The Present Drift

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Every conceivable activity of mind and body will be under the direction and surveillance of a bureau. Spies and inspectors, guides and counsellors will leer upon the citizen from every street and cor,aer and accompany biaa hourly in his daily avocation. Taxes will be a hundred dollars per capita. Forty per cent of the national income will be demanded for public expenses. We will still have a Republic in name but a bureaucracy in fact the most wasteful, the most extravagant, the most demoralizing and deadly form of government which God in His inscrutable wisdom has ever permitted to torture the human family. This is not the picture of a disturbed imagination; it is the remorseless logic of the present drift of things. . .

"I venture to say in all sincerity that these very young men whose interests we are now considering are far more interested in changing this ruinous course than either myself or any member who sits in this Chamber. The future is theirs, and it is the future that we are presuming to mortgage. It is that future with which we are trifling. . ."