Mr. Wilson states that the Progressives have “a programme perfectly agreeable to monopolies.”

The plain and unmistakable inference to be drawn from this and other similar statements in his article, and the inference which he obviously desired to have drawn, is that the big corporations approved the Progressive plan and supported the Progressive candidate.  If President Wilson does not know perfectly well that this is not the case, he is the only intelligent person in the United States who is thus ignorant.  Everybody knows that the overwhelming majority of the heads of the big corporations supported him or Mr. Taft.  It is equally well known that of the corporations he mentions, the Steel and the Harvester Trusts, there was but one man who took any part in the Progressive campaign, and that almost all the others, some thirty in number, were against us, and some of them, including the President of the Harvester Trust, openly and enthusiastically for Mr. Wilson himself.  If he reads the newspapers at all, he must know that practically every man representing the great financial interests of the country, and without exception every newspaper controlled by Wall Street or State Street, actively supported either him or Mr. Taft, and showed perfect willingness to accept either if only they could prevent the Progressive party from coming into power and from putting its platform into effect.

Mr. Wilson says of the trust plank in that platform that it “did not anywhere condemn monopoly except in words.”  Exactly of what else could a platform consist?  Does Mr. Wilson expect us to use algebraic signs?  This criticism is much as if he said the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence contained nothing but words.  The Progressive platform did contain words, and the words were admirably designed to express thought and meaning and purpose.  Mr. Wilson says that I long ago “classified trusts for us as good and bad,” and said that I was “afraid only of the bad ones.”  Mr. Wilson would do well to quote exactly what my language was, and where it was used, for I am at a loss to know what statement of mine it is to which he refers.  But if he means that I say that corporations can do well, and that corporations can also do ill, he is stating my position correctly.  I hold that a corporation does ill if it seeks profit in restricting production and then by extorting high prices from the community by reason of the scarcity of the product; through adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over-driving the help; or replacing men workers with children; or by rebates; or in any illegal or improper manner driving competitors out of its way; or seeking to achieve monopoly by illegal or unethical treatment of its competitors, or in any shape or way offending against the moral law either in connection with the public or with its employees or with its rivals.  Any corporation which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly.  It is, in fact, a conspiracy