 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
IX
AT MUSIC HALL, CINCINNATI, OHIO, ON THE
EVENING OF SEPTEMBER 20, 1902
Mr. Mayor, and you, my fellow-Americans:
I shall ask your attention to what I say to-night, because
I intend to make a perfectly serious argument to
you, and I shall be obliged if you will remain as still as
possible; and I ask that those at the very back will remember
that if they talk or make a noise it interferes
with the hearing of the rest. I intend to speak to you
on a serious subject and to make an argument as the
Chief Executive of a nation, who is the President of all
the people, without regard to party, without regard to
section. I intend to make to you an argument from the
standpoint simply of one American talking to his fellow-Americans
upon one of the great subjects of interest to
all alike; and that subject is what are commonly known
as the trusts. The word is used very loosely and almost
always with technical inaccuracy. The average man,
however, when he speaks of the trusts means rather
vaguely all of the very big corporations, the growth of
which has been so signal a feature of our modern civilization,
and especially those big corporations which, though
organized in one State, do business in several States, and
often have a tendency to monopoly.
The whole subject of the trusts is of vital concern to us,
because it presents one, and perhaps the most conspicuous,
of the many problems forced upon our attention by
place during the last century, a development which is
occurring in all civilized countries, notably in our own.
There have been many factors responsible for bringing
about these changed conditions. Of these, steam and
electricity are the chief. The extraordinary changes in
the methods of transportation of merchandise and of
transmission of news have rendered not only possible, but
inevitable, the immense increase in the rate of growth of
our great industrial centres—that is, of our great cities.
I want you to bring home to yourselves that fact. When
Cincinnati was founded, news could be transmitted and
merchandise carried exactly as had been the case in the
days of the Roman Empire. You had here on your river
the flatboat, you had on the ocean the sailing-ship, you
had the pack-train, you had the wagon, and every one of
the four was known when Babylon fell. The change in the
last hundred years has been greater by far than the changes
in all the preceding three thousand. Those are the facts.
Because of them have resulted the specialization of industries,
and the unexampled opportunities offered for the
employment of huge amounts of capital, and therefore
for the rise in the business world of those master minds
through whom alone it is possible for such vast amounts
of capital to be employed with profit. It matters very
little whether we like these new conditions or whether
we dislike them; whether we like the creation of
these new opportunities or not. Many admirable qualities
which were developed in the older, simpler, less progressive
life, have tended to atrophy under our rather
feverish, high-pressure, complex life of to-day. But our
likes and dislikes have nothing to do with the matter.
The new conditions are here. You can't bring back the
old days of the canal-boat and stage-coach if you wish.
The steamboat and the railroad are here. The new forces
have produced both good and evil. We cannot get rid
them; and our instant duty is to try to accommodate
our social, economic, and legislative life to them, and to
frame a system of law and conduct under which we shall
get out of them the utmost possible benefit and the least
possible amount of harm. It is foolish to pride ourselves
upon our progress and prosperity, upon our commanding
position in the international industrial world, and at the
same time have nothing but denunciation for the men to
whose commanding position we in part owe this very
progress and prosperity, this commanding position.
Whenever great social or industrial changes take place,
no matter how much good there may be to them, there
is sure to be some evil, and it usually takes mankind a
number of years and a good deal of experimenting before
they find the right ways in which, so far as possible, to
control the new evil, without at the same time nullifying
the new good. I am stating facts so obvious that if each
one of you will think them over, you will think them
trite, but if you read or listen to some of the arguments
advanced, you will come to the conclusion that there is
need of learning these trite truths. In these circumstances
the effort to bring the new tendencies to a standstill
is always futile and generally mischievous; but it is
possible somewhat to develop them aright. Law can to
a degree guide, protect, and control industrial development,
but it can never cause it, or play more than a subordinate
part in its healthy development—unfortunately
it is easy enough by bad laws to bring it to an almost
complete stop.
In dealing with the big corporations which we call
trusts, we must resolutely purpose to proceed by evolution
and not revolution. We wish to face the facts, declining
to have our vision blinded either by the folly of
. those who say there are no evils, or by the more dangerous
folly of those who either see, or make believe that
who if given their way would destroy the evil by the
simple process of bringing ruin and disaster to the entire
country. The evils attendant upon over-capitalization
alone are, in my judgment, sufficient to warrant a far
closer supervision and control than now exist over the
great corporations. Wherever a substantial monopoly can
be shown to exist, we should certainly try our utmost
to devise an expedient by which it can be controlled.
