men, as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and
equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and brotherhood. It
is not possible, with the imperfections of mankind, ever wholly to
achieve such an ideal, if only for the reason that the shortcomings of
men are such that complete and unrestricted individual liberty would
mean the negation of even approximate equality, while a rigid and
absolute equality would imply the destruction of every shred of liberty.
Our business is to secure a practical working combination between the
two. This combination should aim, on the one hand, to secure to each man
the largest measure of individual liberty that is compatible with his
fellows’ getting from life a just share of the good things to which they
are legitimately entitled; while, on the other hand, it should aim to
bring about among well-behaved, hard-working people a measure of
equality which shall be substantial, and which shall yet permit to the
individual the personal liberty of achievement and reward without which
life would not be worth living, without which all progress would stop,
and civilization first stagnate and then go backwards. Such a
combination cannot be completely realized. It can be realized at all
only by the application of the spirit of fraternity, the spirit of
brotherhood. This spirit demands that each man shall learn and apply the
principle that his liberty must be used not only for his own benefit but
for the interest of the community as a whole, while the community in its
turn, acting as a whole, shall understand that while it must insist on
its own rights as against the individual, it must also scrupulously
safeguard these same rights of the individual.
Lincoln set before us forever our ideal when he stated that this country
was dedicated to a government of, by, and for the people. Our whole
experiment is meaningless unless we are to make this a democracy in the
fullest sense of the word, in the broadest as well as the highest and
deepest significance of the word. It must be made a democracy
economically as well as politically. This does not mean that there shall
not be leadership in the economic as in the political world, or that
there shall not be ample reward for high distinction and great service.
Quite the contrary. It is our boast that in our political affairs we
have combined genuine political equality with high distinction in
individual service. During a century and a third we here on this
continent—more completely than anywhere else at any other time—have
actually realized the democratic principle, the principle of popular
government. Yet during this period we have produced, in the persons of
Washington and Lincoln, two leaders who on the roll of the world’s
worthies stand higher than any other two men ever produced by any other
country during a similar length of time. We believe that it is entirely
possible to combine equality of rights and at least an approximate
equality in the opportunity to achieve material well-being, with the
opportunity for the highest kind of individual distinction. Hitherto our
efforts towards this end have related to purely political matters; we
must now strive to achieve the same end in economic matters.
To achieve our purpose we cannot trust merely to haphazard, easy-going
methods with complete absence of official Government action and a too
exclusively material standard. These did well enough in the pioneer days
when problems were comparatively simple, and when the country was still
so large that Uncle Sam could give every man a farm, so that, if any man
did not succeed where he was, all he had to do was to move somewhere
else. We must be true to the spirit of our ancestors, and therefore we
must avoid any servility to the letter of what they said and did. There
must be equal rights for all, and special privileges for none; but we
must remember that to achieve this ideal it is necessary to construe
rights and privileges very differently from the way they were
necessarily construed, by statesmen and people alike, a century ago. We
must strive to achieve our ideal by an exercise of governmental power
which the conditions did not render necessary a century ago, and of
which our forefathers would have felt suspicious. This is no reflection
on the wisdom of our forefathers; it is simply an acknowledgment that
conditions have now changed. If our farmers now used the wasteful
methods that served for their great-grandfathers, they would not merely
fail in the present, but would work a grave wrong to the American
citizens of the future. In the same way we must apply new political
methods to meet the new political needs, or else we shall suffer, and
our children also. In the same way, when we speak of the “square deal,”
we include two thoughts, each supplementary to the other. The square
deal can be secured in part by honest enforcement of existing laws, by
honest application of the principles upon which this Government was
founded, by the exercise of an aroused and enlightened public opinion.
But in order completely to secure it, there must be whatever legislation
is necessary to meet the new conditions caused by the extraordinary
industrial change and development that have taken place during the last
two generations. The greatest evils in our industrial system to-day are
those which rise from the abuses of aggregated wealth; and our great
problem is to overcome these evils and cut out these abuses. No one man
can deal with this matter. It is the affair of the people as a whole.
