Portal:Business/Selected quote/105
"I have not set forth any bills in drafted form ready for enaction, because that is a mere detail which should come at a time when things have shaped themselves so as to make that step necessary. The ground must be plowed before the seeding is done. The people themselves must do the plowing. After that they must seed the land and keep possession of the field if they wish to harvest and reap the fruits of their labor. They have always done the plowing, the seeding, the cultivating, and practically all of the work in the field of industrial enterprise, but they have never reaped the results of their labor. There has always been a Rothschild, a Gould, a Rockefeller, a Carnegie, a Morgan and men of their kind, and a few thousand lesser harvesters who have gathered in the best fruits out of the fields of industry. They are on hand and active at every point of vantage; they understand human selfishness, and know how to deal with the individuals whom the people have selected to represent them. They know that the individual citizen whose interest is the same as that of the citizens in general, will not find it practicable to spend the time in the legislative halls or in Congress, to exert a direct influence over his official representative. But the other parties to whom I have alluded send their representatives to influence the people’s representatives, and the manner of their influence is so varied in its application that no description of its application in one case would serve as an index to another. I shall deal with that particular phase of the subject on another occasion but before dropping it at this point, let me call the attention of the citizen to the fact that he must be on guard that the new progressive spirit and movement is kept alive, and that special interests are made to understand that it is alive. The special interests are more alert individually than the people themselves are individually, for the reason that the interests get the bulk of the wealth that grows out of the work of the people, and, therefore, the special interests are seeking to convert the progressive movement into another victory for themselves. I started as an original progressive when there were but a few on the battle line of progressiveness, and I had known the wily moves employed by the interests in their efforts to divert this progressive movement to their own advantage, not only in dividing the progressives into factions and parties, which means one and the same thing in its effect upon the people, but in what is worse than that, the attempt on their part to fill the ranks of the progressives, with spies and traitors and then presume through selfish influence to convert many of those who honestly started the movement. “Temptation thou art a mighty power in the hands of those who hold the seductive bait.” The interests base their hope of victory upon the temptation furnished, by that "bait" Their first hope was to win by ridiculing the progressives and taking patronage from those whom the people had elected, but this proved a failure."
- —Charles August Lindbergh, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, 1913