The major contributions to any candidate's campaign fund are made by men who have axes to grind—and the campaign chest is the grindstone.... The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealthy men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States.
Experience has shown that the most practicable method of getting hold of a political party is to furnish it with money in large quantities.
This brings the big money-giver or givers into close communion with the party leaders. Contact and influence do the rest.1
THE MONEY TRUST THEY LOVE TO HATE
Roosevelt actually had very little interest in the banking issue,probably because he didn't understand it. Furthermore, in theunlikely event the blustery "trust buster" would actually win theelection, the financiers still had little to fear. In spite of hiswell-publicized stance of opposing big business, his true convictions were quite acceptable to Wall Street. As Chernow observed: Although the Roosevelt-Morgan relationship is sometimes
caricatured as that of trust buster versus trust king, it was far more complex than that. The public wrangling obscured deeper ideological affinities.... Roosevelt saw trusts as natural, organic outgrowths of economic development. Stopping them, he said, was like trying to dam the Mississippi River. Both TR and Morgan disliked the rugged, individualistic economy of the nineteenth century and favored big business.... In the sparring between Roosevelt and Morgan there was always a certain amount of shadow play, a pretense of greater animosity than actually existed.... Roosevelt and Morgan were secret blood brothers.2
It is not surprising, therefore, as Warburg noted in January,1912—ten months before the election—that Teddy had been "fairlywon over to a favorable consideration of the Aldrich Plan."3
Inner convictions on these issues notwithstanding, both Wilsonand Roosevelt played their roles to the hilt. Privately financed byWall Street's most powerful bankers, they publicly carried aflaming crusade against the "Money Trust" from one end of thecountry to the other. Roosevelt bellowed that the "issue of currency 1- McAdoo, pp. 165-66.
2. Chernow, pp. 106-12.
3. Warburg, Vol. I, p. 78.
456
THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
should be lodged with the government and be protected fromdomination and manipulation by Wall Street."1 And he quotedover and over again the Bull Moose (Progressive Party) platformwhich said: "We are opposed to the so-called Aldrich Currency Bill because its provisions would place our currency and credit system in private hands." Meanwhile, at the other end of town, Wilson declared:
There has come about an extraordinary and very sinister
concentration in the control of business in the country.... The growth of our nation, therefore, and all our activities, are in the hands of a few men.... This money trust, or as it should be more properly called, this credit trust... is no myth.2
Throughout the campaign, Taft was portrayed as the championof big business and Wall Street banks—which, of course, he was.
