_Governor Crane, Mayor Collins, men and women of Boston_:
I want to take up this evening the general question of our economic
and social relations, with specific reference to that problem with
which I think our people are now greatly concerning themselves—the
problem of our complex social condition as intensified by the
existence of the great corporations which we rather loosely designate
as trusts. I have not come here to say that I have discovered a patent
cure-all for any evils. When people’s minds are greatly agitated on
any subject, and especially when they feel deeply but rather vaguely
that conditions are not right, it is far pleasanter in addressing them
to be indifferent as to what you promise; but it is much less pleasant
afterward when you come to try to carry out what has been promised. Of
course the worth of a promise consists purely in the way in which the
performance squares with it. That has two sides. In the first place,
if a man is an honest man he will try just as hard to keep a promise
made on the stump as one made off the stump. In the second place, if
the people keep their heads they won’t wish promises to be made which
are impossible of performance. You see, one side of that question
represents my duty, and the other side yours.
Mankind goes ahead but slowly, and it goes ahead mainly through each
of us trying to do the best that is in him and to do it in the sanest
way. We have founded our Republic upon the theory that the average
man will as a rule do the right thing, that in the long run the
majority will decide for what is sane and wholesome. If our fathers
were mistaken in that theory, if ever the times become such—not
occasionally but persistently—that the mass of the people do what
is unwholesome, what is wrong, then the Republic can not stand, I
care not how good its laws, I care not what marvelous mechanism its
Constitution may embody. Back of the laws, back of the administration,
back of the system of government lies the man, lies the average
manhood of our people, and in the long run we are going to go up or go
down accordingly as the average standard of our citizenship does or
does not wax in growth and grace.
The first requisite of good citizenship is that the man shall do the
homely, every-day, humdrum duties well. A man is not a good citizen,
I do not care how lofty his thoughts are about citizenship in the
abstract, if in the concrete his actions do not bear them out; and it
does not make much difference how high his aspirations for mankind
at large may be, if he does not behave well in his own family those
aspirations do not bear visible fruit. He must be a good bread-winner,
he must take care of his wife and his children, he must be a neighbor
whom his neighbors can trust, he must act squarely in his business
relations,—he must do all those every-day ordinary duties first,
or he is not a good citizen. But he must do more. In this country
of ours the average citizen must devote a good deal of thought and
time to the affairs of the State as a whole or those affairs will go
backward; and he must devote that thought and that time steadily and
intelligently. If there is any one quality that is not admirable,
whether in a nation or in an individual, it is hysterics, either in
religion or in anything else. The man or woman who makes up for ten
days’ indifference to duty by an eleventh-day morbid repentance about
that duty is of scant use in the world. Now in the same way it is of
no possible use to decline to go through all the ordinary duties of
citizenship for a long space of time and then suddenly to get up and
feel very angry about something or somebody, not clearly defined, and
demand reform, as if it were a concrete substance to be handed out
forthwith.
This is preliminary to what I want to say to you about the whole
question of great corporations as affecting the public. There are
very many and very difficult problems with which we are faced as
the results of the forces which have been in play for more than the
lifetime of a generation. It is worse than useless for any of us to
rail at or regret the great growth of our industrial civilization
during the last half century. Speaking academically, we can,
according to our several temperaments, regret that the old days with
the old life have vanished, or not, just as we choose; but we are here
to-night only because of the play of those great forces. There is but
little use in regretting that things have been shaping themselves
differently from what we might have preferred. The practical thing to
do is to face the conditions as they are and see if we can not get the
best there is in them out of them. Now we shall not get a complete or
perfect solution for all of the evils attendant upon the development
of the trusts by any single action on our part. A good many actions
in a good many different ways will be required before we get many
of those evils even partially remedied. We must first of all think
clearly; we must probably experiment somewhat; we must above all show
by our actions that our interest is permanent and not spasmodic; and
we must see that all proper steps are taken toward the solution. Now
of course all this is perfectly trite. Every one who thinks knows
that the only way in which any problem of great importance was ever
successfully solved was by consistent and persistent effort toward a
given end—effort that did not cease with any one election or with any
one year, but was continued steadily, temperately, but resolutely,
toward a given end. It is a little difficult to set clearly before
us all of the evils attendant upon the working of some of our great
corporations, but I think that those gentlemen, and especially those
gentlemen of large means, who deny that the evils exist are acting
with great folly. So far from being against property when I ask
that the question of the trusts be taken up, I am acting in the most
conservative sense in property’s interest. When a great corporation
is sued for violating the anti-trust law, it is not a move against
property, it is a move in favor of property, because when we make it
evident that all men, great and small alike, have to obey the law, we
put the safeguard of the law around all men. When we make it evident
that no man shall be excused for violating the law, we make it evident
that every man will be protected from violations of the law.
Now one of the great troubles—I am inclined to think much the greatest
trouble—in any immediate handling of the question of the trusts comes
from our system of government. Under this system it is difficult to
say where the power is lodged to deal with these evils. Remember that
I am not saying that even if we had all the power we could completely
solve the trust question. If what we read in the papers is true,
international trusts are now being planned. It is going to be very
difficult for any set of laws on our part to deal completely with a
problem which becomes international in its bearings. But a great deal
can be done in various ways even now—a great deal is being done—and
a great deal more can be done, if we see that the power is lodged
somewhere to do it. On the whole, our system of government has worked
marvelously well—the system of divided functions of government, of
a scheme under which Maine, Louisiana, Oregon, Idaho, New York,
Illinois, South Carolina, can all come together for certain purposes,
and yet each be allowed to work out its salvation as it desires along
certain other lines. On the whole, this has worked well; but in some
respects it has worked ill. While I most firmly believe in fixity
of policy, I do not believe that that policy should be fossilized,
and when conditions change we must change our governmental methods
to meet them. I believe with all my heart in the New England town
meeting, but you can’t work the New England town meeting in Boston—it
is too big. You must devise something else. If you look back in the
history of Boston you will find that Boston was very reluctant to
admit this particular truth for some time in the first decades of
the nineteenth century. When this government was founded there were
no great individual or corporate fortunes, and commerce and industry
were being carried on very much as they had been carried on in the
days when Nineveh and Babylon stood in the Mesopotamian Valley.
Sails, oars, wheels—these were the instruments of commerce. The pack
train, the wagon train, the rowboat, the sailing craft—these were
the methods of commerce. Everything has been revolutionized in the
business world since then, and the progress of civilization from
being a dribble has become a torrent. There was no particular need
at that time of bothering as to whether the nation or the State had
control of corporations. They were easy to control. Now, however, the
exact reverse is the case. And remember when I say corporations I
do not mean merely trusts technically so-called, merely combinations
of corporations, or corporations under certain peculiar conditions.
For instance, some time ago the Attorney-General took action against
a certain trust. There was considerable discussion as to whether
the trust aimed at would not seek to get out from under the law by
becoming a single corporation. Now, I want laws that will enable us to
deal with any evil no matter what shape it takes. I want to see the
government able to get at it definitely, so that the action of the
government can not be evaded by any turning within or without Federal
or State statutes. At present we have really no efficient control
over a big corporation which does business in more than one State.
Frequently the corporation has nothing whatever to do with the State
in which it is incorporated except to get incorporated; and all its
business may be done in entirely different communities—communities
which may object very much to the methods of incorporation in the
State named. I do not believe that you can get any action by any
State, I do not believe it practicable to get action by all the
States that will give us satisfactory control of the trusts, of big
corporations; and the result is at present that we have a great,
powerful, artificial creation which has no creator to which it is
responsible. The creator creates it and then it goes and operates
somewhere else; and there is no interest on the part of the creator to
deal with it. It does not do anything where the creator has power; it
operates entirely outside of the creator’s jurisdiction.
It is of course a mere truism to say that the corporation is the
creature of the State, that the State is sovereign. There should be
a real and not a nominal sovereign, some one sovereign to which the
corporation shall be really and not nominally responsible. At present
if we pass laws nobody can tell whether they will amount to anything.
That has two bad effects. In the first place, the corporation becomes
indifferent to the law-making body; and in the next place, the
law-making body gets into that most pernicious custom of passing a law
not with reference to what will be done under it, but with reference
to its effects upon the opinions of the voters. That is a bad thing.
When any body of law-makers passes a law, not simply with reference
to whether that law will do good or ill, but with the knowledge that
not much will come of it, and yet that perhaps the people as a whole
will like to see it on the statute books—it does not speak well for
the law-makers, and it does not speak well for the people, either.
What I hope to see is power given to the National Legislature which
shall make the control real. It would be an excellent thing if you
could have all the States act on somewhat similar lines so that
you would make it unnecessary for the national government to act;
but all of you know perfectly well that the States will not act on
similar lines. No advance whatever has been made in the direction of
intelligent dealing by the States as a collective body with these
great corporations. Here in Massachusetts you have what I regard as,
on the whole, excellent corporation laws. Most of our difficulties
would be in a fair way of solution if we had the power to put upon the
national statute books, and did put upon them, laws for the nation
much like those you have here on the subject of corporations in
Massachusetts. So you can see, gentlemen, I am not advocating anything
very revolutionary. I am advocating action to prevent anything
revolutionary. Now, if we can get adequate control by the nation of
these great corporations, then we can pass legislation which will
give us the power of regulation and supervision over them. If the
nation had that power, mind you, I should advocate as strenuously as
I know how that the power should be exercised with extreme caution
and self-restraint. No good will come from plunging in without having
looked carefully ahead. The first thing we want is publicity; and I
do not mean publicity as a favor by some corporations—I mean it as a
right from all corporations affected by the law. I want publicity as
to the essential facts in which the public has an interest. I want the
knowledge given to the accredited representatives of the people of
facts upon which those representatives can if they see fit base their
actions later. The publicity itself would cure many evils. The light
of day is a great deterrer of wrongdoing. The mere fact of being able
to put out nakedly, and with the certainty that the statements were
true, a given condition of things that was wrong, would go a long
distance toward curing that wrong; and, even where it did not cure
it, would make the path evident by which to cure it. We would not be
leaping in the dark; we would not be striving blindly to see what was
good and what bad. We would know what the facts were and be able to
shape our course accordingly.
A good deal can be done now, a good deal is being done now. As far
as the anti-trust laws go they will be enforced. No suit will be
undertaken for the sake of seeming to undertake it. Every suit that
is undertaken will be begun because the great lawyer and upright man
whom we are fortunate enough to have as Attorney-General, Mr. Knox,
believes that there is a violation of the law which we can get at; and
when the suit is undertaken it will not be compromised except upon the
basis that the government wins. Of course, gentleman, no laws amount
to anything unless they are administered honestly and fearlessly. We
must have such administration or the law will amount to nothing. I
believe that it is possible to frame national legislation which shall
give us far more power than we now have, at any rate over corporations
doing an interstate business. I can not guarantee that, because in
the past it has more than once happened that we have put laws on the
statute books which those who made them intended to mean one thing,
and when they came up for decision by the courts, it was found that
the intention had not been successfully put into effect. But I
believe that additional legislation can be had. If my belief is wrong,
if it proves evident that we can not, under the Constitution as it is,
give the national administration sufficient power to deal with these
great corporations, then no matter what our reverence for the past,
our duty to the present and the future will force us to see that some
power is conferred upon the national government. And when that power
has been conferred, then it will rest with the national government to
exercise it.