It is true that the private monopolies, as Mr. Bryan pointed out (_New York Times_, Nov. 19, 1911), "will soon be in national politics more actively than now, for they will feel it necessary to control Colonel Roosevelt's suggested commission, and to do that they must control the election of those who appoint the commission." But the private monopolies will soon be more actively in politics no matter what remedy is offered, even government ownership. The small capitalist investors, shippers, and consumers of trust products can only protect themselves by securing control of the government, or at least sharing it on equal terms with the large capitalists. The reason that Mr. Roosevelt's proposal was hailed with equal enthusiasm by the more far-sighted capitalists, whether radical or conservative, small or large, was that they have an approximately equal hope of controlling the government, or sharing in its control. The unbiased observer can well conclude that they are likely to divide this control between them--and, indeed, that the complete victory of either party is economically and politically unthinkable. Already banks, railways, industrial "trusts," mining and lumber interests, are being forced to follow a policy satisfactory to small capitalist investors, borrowers, customers, furnishers of raw material, and taxpayers--while small capitalist competitors are being forced to abandon their effort to use the government to restore competition and destroy the "trusts." In the reorganization of capitalism, the non-capitalists, the wage and salary earning class are not to be consulted. Taken together with those among the professional and salaried class who are small investors or expect to become independent producers, the small capitalists constitute a majority of the electorate (though not of the population), or at least hold the political balance of power. It is capitalist interests alone that really count in present-day politics, and it is for capitalists alone that government control would be instituted. Viewed in this light the statements of Mr. Woodrow Wilson that "business is no longer in any proper sense a private matter," or that "our program, from which we cannot be turned aside, is, that we are going to take possession of the control of our own economic life," and the similar statements of Mr. Roosevelt, are not so Socialistic as they seem. What their use by the leading "conservative-progressive" statesmen of both parties means is that a partnership of capital and government is at hand. FOOTNOTES: [31] Lincoln Steffens in _Everybody's Magazine_, beginning September, 1910. [32] _McClure's Magazine_, 1911. [33] Governor Woodrow Wilson, Speech of April 13, 1911. [34] The _Outlook_, Nov. 18, 1911. CHAPTER III THE POLITICS OF THE NEW CAPITALISM