Lyman Abbott: 'Reminiscences', The Outlook, 23 June, 1915, pp. 463, 464. (Conclusion of article.) I have faith in my fellow-men. I believe in their honesty of purpose and their com- petency of judgment. I have seen them take up great questions of National policy, one after another, and decide them aright, sometimes overriding their leaders in so doing. They have endured four years of terrible self-sacrifice in order to preserve the Nation intact and set it free from bondage; they have given away millions of acres of their lands to foreign immigrants who promised to dwell upon and cultivate them, recognizing the truth that the wealth of a nation consists not in its soil but in its people; they have denied themselves the right to purchase their goods in the cheapest market that they might make Amer- ica an industrially independent Nation; they have voted to pay the Nation's debts in gold when, without breaking the letter of their bond, they could have saved millions of dollars by paying them in silver; they have taxed themselves year after year for an expen- sive system of public education, because they recognize the value to the Nation of brain power in its humblest and lowliest citi- zens; they have voted to carry on a war for the succor of a feeble neighbor, and have brushed aside impatiently the protests alike of materialists, who argued that it did not pay, and of timid idealists, who feared that it would convert the Republic into an empire; they have perceived the perils of the country in a growing plutocracy, and have entered on the task of bringing the aristocracy of wealth under the control of the democracy of industry. I have been personally, though not intimately, acquainted with eight Presi- dents—Grant, the soldier; Hayes, the peace-maker; Garfield, the orator; Cleveland, the administrator; McKinley, the cautious; Roosevelt, the courageous; Taft, the lawyer;