TEDDY "TRUSTBUSTER" ROOSEVELT -
1901
Controlling the Trusts
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Roosevelt's Controlling the Trusts
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It follows the full text transcript of
Theodore Roosevelt's Controlling the Trusts speech, delivered
before Congress at Washington D.C. - December 3, 1901.
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|
The Congress
assembles this year under the shadow of a great
calamity. |
On the sixth of
September, President McKinley was shot by an
anarchist while attending the Pan-American
Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that city on
the fourteenth of that month.
Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the
third who has been murdered, and the bare
recital of this fact is sufficient to justify
grave alarm among all loyal American citizens.
Moreover, the circumstances of this, the third
assassination of an American President, have a
peculiarly sinister significance. Both President
Lincoln and President Garfield were killed by
assassins of types unfortunately not uncommon in
history; President Lincoln falling a victim to
the terrible passions aroused by four years of
civil war, and President Garfield to the
revengeful vanity of a disappointed
office-seeker. President McKinley was killed by
an utterly depraved criminal belonging to that
body of criminals who object to all governments,
good and bad alike, who are against any form of
popular liberty if it is guaranteed by even the
most just and liberal laws, and who are as
hostile to the upright exponent of a free
people's sober will as to the tyrannical and
irresponsible despot.
It is not too much to say that at the time of
President McKinley's death he was the most
widely loved man in all the United States; while
we have never had any public man of his position
who has been so wholly free from the bitter
animosities incident to public life. His
political opponents were the first to bear the
heartiest and most generous tribute to the broad
kindliness of nature, the sweetness and
gentleness of character which so endeared him to
his close associates. To a standard of lofty
integrity in public life he united the tender
affections and home virtues which are
all-important in the make-up of national
character. A gallant soldier in the great war
for the Union, he also shone as an example to
all our people because of his conduct in the
most sacred and intimate of home relations.
There could be no personal hatred of him, for he
never acted with aught but consideration for the
welfare of others. No one could fail to respect
him who knew him in public or private life. The
defenders of those murderous criminals who seek
to excuse their criminality by asserting that it
is exercised for political ends, inveigh against
wealth and irresponsible power. But for this
assassination even this base apology cannot be
urged.
President McKinley was a man of moderate means,
a man whose stock 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 centered 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 reelected 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 out-stretched 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 faltering 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 cannot 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 than 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. provision
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 offense 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 offense
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 cannot 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 centers 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 of 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 anyone 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 cannot 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 farthest 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 over-capitalization because of its many
baleful consequences; and a resolute and
practical effort must be made to correct these
evils.
There is a 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.
American wage-workers work with their heads as
well as their hands. Moreover, they take a keen
pride in what they are doing; so that,
independent of the reward, they wish to turn out
a perfect job. This is the great secret of our
success in competition with the labor of foreign
countries.
The most vital problem with which this country,
and for that matter the whole civilized world,
has to deal, is the problem which has for one
side the betterment of social conditions, moral
and physical, in large cities, and for another
side the effort to deal with that tangle of
far-reaching questions which we group together
when we speak of "labor." The chief factor in
the success of each man--wage-worker, farmer,
and capitalist alike--must ever be the sum total
of his own individual qualities and abilities.
Second only to this comes the power of acting in
combination or association with others. Very
great good has been and will be accomplished by
associations or unions of wage-workers, when
managed with forethought, and when they combine
insistence upon their own rights with
law-abiding respect for the rights of others.
The display of these qualities in such bodies is
a duty to the nation no less than to the
associations themselves. Finally, there must
also in many cases be action by the Government
in order to safeguard the rights and interests
of all. Under our Constitution there is much
more scope for such action by the State and the
municipality than by the nation. But on points
such as those touched on above the National
Government can act.
When all is said and done, the rule of
brotherhood remains as the indispensable
prerequisite to success in the kind of national
life for which we strive. Each man must work for
himself, and unless he so works no outside help
can avail him; but each man must remember also
that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that
while no man who refuses to walk can be carried
with advantage to himself or anyone else, yet
that each at times stumbles or halts, that each
at times needs to have the helping hand
outstretched to him. To be permanently
effective, aid must always take the form of
helping a man to help himself; and we can all
best help ourselves by joining together in the
work that is of common interest to all.
Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory.
We need every honest and efficient immigrant
fitted to become an American citizen, every
immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings
here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head,
and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in
every way and to bring up his children as
law-abiding and God-fearing members of the
community. But there should be a comprehensive
law enacted with the object of working a
threefold improvement over our present system.
