 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
II
AT PROVIDENCE, R. I., AUGUST 23, 1902
Mr. Governor; and you, my fellow-citizens:
We are passing through a period of great commercial
prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself
to bring mutterings of discontent. At a time when most
men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly;
and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell
upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely
to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When
the weather is good for crops it is good for weeds.
Moreover, not only do the wicked flourish when the
times are such that most men flourish, but, what is
worse, the spirit of envy and jealousy springs up in the
breasts of those who, though they may be doing fairly
well themselves, see others no more deserving, who do
better.
Wise laws and fearless and upright administration of the
laws can give the opportunity for such prosperity as we
see about us. But that is all that they can do. When
the conditions have been created which make prosperity
possible, then each individual man must achieve it for
himself, by his own energy and thrift and business intelligence.
If when people wax fat they kick, as they have
kicked since the days of Jeshurun, they will speedily
destroy their own prosperity. If they go into wild
speculation and lose their heads, they have lost that which
no laws can supply. If in a spirit of sullen envy they
in the years of fatness, they will bury themselves in the
crash of the common disaster. It is difficult to make
our material condition better by the best laws, but it is
easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
The upshot of all this is that it is peculiarly incumbent
upon us in a time of such material well-being, both collectively
as a nation and individually as citizens, to show,
each on his own account, that we possess the qualities of
prudence, self-knowledge, and self-restraint. In our Government
we need above all things stability, fixity of
economic policy, while remembering that this fixity must
not be fossilization, that there must not be inability to
shift our laws so as to meet our shifting national needs.
There are real and great evils in our social and economic
life, and these evils stand out in all their ugly baldness in
time of prosperity; for the wicked who prosper are never
a pleasant sight. There is every need of striving in all
possible ways, individually and collectively, by combinations
among ourselves and through the recognized governmental
agencies, to cut out those evils. All I ask is to
be sure that we do not use the knife with an ignorant zeal
which would make it more dangerous to the patient than
to the disease.
One of the features of the tremendous industrial development
of the last generation has been the very great
increase in private, and especially in corporate, fortunes.
We may like this or not, just as we choose, but it is a
fact nevertheless; and as far as we can see it is an inevitable
result of the working of the various causes, prominent
among them steam and electricity. Urban population
has grown in this country, as in all civilized countries,
much faster than the population as a whole during the
last century. If it were not for that, Rhode Island
could not to-day be the State she is. Rhode Island has
flourished as she has flourished because of the conditions
There is evil in these conditions, but you can't destroy it
unless you destroy the civilization they have brought
about. Where men are gathered together in great masses,
it inevitably results that they must work far more largely
through combinations than where they live scattered and
remote from one another. Many of us prefer the old
conditions of life, under which the average man lived
more to himself and by himself, where the average community
was more self-dependent, and where even though
the standard of comfort was lower on the average, yet
there was less of the glaring inequality in worldly conditions
which we now see about us in our great cities. It
is not true that the poor have grown poorer; but some
of the rich have grown so very much richer that, where
multitudes of men are herded together in a limited space,
the contrast strikes the onlooker as more violent than
formerly. On the whole, our people earn more and live
better than ever before, and the progress of which we are
so proud could not have taken place had it not been for
the upbuilding of industrial centres, such as this in which
I am speaking.
But together with the good there has come a measure
of evil. Life is not so simple as it was; and surely, both
for the individual and the community, the simple life is
normally the healthy life. There is not in the great cities
the feeling of brotherhood which there is still in country
localities, and the lines of social cleavage are far more
deeply marked.
For some of the evils which have attended upon the
good of the changed conditions we can at present see no
complete remedy. For others the remedy must come by
the action of men themselves in their private capacity,
whether merely as individuals or by combination. For
yet others some remedy can be found in legislative and
executive action—national, State, or municipal. Much
Under present-day conditions it is as necessary
to have corporations in the business world as it is to have
organizations, unions, among wage workers. We have a
right to ask in each case only this: that good and not
harm shall follow. Exactly as labor organizations, when
managed intelligently and in a spirit of justice and
fair play, are of very great service not only to the wage
workers but to the whole community, as has been
shown again and again in the history of many such
organizations; so wealth, not merely individual, but corporate,
when used aright, is not merely beneficial to the
community as a whole, but is absolutely essential to the
upbuilding of such a series of communities as those whose
citizens I am now addressing. This is so obvious that it
ought to be too trite to mention, and yet it is necessary
to mention it when we see some of the attacks made upon
wealth, as such.
Of course a great fortune, if used wrongly, is a menace
to the community. A man of great wealth who does not
use that wealth decently is in a peculiar sense a menace
to the community, and so is the man who does not use
his intellect aright. Each talent—the talent for making
money, the talent for showing intellect at the bar, or in
any other way, if unaccompanied by character, makes the
possessor a menace to the community. But such a fact
no more warrants us in attacking wealth than it does in
attacking intellect. Every man of power by the very fact
of that power is capable of doing damage to his neighbors:
but we cannot afford to discourage the development of
such men merely because it is possible they may use their
power for wrong ends. If we did so we should leave our
history a blank, for we should have no great statesmen,
soldiers, merchants, no great men of arts, of letters, of
science. Doubtless on the average the most useful citizen
to the community as a whole is the, man to whom has
nor riches. But the great captain of industry, the man
of wealth, who alone or in combination with his fellows,
drives through our great business enterprises, is a factor
without whom the civilization that we see round about us
here could not have been built up. Good, not harm,
normally comes from the upbuilding of such wealth.
Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the
harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we
let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own
natures.
But there is other harm; and it is evident that we
should try to do away with that. The great corporations
which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts
are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has
the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control
them wherever the need of such control is shown.
There is clearly need of supervision—need to possess the
power of regulation of these great corporations through
the representatives of the public, wherever, as in our own
country at the present time, business corporations become
so very powerful alike for beneficent work and for
work that is not always beneficent. It is idle to say that
there is no need for such supervision. There is, and a
sufficient warrant for it is to be found in any one of the
admitted evils appertaining to them.
We meet a peculiar difficulty under our system of government,
because of the division of governmental power
between the Nation and the States. When the industrial
conditions were simple, very little control was needed,
and the difficulties of exercising such control under our
Constitution were not evident. Now the conditions are
complicated and we find it hard to frame national legislation
which shall be adequate; while as a matter of practical
experience it has been shown that the States either
cannot or will not exercise a sufficient control to meet the
laws—laws which it would be well indeed to have enacted
by the national legislature. But the widespread differences
in these laws, even between adjacent States, and
the uncertainty of the power of enforcement, result practically
in altogether insufficient control. I believe that
the nation must assume this power of control by legislation;
if necessary, by constitutional amendment. The
immediate necessity in dealing with trusts is to place
them under the real, not the nominal, control of some
sovereign to which, as its creatures, the trusts shall owe
allegiance, and in whose courts the sovereign's orders
may be enforced.
This is not the case with the ordinary so-called
"trust" to-day; for the trust nowadays is a large State
corporation, which generally does business in other
States, often with a tendency toward monopoly. Such
a trust is an artificial creature not wholly responsible
to or controllable by any legislation, either by State or
Nation, and not subject to the jurisdiction of any one
court. Some governmental sovereign must be given full
power over these artificial, and very powerful, corporate
beings. In my judgment this sovereign must be the National
Government. When it has been given full power,
then this full power can be used to control any evil influence,
exactly as the Government is now using the power
conferred upon it by the Sherman anti-trust law.
Even when the power has been granted, it would be
most unwise to exercise it too much, to begin by too
stringent legislation. The mechanism of modern business
is as delicate and complicated as it is vast, and nothing
would be more productive of evil to all of us, and especially
to those least well off in this world's goods, than
ignorant meddling with this mechanism—above all, meddling
in a spirit of class legislation or hatred or rancor.
It is eminently necessary that the power should be had,
wisdom and self-restraint. The first exercise of that
power should be the securing of publicity among all great
corporations doing an interstate business. The publicity,
though non-inquisitorial, should be real and thorough as
to all important facts with which the public has concern.
Daylight is a powerful discourager of evil. Such publicity
would by itself tend to cure the evils of which
there is just complaint; it would show us if evils existed,
and where the evils are imaginary, and it would show us
what next ought to be done.
Above all, let us remember that our success in accomplishing
anything depends very much upon our not
trying to accomplish everything. Distrust whoever pretends
to offer you a patent cure-all for every ill of the
body politic, just as you would a man who offers a
medicine which would cure every evil of your individual
body. A medicine that is recommended to cure both
asthma and a broken leg is not good for either. Mankind
has moved slowly upward through the ages, sometimes
a little faster, sometimes a little slower, but rarely,
indeed, by leaps and bounds. At times a great crisis
comes in which a great people, perchance led by a great
man, can at white heat strike some mighty blow for the
right—make a long stride in advance along the path of
justice and of orderly liberty. But normally we must be
content if each of us can do something—not all that we
wish, but something—for the advancement of those principles
of righteousness which underlie all real national
greatness, all true civilization and freedom. I see no
promise of any immediate and complete solution of
all the problems we group together when we speak of
the trust question. But we can make a beginning in
solving these problems, and a good beginning, if only we
approach the subject with a sufficiency of resolution, of
honesty, and of that hard common-sense which is one
common, assets in any nation's greatness. The existing
laws will be fully enforced as they stand on the statute
books without regard to persons, and I think good
has already come from their enforcement. I think
furthermore that additional legislation should be had and
can be had, which will enable us to accomplish much
more along the same lines. No man can promise a perfect
solution, at least in the immediate future. But
something has already been done, and much more can be
done if our people temperately and determinedly will
that it shall be done.
In conclusion let me add one word. While we are not
to be excused if we fail to do whatever is possible through
the agency of Government, we must keep ever in mind
that no action of the Government, no action by combination
among ourselves, can take the place-of the individual
qualities to which in the long run every man must owe
the success he can make of life. There never has been
devised, and there never will be devised, any law which
will enable a man to succeed save by the exercise of those
qualities which have always been the prerequisites of success—the
qualities of hard work, of keen intelligence, of
unflinching will. Such action can supplement those qualities,
but it cannot take their place. No action by the
State can do more than supplement the initiative of the
individual; and ordinarily the action of the State can do
no more than to secure to each individual the chance to
show under as favorable conditions as possible the stuff
that there is in him.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |