There is one circumstance connected with this program which ought to be
very plainly stated. It was resisted at every step by the interests
which the Republican Party had catered to and fostered at the expense of
the country, and these same interests are now earnestly praying for a
reaction which will save their privileges,--for the restoration of their
sworn friends to power before it is too late to recover what they have
lost. They fought with particular desperation and infinite
resourcefulness the reform of the banking and currency system, knowing
that to be the citadel of their control; and most anxiously are they
hoping and planning for the amendment of the Federal Reserve Act by the
concentration of control in a single bank which the old familiar group
of bankers can keep under their eye and direction. But while the "big
men" who used to write the tariffs and command the assistance of the
Treasury have been hostile,--all but a few with vision,--the average
business man knows that he has been delivered, and that the fear that
was once every day in his heart, that the men who controlled credit and
directed enterprise from the committee rooms of Congress would crush
him, is there no more, and will not return,--unless the party that
consulted only the "big men" should return to power,--the party of
masterly inactivity and cunning resourcefulness in standing pat to
resist change.
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