When aggregated wealth demands what is unfair, its immense power can be
met only by the still greater power of the people as a whole, exerted in
the only way it can be exerted, through the Government; and we must be
resolutely prepared to use the power of the Government to any needed
extent, even though it be necessary to tread paths which are yet untrod.
The complete change in economic conditions means that governmental
methods never yet resorted to may have to be employed in order to deal
with them. We cannot tolerate anything approaching a monopoly,
especially in the necessaries of life, except on terms of such
thoroughgoing governmental control as will absolutely safeguard every
right of the public. Moreover, one of the most sinister manifestations
of great corporate wealth during recent years has been its tendency to
interfere and dominate in politics.
It is not merely that we want to see the game played fairly. We also
want to see the rules changed, so that there shall be both less
opportunity and less temptation to cheat, and less chance for some few
people to gain a profit to which either they are not entitled at all, or
else which is so enormous as to be greatly in excess of what they
deserve, even though their services have been great. We wish to do away
with the profit that comes from the illegitimate exercise of cunning and
craft. We also wish to secure a measurable equality of opportunity, a
measurable equality of reward for services of similar value. To do all
this, two mutually supplementary movements are necessary. On the one
hand, there must be—I think there now is—a genuine and permanent moral
awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration
really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the
social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to
purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent.
We pride ourselves upon being a practical people, and therefore we
should not be merely empirical in seeking to bring about results. We
must set the end in view as the goal; and then, instead of making a
fetish of some particular kind of means, we should adopt whatever
honorable means will best accomplish the end. In so far as unrestricted
individual liberty brings the best results, we should encourage it. But
when a point is reached where this complete lack of restriction on
individual liberty fails to achieve the best results, then, on behalf of
the whole people, we should exercise the collective power of the people,
through the State Legislatures in matters of purely local concern, and
through the National Legislature when the purpose is so big that only
National action can achieve it. There are good people who, being
discontented with present-day conditions, think that these conditions
can be cured by a return to what they call the “principles of the
fathers.” In so far as we have departed from the standards of lofty
integrity in public and private life to which the greatest men among the
founders of the Republic adhered, why, of course, we should return to
these principles. We must always remember that no system of legislation
can accomplish anything unless back of it we have the right type of
National character; unless we have ideals to which our practice
measurably conforms. But to go back to the governmental theories of a
hundred years ago would accomplish nothing whatever; for it was under
the conditions of unrestricted individualism and freedom from Government
interference, countenanced by those theories, that the trusts grew up,
and private fortunes, enormous far beyond the deserts of the
accumulators, were gathered. The old theories of government worked well
in sparsely settled communities, before steam, electricity, and
machinery had revolutionized our industrial system; but to return to
them now would be as hopeless as for the farmers of the present to
return to the agricultural implements which met the needs of their
predecessors, the farmers who followed in the footsteps of Daniel Boone
to Kentucky and Missouri. It may be that, in the past development of our
country, complete freedom from all restrictions, and the consequent
unlimited encouragement and reward given to the most successful
industrial leaders, played a part in which the benefits outweighed the
disadvantages. But nowadays such is not the case.
Lincoln had to meet special and peculiar problems, and therefore there
was no need and no opportunity for him to devote attention to those
other problems which we face, and which in his day were so much less
intense than in ours. Nevertheless, he very clearly put the proper
democratic view when he said: “I hold that while man exists it is his
duty to improve not only his own condition but to assist in ameliorating
mankind.” And again: “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital;
capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed but for
labor. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection
as any other rights.... Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of
property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a
positive good in the world. Let not him who is houseless pull down the
house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself,
thus by example showing that his own shall be safe from violence when
built.” It seems to me that in these words Lincoln took substantially
the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of
proportion in his relative estimate of capital and labor, of human
rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in so many
others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an
indispensable lesson to us of to-day, for if we approach the work of
reform in a spirit of vindictiveness—in a spirit of reckless disregard
for the rights of others, or of hatred for men because they are better
off than ourselves—we are sure in the end to do not good but damage to
all mankind, and especially to those whose especial champions we profess
ourselves to be. Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and
the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent
oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and
unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights.
The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and
untruthfulness, and the visionary who promises perfection and
accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the
man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard
to ethical standards, who profits by and breeds corruption, and robs and
swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst
enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those “business
interests” that only too often regard him with mean admiration and
heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity.
Now, the object we seek to achieve is twofold. A great democratic
commonwealth should seek to produce and reward that individual
distinction which results in the efficient performance of needed work,
for such performance is of high value to the whole community. But hand
in hand with this purpose must go the purpose which Abraham Lincoln
designated as the “amelioration of mankind.” Only by an intelligent
effort to realize this joint process of individual and social betterment
can we keep our democracy sound. We all admit this to be true
politically; but we have not paid much heed to the question from its
economic side. The wage-earner primarily needs what it is pre-eminently
to the interest of our democratic commonwealth that he should
obtain—that is, a high standard of living, and the opportunity to
acquire the means whereby to secure it. Every power of the Nation should
be used in helping him to this end; taking care, however, that the help
shall be given in such fashion as to represent real help, and not harm;
for the worst injury that could be done him or any other man would be to
teach him to rely primarily on “the State” instead of on himself. The
collective power of the State can help; but it is the individual’s own
power of self-help which is most important.
Now, I am well aware that demagogues and doctrinaire reformers of a
certain type may try to turn such use of the powers of the State into an
abuse. We should set our faces like flint against any such abuse. We
should make it fully understood by the workingmen—by the men of small
means—that we will do everything in our power for them _except what is
wrong;_ but that we will do wrong for no man—neither for them nor for
any one else. Nevertheless, the fact that there are dangers in following
a given course merely means that we should follow it with a cautious
realization of these dangers, and not that we should abandon it, if on
the whole it is the right course.
It is just so with personal liberty. The unlimited freedom which the
individual property-owner has enjoyed has been of use to this country in
many ways, and we can continue our prosperous economic career only by
retaining an economic organization which will offer to the men of the
stamp of the great captains of industry the opportunity and inducement
to earn distinction. Nevertheless, we as Americans must now face the
fact that this great freedom which the individual property-owner has
enjoyed in the past has produced evils which were inevitable from its
unrestrained exercise. It is this very freedom—this absence of State and
National restraint—that has tended to create a small class of enormously
wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and
increase their power. Any feeling of special hatred toward these men is
as absurd as any feeling of special regard. Some of them have gained
their power by cheating and swindling, just as some very small business
men cheat and swindle; but, as a whole, big men are no better and no
worse than their small competitors, from a moral standpoint. Where they
do wrong it is even more important to punish them than to punish a small
man who does wrong, because their position makes it especially wicked
for them to yield to temptation; but the prime need is to change the
conditions which enable them to accumulate a power which it is not for
the general welfare that they should hold or exercise, and to make this
change not only without vindictiveness, without doing injustice to
individuals, but also in a cautious and temperate spirit, testing our
theories by actual practice, so that our legislation may represent the
minimum of restrictions upon the individual initiative of the
exceptional man which is compatible with obtaining the maximum of
welfare for the average man. We grudge no man a fortune which represents
merely his own power and sagacity exercised with entire regard to the
welfare of his fellows. But the fortune must not only be honorably
obtained and well used; it is also essential that it should not
represent a necessary incident of widespread, even though partial,
economic privation. It is not even enough that the fortune should have
been gained without doing damage to the community. We should only permit
it to be gained and kept so long as the gaining and the keeping
represent benefit to the community. This I know implies a policy of a
far more active governmental interference with social and economic
conditions than we have hitherto seen in this country; but I think we
have to face the fact that such increase in governmental activity is now
necessary. We should work cautiously and patiently and with complete
absence of animosity, except toward the individuals whom we are certain
have been guilty of flagrant evil; but we should also work firmly to
realize the democratic purpose, economically and socially as well as
politically. We must make popular government responsible for the
betterment both of the individual and of society at large.
Let me repeat once more that, while such responsible governmental action
is an absolutely necessary thing to achieve our purpose, yet it will be
worse than useless if it is not accompanied by a serious effort on the
part of the individuals composing the community thus to achieve each for
himself a higher standard of individual betterment, not merely material
but spiritual and intellectual. In other words, our democracy depends on
individual improvement just as much as upon collective effort to achieve
our common social improvement. The most serious troubles of the present
day are unquestionably due in large part to lack of efficient
governmental action, and cannot be remedied without such action; but
neither can any remedy permanently avail unless back of it stands a high
general character of individual citizenship.
This governmental improvement can be accomplished partly by the States,
in so far as any given evil affects only one State, or one or two
States; in so far as a merely local remedy is needed for a merely local
disease. But the betterment must be accomplished partly, and I believe
mainly, through the National Government. I do not ask for
over-centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and
far-reaching nationalism when we deal with what concerns our people as a
whole. I no more make a fetish of centralization than of
decentralization. Any given case must be treated on its special merits.
Each community should be required to deal with all that is of merely
local interest; and nothing should be undertaken by the Government of
the whole country which can thus wisely be left to local management. But
those functions of government which no wisdom on the part of the States
will enable them satisfactorily to perform must be performed by the
National Government. We are all Americans; our common interests are as
broad as the continent; the most vital problems are those that affect us
all alike. The regulation of big business, and therefore the control of
big property in the public interest, are pre-eminently instances of such
functions which can only be performed efficiently and wisely by the
Nation; and, moreover, so far as labor is employed in connection with
inter-State business, it should also be treated as a matter for the
National Government. The National power over inter-State commerce
warrants our dealing with such questions as employers’ liability in
inter-State business, and the protection and compensation for injuries
of railway employees. The National Government of right has, and must
exercise, its power for the protection of labor which is connected with
the instrumentalities of inter-State commerce.
The National Government belongs to the whole American people; and where
the whole American people are interested that interest can be
effectively guarded only by the National Government. We ought to use the
National Government as an agency, a tool, wherever it is necessary, in
order that we may organize our entire political, economical, and social
life in accordance with a far-reaching democratic purpose. We should
make the National governmental machinery an adequate and constructive
instrument for constructive work in the realization of a National
democratic ideal. I lay emphasis upon the word _constructive_. Too often
the Federal Government, and above all the Federal judiciary, has
permitted itself to be employed for purely negative purposes—that is, to
thwart the action of the States while not permitting efficient National
action in its place. From the National standpoint nothing can be
worse—nothing can be full of graver menace—for the National life than to
have the Federal courts active in nullifying State action to remedy the
evils arising from the abuse of great wealth, unless the Federal
authorities, executive, legislative, and judicial alike, do their full
duty in effectually meeting the need of a thoroughgoing and radical
supervision and control of big inter-State business in all its forms.
Many great financiers, and many of the great corporation lawyers who
advise them, still oppose any effective regulation of big business by
the National Government, because, for the time being, it serves their
interest to trust to the chaos which is caused on the one hand by
inefficient laws and conflicting and often unwise efforts at regulation
by State governments, and, on the other hand, by the efficient
protection against such regulation afforded by the Federal courts. In
the end this condition will prove intolerable, and will hurt most of all
the very class which it at present benefits. The continuation of such
conditions would mean that the corporations would find that they had
purchased immunity from the efficient exercise of Federal regulative
power at the cost of being submitted to a violent and radical local
supervision, inflamed to fury by having repeatedly been thwarted, and
not chastened by exercised responsibility. To refuse to take, or to
permit others to take, wise and practical action for the remedying of
abuses is to invite unwise action under the lead of violent extremists.
I do not wish to see the Nation forced into ownership of the railways if
it can possibly be avoided; and the only alternative is thoroughgoing
and effective regulation, which shall be based on full knowledge of all
the facts, including a physical valuation of the property, the details
of its capitalization, and the like. We should immediately set about
securing this physical valuation. The Government should oversee the
issuance of all stocks and bonds, and should have complete power over
rates and traffic agreements. The railways are really highways, and it
is the fundamental right of the people as a whole to see that they are
open to use on just and reasonable terms, equal to all persons. The
Hepburn Bill marked a great step in advance; the law of last session, in
its final shape and as actually passed, marks, on the whole, another
decided step in advance.
Corporate regulation is merely one phase of a vast problem. The true
friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that
property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth;
who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and
not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States
must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have
themselves called into being.