Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
fashion to regulate and control, in the public interest, the great
instrumentalities of modern business, which it is destructive of the
general welfare of the community to destroy, and which nevertheless it
is vitally necessary to that general welfare to regulate and control.
Competition will remain as a very important factor when once we have
destroyed the unfair business methods, the criminal interference with
the rights of others, which alone enabled certain swollen combinations
to crush out their competitors--and, incidentally, the "conservatives"
will do well to remember that these unfair and iniquitous methods by
great masters of corporate capital have done more to cause popular
discontent with the propertied classes than all the orations of all the
Socialist orators in the country put together.
I have spoken above of Senator Davis's admirable address delivered a
quarter of a century ago. Senator Davis's one-time partner, Frank B.
Kellogg, the Government counsel who did so much to win success for the
Government in its prosecutions of the trusts, has recently delivered
before the Palimpsest Club of Omaha an excellent address on the subject;
Mr. Prouty, of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, has recently, in
his speech before the Congregational Club of Brooklyn, dealt with
the subject from the constructive side; and in the proceedings of the
American Bar Association for 1904 there is an admirable paper on
the need of thoroughgoing Federal control over corporations doing an
inter-State business, by Professor Horace L. Wilgus, of the University
of Michigan. The National Government exercises control over inter-State
commerce railways, and it can in similar fashion, through an appropriate
governmental body, exercise control over all industrial organizations
engaged in inter-State commerce. This control should be exercised, not
by the courts, but by an administrative bureau or board such as the
Bureau of Corporations or the Inter-State Commerce Commission; for
the courts cannot with advantage permanently perform executive and
administrative functions.
APPENDIX B
THE CONTROL OF CORPORATIONS AND "THE NEW FREEDOM"
In his book "The New Freedom," and in the magazine articles of which
it is composed, which appeared just after he had been inaugurated as
President, Mr. Woodrow Wilson made an entirely unprovoked attack upon
me and upon the Progressive party in connection with what he asserts
the policy of that party to be concerning the trusts, and as regards my
attitude while President about the trusts.
I am reluctant to say anything whatever about President Wilson at the
outset of his Administration unless I can speak of him with praise.
I have scrupulously refrained from saying or doing one thing
since election that could put the slightest obstacle, even of
misinterpretation, in his path. It is to the interest of the country
that he should succeed in his office. I cordially wish him success, and
I shall cordially support any policy of his that I believe to be in the
interests of the people of the United States. But when Mr. Wilson, after
being elected President, within the first fortnight after he has been
inaugurated into that high office, permits himself to be betrayed into
a public misstatement of what I have said, and what I stand for, then he
forces me to correct his statements.
Mr. Wilson opens his article by saying that the Progressive "doctrine is
that monopoly is inevitable, and that the only course open to the people
of the United States is to submit to it." This statement is without one
particle of foundation in fact. I challenge him to point out a sentence
in the Progressive platform or in any speech of mine which bears him
out. I can point him out any number which flatly contradict him. We have
never made any such statement as he alleges about monopolies. We have
said: "The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The
concentration of modern business, in some degree, is both inevitable and
necessary for National and international business efficiency." Does Mr.
Wilson deny this? Let him answer yes or no, directly. It is easy for
a politician detected in a misstatement to take refuge in evasive
rhetorical hyperbole. But Mr. Wilson is President of the United States,
and as such he is bound to candid utterance on every subject of public
interest which he himself has broached. If he disagrees with us, let him
be frank and consistent, and recommend to Congress that all corporations
be made illegal. Mr. Wilson's whole attack is largely based on a deft
but far from ingenuous confounding of what we have said of monopoly,
which we propose so far as possible to abolish, and what we have said of
big corporations, which we propose to regulate; Mr. Wilson's own vaguely
set forth proposals being to attempt the destruction of both in ways
that would harm neither. In our platform we use the word "monopoly" but
once, and then we speak of it as an abuse of power, coupling it with
stock-watering, unfair competition and unfair privileges. Does Mr.
Wilson deny this? If he does, then where else will he assert that we
speak of monopoly as he says we do? He certainly owes the people of the
United States a plain answer to the question. In my speech of acceptance
I said: "We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting
agreements to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to
customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below cost in certain
areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power
of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and all
other unfair trade practices." The platform pledges us to "guard and
keep open equally to all, the highways of American commerce." This is
the exact negation of monopoly. Unless Mr. Wilson is prepared to show
the contrary, surely he is bound in honor to admit frankly that he has
been betrayed into a misrepresentation, and to correct it.
Mr. Wilson says that for sixteen years the National Administration has
"been virtually under the regulation of the trusts," and that the big
business men "have already captured the Government." Such a statement as
this might perhaps be pardoned as mere rhetoric in a candidate seeking
office--although it is the kind of statement that never under any
circumstances have I permitted myself to make, whether on the stump or
off the stump, about any opponent, unless I was prepared to back it up
with explicit facts. But there is an added seriousness to the charge
when it is made deliberately and in cold blood by a man who is at the
time President. In this volume I have set forth my relations with the
trusts. I challenge Mr. Wilson to controvert anything I have said, or to
name any trusts or any big business men who regulated, or in any
shape or way controlled, or captured, the Government during my term
as President. He must furnish specifications if his words are taken at
their face value--and I venture to say in advance that the absurdity
of such a charge is patent to all my fellow-citizens, not excepting Mr.
Wilson.
Mr. Wilson says that the new party was founded "under the leadership of
Mr. Roosevelt, with the conspicuous aid--I mention him with no satirical
intention, but merely to set the facts down accurately--of Mr. George W.
Perkins, organizer of the Steel Trust." Whether Mr. Wilson's intention
was satirical or not is of no concern; but I call his attention to the
fact that he has conspicuously and strikingly failed "to set the facts
down accurately." Mr. Perkins was not the organizer of the Steel Trust,
and when it was organized he had no connection with it or with the
Morgan people. This is well known, and it has again and again been
testified to before Congressional committees controlled by Mr. Wilson's
friends who were endeavoring to find out something against Mr. Perkins.
If Mr. Wilson does not know that my statement is correct, he ought to
know it, and he is not to be excused for making such a misstatement as
he has made when he has not a particle of evidence in support of it.
Mr. Perkins was from the beginning in the Harvester Trust but, when Mr.
Wilson points out this fact, why does he not add that he was the only
man in that trust who supported me, and that the President of the trust
ardently supported Mr. Wilson himself? It is disingenuous to endeavor to
conceal these facts, and to mislead ordinary citizens about them. Under
the administrations of both Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Perkins has
been singled out for special attack, obviously not because he belonged
to the Harvester and Steel Trusts, but because he alone among the
prominent men of the two corporations, fearlessly supported the only
party which afforded any real hope of checking the evil of the trusts.
Mr. Wilson states that the Progressives have "a programme perfectly
agreeable to monopolies."
The plain and unmistakable inference to be drawn from this and other
similar statements in his article, and the inference which he obviously
desired to have drawn, is that the big corporations approved the
Progressive plan and supported the Progressive candidate. If President
Wilson does not know perfectly well that this is not the case, he is
the only intelligent person in the United States who is thus ignorant.
Everybody knows that the overwhelming majority of the heads of the big
corporations supported him or Mr. Taft. It is equally well known that of
the corporations he mentions, the Steel and the Harvester Trusts, there
was but one man who took any part in the Progressive campaign, and that
almost all the others, some thirty in number, were against us, and some
of them, including the President of the Harvester Trust, openly and
enthusiastically for Mr. Wilson himself. If he reads the newspapers
at all, he must know that practically every man representing the
great financial interests of the country, and without exception every
newspaper controlled by Wall Street or State Street, actively supported
either him or Mr. Taft, and showed perfect willingness to accept either
if only they could prevent the Progressive party from coming into power
and from putting its platform into effect.
Mr. Wilson says of the trust plank in that platform that it "did not
anywhere condemn monopoly except in words." Exactly of what else could a
platform consist? Does Mr. Wilson expect us to use algebraic signs? This
criticism is much as if he said the Constitution or the Declaration of
Independence contained nothing but words. The Progressive platform did
contain words, and the words were admirably designed to express thought
and meaning and purpose. Mr. Wilson says that I long ago "classified
trusts for us as good and bad," and said that I was "afraid only of the
bad ones." Mr. Wilson would do well to quote exactly what my language
was, and where it was used, for I am at a loss to know what statement
of mine it is to which he refers. But if he means that I say that
corporations can do well, and that corporations can also do ill, he is
stating my position correctly. I hold that a corporation does ill if it
seeks profit in restricting production and then by extorting high prices
from the community by reason of the scarcity of the product; through
adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over-driving the help; or
replacing men workers with children; or by rebates; or in any illegal
or improper manner driving competitors out of its way; or seeking to
achieve monopoly by illegal or unethical treatment of its competitors,
or in any shape or way offending against the moral law either in
connection with the public or with its employees or with its rivals. Any
corporation which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly.
It is, in fact, a conspiracy against the public welfare which the