taxed upon the value of the privileges they enjoyed. The
corporations naturally enough did not like the proposal. But it
was made in no spirit or tone of antagonism to business or of
demagogic outcry against those who were prosperous. All that the
Governor demanded was a square deal. In his message to the
Legislature, he wrote as follows:

"There is evident injustice in the light taxation of
corporations. I have not the slightest sympathy with the outcry
against corporations as such, or against prosperous men of
business. Most of the great material works by which the entire
country benefits have been due to the action of individual men,
or of aggregates of men, who made money for themselves by doing
that which was in the interest of the people as a whole. From an
armor plant to a street railway, no work which is really
beneficial to the public can be performed to the best advantage
of the public save by men of such business capacity that they
will not do the work unless they themselves receive ample reward
for doing it. The effort to deprive them of an ample reward
merely means that they will turn their energies in some other
direction; and the public will be just so much the loser . . . .
But while I freely admit all this, it yet remains true that a
corporation which derives its powers from the State should pay to
the State a just percentage of its earnings as a return for the
privileges it enjoys."

This was quietly reasonable and uninflammatory doctrine. But the
corporations would have none of it. The Republican machine, which
had a majority in the Legislature, promptly repudiated it as
well. The campaign contributions from the corporations were too