Doubtless some of the evils existing in or because of the
great corporations, cannot be cured by any legislation
which has yet been proposed, and doubtless others, which
have really been incident to the sudden development in
the formation of corporations of all kinds, will in the
end cure themselves. But there will remain a certain
number which can be cured if we decide that by the
power of the Government they are to be cured. The
surest way to prevent the possibility of curing any of
them is to approach the subject in a spirit of violent rancor,
complicated with total ignorance of business interests,
and fundamental incapacity or unwillingness to understand
the limitations upon all law-making bodies. No
problem, and least of all so difficult a problem as this,
can be solved if the qualities brought to its solution are
panic, fear, envy, hatred, and ignorance. There can
exist in a free republic no man more wicked, no man
more dangerous to the people, than he who would
arouse these feelings in the hope that they would redound
to his own political advantage. Corporations
that are handled honestly and fairly, so far from being
an evil, are a natural business evolution and make
for the general prosperity of our land. We do not wish
to destroy corporations, but we do wish to make them
subserve the public good. All individuals, rich or poor,
private or corporate, must be subject to the law of the.
land; and the Government will hold them to a rigid obedience
private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the
will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law.
The rich man who does not see that this is in his interest
is, indeed, short-sighted. When we make him obey the
law we insure for him the absolute protection of the law.
The savings banks show what can be done in the way
of genuinely beneficent work by large corporations when
intelligently administered and supervised. They now
hold over twenty-six hundred millions of the people's
money and pay annually about one hundred millions of
interest or profit to their depositors. There is no talk of
danger from these corporations; yet they possess great
power, holding over three times the amount of our present
national debt; more than all the currency, gold,
silver, greenbacks, etc., in circulation in the United
States. The chief reason for there being no talk of danger
from them is that they are, on the whole, faithfully
administered for the benefit of all, under wise laws which
require frequent and full publication of their condition,
and which prescribe certain needful regulations with which
they have to comply, while at the same time giving full
scope for the business enterprise of their managers within
these limits.
Now, of course, savings banks are as highly specialized
a class of corporations as railroads, and we cannot force
too far the analogy with other corporations; but there
are certain conditions which I think we can lay down as
indispensable to the proper treatment of all corporations
which from their size have become important factors in
the social development of the community.
Before speaking, however, of what can be done by way
of remedy, let me say a word or two as to certain proposed
remedies which, in my judgment, would be ineffective or
mischievous. The first thing to remember is that if we
are to accomplish any good at all it must be by resolutely
in the conduct of big corporations, while steadfastly refusing
to assent to indiscriminate assault upon all forms
of corporate capital as such. The line of demarcation we
draw must always be on conduct, not upon wealth; our
objection to any given corporation must be, not that it is
big, but that it behaves badly. Perfectly simple again,
my friends, but not always heeded by some of those who
would strive to teach us how to act toward big corporations.
Treat the head of the corporation as you would
treat all other men. If he does well stand by him. You
will occasionally find the head of a big corporation who
objects to that treatment; very good, apply it all the
more carefully. Remember, after all, that he who objects
because he is the head of a big corporation to being
treated like any one else is only guilty of the same sin as
the man who wishes him treated worse than any one else
because he is the head of a big corporation. Demagogic
denunciation of wealth is never wholesome and generally
dangerous; and not a few of the proposed methods of
curbing the trusts are dangerous chiefly because all insincere
advocacy of the impossible is dangerous. It is
an unhealthy thing for a community when the appeal is
made to follow a course which those who make the appeal
either do know or ought to know cannot be followed;
and which if followed would result in disaster to
everybody. Loose talk about destroying monopoly out
of hand, without a hint as to how the monopoly should
even be defined, offers a case in point.
Nor can we afford to tolerate any proposal which will
strike at the so-called trusts only by striking at the general
well-being. We are now enjoying a period of great prosperity.
The prosperity is generally diffused through all
sections and through all classes. Doubtless there are some
individuals who do not get enough of it, and there are
others who get too much. That is simply another way of
the best human system does not work perfectly. You don't
have to take my word for that. Look back just nine years.
In 1893 nobody was concerned in downing the trusts.
Everybody was concerned in trying to get up himself.
The men who propose to get rid of the evils of the trusts
by measures which would do away with the general wellbeing,
advocate a policy which would not only be a damage
to the community as a whole, but which would defeat
its own professed object. If we are forced to the alternative
of choosing either a system under which most of
us prosper somewhat, though a few of us prosper too
much, or else a system under which no one prospers
enough, of course we will choose the former. If the
policy advocated is so revolutionary and destructive as
to involve the whole community in the crash of common
disaster, it is as certain as anything can be that when the
disaster has occurred all efforts to regulate the trusts will
cease, and that the one aim will be to restore prosperity.
