sprang from the sturdy tillers of the soil, who had himself belonged
among the wage-workers, who had entered the Army as a private soldier.
Wealth was not struck at when the President was assassinated, but the
honest toil which is content with moderate gains after a lifetime
of unremitting labor, largely in the service of the public. Still
less was power struck at in the sense that power is irresponsible or
centred in the hands of any one individual. The blow was not aimed at
tyranny or wealth. It was aimed at one of the strongest champions the
wage-worker has ever had; at one of the most faithful representatives
of the system of public rights and representative government who has
ever risen to public office. President McKinley filled that political
office for which the entire people vote, and no President—not even
Lincoln himself—was ever more earnestly anxious to represent the well
thought out wishes of the people; his one anxiety in every crisis was
to keep in closest touch with the people—to find out what they thought
and to endeavor to give expression to their thought, after having
endeavored to guide that thought aright. He had just been re-elected
to the Presidency because the majority of our citizens, the majority
of our farmers and wage-workers, believed that he had faithfully
upheld their interests for four years. They felt themselves in close
and intimate touch with him. They felt that he represented so well and
so honorably all their ideals and aspirations that they wished him to
continue for another four years to represent them.
And this was the man at whom the assassin struck! That there might be
nothing lacking to complete the Judas-like infamy of his act, he took
advantage of an occasion when the President was meeting the people
generally; and advancing as if to take the hand outstretched to him
in kindly and brotherly fellowship, he turned the noble and generous
confidence of the victim into an opportunity to strike the fatal blow.
There is no baser deed in all the annals of crime.
The shock, the grief of the country, are bitter in the minds of all
who saw the dark days while the President yet hovered between life
and death. At last the light was stilled in the kindly eyes and the
breath went from the lips that even in mortal agony uttered no words
save of forgiveness to his murderer, of love for his friends, and
of unfaltering trust in the will of the Most High. Such a death,
crowning the glory of such a life, leaves us with infinite sorrow, but
with such pride in what he had accomplished and in his own personal
character, that we feel the blow not as struck at him, but as struck
at the nation. We mourn a good and great President who is dead; but
while we mourn we are lifted up by the splendid achievements of his
life and the grand heroism with which he met his death.
When we turn from the man to the nation, the harm done is so great as
to excite our gravest apprehensions and to demand our wisest and most
resolute action. This criminal was a professed anarchist, inflamed
by the teachings of professed anarchists, and probably also by the
reckless utterances of those who, on the stump and in the public
press, appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and greed, envy
and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed by the men who preach such
doctrines, and they can not escape their share of responsibility for
the whirlwind that is reaped. This applies alike to the deliberate
demagogue, to the exploiter of sensationalism, and to the crude and
foolish visionary who, for whatever reason, apologizes for crime or
excites aimless discontent.
The blow was aimed not at this President, but at all Presidents; at
every symbol of government. President McKinley was as emphatically the
embodiment of the popular will of the nation expressed through the
forms of law as a New England town meeting is in similar fashion the
embodiment of the law-abiding purpose and practice of the people of
the town. On no conceivable theory could the murder of the President
be accepted as due to protest against “inequalities in the social
order,” save as the murder of all the freemen engaged in a town
meeting could be accepted as a protest against that social inequality
which puts a malefactor in jail. Anarchy is no more an expression of
“social discontent” than picking pockets or wife-beating.
The anarchist, and especially the anarchist in the United States, is
merely one type of criminal, more dangerous than any other because
he represents the same depravity in a greater degree. The man who
advocates anarchy directly or indirectly, in any shape or fashion,
or the man who apologizes for anarchists and their deeds, makes
himself morally accessory to murder before the fact. The anarchist
is a criminal whose perverted instincts lead him to prefer confusion
and chaos to the most beneficent form of social order. His protest of
concern for workingmen is outrageous in its impudent falsity; for if
the political institutions of this country do not afford opportunity
to every honest and intelligent son of toil, then the door of hope is
forever closed against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely
the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty.
If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red
moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy night of despotism.
For the anarchist himself, whether he preaches or practices his
doctrines, we need not have one particle more concern than for any
ordinary murderer. He is not the victim of social or political
injustice. There are no wrongs to remedy in his case. The cause of his
criminality is to be found in his own evil passions and in the evil
conduct of those who urge him on, not in any failure by others or by
the State to do justice to him or his. He is a malefactor and nothing
else. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, a “product of social
conditions,” save as a highwayman is “produced” by the fact that an
unarmed man happens to have a purse. It is a travesty upon the great
and holy names of liberty and freedom to permit them to be invoked in
such a cause. No man or body of men preaching anarchistic doctrines
should be allowed at large any more than if preaching the murder of
some specified private individual. Anarchistic speeches, writings, and
meetings are essentially seditious and treasonable.
I earnestly recommend to the Congress that in the exercise of its
wise discretion it should take into consideration the coming to this
country of anarchists or persons professing principles hostile to all
government and justifying the murder of those placed in authority.
