come into a new era of American greatness and American
liberty; but if they open their eyes in a country where
they must be employees or nothing, if they open their
eyes in a land of merely regulated monopoly, where
all the conditions of industry are determined by small
groups of men, then they will see an America such as
the founders of this Republic would have wept to think
of. The only hope is in the release of the forces
which philanthropic trust presidents want to monopolize.
Only the emancipation, the freeing and heartening of
the vital energies of all the people will redeem us.
In all that I may have to do in public affairs in
the United States I am going to think of towns such
as I have seen in Indiana, towns of the old American
pattern, that own and operate their own industries,
hopefully and happily. My thought is going to
be bent upon the multiplication of towns of that kind
and the prevention of the concentration of industry
in this country in such a fashion and upon such a
scale that towns that own themselves will be impossible.
You know what the vitality of America consists of.
Its vitality does not lie in New York, nor in Chicago;
it will not be sapped by anything that happens in
St. Louis. The vitality of America lies in the
brains, the energies, the enterprise of the people
throughout the land; in the efficiency of their factories
and in the richness of the fields that stretch beyond
the borders of the town; in the wealth which they
extract from nature and originate for themselves through
the inventive genius characteristic of all free American
communities.
That is the wealth of America, and if America discourages
the locality, the community, the self-contained town,
she will kill the nation. A nation is as rich
as her free communities; she is not as rich as her
capital city or her metropolis. The amount of
money in Wall Street is no indication of the wealth
of the American people. That indication can be
found only in the fertility of the American mind and
the productivity of American industry everywhere throughout
the United States. If America were not rich and
fertile, there would be no money in Wall Street.
If Americans were not vital and able to take care
of themselves, the great money exchanges would break
down. The welfare, the very existence of the nation,
rests at last upon the great mass of the people; its
prosperity depends at last upon the spirit in which
they go about their work in their several communities
throughout the broad land. In proportion as her
towns and her country-sides are happy and hopeful
will America realize the high ambitions which have
marked her in the eyes of all the world.