First, we should aim to exclude absolutely not
only all persons who are known to be believers
in anarchistic principles or members of
anarchistic societies, but also all persons who
are of a low moral tendency or of unsavory
reputation. This means that we should require a
more thorough system of inspection abroad and a
more rigid system of examination at our
immigration ports, the former being especially
necessary.
The second object of a proper immigration law
ought to be to secure by a careful and not
merely perfunctory educational test some
intelligent capacity to appreciate American
institutions and act sanely as American
citizens. This would not keep out all
anarchists, for many of them belong to the
intelligent criminal class. But it would do what
is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the
sum of ignorance, so potent in producing the
envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred
of order, out of which anarchistic sentiment
inevitably springs. Finally, all persons should
be excluded who are below a certain standard of
economic fitness to enter our industrial field
as competitors with American labor. There should
be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an
American living and enough money to insure a
decent start under American conditions. This
would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the
resulting competition which gives rise to so
much of bitterness in American industrial life;
and it would dry up the springs of the
pestilential social conditions in our great
cities, where anarchistic organizations have
their greatest possibility of growth.
Both the educational and economic tests in a
wise immigration law should be designed to
protect and elevate the general body politic and
social. A very close supervision should be
exercised over the steamship companies which
mainly bring over the immigrants, and they
should be held to a strict accountability for
any infraction of the law.
There is general acquiescence in our present
tariff system as a national policy. The first
requisite to our prosperity is the continuity
and stability of this economic policy. Nothing
could be more unwise than to disturb the
business interests of the country by any general
tariff change at this time. Doubt, apprehension,
uncertainty are exactly what we most wish to
avoid in the interest of our commercial and
material well-being. Our experience in the past
has shown that sweeping revisions of the tariff
are apt to produce conditions closely
approaching panic in the business world. Yet it
is not only possible, but eminently desirable,
to combine with the stability of our economic
system a supplementary system of reciprocal
benefit and obligation with other nations. Such
reciprocity is an incident and result of the
firm establishment and preservation of our
present economic policy. It was specially
provided for in the present tariff law.
Reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of
protection. Our first duty is to see that the
protection granted by the tariff in every case
where it is needed is maintained, and that
reciprocity be sought for so far as it can
safely be done without injury to our home
industries. Just how far this is must be
determined according to the individual case,
remembering always that every application of our
tariff policy to meet our shifting national
needs must be conditioned upon the cardinal fact
that the duties must never be reduced below the
point that will cover the difference between the
labor cost here and abroad. The well-being of
the wage-worker is a prime consideration of our
entire policy of economic legislation.
Subject to this proviso of the proper protection
necessary to our industrial well-being at home,
the principle of reciprocity must command our
hearty support. The phenomenal growth of our
export trade emphasizes the urgency of the need
for wider markets and for a liberal policy in
dealing with foreign nations. Whatever is merely
petty and vexatious in the way of trade
restrictions should be avoided. The customers to
whom we dispose of our surplus products in the
long run, directly or indirectly, purchase those
surplus products by giving us something in
return. Their ability to purchase our products
should as far as possible be secured by so
arranging our tariff as to enable us to take
from them those products which we can use
without harm to our own industries and labor, or
the use of which will be of marked benefit to
us.
It is most important that we should maintain the
high level of our present prosperity. We have
now reached the point in the development of our
interests where we are not only able to supply
our own markets but to produce a constantly
growing surplus for which we must find markets
abroad. To secure these markets we can utilize
existing duties in any case where they are no
longer needed for the purpose of protection, or
in any case where the article is not produced
here and the duty is no longer necessary for
revenue, as giving us something to offer in
exchange for what we ask. The cordial relations
with other nations which are so desirable will
naturally be promoted by the course thus
required by our own interests.
The natural line of development for a policy of
reciprocity will be in connection with those of
our productions which no longer require all of
the support once needed to establish them upon a
sound basis, and with those others where either
because of natural or of economic causes we are
beyond the reach of successful competition.
I ask the attention of the Senate to the
reciprocity treaties laid before it by my
predecessor.
The condition of the American merchant marine is
such as to call for immediate remedial action by
the Congress. It is discreditable to us as a
Nation that our merchant marine should be
utterly insignificant in comparison to that of
other nations which we overtop in other forms of
business. We should not longer submit to
conditions under which only a trifling portion
of our great commerce is carried in our own
ships. To remedy this state of things would not
.merely serve to build up our shipping
interests, but it would also result in benefit
to all who are interested in the permanent
establishment of a wider market for American
products, and would provide an auxiliary force
for the Navy. Ships work for their own countries
just as railroads work for their terminal
points. Shipping lines, if established to the
principal countries with which we have dealings,
would be of political as well as commercial
benefit. From every standpoint it is unwise for
the United States to continue to rely upon the
ships of competing nations for the distribution
of our goods. It should be made advantageous to
carry American goods in American-built ships.
