US Presidency
1916

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. The Republican Party is just the party that can not meet the new conditions of a new age. It does not know the way and it does not wish new conditions. It tried to break away from the old leaders and could not. They still select its candidates and dictate its policy, still resist change, still hanker after the old conditions, still know no methods of encouraging business but the old methods.