Their interest for my present purpose is that they probably foreshadow the attitude that will finally be assumed when the large "Interests" see that they must make terms.
Mr.Wilson's language is at times so conciliatory as to create doubt whether or not he will stand with Senator La Follette and the Republican "Insurgents" for the whole of the small capitalist's program, but it leaves no doubt that, if he lives up to his declared principles, he must aim at the government regulation, not of "Big Business" merely, but of all business--as when he says that "business is no longer in any sense a private matter." "We are dealing, in our present discussion," he said in an address, delivered in December, 1910, "with business, and we are dealing with life as an organic whole, and modern politics is an accommodation of these two.

Suppose we define business as economic _service of society for private profit_, and suppose we define politics as the accommodation of all social forces, the forces of _business, of course, included_, to the common interest." (My italics.) It is evident that if the community gains by an extended control over business, that business gains at least as much by its claim to be recognized as a _public service_.

And this Mr.Wilson makes very emphatic:-- "Business must be looked upon, not as the exploitation of society, not as its use for private ends, but as its sober service; and private profit must be regarded as legitimate only when it is in fact a reward for what is veritably serviceable,--serviceable to interests which are not single but common, as far as they go; and politics must be the discovery of this common interest, in order that the service may be tested and exacted.
"In this acceptation, society is the _senior partner_ in all business.

It first must be considered,--society as a whole, in its permanent and essential, not merely in its temporary and superficial, interests.

_If private profits are to be legitimatized, private fortunes made honorable_, these great forces which play upon the modern field must, both individually and collectively, be accommodated to a common purpose." (My italics.) Business is no longer "to be looked upon" as the exploitation of society, private profits are to be "legitimatized" and private fortunes "made honorable"-- in a word, the whole business world is to be regenerated and at the same time rehabilitated.