It was on his theory of the trusts that Mr. Wilson based his opposition to all attempts at government regulation. Under the plan of regulation, put forward by the Progressives, said Mr. Wilson, "there will be an avowed partnership between the government and the trusts. I take it the firm will be ostensibly controlled by the senior member. For I take it that the government of the United States is at least the senior member, though the younger member has all along been running the business.... There is no hope to be seen for the people of the United States until the partnership is dissolved. And the business of the party now intrusted with power is to dissolve it." In other words, the government was, in his opinion, too weak to force the trusts to obey certain rules and regulations, but it was strong enough to take their business away from them and prevent their ever getting together again. Apparently, Mr. Wilson did not expect to find that cordial cooperation from the national trust magnates which he found on the part of New Jersey public service corporations when he undertook to regulate them. Mr. Wilson's political program was more definite. His short experience in New Jersey politics had evidently wrought great changes in his earlier academic views. In 1907, he thought that the United States Senate, "represents the country as distinct from the accumulated populations of the country, much more fully and much more truly than the House of Representatives does." In the presidential campaign, he advocated popular election of United States Senators, principally on the ground "that a little group of Senators holding the balance of power has again and again been able to defeat programs of reform upon which the whole country has set its heart." He did not attack the Senate as a body, but he thought sinister influences had often been at work there. However, Mr. Wilson declared that the popular election of Senators was not inconsistent with "either the spirit or the essential form of the American government." As to those other devices of direct democracy, the initiative, referendum, and recall, Mr. Wilson admitted that there were some states where it was premature to discuss them, and added that in some states it might never be necessary to discuss them. The initiative and referendum, he approved as a sort of "gun behind the door," to be used rarely when representative institutions failed; and as to the recall he remarked, "I don't see how any man grounded in the traditions of American affairs can find any valid objection to the recall of administrative officers." The recall of judges, however, he opposed positively and without qualification, pointing out that the remedy for evils in the judicial system lay in methods of nomination and election. Such was the economic and political philosophy of the new Democratic President inaugurated on March 4, 1913. FOOTNOTES: [84] _Autobiography_, p. 476.