I said not long ago that Mr. Roosevelt was promoting a plan for the control of monopoly which was supported by the United States Steel Corporation.  Mr. Roosevelt denied that he was being supported by more than one member of that corporation.  He was thinking of money.  I was thinking of ideas.  I did not say that he was getting money from these gentlemen; it was a matter of indifference to me where he got his money; but it was a matter of a great deal of difference to me where he got his ideas.  He got his idea with regard to the regulation of monopoly from the gentlemen who form the United States Steel Corporation.  I am perfectly ready to admit that the gentlemen who control the United States Steel Corporation have a perfect right to entertain their own ideas about this and to urge them upon the people of the United States; but I want to say that their ideas are not my ideas; and I am perfectly certain that they would not promote any idea which interfered with their monopoly.  Inasmuch, therefore, as I hope and intend to interfere with monopoly just as much as possible, I cannot subscribe to arrangements by which they know that it will not be disturbed.

The Roosevelt plan is that there shall be an industrial commission charged with the supervision of the great monopolistic combinations which have been formed under the protection of the tariff, and that the government of the United States shall see to it that these gentlemen who have conquered labor shall be kind to labor.  I find, then, the proposition to be this:  That there shall be two masters, the great corporation, and over it the government of the United States; and I ask who is going to be master of the government of the United States?  It has a master now,—­those who in combination control these monopolies.  And if the government controlled by the monopolies in its turn controls the monopolies, the partnership is finally consummated.

I don’t care how benevolent the master is going to be, I will not live under a master.  That is not what America was created for.  America was created in order that every man should have the same chance as every other man to exercise mastery over his own fortunes.  What I want to do is analogous to what the authorities of the city of Glasgow did with tenement houses.  I want to light and patrol the corridors of these great organizations in order to see that nobody who tries to traverse them is waylaid and maltreated.  If you will but hold off the adversaries, if you will but see to it that the weak are protected, I will venture a wager with you that there are some men in the United States, now weak, economically weak, who have brains enough to compete with these gentlemen and who will presently come into the market and put these gentlemen on their mettle.  And the minute they come into the market there will be a bigger market for labor and a different wage scale for labor.