But in the meantime the people of the United States believe that, as a whole, the Senate and the House no longer represent the voters by whom they were elected, but the special interests by whom they are controlled.  They believe so because they have so often seen Congress reject what the people desire, and do instead what the interests demand.  And of this there could be no better illustration than the tariff.

The tariff, under the policy of protection, was originally a means to raise the rate of wages.  It has been made a tool to increase the cost of living.  The wool schedule, professing to protect the wool-grower, is found to result in sacrificing grower and consumer alike to one of the most rapacious of trusts.

The cotton cloth schedule was increased in the face of the uncontradicted public testimony of the manufacturers themselves that it ought to remain unchanged.

The Steel interests by a trick secured an indefensible increase in the tariff on structural steel.

The Sugar Trust stole from the Government like a petty thief, yet Congress, by means of a dishonest schedule, continues to protect it in bleeding the public.

At the very time the duties on manufactured rubber were being raised, the leader of the Senate, in company with the Guggenheim Syndicate, was organizing an international rubber trust, whose charter made it also a holding company for the coal and copper deposits of the whole world.

For a dozen years the demand of the Nation for the Pure Food and Drug bill was outweighed in Congress by the interests which asserted their right to poison the people for a profit.

Congress refused to authorize the preparation of a great plan of waterway development in the general interest, and for ten years has declined to pass the Appalachian and White Mountain National Forest bill, although the people are practically unanimous for both.

The whole Nation is in favor of protecting the coal and other natural resources in Alaska, yet they are still in grave danger of being absorbed by the special interests.  And as for the general conservation movement, Congress not only refused to help it on, but tried to forbid any progress without its help.  Fortunately for us all, in this attempt it has utterly failed.

This loss of confidence in Congress is a matter for deep concern to every thinking American.  It has not come quickly or without good reason.  Every man who knows Congress well knows the names of Senators and members who betray the people they were elected to represent, and knows also the names of the masters whom they obey.  A representative of the people who wears the collar of the special interests has touched bottom.  He can sink no farther.

Who is to blame because representatives of the people are so commonly led to betray their trust?  We all are—­we who have not taken the trouble to resent and put an end to the knavery we knew was going on.  The brand of politics served out to us by the professional politician has long been composed largely of hot meals for the interests and hot air for the people, and we have all known it.