I do not wish to depreciate the value or importance
of improvement in material comfort. When you hear a man denounce it, you
may know that either he is not a clear, calm thinker, or else he is a
demagogue. Material growth and material comfort are essential for the
development of mental and spiritual activities. The result of this
combination and material expansion, however, was to create great
corporations which began to get control of things. The same spirit of
combination entered into politics and we had machines and bosses which
lent their hand to, and furnished a complacent instrument for,
corporations. Time was when they ordered delegates in a convention with
the same degree of certainty that the order would be supplied, as they
did steel rails or any other commodity. That time has passed and why?
Because the danger of plutocracy forced itself on the people. Leaders
took it up and showed it to them; and in the last ten years we have had
a great movement to eliminate corporate and money control in politics.
Great statutes have been passed--the anti-trust law, the interstate
commerce law, the statutes against the use of contributions from
corporations in politics, the statutes requiring the showing of the
electoral expenses, have all been brought about in response to a popular
demand.
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