head the type of ability which can do well; just as you, comrade of the Civil War (turning to an engineer who wore the button of the Grand Army) needed a general who knew his business, or your valor did not avail. You remember that the valor of the best enlisted man that ever was (of course he was the basis of everything; the man who carried the gun and made the army; and you could not get the right stuff out of him if it was not in him) was of no value if there was not a directing power to see that the valor was used aright. The Union Army could have accomplished nothing if the feeling of the enlisted men had been the wish to down Grant and Sherman instead of supporting them heartily in achieving the common work for which all in common were striving. If you will look at my Raleigh speech and my other recent utterances you will see my principles clearly set forth. I have said again and again that I would not tolerate for one moment any injustice to a railroad any more than I would tolerate any injustice by a railroad. I have said again and again that I would remove a public official who improperly yielded to any public clamor against a railroad, no matter how popular that clamor might be, just as quickly as I would remove a public official who rendered an improper service to the railroad at the expense of the public. But I am convinced that there must be an increased regulatory and supervisory power exercised by the Government over the railways. Indeed, I would like it exercised to a much greater extent than I have any idea of pressing at the moment. For instance, I would greatly like to have it exercised in the matter of overcapitalization. I am convinced that the “wages fund” would be larger if there was no fictitious capital upon which dividends had to be paid. I need hardly say that this does not mean hostility to wealth. If you gentlemen here, in whom I believe so strongly, were all a unit in demanding that some improper action should be taken against certain men of wealth, then, no matter whether I did or did not like those same men of wealth, I would defend them against you, no matter how much I cared for you; and in so doing I would really be acting in your own interest. I would be false to your interest if I failed to do justice to the capitalist as much as to the wage-worker. But I shall act against the abuses of wealth just as against all other abuses. The outcry against rate regulation is of much the same character as that I encountered when I was engaged in putting through that car-coupling business; or in endeavoring to secure certain legislation in which you have all been interested, such as the employers’ liability law.