"The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as that exists, our old variety and freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved, and who necessarily by every reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatest question of all, and to this statesmen must address themselves with an earnest determination to serve the long future and the true liberties of men." (My italics.)
Undoubtedly this is a great question; the establishment of a political control over credit will mean a political and financial revolution. For it will establish the power of the government over our whole economic system and will lead rapidly to a common political and economic organization of all classes of capitalists for the control of the government, to a compromise between the group of capitalists that now rules the business world and that far larger group which is bound to rule the government. The financial magnates have seen this truth, and, as Mr. Paul Warburg said to the American Association (New Orleans, Nov. 21, 1911), "Wall Street, like many an absolute ruler in recent years, finds it more conducive to safety and contentment to forego some of its prerogatives ... and to turn an oligarchy into a constitutional democratic federation [i.e. a federation composed of capitalists]."
Mr. Roosevelt has announced a policy with regard to monopolies that foreshadows even more distinctly than anything Mr. Woodrow Wilson has said the solution of the differences between large and small capitalists. He urges that a government commission should undertake "supervision, regulation, and control of these great corporations" even to the point of controlling "monopoly prices" and that this control should "indirectly or directly extend to dealing with all questions connected with their treatment of their employees, including the wages, the hours of labor, and the like."[34]
This policy is in entire accord with the declarations of Andrew Carnegie, Daniel Guggenheim, Judge Gary, Samuel Untermeyer, Attorney-General Wickersham, and others of the large capitalists or those who stand close to them. It is in equal accord with the declarations of La Follette's Weekly and the leading "Insurgent" writers.
It is true that the private monopolies, as Mr. Bryan pointed out (New York Times, Nov. 19, 1911), "will soon be in national politics more actively than now, for they will feel it necessary to control Colonel Roosevelt's suggested commission, and to do that they must control the election of those who appoint the commission."
But the private monopolies will soon be more actively in politics no matter what remedy is offered, even government ownership. The small capitalist investors, shippers, and consumers of trust products can only protect themselves by securing control of the government, or at least sharing it on equal terms with the large capitalists.
The reason that Mr. Roosevelt's proposal was hailed with equal enthusiasm by the more far-sighted capitalists, whether radical or conservative, small or large, was that they have an approximately equal hope of controlling the government, or sharing in its control. The unbiased observer can well conclude that they are likely to divide this control between them—and, indeed, that the complete victory of either party is economically and politically unthinkable. Already banks, railways, industrial "trusts," mining and lumber interests, are being forced to follow a policy satisfactory to small capitalist investors, borrowers, customers, furnishers of raw material, and taxpayers—while small capitalist competitors are being forced to abandon their effort to use the government to restore competition and destroy the "trusts."
In the reorganization of capitalism, the non-capitalists, the wage and salary earning class are not to be consulted. Taken together with those among the professional and salaried class who are small investors or expect to become independent producers, the small capitalists constitute a majority of the electorate (though not of the population), or at least hold the political balance of power. It is capitalist interests alone that really count in present-day politics, and it is for capitalists alone that government control would be instituted.
Viewed in this light the statements of Mr. Woodrow Wilson that "business is no longer in any proper sense a private matter," or that "our program, from which we cannot be turned aside, is, that we are going to take possession of the control of our own economic life," and the similar statements of Mr. Roosevelt, are not so Socialistic as they seem. What their use by the leading "conservative-progressive" statesmen of both parties means is that a partnership of capital and government is at hand.