of that experience. Legislation is a business of interpretation, not of
origination; and it is now plain what the opinion is to which we must
give effect in this matter. It is not recent or hasty opinion. It
springs out of the experience of a whole generation. It has clarified
itself by long contest, and those who for a long time battled with it
and sought to change it are now frankly and honorably yielding to it and
seeking to conform their actions to it.

The great business men who organized and financed monopoly and those who
administered it in actual everyday transactions have year after year,
until now, either denied its existence or justified it as necessary for
the effective maintenance and development of the vast business processes
of the country in the modern circumstances of trade and manufacture and
finance; but all the while opinion has made head against them. The
average business man is convinced that the ways of liberty are also the
ways of peace and the ways of success as well; and at last the masters
of business on the great scale have begun to yield their preference and
purpose, perhaps their judgment also, in honorable surrender.

What we are purposing to do, therefore, is, happily, not to hamper or
interfere with business as enlightened business men prefer to do it, or
in any sense to put it under the ban. The antagonism between business
and government is over. We are now about to give expression to the best
business judgment of America, to what we know to be the business
conscience and honor of the land. The Government and business men are
ready to meet each other half-way in a common effort to square business
methods with both public opinion and the law. The best informed men of
the business world condemn the methods and processes and consequences of
monopoly as we condemn them; and the instinctive judgment of the vast
majority of business men everywhere goes with them. We shall now be