A remedy much advocated at the moment is to take
off the tariff from all articles which are made by trusts.
To do this it will be necessary first to define trusts. The
language commonly used by the advocates of the method
implies that they mean all articles made by large corporations,
and that the changes in tariff are to be made with
punitive intent towards these large corporations. Of
course, if the tariff is to be changed in order to punish
them, it should be changed so as to punish those that do
ill, not merely those that are prosperous. It would be
neither just nor expedient to punish the big corporations
as big corporations; what we wish to do is to protect the
people from any evil that may grow out of their existence
or mal-administration. Some of those corporations do
well and others do ill. If in any case the tariff is found
to foster a monopoly which does ill, of course no protectionist
would object to a modification of the tariff
the so-called trust really monopolize the market. Take
any very big corporation—I could mention them by the
score—which controls say something in the neighborhood
of half of the products of a given industry. It is the kind
of corporation that is always spoken of as a trust. Surely,
in rearranging the schedules affecting such a corporation
it would be necessary to consider the interests of its
smaller competitors which control the remaining part, and
which, being weaker, would suffer most from any tariff
designed to punish all the producers; for, of course, the
tariff must be made light or heavy for big and little producers
alike. Moreover, such a corporation necessarily
employs very many thousands, often very many tens of
thousands of workmen, and the minute we proceeded
from denunciation to action it would be necessary to consider
the interests of these workmen. Furthermore, the
products of many trusts are unprotected, and would be
entirely unaffected by any change in the tariff, or at most
very slightly so. The Standard Oil Company offers a
case in point; and the corporations which control the
anthracite coal output offer another—for there is no duty
whatever on anthracite coal.
I am not now discussing the question of the tariff
as such; whether from the standpoint of the fundamental
difference between those who believe in a protective
tariff and those who believe in free trade; or
from the standpoint of those who, while they believe
in a protective tariff, feel that there could be a rearrangement
of our schedules, either by direct legislation
or by reciprocity treaties, which would result in enlarging
our markets; nor yet from the standpoint of those
who feel that stability of economic policy is at the moment
our prime economic need, and that the benefits to be
derived from any change in schedules would not compensate
for the damage to business caused by the widespread
revision of the tariff at this moment. Without regard to
the wisdom of any one of those three positions, it remains
true that the real evils connected with the trusts cannot
be remedied by any change in the tariff laws. The trusts
can be damaged by depriving them of the benefits of a
protective tariff, only on condition of damaging all their
smaller competitors, and all the wage workers employed
in the industry. This point is very important, and it is
desirable to avoid any misunderstanding concerning it.
I am not now considering whether or not, on grounds
totally unconnected with the trusts, it would be well
to lower the duties on various schedules, either by direct
legislation, or by legislation or treaties designed to secure
as an offset reciprocal advantages from the nations
with which we trade. My point is that changes in the
tariff would have little appreciable effect on the trusts save
as they shared in the general harm or good proceeding
from such changes. No tariff change would help one of
our smaller corporations, or one of our private individuals
in business, still less one of our wage workers, as against
a large corporation in the same business; on the contrary,
if it bore heavily on the large corporation, it would inevitably
be felt still more by that corporation's weaker rivals,
while any injurious result would of necessity be shared by
both the employer and the employed in the business concerned.
The immediate introduction of substantial free
trade in all articles manufactured by trusts, that is, by the
largest and most successful corporations, would not affect
some of the most powerful of our business combinations
in the least, save by the damage done to the general business
welfare of the country; others would undoubtedly
be seriously affected, but much less so than their weaker
rivals, while the loss would be divided between the capitalists
and the laborers; and after the years of panic and
distress had been lived through, and some return to
plane of prosperity than before, the relative difference between
the trusts and their rivals would remain as marked
as ever. In other words, the trust, or big corporation,
would have suffered relatively to, and in the interest of,
its foreign competitor; but its relative position towards
its American competitors would probably be improved;
little would have been done towards cutting out or minimizing
the evils in the trusts; nothing towards securing
adequate control and regulation of the large modern corporations.
In other words, the question of regulating
the trusts with a view to minimizing or abolishing the
evils existent in them, is separate and apart from the
question of tariff revision.
