Truly prophetic these solemn words were to-day.  Forgetting the austere simplicity of their forebears, a love of show and ostentation had become the ruling passion of the American people.  Money, money, MONEY! was to-day the only standard, the only god!  The whole nation, frenzied with a wild lust for wealth no matter how acquired, had tacitly acquiesced in all sorts of turpitude, every description of moral depravity, and so had fallen an easy victim to the band of capitalistic adventurers who now virtually ruled the land.  With the thieves in power, the courts were powerless, the demoralization was general and the world was afforded the edifying spectacle of an entire country given up to an orgy of graft—­treason in the Senate—­corruption in the Legislature, fraudulent elections, leaks in government reports, trickery in Wall Street, illegal corners in coal, meat, ice and other prime necessaries of life, the deadly horrors of the Beef and Drug Trusts, railroad conspiracies, insurance scandals, the wrecking of savings banks, police dividing spoils with pickpockets and sharing the wages of prostitutes, magistrates charged with blackmailing—­a foul stench of social rottenness and decay!  What, thought Jefferson, would be the outcome—­Socialism or Anarchy?

Still, he mused, one ray of hope pierced the general gloom—­the common sense, the vigour and the intelligence of the true American man and woman, the love for a “square deal” which was characteristic of the plain people, the resistless force of enlightened public opinion.  The country was merely passing through a dark phase in its history, it was the era of the grafters.  There would come a reaction, the rascals would be exposed and driven off, and the nation would go on upward toward its high destiny.  The country was fortunate, too, in having a strong president, a man of high principles and undaunted courage who had already shown his capacity to deal with the critical situation.  America was lucky with her presidents.  Picked out by the great political parties as mere figureheads, sometimes they deceived their sponsors, and showed themselves men and patriots.  Such a president was Theodore Roosevelt.  After beginning vigorous warfare on the Trusts, attacking fearlessly the most rascally of the band, the chief of the nation had sounded the slogan of alarm in regard to the multi-millionaires.  The amassing of colossal fortunes, he had declared, must be stopped—­a man might accumulate more than sufficient for his own needs and for the needs of his children, but the evil practice of perpetuating great and ever-increasing fortunes for generations yet unborn was recognized as a peril to the State.  To have had the courage to propose such a sweeping and radical restrictive measure as this should alone, thought Jefferson, ensure for Theodore Roosevelt a place among America’s greatest and wisest statesmen.  He and Americans of his calibre would eventually perform the titanic task of cleansing these Augean stables, the muck and accumulated filth of which was sapping the health and vitality of the nation.