enterprises, the part into which the ambitious and gifted workingman makes
his way up, the class that saves, that plans, that organizes, that
presently spreads its enterprises until they have a national scope and
character,--that middle class is being more and more squeezed out by the
processes which we have been taught to call processes of prosperity. Its
members are sharing prosperity, no doubt; but what alarms me is that they
are not _originating_ prosperity. No country can afford to have its
prosperity originated by a small controlling class. The treasury of
America does not lie in the brains of the small body of men now in
control of the great enterprises that have been concentrated under the
direction of a very small number of persons. The treasury of America lies
in those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a special
favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the
originations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Every
country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks
of those already famous and powerful and in control.

There has come over the land that un-American set of conditions which
enables a small number of men who control the government to get favors
from the government; by those favors to exclude their fellows from equal
business opportunity; by those favors to extend a network of control that
will presently dominate every industry in the country, and so make men
forget the ancient time when America lay in every hamlet, when America was
to be seen in every fair valley, when America displayed her great forces
on the broad prairies, ran her fine fires of enterprise up over the
mountain-sides and down into the bowels of the earth, and eager men were
everywhere captains of industry, not employees; not looking to a distant
city to find out what they might do, but looking about among their
neighbors, finding credit according to their character, not according to
their connections, finding credit in proportion to what was known to be in