production and commerce under modern conditions. We cannot effectively
prohibit all combinations without doing far-reaching economic harm; and
it is mere folly to do as we have done in the past—to try to combine
incompatible systems—that is, to try both to prohibit and regulate
combinations. Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative
economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The
effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The only
course left is active corporate regulation—that is, the control of
corporations for the common good—the suppression of the evils that they
work, and the retention, as far as may be, of that business efficiency
in their use which has placed us in the forefront of industrial peoples.
I need waste no words upon our right so to control them. The corporation
is the creature of government, and the people have the right to handle
it as they desire; all they need pay attention to is the expediency of
realizing this right in some way that shall be productive of good and
not harm. The corporate manager who achieves success by honest
efficiency in giving the best service to the public should be favored
because we all benefit by his efficiency. He realizes Abraham Lincoln’s
definition which I have quoted above, because he works for his own
material betterment and at the same time for the “amelioration of
mankind,” and he should be helped by the Government because his success
is good for the National welfare. But a man who grasps and holds
business power by breaking the industrial efficiency of others, who wins
success by methods which are against the public interest and degrading
to the public morals, should not be permitted to exercise such power.
Instead of punishing him by a long and doubtful process of the law after
the wrong has been committed, there should be such effective Government
regulation as to check the evil tendencies at the moment that they start
to develop. Overcapitalization in all its shapes is one of the prime
evils; for it is one of the most fruitful methods by which unscrupulous
men get improper profits, and when the holdings come into innocent hands
we are forced into the uncomfortable position of being obliged to reduce
the dividends of innocent investors, or of permitting the public and the
wage-workers, either or both, to suffer. Such really effective control
over great inter-State business can come only from the National
Government. The American people demands the new Nationalism needful to
deal with the new problems; it puts the National need above sectional or
personal advantage; it is impatient of the utter confusion which results
from local legislatures attempting to treat National issues as local
issues; it is still more impatient of the National impotence which
springs from the over-division of governmental powers; the impotence
which makes it possible for local selfishness, or for the vulpine legal
cunning which is hired by wealthy special interests, to bring National
activities to a deadlock.
The control must be exercised in several different ways. It may be that
National incorporation is not at the moment possible; but there must be
some affirmative National control, on terms which will secure publicity
in the affairs of and complete supervision and control over the big,
Nation-wide business corporations; a control that will prevent and not
legalize abuses. Such control should imply the issuance of securities by
corporations only under thoroughgoing Governmental supervision, and
after compliance with Governmental requirements which shall effectually
prevent overcapitalization. Such control should protect and favor the
corporation which acts honestly, exactly as it should check and punish,
when it cannot prevent, every species of dishonesty.
In the Inter-State Commerce Commission and in the Federal Bureau of
Corporations we have bodies which, if their powers are sufficiently
enlarged after the right fashion, can render great and substantial
service. The average American citizen should have presented to him in a
simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs
that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor,
as voter. The issue of securities should be subject to rigorous
Government supervision. There are concrete instances of unfair
competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation,
and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts. But the laws
should be such that normally, and save in extraordinary circumstances,
there should be no need of recourse to the courts. What is needed is
administrative supervision and control. This should be so exercised that
the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not
nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to
deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own
superiority and efficiency, controlled by moral purpose. The National
Bureau of Corporations has not been given the powers or the funds to
develop its full usefulness, and yet it offers one of the prime means at
the disposal of the people of keeping them fully acquainted with all the
facts about corporation control. We have a right to expect from this
Bureau and from the Inter-State Commerce Commission a very high grade of
public service. We should be as sure of the proper conduct of
inter-State railways and the proper management of inter-State business
as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the National banks,
and we should have as effective supervision in one case as in the other.
Not only as a matter of justice and honesty, but as a matter of prime
popular interest, we should see that this control is so exercised as to
favor a proper return to the upright business manager and honest
investor. In the matter of railway rates, for instance, it is just as
much our duty to see that they are not too low as that they are not too
high. We must preserve the right of the railway employee to proper wages
and the right of the investor to proper interest as scrupulously as we
preserve the right of the shipper and the producer and the consumer. We
cannot afford to do injustice, or suffer it to be done, to any of these.
