The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair way of failure,—­tragic failure.  And we stand in danger of utter failure yet except we fulfil speedily the determination we have reached, to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts.  Don’t deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development.  They are so great that it is almost an open question whether the government of the United States can dominate them or not.  Go one step further, make their organized power permanent, and it may be too late to turn back.  The roads diverge at the point where we stand.  They stretch their vistas out to regions where they are very far separated from one another; at the end of one is the old tiresome scene of government tied up with special interests; and at the other shines the liberating light of individual initiative, of individual liberty, of individual freedom, the light of untrammeled enterprise.  I believe that that light shines out of the heavens itself that God has created.  I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life.  There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters.  Guardians have no place in a land of freemen.  Prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of endurance.  Monopoly means the atrophy of enterprise.  If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.  I do not expect to see monopoly restrain itself.  If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.  We haven’t had free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guidance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing less than the recovery of what was made with our own hands, and acts only by our delegated authority.

I tell you, when you discuss the question of the tariffs and of the trusts, you are discussing the very lives of yourselves and your children.  I believe that I am preaching the very cause of some of the gentlemen whom I am opposing when I preach the cause of free industry in the United States, for I think they are slowly girding the tree that bears the inestimable fruits of our life, and that if they are permitted to gird it entirely nature will take her revenge and the tree will die.

I do not believe that America is securely great because she has great men in her now.  America is great in proportion as she can make sure of having great men in the next generation.  She is rich in her unborn children; rich, that is to say, if those unborn children see the sun in a day of opportunity, see the sun when they are free to exercise their energies as they will.  If they open their eyes in a land where there is no special privilege, then we shall