interests better than any group of men in the confines of the country
understand them. The men who are sweating blood to get their foothold in
the world of endeavor understand the conditions of business in the United
States very much better than the men who have arrived and are at the top.
They know what the thing is that they are struggling against. They know
how difficult it is to start a new enterprise. They know how far they have
to search for credit that will put them upon an even footing with the men
who have already built up industry in this country. They know that
somewhere, by somebody, the development of industry is being controlled.

I do not say this with the slightest desire to create any prejudice
against wealth; on the contrary, I should be ashamed of myself if I
excited class feeling of any kind. But I do mean to suggest this: That the
wealth of the country has, in recent years, come from particular sources;
it has come from those sources which have built up monopoly. Its point of
view is a special point of view. It is the point of view of those men who
do not wish that the people should determine their own affairs, because
they do not believe that the people's judgment is sound. They want to be
commissioned to take care of the United States and of the people of the
United States, because they believe that they, better than anybody else,
understand the interests of the United States. I do not challenge their
character; I challenge their point of view. We cannot afford to be
governed as we have been governed in the last generation, by men who
occupy so narrow, so prejudiced, so limited a point of view.

The government of our country cannot be lodged in any special class. The
policy of a great nation cannot be tied up with any particular set of
interests. I want to say, again and again, that my arguments do not touch
the character of the men to whom I am opposed. I believe that the very
wealthy men who have got their money by certain kinds of corporate