But in order to do justice we must have full knowledge. We must have the
right to find out every fact connected with the business of the railway,
so as to base our judgment, not on any one fact, but on all taken
together. Inasmuch as it is so often impossible to punish wrongs done in
the past, and to prevent the consequences of the wrongs thus committed
being felt by one innocent class, without shifting the burden to the
shoulders of another innocent class, we ought to provide that hereafter
business shall be carried on from its inception in such a way as to
prevent swindling. Incidentally, this will also tend to prevent that
excessive profit by one man, which may not be swindling, under existing
laws, but which nevertheless is against the interest of the
commonwealth; To know all the facts is of as much interest to the
investor and the wageworker as to the shipper, the producer, the
consumer. Full knowledge of the past helps us in dealing with the
future. If we find that high rates are due to overcapitalization in the
past, or to any kind of sharp practice in the past, then, whether or not
it is possible to take action which will partly remedy the wrong, we are
certainly in a better position to prevent a repetition of the wrong.
Let me, in closing, put my position in a nutshell. When I say that I am
for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under
the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having these rules
changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and
of reward for equally good service. So far as possible, the reward
should be based upon service; and this necessarily implies that where a
man renders us service in return for the fortune he receives, he has the
right to receive it only on terms just to the whole people. For this
reason there should be a heavily progressive National inheritance tax on
big fortunes. The really big fortune, by the mere fact of its size,
acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree
from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. A heavily
progressive inheritance tax on all such fortunes (heaviest on absentees)
has the good qualities of an income tax, without its drawbacks; it is
far more beneficial to the community at large, and far less burdensome
to private individuals, as well as far more easily collected. A
moderate, but progressive, income tax, carefully devised to fall
genuinely on those who ought to pay, would, I believe, be a good thing;
but a heavy and heavily progressive inheritance tax on great fortunes
would be a far better thing.
I have tried to set before you my creed. I believe in property rights,
but I believe in them as adjuncts to, and not as substitutes for, human
rights. I believe that normally the rights of property coincide with the
rights of man; but where they do not, then the rights of man must be put
above the rights of property. I believe in shaping the ends of
government to protect property; but wherever the alternative must be
faced, I am for man and not for property. I am far from underestimating
the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character.
I know well that if there is not sufficient prosperity the people will
in the end rebel against any system, no matter how exalted morally; and
reformers must not bring upon the people permanent economic ruin, or the
reforms themselves will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready to
face any temporary disaster—whether or not brought on by those who will
war against us to the knife—if only through such disaster can we attain
our goal. And those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that
ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our National life brings us
nothing whatever but a swollen and badly distributed material
prosperity. In other words, I feel that material interests are chiefly
good, not in themselves, but as an indispensable foundation upon which
we should build a higher superstructure, a superstructure without which
the foundation becomes worthless. Therefore I believe that the destinies
of this country should be shaped primarily by moral forces, and by
material forces only as they are subordinated to these moral forces. I
believe that material wealth is an exceedingly valuable servant, and a
particularly abhorrent master, in our National life. I think one end of
government should be to achieve prosperity; but it should follow this
end chiefly to serve an even higher and more important end—that of
promoting the character and welfare of the average man. In the long run,
and inevitably, the actual control of the government will be determined
by the chief end which the government subserves. If the end and aim of
government action is merely to accumulate general material prosperity,
treating such prosperity as an end in itself and not as a means, then it
is inevitable that material wealth and the masters of that wealth will
dominate and control the course of national action. If, on the other
hand, the achievement of material wealth is treated, not as an end of
government, but as a thing of great value, it is true—so valuable as to
be indispensable—but of value only in connection with the achievement of
other ends, then we are free to seek through our government, and through
the supervision of our individual activities, the realization of a true
democracy. Then we are free to seek not only the heaping up of material
wealth, but a wise and generous distribution of such wealth so as to
diminish grinding poverty, and, so far as may be, to equalize social and
economic no less than political opportunity.
The people as a whole can be benefited morally and materially by a
system which shall permit of ample reward for exceptional efficiency,
but which shall nevertheless secure to the average man who does his work
faithfully and well, the reward to which he is entitled. Remember that I
speak only of the man who does his work faithfully and well. The man who
shirks his work, who is lazy or vicious, or even merely incompetent,
deserves scant consideration; we may be sorry for his family, but it is
folly to waste sympathy on the man himself; and it is also folly for
sentimentalists to try to shift the burden of blame from such a man
himself to “society;” and it is an outrage to give him the reward given
to his hard-working, upright, and efficient brother. Still less should
we waste sympathy on the criminal; there are altogether too many honest
men who need it; and one chief point in dealing with the criminal should
be to make him understand that he will be in personal peril if he
becomes a lawbreaker. I realize entirely that in the last analysis, with
the nation as with the individual, it is private character that counts
for most. It is because of this realization that I gladly lay myself
open to the charge that I preach too much, and dwell too much upon moral
commonplaces; for though I believe with all my heart in the
nationalization of this Nation—in the collective use on behalf of the
American people of the governmental powers which can be derived only
from the American people as a whole—yet I believe even more in the
practical application by the individual of those great fundamental
moralities.
