Neither of these groups of men express real live American labour or real live characteristic American money.
American money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to a fault. American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdly believing things, imperiously singing things out of its way.
A singing people want a singing government. How is our President going to hear our labour and our money sing?
Pinchot expressed us, not Ballinger.
Mr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary. He is an artist in expressing America to a President. If we have a President who will not listen to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will.
Pinchot—an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, who is spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is the kind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say what Americans are like. Millions of men stand by Pinchot. We like the way he makes money sing.
Tom L. Johnson—an American millionaire who made his money in the ordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises out of a city for nothing—has the courage to turn around, spend his fortune and spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it.
America presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments and says, "This is what America is like."
It may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America—America in miniature. But millions of us say he is. He makes money sing.
We want a President—millions of us want him—and this is the most important news about us, who expects money in this country to sing.