If the American people are not getting a "Square Deal," it must mean that they are having the cards stacked against them; and in that case the questions of paramount importance are: Who are stacking the cards?
And how can they be punished?
These are precisely the questions which Hearst is always asking and Hearstism is seeking to answer.

Neither has Mr.Roosevelt himself entirely escaped the misleading effects of his own figure.

He has too frequently talked as if his opponents deserved to be treated as dishonest sharpers; and he has sometimes behaved as if his suspicions of unfair play on their part were injuring the coolness of his judgment.

But at bottom and in the long run Mr.Roosevelt is too fair-minded a man and too patriotic a citizen to become much the victim of his dangerous figure of the "Square Deal." He inculcates for the most part in his political sermons a spirit, not of suspicion and hatred, but of mutual forbearance and confidence; and his programme of reform attaches more importance to a revision of the rules of the game than to the treatment of the winners under the old rules as one would treat a dishonest gambler.
In truth, Mr.Roosevelt has been building either better than he knows or better than he cares to admit.

The real meaning of his programme is more novel and more radical than he himself has publicly proclaimed.