Therefore, Mr. Roosevelt is trying to bring about the impossible. He is trying to prevent the people from being robbed without destroying the power of the capitalist to live by robbery. Mr. Roosevelt probably would like to decrease, somewhat, the extent to which capitalists practice robbery. But he is not willing to take away from them the power to rob. If Mr. Roosevelt were chasing burglars instead of the Presidency, we should first laugh at him and then put a new man on the force in his place. Imagine a policeman trying to prevent burglary by “regulating” the burglars, saying to them in a hissing voice: “Now, gentlemen, this burglary must stop. We really can have no more of it. None of you must carry a ‘jimmy’ more than four feet long. Any burglar caught with more than twenty skeleton keys will be sent to prison.” Yet that is practically what Mr. Roosevelt says to the capitalists. The “jimmy” of the capitalist is his ownership of the tools with which his employees work, but Mr. Roosevelt makes no move to take this instrument from the men who are despoiling the workers. All that Mr. Roosevelt purposes to do is to place a limit upon the amount that the capitalist can legally abstract. And he depends upon “strong” commissions to keep the ferocious capitalist in order. We Socialists have no faith in such measures. We frankly predict their failure, precisely as twenty years ago we predicted the failure of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. We were then known to so few of our own people that not many persons had the pleasure of calling us fools. Now, nobody wants to call us fools for that. We are now fools because we do not believe in Wilson or in Roosevelt. We are not content to await the verdict of time, but we await it with confidence. We dislike to waste twenty-five more years in chasing up this Roosevelt blind alley, but if you should determine to make the trip—which we hope you will not—we shall still be on the main track when you come back. If somebody else had the key to your house and would not let you in unless you paid him his price, you would not value highly the services of a policeman who should tell you that the way to deal with the gentleman was to “regulate” him. If the gentlemen had locked you out upon an average of four times a week, you would feel even less kindly disposed toward such a policeman. We Socialists feel that the capitalist class has keys that belong to the American people, and that it has used and is using those keys to prevent the people from using their own, except upon the payment of tribute. We feel that the capitalist class holds the keys to our workshops and will not let us enter except upon such tribute terms as they can wring from us. We feel that the capitalist class has the keys to our coal fields and will not let us be warm in winter except upon the payment of money that should go, perhaps, for food or clothing.