The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-10-30

that if you could Iop off the patronage you would have taken away most or the objectionable features of the so- called protection.
 This patronage, this special privil- ege, these favors doled out to some persons and not to all, have been the basis of the control which has been set up over the industries and over the enterprises of this country 3y great combinations, because we. for get, in permitting a regime of free competition to last so long, that the competitors had ceased to be individ- uals or simply groups of individuals, and it had come to be a competition between individuals or small groups on the one hand and enormous ag- gregations of individuals and capital on the other, and that after that con- trast in strength had been created in fact, competition, free comp etition, was out of the question-that it was then possible for the powerful to crush the weak.
 That is not competition; that is warfare. And because we did not check the free competition soon enough, because we did not check it at the point where pygmies entered the field against giants, we have creat- ed a. condition of affairs in which the control of industry and, to a large extent, the control of credit in this
 
 and in which all new enterprises must be rooted, is in the hands of a com paratively small and compact body of men.
 They have indulged themselves be- yond reason in the exercise of that power which makes competition prac- tically impossible. Very well, then: the test of our freedom for the next generation lies here: Are we going to take that. power away from them. or are we going to leave it with them?
 You can take it away from them if you regulate competition and make it impossible for them to do some things that they have been doing. You leave it with them if you Ieg1timatize and regulate monopoly. What the platform of the new party proposes to do is exactly tais-nothing more than a legitimated continuation of the pres ent order of things, with the alliance between the great interests and the government open instead of covered.
 We will depend upon the federal government to take care of them. But, gentlemen, that depends on who takes care of the federal government. What is to prevent their controlling a government which for generation they have already controlled? In other words, instead of setting your government free you have consented to the continuation and perpetuatfon of the existing alliance between the government and big business.
 am not intimating that there will be colossal corruption. I am mere Iy pointing out that there will be a union of power between them-an i'm evitable union of power-and say to the honorable men and women who have allied themselves with that par ty because of the social program:
 'sWho will guarantee to us that this master will be just and pitifu1? Do we conceive social betterment to lie in the pitiful use. of irresistible power, or do we canceive it to arise out of the irresistible might of body of free men? Has justice ever grown out of the soil of absolute power ? Has not justice always come from the press of the heart and spirit of men who resist power? Liberty has nev- CT come from the government Lib- jerty has always come from the sub- jects of it.''-New York Press Club Sent g.