Moreover, American practice has
allowed the individual a far larger measure of economic liberty than is
required by the Constitution; and this liberty was granted in the
expectation that it would benefit, not the individual as such, but the
great mass of the American people. It has undoubtedly benefited the
great mass of the American people; but it has been of far more benefit
to a comparatively few individuals. Americans are just beginning to
learn that the great freedom which the individual property-owner has
enjoyed is having the inevitable result of all unrestrained exercise of
freedom. It has tended to create a powerful but limited class whose
chief object it is to hold and to increase the power which they have
gained; and this unexpected result has presented the American democracy
with the most difficult and radical of its problems. Is it to the
interest of the American people as a democracy to permit the increase or
the perpetuation of the power gained by this aristocracy of money?
A candid consideration of the foregoing question will, I believe, result
in a negative answer.
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