trustees did; and it has been in my thought ever since that if I could
have dealt directly with the people who constituted Princeton University I
could have carried it forward much faster than I could dealing with a
board of trustees.

Mark you, I am not saying that these leaders knew that they were doing us
an evil, or that they intended to do us an evil. For my part, I am very
much more afraid of the man who does a bad thing and does not know it is
bad than of the man who does a bad thing and knows it is bad; because I
think that in public affairs stupidity is more dangerous than knavery,
because harder to fight and dislodge. If a man does not know enough to
know what the consequences are going to be to the country, then he cannot
govern the country in a way that is for its benefit. These gentlemen,
whatever may have been their intentions, linked the government up with the
men who control the finances. They may have done it innocently, or they
may have done it corruptly, without affecting my argument at all. And they
themselves cannot escape from that alliance.

Here, for example, is the old question of campaign funds: If I take a
hundred thousand dollars from a group of men representing a particular
interest that has a big stake in a certain schedule of the tariff, I take
it with the knowledge that those gentlemen will expect me not to forget
their interest in that schedule, and that they will take it as a point of
implicit honor that I should see to it that they are not damaged by too
great a change in that schedule. Therefore, if I take their money, I am
bound to them by a tacit implication of honor. Perhaps there is no ground
for objection to this situation so long as the function of government is
conceived to be to look after the trustees of prosperity, who in turn will
look after the people; but on any other theory than that of trusteeship
no interested campaign contributions can be tolerated for a moment,--save