A certain type of rather thinly intellectual man sneers at these
moralities as “commonplaces;” and base and evil men, selfish and
shortsighted men, are immensely pleased to see them denounced and
derided. Yet surely it is the duty of every public man to try to make
all of us keep in mind, and practice, the moralities essential to the
welfare of the American people. It is of vital concern to the American
people that the men and women of this great Nation should be good
husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters; that we
should be good neighbors, one to another, in business and in social
life; that we should each do his or her primary duty in the home without
neglecting the duty to the State; that we should dwell even more on our
duties than on our rights; that we should work hard and faithfully; that
we should prize intelligence, but prize courage and honesty and
cleanliness even more. Inefficiency is a curse; and no good intention
atones for weakness of will and flabbiness of moral, mental, and
physical fiber; yet it is also true that no intellectual cleverness, no
ability to achieve material prosperity, can atone for the lack of the
great moral qualities which are the surest foundation of national might.
In this great free democracy it behooves all the people so to bear
themselves that, not with their lips only but in their lives, they shall
show their fealty to the great truth pronounced of old—the truth that
Righteousness exalteth a nation.
The Pioneer Spirit and American Problems
For a number of years I have believed and urged the principles I set
forth in the following article. Their presentation here is in substance
what I said in three recent speeches at Cheyenne, Denver, and Omaha.
The men who have made this great republic what it is, and especially the
men who have turned it into a continental commonwealth, have possessed
in the highest degree the great virile virtues of strength, courage,
energy, and undaunted and unwavering resolution. Their typical
leaders—of whom Abraham Lincoln, though the most exceptional, was the
most typical—have possessed keen intelligence, and a character not
merely strong but lofty, a character exalted by the fact that great
power was accompanied by a high and fine determination to use this great
power for the common good, for the advancement of mankind. Such men were
the builders of New England. As the country grew, such men were the
pioneers that pushed the frontiers of civilization westward. A hundred
years ago, when men spoke of the West, they meant the country between
the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Fifty years ago the white man’s
West took in Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas, and then skipped across to
California and Oregon. The country of the great plains and the Rockies
has grown up within my own lifetime. I myself saw and took part in the
closing years of the pioneer period, and it was my great privilege to
work side by side with the pioneers—the ranchmen, the miners, the
cow-punchers, the mule-skinners, the bull-whackers—who actually opened
up the country. I now travel in every comfort on railways across lands
which, when I first rode across them, were still the home of the Indian
and the buffalo; and I find cities where one can obtain not merely
comfort but luxury, in the places where, thirty years ago, there was not
a building beyond a log hut or a ’dobe house. The men who did this work
were engaged in the final stages of conquering the continent; and it was
their privilege to do one of the great works of all time, to do their
part in the performance of an epic feat in the history of the progress
of mankind.
The pioneer days are over, save in a few places; and the more complex
life of to-day calls for a greater variety of good qualities than were
needed on the frontier. There is need at present to encourage the
development of new abilities which can be brought to high perfection
only by a kind of training useless in pioneer times; but these new
qualities can only supplement, and never supplant, the old, homely
virtues; the need for the special and distinctive pioneer virtues is as
great as ever. In other words, as our civilization grows older and more
complex, while it is true that we need new forms of trained ability, and
need to develop men whose lives are devoted wholly to the pursuit of
special objects, it is yet also true that we need a greater and not a
less development of the fundamental frontier virtues.
These qualities, derived from the pioneers, were not confined to the
pioneers. They are shown in the deeds of the Nation; and especially in
the two great feats which during the past decade have made the deepest
impression abroad—the cruise of the battle fleet around the world, and
the digging of the Panama Canal.
Now, there is no use of a nation claiming to be a great nation, unless
it is prepared to play a great part. A nation such as ours cannot
possibly play a great part in international affairs, cannot expect to be
treated as of weight in either the Atlantic or the Pacific, or to have
its voice as to the Monroe Doctrine or the management of the Panama
Canal heeded, unless it has a strong and thoroughly efficient navy. So
far from this increase in naval strength representing on our part either
a menace of aggression to weaker nations or a menace of war to stronger
nations, it has told most powerfully for peace. No nation regarded the
cruise as fraught with any menace of hostility to itself; and yet every
nation accepted it as a proof that we were not only desirous ourselves
to keep the peace, but able to prevent the peace being broken at our
expense. No cruise in any way approaching it has ever been made by any
fleet of any other Power; and the best naval opinion abroad had been
that no such feat was possible; that is, that no such cruise as that we
actually made could be undertaken by a fleet of such size without
innumerable breakdowns and accidents. The success of the cruise,
performed as it was without a single accident, immeasurably raised the
prestige, not only of our fleet, but of our Nation; and was a distinct
help to the cause of international peace.