You must face the fact that only harm will come from
a proposition to attack the so-called trusts in a vindictive
spirit by measures conceived solely with a desire of hurting
them, without regard as to whether or not discrimination
should be made between the good and evil in them,
and without even any regard as to whether a necessary
sequence of the action would be the hurting of other
interests. The adoption of such a policy would mean
temporary damage to the trusts, because it would mean
temporary damage to all of our business interests; but
the effect would be only temporary, for exactly as the
damage affected all alike, good and bad, so the reaction
would affect all alike, good and bad. The necessary
supervision and control in which I firmly believe as the
only method of eliminating the real evils of the trusts
must come through wisely and cautiously framed legislation
which shall aim, in the first place, to give definite
control to some sovereign over the great corporations,
and which shall be followed, when once this power has
been conferred, by a system giving to the Government
the full knowledge which is the essential for satisfactory
action. Then when this knowledge—one of the essential
what further steps of any kind are necessary can be taken
with the confidence born of the possession of power to
deal with the subject, and of a thorough knowledge of
what should and can be done in the matter.
We need additional power; and we need knowledge.
Our Constitution was framed when the economic conditions
were so different that each State could wisely be
left to handle the corporations within its limits as it saw
fit. Nowadays all the corporations which I am considering
do what is really an interstate business, and as the States
have proceeded on very different lines in regulating them,
at present a corporation will be organized in one State, not
because it intends to do business in that State, but because
it does not, and therefore that State can give it better
privileges, and then it will do business in some other
States, and will claim not to be under the control of the
States in which it does business; and of course it is not
the object of the State creating it to exercise any control
over it, as it does not do any business in that State.
Such a system cannot obtain. There must be some sovereign.
It might be better if all the States could agree
along the same lines in dealing with these corporations,
but I see not the slightest prospect of such an agreement.
Therefore I personally feel that ultimately the nation will
have to assume the responsibility of regulating these very
large corporations which do an interstate business. The
States must combine to meet the way in which capital
has combined; and the way in which the States can combine
is through the National Government. But I firmly
believe that all these obstacles can be met if only we face
them, both with the determination to overcome them,
and with the further determination to overcome them in
ways which shall not do damage to the country as a
whole; which, on the contrary, shall further our industrial
development, and shall help instead of hindering all
are just and fair towards all men.
Without the adoption of a constitutional amendment
my belief is that a good deal can be -done by law. It is
difficult to say exactly how much, because experience has
taught us that in dealing with these subjects where the
lines dividing the rights and duties of the States and of
the nation are in doubt it has sometimes been difficult
for Congress to forecast the action of the courts upon its
legislation. Such legislation (whether obtainable now,
or obtainable only after a constitutional amendment)
should provide for a reasonable supervision, the most
prominent feature of which at first should be publicity;
that is, the making public both to the governmental
authorities and to the people at large the essential facts
in which the public is concerned. This would give us
exact knowledge of many points which are now not only
in doubt but the subject of fierce controversy. Moreover,
the mere fact of the publication would cure some
very grave evils, for the light of day is a deterrent to
wrong-doing. It would doubtless disclose other evils
with which for the time being we could devise no way to
grapple. Finally, it would disclose others which could
be grappled with and cured by further legislative action.
Remember, I advocate the action which the President
can only advise, and which he has no power himself to
take. Under our present legislative and constitutional
limitations, the national executive can work only between
narrow lines in the field of action concerning great corporations.
Between those lines, I assure you that exact
and even-handed justice will be dealt, and is being dealt,
to all men, without regard to persons.
I wish to repeat with all emphasis that, desirable though
it is that the nation should have the power I suggest, it is
equally desirable that it should be used with wisdom and
self-restraint. The mechanism of modern business is
with it would be disastrous. We should
not be made timid or daunted by the size of the problem;
we should not fear to undertake it; but we should undertake
it with ever present in our minds dread of the sinister
spirits of rancor, ignorance, and vanity. We need to
keep steadily in mind the fact that besides the tangible
property in each corporation there lies behind the spirit
which brings it success, and in the case of each very successful
corporation this is usually the spirit of some one
man or set of men. Under exactly similar conditions
one corporation will make a stupendous success where
another makes a stupendous failure, simply because one
is well managed and the other is not. While making it
clear that we do not intend to allow wrong-doing by one
of the captains of industry any more than by the humblest
private in the industrial ranks, we must also in the interests
of all of us avoid cramping a strength which, if
beneficently used, will be for the good of all of us. The
marvellous prosperity we have been enjoying for the past
few years has been due primarily to the high average of
honesty, thrift, and business capacity among our people
as a whole; but some of it has also been due to the ability
of the men who are the industrial leaders of the nation.
In securing just and fair dealing by these men let us remember
to do them justice in return, and this not only
because it is our duty, but because it is our interest; not
only for their sakes, but for ours. We are neither the
friend of the rich man as such nor the friend of the poor
man as such; we are the friend of the honest man, rich or
poor; and we intend that all men, rich and poor alike,
shall obey the law alike and receive its protection alike.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |