Chapter VI: Part 6

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 the engineers, of the lower Mississippi River. No one 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 can not 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 can not 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 ensure 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 shape our legislation and administration as to minimize, if we can not 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 the Phœnician galleys plowed the waters of the Mediterranean. 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 the governmental agencies necessary for their regulation 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 Government, and wholly without regard to persons. But the power is very limited. Now I want you to take my words at their exact value. I think—I can not 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 way off yet. But you will be in a position to make long strides 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.

TO THE BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN, CHATTANOOGA, TENN., SEPTEMBER 8, 1902

_Mr. Grand Master, Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor, my Brothers, my
Fellow-Citizens_:

I am glad to be here to-day. I am glad to come as the guest of the Brotherhood. Let me join with you, the members of the Brotherhood of this country, in extending a most cordial welcome to our fellows from Canada and Mexico. The fact that we are good Americans only makes us all the better men, all the more desirous of seeing good fortune to all mankind. I needed no pressing to accept the invitation tendered through you, Mr. Hannahan, and through Mr. Arnold, to come to this meeting. I have always admired greatly the railroad men of the country, and I do not see how any one who believes in what I regard as the fundamental virtues of citizenship can fail to do so. I want to see the average American a good man, an honest man, and a man who can handle himself, and does handle himself, well under difficulties. The last time I ever saw General Sherman, I dined at his house, and we got to talking over the capacity of different types of soldiers, and the General happened to say that if ever there were another war, and he were to have a command, he should endeavor to get as many railway men as possible under him. I asked him why, and he said, “Because on account of their profession they have developed certain qualities which are essential in a soldier.” In the first place, they are accustomed to taking risks. There are a great many men who are naturally brave, but who, being entirely unaccustomed to risks, are at first appalled by them. Railroad men are accustomed to enduring hardship; they are accustomed to irregular hours; they are accustomed to act on their own responsibility, on their own initiative, and yet they are accustomed to obeying orders quickly. There is not anything more soul-harrowing for a man in time of war, or for a man engaged in a difficult job in time of peace, than to give an order and have the gentleman addressed say “What?” The railroad man has to learn that when an order is issued there may be but a fraction of a second in which to obey it. He has to learn that orders are to be obeyed, and, on the other hand, that there will come plenty of crises in which there will be no orders to be obeyed, and he will have to act for himself.

Those are all qualities that go to the very essence of good soldiership, and I am not surprised at what General Sherman said. In raising my own regiment, which was raised mainly in the Southwest, partly in the Territory in which Mr. Sargent himself served as a soldier at one time—in Arizona—I got a number of railroad men. Of course, the first requisite was that a man should know how to shoot and how to ride. We were raising the regiment in a hurry, and we did not have time to teach him either. He had to know how to handle a horse and how to handle a rifle, to start with. But given the possession of those two qualities, I found that there was no group of our citizens from whom better men could be drawn to do a soldier’s work in a tight place and at all times than the railroad men.

But, gentlemen, the period of war is but a fractional part of the life of our Republic, and I earnestly hope and believe that it will be an even smaller part in the future than it has been in the past. It was the work that you have done in time of peace that especially attracted me to you, that made me anxious to come down here and see you, and that made me glad to speak to you, not for what I can tell you, but for the lesson it seems to me can be gained by all of our people from what you have done.

At the opening of the twentieth century we face conditions vastly changed from what they were in this country and throughout the world a century ago. Our complex industrial civilization under which progress has been so rapid, and in which the changes for good have been so great, has also inevitably seen the growth of certain tendencies that are not for good, or at least that are not wholly for good; and we in consequence, as a people, like the rest of civilized mankind, find set before us for solution during the coming century problems which need the best thought of all of us, and the most earnest desire of all to solve them well if we expect to work out a solution satisfactory to our people, a solution for the advantage of the nation. In facing these problems, it must be a comfort to every well-wisher of the nation to see what has been done by your organization. I believe emphatically in organized labor. I believe in organizations of wage-workers. Organization is one of the laws of our social and economic development at this time. But I feel that we must always keep before our minds the fact that there is nothing sacred in the name itself. To call an organization an organization does not make it a good one. The worth of an organization depends upon its being handled with the courage, the skill, the wisdom, the spirit of fair dealing as between man and man, and the wise self-restraint which, I am glad to be able to say, your Brotherhood has shown. You now number close upon 44,000 members. During the two years ending June 30 last you paid in to the general and beneficiary funds close upon a million and a half dollars. More than six and one-half millions have been paid in since the starting of the insurance clause in the constitution—have been paid to disabled members and their beneficiaries. Over fifty per cent of the amount paid was paid on account of accidents. Gentlemen, that is a sufficient commentary upon the kind of profession which is yours. You face death and danger in time of peace, as in time of war the men wearing Uncle Sam’s uniform must face them.

Your work is hard. Do you suppose I mention that because I pity you? No; not a bit. I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. The law of worthy work well done is the law of successful American life. I believe in play, too—play, and play hard while you play; but don’t make the mistake of thinking that that is the main thing. The work is what counts, and if a man does his work well and it is worth doing, then it matters but little in which line that work is done; the man is a good American citizen. If he does his work in slip-shod fashion, then no matter what kind of work it is, he is a poor American citizen.

I speak to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, but what I say applies to all railroad men—not only to the engineers who have served an apprenticeship as firemen, to the conductors, who, as a rule, have served an apprenticeship as brakemen, but to all the men of all the organizations connected with railroad work. I know you do not grudge my saying that, through you, I am talking to all the railroad men of the country. You, in your organization as railroad men, have taught two lessons: the lesson of how much can be accomplished by organization, by mutual self-help of the type that helps another in the only way by which, in the long run,—that is, by teaching him to help himself. You teach the benefits of organization, and you also teach the indispensable need of keeping absolutely unimpaired the faculty of individual initiative, the faculty by which each man brings himself to the highest point of perfection by exercising the special qualities with which he is himself endowed. The Brotherhood has developed to this enormous extent since the days, now many years ago, when the first little band came together; and it has developed, not by crushing out individual initiative, but by developing it, by combining many individual initiatives.

The Brotherhood of Firemen does much for all firemen, but I firmly believe that the individual fireman since the growth of the Brotherhood has been more, not less, efficient than he was twenty years ago. Membership in the Brotherhood comes, as I understand it, after a nine months’ probationary period; after a man has shown his worth, he is then admitted and stands on his footing as a brother. Now, any man who enters with the purpose of letting the Brotherhood carry him is not worth much. The man who counts in the Brotherhood is the man who pulls his own weight and a little more. Much can be done by the Brotherhood. I have just hinted in the general figures I gave you, at how much has been done, but it still remains true in the Brotherhood, and everywhere else throughout American life, that in the last resort nothing can supply the place of the man’s own individual qualities. We need those, no matter how perfect the organization is outside. There is just as much need of nerve, hardihood, power to face risks and accept responsibilities, in the engineer and the fireman, whether on a flyer or a freight train, now as there ever was. Much can be done by the Association. A great deal can be accomplished by working each for all and all for each; but we must not forget that the first requisite in accomplishing that is that each man should work for others by working for himself, by developing his own capacity.

The steady way in which a man can rise is illustrated by a little thing that happened yesterday. I came down here over the Queen and Crescent Railroad, and the General Manager, who handled my train and who handled yours, was Mr. Maguire. I used to know him in the old days when he was on his way up, and he began right at the bottom. He was a fireman at one time. He worked his way straight up, and now he is General Manager.

I believe so emphatically in your organization because, while it teaches the need of working in union, of working in association, of working with deep in our hearts, not merely on our lips, the sense of Brotherhood, yet of necessity it still keeps, as your organization always must keep, to the forefront the worth of the individual qualities of a man. I said to you that I came here in a sense not to speak to you, but to use your experience as an object-lesson for all of us, an object-lesson in good American citizenship. All professions, of course, do not call for the exercise to the same degree of the qualities of which I have spoken. Your profession is one of those which I am inclined to feel play in modern life a greater part from the standpoint of character than we entirely realize. There is in modern life, with the growth of civilization and luxury, a certain tendency to softening of the national fibre. There is a certain tendency to forget, in consequence of their disuse, the rugged virtues which lie at the back of manhood; and I feel that professions like yours, like the profession of the railroad men of the country, have a tonic effect upon the whole body politic.

It is a good thing that there should be a large body of our fellow-citizens—that there should be a profession—whose members must, year in and year out, display those old, old qualities of courage, daring, resolution, unflinching willingness to meet danger at need. I hope to see all our people develop the softer, gentler virtues to an ever increasing degree, but I hope never to see them lose the sterner virtues that make men men.

A man is not going to be a fireman or an engineer, or serve well in any other capacity on a railroad long if he has a “streak of yellow” in him. You are going to find it out, and he is going to be painfully conscious of it, very soon. It is a fine thing for our people that we should have those qualities in evidence before us in the life-work of a big group of our citizens.

In American citizenship, we can succeed permanently only upon the basis of standing shoulder to shoulder, working in association, by organization, each working for all, and yet remembering that we need each so to shape things that each man can develop to best advantage all the forces and powers at his command. In your organization you accomplish much by means of the Brotherhood, but you accomplish it because of the men who go to make up that brotherhood.

If you had exactly the organization, exactly the laws, exactly the system, and yet were yourselves a poor set of men, the system would not save you. I will guarantee that, from time to time, you have men go in to try to serve for the nine months who prove that they do not have the stuff in them out of which you can make good men. You have to have the stuff in you, and, if you have the stuff, you can make out of it a much finer man by means of the association—but you must have the material out of which to make it. So it is in citizenship.

And now let me say a word, speaking not merely especially to the Brotherhood, but to all our citizens. Governor McMillan, Mr. Mayor: I fail to see how any American can come to Chattanooga and go over the great battle-fields in the neighborhood—the battle-fields here in this State and just across the border in my mother’s State of Georgia—how any American can come here and see evidences of the mighty deeds done by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray, and not go away a better American, prouder of the country, prouder because of the valor displayed on both sides in the contest—the valor, the self-devotion, the loyalty to the right as each side saw the right. Yesterday I was presented with a cane cut from the Chickamauga battle-field by some young men of Northern Georgia. On the cane were engraved the names of three Union generals and three Confederate generals. One of those Union generals was at that time showing me over the battle-field—General Boynton. Under one of the Confederate generals—General Wheeler—I myself served. In my regiment there served under me in the ranks a son of General Hood, who commanded at one time the Confederate army against General Sherman. The only captain whom I had the opportunity of promoting to field rank, and to whom the promotion was given for gallantry on the field, was Micah Jenkins, of South Carolina, the son of a Confederate general, whose name you will find recorded among those who fought at Chickamauga.

Two of my best captains were killed at Santiago—one was Allyn Capron, the fifth in line who, from father to son, had served in the regular army of the United States, who had served in every war in which our country had been engaged; the other, Bucky O’Neill. His father had fought under Meagher when, on the day at Fredericksburg, his brigade left more men under the stone wall than did any other brigade. I had in my regiment men from the North and the South; men from the East and the West; men whose fathers had fought under Grant, and whose fathers had fought under Lee; college graduates, capitalists’ sons, wage-workers, the man of means and the man who all his life had owed each day’s bread to the day’s toil. I had Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and Gentile under me. Among my captains were men whose forefathers had been among the first white men to settle on Massachusetts Bay and on the banks of the James, and others whose parents had come from Germany, from Ireland, from England, from France. They were all Americans, and nothing else, and each man stood on his worth as a man, to be judged by it, and to succeed or fail accordingly as he did well or ill. Compared to the giant death-wrestles that reeled over the mountains round about this city the fight at Santiago was the merest skirmish; but the spirit in which we handled ourselves there, I hope was the spirit in which we have to face our duties as citizens if we are to make this Republic what it must be made.

Yesterday, in passing over the Chickamauga battle-field, I was immensely struck by the monument raised by Kentucky to the Union and Confederate soldiers from Kentucky who fell on that battle-field. The inscription reads as follows: “As we are united in life, and they united in death, let one monument perpetuate their deeds, and one people, forgetful of all asperities, forever hold in grateful remembrance all the glories of that terrible conflict which made all men free and retained every star on the nation’s flag.” That is a good sentiment. That is a sentiment by which we can all stand. And oh, my friends! what does that sentiment have as its underlying spirit? The spirit of brotherhood!

I firmly believe in my countrymen, and therefore I believe that the chief thing necessary in order that they shall work together is that they shall know one another—that the Northerner shall know the Southerner, and the man of one occupation know the man of another occupation; the man who works in one walk of life know the man who works in another walk of life, so that we may realize that the things which divide us are superficial, are unimportant, and that we are, and must ever be, knit together into one indissoluble mass by our common American brotherhood.

AT DANVILLE, VA., SEPTEMBER 9, 1902

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

I did not expect to have the chance of speaking to any of you of Virginia on this trip. I only wish it had been my good fortune to be able to go through your grand and beautiful historic State by daylight. But you have not escaped me, gentlemen; I am going to come again.

Yesterday and to-day I spent in Tennessee and North Carolina. I have enjoyed much those two days. It is a good thing for any American, and it is an especially good thing for the American who happens to be President at any time, to go around in the country and meet his fellow-Americans of different sections and different States. The more he sees of his fellow-Americans the more he will realize that the differences which divide them are trivial and that the likenesses which unite them are fundamental. A good American is a good American wherever he is, and a bad American is a poor one wherever he is. If a man is a decent citizen, if he does his duty to his family, to his neighbors, to the State and the nation, as a decent man ought to, then he is a man who has a right to claim kinship and comradeship with every other decent American from one end of this country to the other. If he is a straight man he is a credit to all of us, and if he is a crooked man he is a disgrace to all of us. Fundamentally, for weal or for woe, we are knit together; we shall go up or go down together. If hard times come they come without much regard to State lines. If good times come they come without regard to State lines. Wherever a deed is done by an American which reflects credit upon our country, each of us can walk with his head a little higher in consequence; and wherever anything happens through the fault of any of us that is discreditable it discredits all of us more or less.

Gentlemen and ladies, I thank you greatly for having come down here to greet me. It is a genuine pleasure to see you. No man of the United States, proud of the history of the United States, can fail to feel certain associations of reverence and regard awakened when he treads the soil of Virginia, which has taken so leading a part in peace and in war throughout our history.

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 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 the tremendous industrial development which has taken 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 has been the case in the days of the Roman Empire. You had here on your river the flat-boat, 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 canalboat and stagecoach if you wish. The steamboat and the railroad are here. The new forces have produced both good and evil. We can not get rid of them—even if it were not undesirable to get rid of 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 they see, nothing but evil in all the existing system, and 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 exists 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 can not 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 thereof. The biggest corporation, like the humblest 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 ensure 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 can not 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 keeping in mind the intention to do away with any evils 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 is 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, can not 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 saying that the wisdom of mankind is finite; and that even 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 well-being, 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 toward 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 maladministration. 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 sufficient to remedy the evil. But in very few cases does 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 agitation which would follow any attempted general 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 can not 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 prosperity had occurred, even though all were on a lower 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 toward its American competitors would probably be improved; little would have been done toward cutting out or minimizing the evils in the trusts; nothing toward 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.