I answered him by saying:
“I advise investors as honestly as I know how regarding their investment problems. I also reserve the right and the duty to express myself to the public as honestly as I know how regarding public problems. I am not in the slightest allied to any political group; but my financial interests must not and will not taint my political views.
“Incidentally, I am not publishing advice regarding Mr. Cox. I am simply a recorder of facts, including facts which are anything but campaign material in behalf of the governor’s political advancement.
“But if I were to put the proposition on sordid grounds, I might, if it were not against my principles to mix political views with the pure routine of business statistics and business forecast, proceed to show why the financial interests should ally themselves at this hour with all the forces of liberalism.
“For the question of the hour is not embodied in the issues as they appear before the public. These issues are but the expressions of the fundamental issue,—the contest of liberalism and reaction.
“If we have a period of reactionary rule for the next four years, not only will labor suffer, but all industry must surely soon suffer the consequences—the consequences of attempting to fight the inevitable onward march of Father Time.
“Reactionary business men in America do not appear to realize that they are walking hand in hand with the ultra-radicals. In England, the financial interests have awakened, for there the ultra-radicals are plainly on record as opposed above all else to the compromises of liberalism because as they frankly admit, such liberalism ‘tends to preserve the present system of society instead of hastening the upheaval.’
“The greatest danger in America today comes from those who, seeing the steam escaping from the safety valve, are crying loud to shut the valve.”
THE END