 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
VII
AT WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA, SEPTEMBER 6,
1902
My friends and fellow-citizens:
It is a pleasure to come here to your city. I wish to
thank the Mayor, and through the Mayor all of your citizens,
for the way in which, upon your behalf, he has
greeted me; and I wish to state that it is a special pleasure
to be introduced by my friend, Senator Scott. I
have known the Senator for some time, and I like him,
because when he gives you his word you don't have to
think about it again.
I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words
here in this great industrial centre in one of those regions
which have felt to a notable degree the effects of the
period of prosperity through which we are now passing.
Probably never before in our history has the country been
more prosperous than it is at this moment; and it is a
prosperity which has come alike to the tillers of the soil and
to those connected with our great industrial enterprises.
Every period has its own troubles and difficulties. A
period of adversity, of course, troubles us all; but there
are troubles in connection with a period of prosperity
also. When all things flourish it means that there is a
good chance for things that we don't like to flourish also,
just exactly as for things that we do like. A period of great
national material well-being is inevitably one in which
men's minds are turned to the way in which those flourish
capitalistic corporations, whose growth has been so noted
a feature of the last half-century—the corporations which
we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts—accepting
the word in its usual and common significance
as a big corporation usually doing business in several
States at least, besides the State in which it is incorporated,
and often, though not always, with some element of
monopoly in it.
It seems to me that in dealing with this problem of the
trusts—perhaps it would be more accurate to say the
group of problems which come into our minds when we
think of the trusts—we have two classes of our fellow-citizens
whom we have to convert or override. One is
composed of those men who refuse to admit that there is
any action necessary at all. The other is composed of
those men who advocate some action so extreme, so foolish,
that it would either be entirely non-effective or, if
effective, would be so only by destroying everything,
good and bad, connected with our industrial development.
In every governmental process the aim that a people
capable of self-government should steadfastly keep in
mind is to proceed by evolution rather than revolution.
On the other hand, every people fit for self-government
must beware of that fossilization of mind which refuses to
allow of any change as conditions change. Now, in dealing
with the whole problem of the change in our great
industrial civilization—in dealing with the tendencies
which have been accentuated in so extraordinary a degree
by steam and electricity and by the tremendous upbuilding
of industrial centres which steam and electricity
have been the main factors in bringing about—I think we
must set before ourselves the desire not to accept less
than the possible, and at the same time not to bring ourselves
to a complete standstill by attempting the impossible.
It is a good deal as it is in taking care, through
can dam the Mississippi. If the nation started to dam it,
the nation would waste its time. It would not hurt the
Mississippi, but it would not only throw away its own
means, but would incidentally damage the population
along the banks. You can't dam the current. You
can build levees to keep the current within bounds and
to shape its direction. I think that is exactly what
we can do in connection with these great corporations
known as trusts. We cannot reverse the industrial tendency
of the age. If you succeed in doing it, then all
cities like Wheeling will have to go out of business. Remember
that. You cannot put a stop to or reverse the
industrial tendencies of the age, but you can control and
regulate them and see that they do no harm.
A flood comes down the Mississippi—you can't stop it.
If you tried to build a dam across it, it would not hurt
the flood, and it would not benefit you. You can guide
it between levees so as to prevent its doing injury, and
so as to insure its doing good. Another thing; you don't
build those levees in a day or in a month. A man who
told you that he had a patent device by which in sixty
days he would solve the whole question of the floods
along the lower Mississippi would not be a wise man; but
he would be a perfect miracle of wisdom compared to
the man who tells you that by any one patent remedy
he can bring the millennium in our industrial and social
affairs.
We can do something; I believe we can do a good deal,
but our accomplishing what I expect to see accomplished
is conditioned upon our setting to work in a spirit as far
removed as possible from hysteria—a spirit of sober,
steadfast, kindly—I want to emphasize that—kindly determination
not to submit to wrong ourselves and not to
wrong others, not to interfere with the great business
development of the country, and at the same time so to
if we cannot eradicate, the unpleasant and vicious features
connected with that industrial development. I
have said that there can be no patent remedy. There
is not any one thing which can be done to remove all of
the existing evils. There are a good many things which,
if we do them all, will, I believe, make a very appreciable
betterment in the existing conditions. To do that is not
to make a promise that will evoke wild enthusiasm, but a
promise that can be kept; and in the long run it is much
more comfortable only to make promises that can be kept
than to make promises which are sure of an immense reception
when made, but which entail intolerable humiliation
when it is attempted to carry them out.
I am sufficiently fortunate to be advocating now, as
President, precisely the remedies that I advocated two
years ago—advocating them not in any partisan spirit,
because, gentlemen, this problem is one which affects the
life of the nation as a whole—but advocating them simply
as the American citizen who, for the time being, stands
as the Chief Executive and, therefore, the special representative
of his fellow-American citizens of all parties.
A century and a quarter ago there had been no development
of industry such as to make it a matter of the
least importance whether the Nation or the State had
charge of the great corporations or supervised the great
business and industrial organizations. A century and a
quarter ago, here at Wheeling, commerce was carried on
by pack train, by wagon train, by boat. That was the
way it was carried on throughout the whole civilized
world—oars and sails, wheeled vehicles and beasts of
burden—those were the means of carrying on commerce
at the end of the eighteenth century, when this country
became a nation.
There had been no radical change, no essential change,
in the means of carrying on commerce from the days when
For four or five thousand years, perhaps
longer, from the immemorial past when Babylon and
Nineveh stood in Mesopotamia, when Thebes and Memphis
were mighty in the valley of the Nile—from that
time on through the supremacy of Greece and of Rome,
through the upbuilding of the great trading cities like
Venice and Genoa in Italy, like the cities of the Rhine
and the Netherlands in Northern Europe—on through
the period of the great expansion of European civilization
which followed the voyages of Columbus and Vasco
da Gama, down to the time when this country became a
nation—the means of commercial intercourse remained
substantially unchanged. Those means, therefore, limited
narrowly what could be done by any corporation,
the growth that could take place in any community.
Suddenly, during our own lifetime as a nation—a lifetime
trivial in duration compared to the period of recorded
history—there came a revolution in the means of intercourse
which made a change in commerce, and in all that
springs from commerce, in industrial development, greater
than all the changes of the preceding thousands of years.
A greater change in the means of commerce of mankind
has taken place since Wheeling was founded, since the
first settlers built their log huts in the great forests on the
banks of this river, than in all the previous period during
which man had led an existence that can be called civilized.
Through the railway, the electric telegraph, and other
developments, steam and electricity worked a complete
revolution. This has meant, of course, that entirely new
problems have sprung up. You have right in this immediate
neighborhood a very much larger population than
any similar region in all the United States held when the
Continental Congress began its sessions; and the change
in industrial conditions has been literally immeasurable.
Those changed conditions need a corresponding change in
and supervision.
Such agencies were not provided, and could not have
been provided, in default of a knowledge of prophecy by
the men who founded the Republic. In those days each
State could take care perfectly well of any corporations
within its limits, and all it had to do was to try to encourage
their upbuilding. Now the big corporations, although
nominally the creatures of one State, usually do business
in other States, and in a very large number of cases the
wide variety of State laws on the subject of corporations
has brought about the fact that the corporation is made
in one State, but does almost all its work in entirely different
States.
It has proved utterly impossible to get anything like
uniformity of legislation among the States. Some States
have passed laws about corporations which, if they had
not been ineffective, would have totally prevented any
important corporate work being done within their limits.
Other States have such lax laws that there is no effective
effort made to control any of the abuses. As a result we
have a system of divided control—where the nation has
something to say, but it is a little difficult to know exactly
how much, and where the different States have each
something to say, but where there is no supreme power
that can speak with authority. It is, of course, a mere
truism to say that every corporation, the smallest as well
as the largest, is the creature of the State. Where the
corporation is small there is very little need of exercising
much supervision over it, but the stupendous corporations
of the present day certainly should be under governmental
supervision and regulation. The first effort to
make is to give somebody the power to exercise that
supervision, that regulation. We have already laws on
the statute books. Those laws will be enforced, and
are being enforced, with all the power of the National
the power is very limited. Now I want you to take my
words at their exact value. I think—I cannot say I am
sure, because it has often happened in the past that Congress
has passed a law with a given purpose in view, and
when that law has been judicially interpreted it has
proved that the purpose was not achieved—but I think
that by legislation additional power in the way of regulation
of at least a number of these great corporations
can be conferred. But, gentlemen, I firmly believe that
in the end power must be given to the National Government
to exercise in full supervision and regulation of these
great enterprises; and if necessary a constitutional amendment
must be resorted to for this purpose.
That is not new doctrine for me. That is the doctrine
that I advocated on the stump two years ago. Some of
my ultra-conservative friends have professed to be greatly
shocked at my advocating it now. I would explain to
those gentlemen, once for all, that they err whenever they
think that I advocate on the stump anything that I will
not try to put into effect after election. The objection
is made that working along these lines will take time. So
it will. Let me go back to my illustration of the Mississippi
River. It took time to build the levees, but we
built them. And if we have the proper intelligence, the
proper resolution, and the proper self-restraint, we can
work out the solution along the lines that I have indicated.
Thus, the first thing is to give the National Government
the power. All the power that is given, I can
assure you, will be used in a spirit as free as possible from
rancor of any kind, but with the firmest determination to
make big man and little man alike obey the law.
What we need first is power. Having gotten the power,
remember the work won't be ended—it will be only fairly
begun. And let me say again and again and again that
you will not get the millennium—the millennium is some
stride in advance in the direction of securing a juster,
fairer, wiser management of many of these corporations,
both as regards the general public and as regards their
relationship among themselves and to the investing public.
When we have the power I most earnestly hope, and
should most earnestly advocate, that it be used with the
greatest wisdom and self-restraint.
The first thing to do would be to find out the facts.
For that purpose I am absolutely clear that we need publicity—that
we need it not as a matter of favor from any
one corporation, but as a matter of right, secured through
the agents of the Government, from all the corporations
concerned. The mere fact of the publicity itself will tend
to stop many of the evils, and it will show that some
other alleged evils are imaginary, and finally in making
evident the remaining evils-those that are not imaginary
and that are not cured by the simple light of day—it will
give us an intelligent appreciation of the methods to take
in getting at them. We should have, under such circumstances,
one sovereign to whom the big corporations
should be responsible—a sovereign in whose courts a
corporation could be held accountable for any failure to
comply with the laws of the legislature of that sovereign.
I do not think you can accomplish that among the forty-six
sovereigns of the States. I think that it will have to
be through the National Government.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |