Let us then have a better informed public opinion. Mr. Walter Lippmann in his new book upon the subject, despairing of the press, would put the making of public opinion in the hands of experts, collecting the truth with the impartiality of science. We seek unity as perhaps the builders of Babel sought it after the confusion of tongues fell upon them. One favorite hope of attaining it is through a new synthesis of business and politics. Government by business had worked. Let us return to Eden. Let us elect a business man President. One may substitute for President in this last sentence Governor or Mayor or Senator or Congressman, for whatever the office is, this recipe is always suggested. Thus, so it is piously hoped, we may get back to those good old times before we builded for ourselves this Babel, a government that was independent of business, parties that were independent of everything under the sun, voters that were independent of parties, a press that was independent, a propaganda that was independent, and blocs that knew no rule but their own. Elect the business man to office, so it is felt, and you will have an important synthesis, an old and tried one, one that worked, business and politics. You will do more. You will import into public life all that wonderful efficiency which we read about in the _American Magazine_, that will to power, that habit of getting things done, that instant capacity for decision which we romantically associate with commercial life. All this is in the minds of those who urge this method of achieving unity. We have no greater national illusion than the business man illusion. In any other country a business man is just a business man; in America he is a demigod. Golden words, as Mark Twain said, flow out of his mouth. He performs miracles. He has erected a great industry and amassed a large fortune. Therefore he would make a great public official. We never think of him as merely a specialist having a narrow aptitude for heaping up money. The reasoning about the business man is this. Success, real success, comes to the jack of all trades, a major premise handed down from pioneer days. "A" is a real success, for he has made several millions. Therefore "A" is a jack of all trades. Therefore he would be as great a President as he is a shoe button manufacturer. We owe the business-man illusion to the pioneers. In a few years they subjected a continent to our uses. They accumulated for themselves wealth such as the world had never seen. The nation does not think of them as the luckiest of a generation facing such virgin resources as existed on no other continent, at a moment when means of transportation such as the world had never seen before, and machinery for manufacture without parallel were in their hands. The marvelous element was not the opportunity but the men.