[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTLTOR."]
Sia,—Your excellent articles on " The Dread of a Profit " recall a speech of ex-Senator Boot, where at New York, February 15th, 1916, he speaks of the way in which a year and a half of Democratic control of Government had tended to restrict production:—
Enterprise had halted. New undertakings no longer made their appearance. . . . The great productive industries of the country, the farmer, the miner, the lumberman, the manu- facturer, were labouring under a misfit tariff devised by the Democratic Party in a spirit of suspicion, distrust, and hos- tility towards American business enterprise. . . . The men who represented the Democratic Party in Washington had been so long declaiming against those whom they considered the bene- ficiaries of the protective tariff that their hostility extended to American business itself. . . . All profitable enterprise was under suspicion. . . . There was a nervous dread lest some- body should make money. Envy of business success and the phrases of the demagogue were potent elements in the framing and administration of the laws. It was with just cause that the enterprise of the country halted. timid and irresolute, because it felt and feared the hostility of Government."
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