FROM THE LIFE
themselves on Miller." And that last was the significant statement to which all his preamble had been directed.
"It isn't pretty, is it?" she said. She had put back the loose sheets of typewritten manuscript on his desk, and she stood looking at him with a wistful desire to aid him showing in her large eyes.
"It's a strange business," he went on as if philosophizing idly, walking up and down. "When I first came into office, before you were old enough to remember—at the head of a reform movement—of business—men we turned out the thieving politicians and professional officeholders who were looting the treasury, and we put them in jail—many of them. And I was a popular hero. Your mother was very proud that day.
"And now they're in revolt against our 'business administration.' They can't say we've not been honest. We've given them good government. And the state's been prosperous. But it's labor that wants to rule, now, and the working-man. And they say I represent business and the corporations and the trusts.
"It all amounts to this: A man is born with the ability to rule as he's born with any other ability. It happens that, during his life, some one class is governing, and he governs for them. Then another class surges up, with a new ruler. And then another. But the people never govern. They can't, any more than an army can command and
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