Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your government.  You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the biggest stake,—­the big bankers, the big manufacturers, the big masters of commerce, the heads of railroad corporations and of steamship corporations.  I have no objection to these men being consulted, because they also, though they do not themselves seem to admit it, are part of the people of the United States.  But I do very seriously object to these gentlemen being chiefly consulted, and particularly to their being exclusively consulted, for, if the government of the United States is to do the right thing by the people of the United States, it has got to do it directly and not through the intermediation of these gentlemen.  Every time it has 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: