And so the people of the United States have made up their minds to do a healthy thing for both politics and big business.  Permit me to mix a few metaphors:  They are going to open doors; they are going to let up blinds; they are going to drag sick things into the open air and into the light of the sun.  They are going to organize a great hunt, and smoke certain animals out of their burrows.  They are going to unearth the beast in the jungle in which when they hunted they were caught by the beast instead of catching him.  They have determined, therefore, to take an axe and raze the jungle, and then see where the beast will find cover.  And I, for my part, bid them God-speed.  The jungle breeds nothing but infection and shelters nothing but the enemies of mankind.

And nobody is going to get caught in our hunt except the beasts that prey.  Nothing is going to be cut down or injured that anybody ought to wish preserved.

You know the story of the Irishman who, while digging a hole, was asked, “Pat, what are you doing,—­digging a hole?” And he replied, “No, sir; I am digging the dirt, and laying the hole.”  It was probably the same Irishman who, seen digging around the wall of a house, was asked, “Pat, what are you doing?” And he answered, “Faith, I am letting the dark out of the cellar.”  Now, that’s exactly what we want to do,—­let the dark out of the cellar.

* * * * *

Take, first, the relations existing between politics and business.

It is perfectly legitimate, of course, that the business interests of the country should not only enjoy the protection of the law, but that they should be in every way furthered and strengthened and facilitated by legislation.  The country has no jealousy of any connection between business and politics which is a legitimate connection.  It is not in the least averse from open efforts to accommodate law to the material development which has so strengthened the country in all that it has undertaken by supplying its extraordinary life with its necessary physical foundations.

But the illegitimate connections between business and legislation are another matter.  I would wish to speak on this subject with soberness and circumspection.  I have no desire to excite anger against anybody.  That would be easy, but it would do no particular good.  I wish, rather, to consider an unhappy situation in a spirit that may enable us to account for it, to some extent, and so perhaps get at the causes and the remedy.  Mere denunciation doesn’t help much to clear up a matter so involved as is the complicity of business with evil politics in America.