Such individuals as those who not long ago gathered in open meeting to
glorify the murder of King Humbert of Italy perpetrate a crime, and
the law should ensure their rigorous punishment. They and those like
them should be kept out of this country; and if found here they should
be promptly deported to the country whence they came; and far-reaching
provisions should be made for the punishment of those who stay. No
matter calls more urgently for the wisest thought of the Congress.
The Federal courts should be given jurisdiction over any man who kills
or attempts to kill the President or any man who by the Constitution
or by law is in line of succession for the Presidency, while the
punishment for an unsuccessful attempt should be proportioned to the
enormity of the offence against our institutions.
Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race; and all mankind
should band against the anarchist. His crime should be made an offence
against the law of nations, like piracy and that form of man-stealing
known as the slave trade; for it is of far blacker infamy than either.
It should be so declared by treaties among all civilized powers. Such
treaties would give to the Federal Government the power of dealing
with the crime.
A grim commentary upon the folly of the anarchist position was
afforded by the attitude of the law toward this very criminal who had
just taken the life of the President. The people would have torn him
limb from limb if it had not been that the law he defied was at once
invoked in his behalf. So far from his deed being committed on behalf
of the people against the government, the government was obliged at
once to exert its full police power to save him from instant death at
the hands of the people. Moreover, his deed worked not the slightest
dislocation in our governmental system, and the danger of a recurrence
of such deeds, no matter how great it might grow, would work only in
the direction of strengthening and giving harshness to the forces of
order. No man will ever be restrained from becoming President by any
fear as to his personal safety. If the risk to the President’s life
became great, it would mean that the office would more and more come
to be filled by men of a spirit which would make them resolute and
merciless in dealing with every friend of disorder. This great country
will not fall into anarchy, and if anarchists should ever become a
serious menace to its institutions, they would not merely be stamped
out, but would involve in their own ruin every active or passive
sympathizer with their doctrines. The American people are slow to
wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming
flame.
During the last five years business confidence has been restored and
the nation is to be congratulated because of its present abounding
prosperity. Such prosperity can never be created by law alone,
although it is easy enough to destroy it by mischievous laws. If
the hand of the Lord is heavy upon any country, if flood or drought
comes, human wisdom is powerless to avert the calamity. Moreover, no
law can guard us against the consequences of our own folly. The men
who are idle or credulous, the men who seek gains not by genuine work
with head or hand but by gambling in any form, are always a source
of menace not only to themselves but to others. If the business
world loses its head, it loses what legislation can not supply.
Fundamentally the welfare of each citizen, and therefore the welfare
of the aggregate of citizens which makes the nation, must rest upon
individual thrift and energy, resolution and intelligence. Nothing can
take the place of this individual capacity; but wise legislation and
honest and intelligent administration can give it the fullest scope,
the largest opportunity to work to good effect.
The tremendous and highly complex industrial development which went
on with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the
nineteenth century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the
twentieth, with very serious social problems. The old laws, and the
old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite
sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth.
Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the
productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.
The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the
growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial
centres has meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of
wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of
very large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate
fortunes has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental
action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in
other countries as they operate in our own.
The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is
wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown
richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before
has the average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader,
been so well off as in this country and at the present time. There
have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it
remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can
be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition
of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful
enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist
if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of
success.
The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across
this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our
manufactures, have on the whole done great good to our people. Without
them the material development of which we are so justly proud could
never have taken place. Moreover, we should recognize the immense
importance to this material development of leaving as unhampered as is
compatible with the public good the strong and forceful men upon whom
the success of business operations inevitably rests. The slightest
study of business conditions will satisfy any one capable of forming a
judgment that the personal equation is the most important factor in a
business operation; that the business ability of the man at the head
of any business concern, big or little, is usually the factor which
fixes the gulf between striking success and hopeless failure.
An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to
be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The
same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations
of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors
in international commercial competition. Business concerns which have
the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men
are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial
supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun
to assume that commanding position in the international business world
which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost
importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time
when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the
skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make
foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most
unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our nation.
Moreover, it can not too often be pointed out that to strike with
ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably
endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national
life—the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in
the long run, we shall go up or down together. There are exceptions;
and in times of prosperity some will prosper far more, and in times
of adversity some will suffer far more, than others; but speaking
generally, a period of good times means that all share more or less in
them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater
or less degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any
proof of this statement; the memory of the lean years which began in
1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions
in this very year which is now closing. Disaster to great business
enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at the top.
It spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it is worst
for those furthest down. The capitalist may be shorn of his luxuries;
but the wage-worker may be deprived of even bare necessities.