As regards the Panama Canal, I really think that outside nations have a
juster idea than our own people of the magnitude and success of the
work. Six years ago last spring the American Government took possession
of the Isthmus. The first two years were devoted to the sanitation of
the Isthmus, to assembling the plant and working force, and providing
quarters, food, and water supplies. In all these points the success was
extraordinary. From one of the plague-spots of the globe, one of the
most unhealthy regions in the entire world, the Isthmus has been turned
into a singularly healthy place of abode. Active excavation on a large
scale did not begin until January, 1907. Three years and a half have
gone by since then, and three-fifths of the total excavation has already
been accomplished. In 1908 and 1909 the monthly average of rock and
earth removed was three million cubic yards, notwithstanding the fact
that nine months of each year constituted a season of very heavy
rainfall; but it is impossible to maintain such a ratio as the depth
increases. Still, it is certain that such a rate can be maintained as
will enable the workers to finish the excavation considerably in advance
of the date fixed for opening the Canal—January 1, 1915. Indeed, I shall
be surprised if the Canal cannot be opened six months or even a year in
advance of the time set. The work has two great features: The Culebra
Cut, which I have been considering, and the great dam at Gatun. The
construction of the dam has advanced sufficiently to convince the
engineers in charge of the work of its absolute stability and
imperviousness. The engineer in charge has announced that all the
concrete in all the locks will be in place two years hence.
This is a stupendous record of achievement. As a people we are rather
fond of criticising ourselves, and sometimes with very great justice;
but even the most pessimistic critic should sometimes think of what is
to our credit. Among our assets of the past ten years will be placed the
extraordinary ability, integrity, and success with which we have handled
all the problems inherited as the result of the Spanish War; the way we
have handled ourselves in the Philippines, in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in
San Domingo, and in Panama. The cruise of the battle fleet around the
world was a striking proof that we had made good with the navy; and what
we have done at Panama represents the accomplishment of one of the great
feats of the ages. It is a feat which reflects the highest honor upon
our country; and our gratitude is due to every man who has taken an
honorable part in any capacity in bringing it about.
The same qualities that have enabled Americans to conquer the
wilderness, and to attempt tasks like the building of the Panama Canal
and the sending of the battle fleet around the world, need to be applied
now to our future problems; and these qualities, which include the power
of self-government, together with the power of joining with others for
mutual help, and, what is especially important, the feeling of
comradeship, need to be applied in particular to that foremost of
National problems, the problem of the preservation of our National
resources.
The question has two sides. In the first place, the actual destruction,
or, if this is not possible, at any rate the needless waste, of the
natural resources must be stopped. In the second place, so far as
possible, these resources must be kept for the use of the whole people,
and not handed over for exploitation to single individuals or groups of
individuals.
The first point I shall not here discuss at length. It is rapidly
becoming a well-settled policy of this people that we of the present
generation hold the land in part as trustees for the next generation,
and not exclusively for our own selfish enjoyment. Just as the farmer is
a good citizen if he leaves his farm improved and not impaired to his
children, and a bad citizen if he cares nothing for his children and
skins the land and destroys its value in his own selfish interest; so
the Nation behaves well if it treats the soil and the water and the
forests as assets which it must turn over to the next generation
increased and not impaired in value, and behaves badly if it leaves the
land poorer to those who come after us. No farm should be so used that
the soil is permitted to depreciate in value; no forest so used as
permanently to impair its productivity.
The second part of the question relates to preserving and using our
natural resources in the interest of the public as a whole. We do not
intend to discourage individual excellence by improperly diminishing the
reward for that individual excellence; on the contrary, our desire is to
see that the fullest reward is given to the men of exceptional
abilities, up to the point when the abilities are used to the detriment
of the people as a whole. We favor the sheep man who feeds his sheep on
his own range in such manner that the range increases instead of
diminishes in value; and we are against the big man who does not live in
the country at all, but who sends migratory bands of sheep with a few
hired shepherds to wander over it, destroying pasturage and forests, and
seriously impairing the value of the country for actual settlers. We are
for the liberty of the individual up to, but not beyond, the point where
it becomes inconsistent with the welfare of the community as a whole.