wishes of the people of the United States or of the rank and file of
business men of the country, but as to the needs and arguments of the
experts who came to arrange matters with the committees.

The moral of the whole matter is this: The business of the United States
is not as a whole in contact with the government of the United States. So
soon as it is, the matters which now give you, and justly give you, cause
for uneasiness will disappear. Just so soon as the business of this
country has general, free, welcome access to the councils of Congress, all
the friction between business and politics will disappear.

* * * * *

The tariff question is not the question that it was fifteen or twenty or
thirty years ago. It used to be said by the advocates of the tariff that
it made no difference even if there were a great wall separating us from
the commerce of the world, because inside the United States there was so
enormous an area of absolute free trade that competition within the
country kept prices down to a normal level; that so long as one state
could compete with all the others in the United States, and all the others
compete with it, there would be only that kind of advantage gained which
is gained by superior brain, superior economy, the better plant, the
better administration; all of the things that have made America supreme,
and kept prices in America down, because American genius was competing
with American genius. I must add that so long as that was true, there was
much to be said in defence of the protective tariff.

But the point now is that the protective tariff has been taken advantage
of by some men to destroy domestic competition, to combine all existing
rivals within our free-trade area, and to make it impossible for new men