_Mr. President, Mr. Toastmaster, and you, my Hosts_:
Our country is governed, and under existing circumstances can only be
governed, under the party system, and that should mean, and that will
mean, when we have a sufficient number of people who take the point of
view that Judge Dickinson takes, that there shall be a frank and manly
opposition of party to party, of party man to party man, combined with
an equally frank refusal to conduct a party contest in any such way as
to give good Americans cause for regret because of what is said before
election, when compared with what is said after election. The frankest
opposition to a given man or a given party on questions of public
policy not only can be, but almost always should be, combined with
the frankest recognition of the infinitely greater number of points
of agreement than of the points of difference. I have accepted your
kind and generous invitation to come before you this evening, because
the longer I am in public life the more firmly I am convinced that the
great bulk of the questions of most importance before us as a people
are questions which we can best decide not from the standpoint of
republicanism or democracy, but from the standpoint of the interests
of the average American citizen, whether Republican or Democrat.
This is true of both foreign and domestic questions. Our political
differences should, and in the great majority of cases do, disappear at
the water’s edge. When I had to choose a man to represent to a peculiar
degree the interests of this Government in one of the most important
foreign negotiations of recent years—that concerning the Alaskan
boundary—I chose the best lawyer, one of the ablest public men, and one
of the most fair-minded patriots that could be found in the country;
and the fact that he was of opposite political faith did not interfere
with Judge Dickinson’s doing that work well. That was a question that
concerned the United States—all of the United States. Most questions
that come up in Washington are questions that go much deeper than
party, are questions that affect the whole country, and the man would
be indeed unfit for the position of President who did not feel that
when he held that office he held it in the most emphatic sense as the
representative of all the people.
One of the works that Uncle Sam has on hand just at present is digging
the Panama Canal; and it is going to be dug. It is going to be dug
honestly and as cheaply as is compatible with efficiency; but with the
efficiency first. I wanted Congress to give me power to remodel the
commission. It did not do it. So I remodeled it anyhow, purely in the
exercise of my executive functions. I made up my mind this time that
I was not going to make the slightest effort to represent different
sections of the country on that commission, that I was going to have
the whole country represented, by putting the best man I could get in
any given position, without the slightest regard to where he came from;
and while it was an accident, still I may mention it as a fortunate
accident that the two most important positions were filled from
Illinois—Shonts and Wallace are both from Illinois.
These are external questions, as regards which the interests of the
whole country and not the interests of any party or any section of the
country must be considered by the President. So it is with certain of
our great internal policies.
Among the vital questions that have come up for solution, because of
the extraordinary industrial development of this country, as of all the
modern world, are the questions affecting capital and labor as regards
each other, and the questions resulting from the effect upon the public
of the organization into great masses of both capital and labor. I
believe thoroughly in each kind of organization, but I recognize that
if either kind of organization does what is wrong, the increase in its
power for efficiency that has resulted from the combination means the
increase in its power to do harm; and that, therefore, corporation—that
is, organized capital—and union—that is, organized labor—must alike be
held to a peculiar responsibility to the public at large, and that from
each alike we have the right to demand not only obedience to the law,
but service to the public.
There are two sides to what I have said, and we are very apt to hear
only insistence upon one side—sometimes insistence upon one side,
sometimes insistence upon the other, but not as often as we should
insistence upon both sides.
I take up first the question of organized capital. When this Nation was
created, such a thing as a modern corporation not only did not exist,
but could not be imagined. This is especially true of the great modern
corporations engaged in interstate commerce. A century ago the highways
of commerce were exactly such as they had been from the days of the
dawn of civilization on the banks of the Nile and in Mesopotamia. All
that could be done by waterways and by roads for wheeled vehicles
drawn by animal power had been developed to a very marked degree; but
sails, oars, wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden were, as they had
been for many thousands of years, the only means of commerce, the
only methods by which individuals or corporations engaged in commerce
could act. Under such circumstances the fathers and founders of this
Republic could not foresee, and therefore, doubly, could not provide
for, the conditions of the present day. We now have the great highways
of commerce of an entirely different kind. The waterway, the road for
wheeled vehicles, have sunk into absolute insignificance compared
with the railway. We therefore have for the first time in history a
highway for the commerce of all the people under the control of a
private individual or private corporation. Now, gentlemen, let me in
the first place insist upon this fact, that we should keep ever before
us that the men who have built up the great railroad systems of this
country, like the men who have built up the other great industries of
this country, have as a rule (there are exceptions, but as a rule)
made their fortunes as incidents to benefiting and not to harming the
country. As a rule benefit and not harm has come from their efforts,
and in making fortunes for themselves they have done good to all of
us. We have all benefited by the talents of the great captains of
industry. I am speaking, as I say, as a rule, with full knowledge of
the exceptions to what I say, but disregarding those exceptions in
making a general statement. We can not afford to do damage to those
men or to those corporations, because in the first place we can not
afford to do injustice to any man, rich or poor; in the next place,
because to do such damage to them would mean widespread damage among
the wage-workers and among the general public. All of this that I have
said I wish kept in mind steadily in appreciating what I am about to
say; for while acknowledging in the frankest manner the benefits that
have come from the development of these great industrial enterprises, I
also feel that we must recognize that the time has now come when it is
essential in the interests of the public that there should be, and be
exercised, an effective power of supervision and regulation over them
in the interests of the public.
The State can properly deal with the corporations doing business within
its own limits. The State can not deal at all with corporations doing
business in many different States, and it is an absurdity at once
ludicrous and harmful to leave it in the power of one State to create a
corporation of gigantic size which shall do all its work in a number of
other States, and perhaps with the scantiest regard for their laws.
Personally, I believe that the Federal Government must take an
increasing control over corporations. It is better that that control
should increase by degrees than that it should be assumed all at
once. But there should be, and I trust will be, no halt in the steady
progress of assuming such national control. The first step toward it
should be the adoption of a law conferring upon some executive body the
power of increased supervision and regulation of the great corporations
engaged primarily in interstate commerce of the railroads. My views
on that subject could not have been better expressed than they were
expressed yesterday by Secretary Taft in Washington, and as they were
expressed by the Attorney-General in his communication to the Senate
Committee a couple of weeks ago. I believe that the representatives
of the Nation—that is, the representatives of all the people—should
lodge in some executive body the power to establish a maximum rate,
the power to have that rate go into effect practically immediately,
and the power to see that the provisions of the law apply in full to
companies owning private cars and private tracks, just as much as the
railroads themselves. The courts will retain, and should retain, no
matter what the Legislature does, the power to interfere and upset
any action that is confiscatory in its nature. I am well aware that
the action of such a body as I have spoken of may stop far short of
confiscation, and yet do great damage. In other words, I am well aware
that to give this power means the possibility that the power may be
abused. That possibility we must face. Any power strong enough, any
power which could be granted sufficiently great to be efficient, would
be sufficiently great to be harmful if abused. That is true of the
power of taxation. It is perfectly possible for the body that has the
power of taxation intrusted to it to use it viciously and harmfully
against certain interests or certain classes. Nevertheless, the power
must exist. The power must be lodged in the representatives of the
people. So it is with the power of which I speak. It must exist; it
must be lodged in some body which is to give expression to the needs of
the people as a whole. The fact that it is possible that the power may
be abused is not, and can not be, an argument against placing it where
we shall have a right to expect that it will be used fairly toward all.
One thing I wish definitely understood. If the power is granted me to
create such a board, such a commission, or to continue in power, if I
so desire, a commission or board with increased powers, I shall strive
to appoint and retain men who will do exactly the same justice to the
railroads as they will exact from the railroads. False hopes are always
raised by any measure of reform, because there are always people who
expect the impossible. If the measure which I advocate is enacted into
law, a good many people will expect that it will bring the millennium
considerably nearer than will prove to be the case. The men whom I
appoint to execute that law will be, so far as my ability to choose
them exists, men who will no more be frightened by an even sincere
popular clamor into doing an act of injustice to any great corporation
than they will be frightened, on the other hand, into refraining from
doing an act of justice because it is against the interests of some
great corporation. In other words, I shall strive to see that that
branch of the Government with its increased power is administered as
every branch of the Government ought to be administered—that is, in a
spirit of striving to do exact justice to the men of great means just
as much as, and no more than, to the man of small means.
Now for the other side of the question. There have been a great many
republics before our time, and again and again these republics have
split upon the rock of disaster. The greatest and most dangerous rock
in the course of any republic is the rock of class hatred. Sometimes
in the past the republic became a republic in which one class grew to
dominate over another class, so that for loyalty to the republic was
substituted loyalty to a class. The result was in such case inevitable.
It meant disaster and ultimately the downfall of the republic, and it
mattered not one whit which class became dominant; it mattered not
one whit whether the poor plundered the rich or the rich exploited
the poor. In either case, just as soon as the republic became one in
which one class substituted loyalty to that class for loyalty to the
republic, the end of the republic was at hand. No true patriot will
fail to do everything in his power to prevent the growth of any such
spirit in this country.
This Government is not and never shall be a government of a plutocracy.
This Government is not, and never shall be, a Government of a mob. I
believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our
modern industrialism; but I believe that they should be so supervised
and regulated that they shall act for the interest of the community as
a whole. So I believe in unions. I am proud of the fact that I am an
honorary member of one union. But I believe that the union, like the
individual, must be held to a strict accountability to the power of the
law.
Mr. Mayor, as President of the United States, and therefore as
representative of the people of this country, I give you, as a matter
of course, my hearty support in upholding the law, in keeping order, in
putting down violence, whether by a mob or by an individual. There need
not be the slightest apprehension in the heart of the most timid that
ever the mob spirit will triumph in this country. Those immediately
responsible for dealing with the trouble must, as I know you feel,
exhaust every effort in so dealing with it before a call is made upon
any outside body. But if ever the need arises, back of the city stands
the State, and back of the State stands the Nation.
There, gentlemen, is a point upon which all good Americans are one.
They are all one in the conviction, in the firm determination that
this country shall remain in the future as it has been in the past, a
country of liberty and justice expressed through the forms of law; a
country in which the will of the people is supreme, but in which that
will finds its expression as provided for in the Constitution of the
United States, and of the several States that go to make up our Nation.