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care
must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or
ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce
the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with
technical inaccuracy, known as “trusts,” appeal especially to hatred
and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when
combined with ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool
and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole
history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both
unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with
sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed at the trusts
would have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely
ineffective. In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the
ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really effective friend
of the evils which he has been nominally opposing. In dealing with
business interests, for the government to undertake by crude and
ill-considered legislation to do what may turn out to be bad, would
be to incur the risk of such far-reaching national disaster that it
would be preferable to undertake nothing at all. The men who demand
the impossible or the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces
with which they are nominally at war, for they hamper those who would
endeavor to find out in rational fashion what the wrongs really are
and to what extent and in what manner it is practicable to apply
remedies.
All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and
grave evils, one of the chief being overcapitalization because of its
many baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be
made to correct these evils.
There is widespread conviction in the minds of the American people
that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their
features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs
from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the
great industrial achievements that have placed this country at the
head of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not
rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of the necessity of
meeting changing and changed conditions of trade with new methods, nor
upon ignorance of the fact that combination of capital in the effort
to accomplish great things is necessary when the world’s progress
demands that great things be done. It is based upon sincere conviction
that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but
supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment
this conviction is right.
It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to
require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing
business under corporate form, which frees them from individual
responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the
capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful
representations as to the value of the property in which the capital
is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should
be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the
public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for
social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning
as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great
corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by
our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see
that they work in harmony with these institutions.
The first essential in determining how to deal with the great
industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity. In the
interest of the public, the government should have the right to
inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged
in interstate business. Publicity is the only sure remedy which
we can now invoke. What further remedies are needed in the way of
governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be determined after
publicity has been obtained, by process of law, and in the course
of administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full and
complete—knowledge which may be made public to the world.
Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other
associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or
privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and
full and accurate information as to their operations should be made
public regularly at reasonable intervals.
The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in
one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little
business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack
of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any
exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice
proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action.
Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should,
without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself,
also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations
doing an interstate business. This is especially true where the
corporation derives a portion of its wealth from the existence of some
monopolistic element or tendency in its business. There would be no
hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their
case it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed, it is
probable that supervision of corporations by the National Government
need not go so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised
over them by so conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to
produce excellent results.
When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth
century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in
industrial and political conditions, which were to take place by the
beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a
matter of course that the several States were the proper authorities
to regulate, so far as was then necessary, the comparatively
insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day.
The conditions are now wholly different and wholly different action
is called for. I believe that a law can be framed which will enable
the National Government to exercise control along the lines above
indicated, profiting by the experience gained through the passage
and administration of the Interstate Commerce Act. If, however, the
judgment of the Congress is that it lacks the constitutional power to
pass such an act, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted
to confer the power.
There should be created a Cabinet officer, to be known as Secretary
of Commerce and Industries, as provided in the bill introduced at the
last session of the Congress. It should be his province to deal with
commerce in its broadest sense; including among many other things
whatever concerns labor and all matters affecting the great business
corporations and our merchant marine.
The course proposed is one phase of what should be a comprehensive
and far-reaching scheme of constructive statesmanship for the purpose
of broadening our markets, securing our business interests on a
safe basis, and making firm our new position in the international
industrial world, while scrupulously safeguarding the rights of
wage-worker and capitalist, of investor and private citizen, so as to
secure equity as between man and man in this Republic.
With the sole exception of the farming interest, no one matter is
of such vital moment to our whole people as the welfare of the
wage-workers. If the farmer and the wage-worker are well off, it
is absolutely certain that all others will be well off too. It is
therefore a matter for hearty congratulation that on the whole wages
are higher to-day in the United States than ever before in our
history, and far higher than in any other country. The standard of
living is also higher than ever before. Every effort of legislator
and administrator should be bent to secure the permanency of this
condition of things and its improvement wherever possible. Not only
must our labor be protected by the tariff, but it should also be
protected so far as it is possible from the presence in this country
of any laborers brought over by contract, or of those who, coming
freely, yet represent a standard of living so depressed that they
can undersell our men in the labor market and drag them to a lower
level. I regard it as necessary, with this end in view, to re-enact
immediately the law excluding Chinese laborers and to strengthen it
wherever necessary in order to make its enforcement entirely effective.
The National Government should demand the highest quality of service
from its employees; and in return it should be a good employer.
If possible legislation should be passed, in connection with the
Interstate Commerce Law, which will render effective the efforts of
different States to do away with the competition of convict contract
labor in the open labor market. So far as practicable under the
conditions of government work, provision should be made to render the
enforcement of the eight-hour law easy and certain. In all industries
carried on directly or indirectly for the United States Government
women and children should be protected from excessive hours of
labor, from night work, and from work under unsanitary conditions.
The government should provide in its contracts that all work should
be done under “fair” conditions, and in addition to setting a high
standard should uphold it by proper inspection, extending if necessary
to the subcontractors. The government should forbid all night work
for women and children, as well as excessive overtime. For the
District of Columbia a good factory law should be passed; and, as a
powerful indirect aid to such laws, provision should be made to turn
the inhabited alleys, the existence of which is a reproach to our
Capital City, into minor streets, where the inhabitants can live under
conditions favorable to health and morals.