,
for this measure or against that measure, are men who represent special
interests. They may represent them very honestly, they may intend no wrong
to their fellow-citizens, but they are speaking from the point of view
always of a small portion of the population. I have sometimes wondered why
men, particularly men of means, men who didn't have to work for their
living, shouldn't constitute themselves attorneys for the people, and
every time a hearing is held before a committee of Congress should not go
and ask: "Gentlemen, in considering these things suppose you consider the
whole country? Suppose you consider the citizens of the United States?"

I don't want a smug lot of experts to sit down behind closed doors in
Washington and play Providence to me. There is a Providence to which I am
perfectly willing to submit. But as for other men setting up as Providence
over myself, I seriously object. I have never met a political savior in
the flesh, and I never expect to meet one. I am reminded of Gillet
Burgess' verses:

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one,
But this I'll tell you anyhow,
I'd rather se