At present American shipping is under certain
great disadvantages when put in competition with
the shipping of foreign countries. Many of the
fast foreign steamships, at a speed of fourteen
knots or above, are subsidized; and all our
ships, sailing vessels and steamers alike, cargo
carriers of slow speed and mail carriers of high
speed, have to meet the fact that the original
cost of building American ships is greater than
is the case abroad; that the wages paid American
officers and seamen are very much higher than
those paid the officers and seamen of foreign
competing countries; and that the standard of
living on our ships is far superior to the
standard of living on the ships of our
commercial rivals.
Our Government should take such action as will
remedy these inequalities. The American merchant
marine should be restored to the ocean.
The Act of March 14, 1900, intended
unequivocally to establish gold as the standard
money and to maintain at a parity therewith all
forms of money medium in use with us, has been
shown to be timely and judicious. The price of
our Government bonds in the world's market, when
compared with the price of similar obligations
issued by other nations, is a flattering tribute
to our public credit. This condition it is
evidently desirable to maintain.
In many respects the National Banking Law
furnishes sufficient liberty for the proper
exercise of the banking function; but there
seems to be need of better safeguards against
the deranging influence of commercial crises and
financial panics. Moreover, the currency of the
country should be made responsive to the demands
of our domestic trade and commerce.
The collections from duties on imports and
internal taxes continue to exceed the ordinary
expenditures of the Government, thanks mainly to
the reduced army expenditures. The utmost care
should be taken not to reduce the revenues so
that there will be any possibility of a deficit;
but, after providing against any such
contingency, means should be adopted which will
bring the revenues more nearly within the limit
of our actual needs. In his report to the
Congress the Secretary of the Treasury considers
all these questions at length, and I ask your
attention to the report and recommendations.
I call special attention to the need of strict
economy in expenditures. The fact that our
national needs forbid us to be niggardly in
providing whatever is actually necessary to our
well-being, should make us doubly careful to
husband our national resources, as each of us
husbands his private resources, by scrupulous
avoidance of anything like wasteful or reckless
expenditure. Only by avoidance of spending money
on what is needless or unjustifiable can we
legitimately keep our income to the point
required to meet our needs that are genuine.
In 1887 a measure was enacted for the regulation
of interstate railways, commonly known as the
Interstate Commerce Act. The cardinal provisions
of that act were that railway rates should be
just and reasonable and that all shippers,
localities, and commodities should be accorded
equal treatment. A commission was created and
endowed with what were supposed to be the
necessary powers to execute the provisions of
this act. That law was largely an experiment.
Experience has shown the wisdom of its purposes,
but has also shown, possibly that some of its
requirements are wrong, certainly that the means
devised for the enforcement of its provisions
are defective. Those who complain of the
management of the railways allege that
established rates are not maintained; that
rebates and similar devices are habitually
resorted to; that these preferences are usually
in favor of the large shipper; that they drive
out of business the smaller competitor; that
while many rates are too low, many others are
excessive; and that gross preferences are made,
affecting both localities and commodities. Upon
the other hand, the railways assert that the law
by its very terms tends to produce many of these
illegal practices by depriving carriers of that
right of concerted action which they claim is
necessary to establish and maintain
non-discriminating rates.
The act should be amended. The railway is a
public servant. Its rates should be just to and
open to all shippers alike. The Government
should see to it that within its jurisdiction
this is so and should provide a speedy,
inexpensive, and effective remedy to that end.
At the same time it must not be forgotten that
our railways are the arteries through which the
commercial lifeblood of this Nation flows.
Nothing could be more foolish than the enactment
of legislation which would unnecessarily
interfere with the development and operation of
these commercial agencies. The subject is one of
great importance and calls for the earnest
attention of the Congress.
The Department of Agriculture during the past
fifteen years has steadily broadened its work on
economic lines, and has accomplished results of
real value in upbuilding domestic and foreign
trade. It has gone into new fields until it is
now in touch with all sections of our country
and with two of the island groups that have
lately come under our jurisdiction, whose people
must look to agriculture as a livelihood. It is
searching the world for grains, grasses, fruits,
and vegetables specially fitted for introduction
into localities in the several States and
Territories where they may add materially to our
resources. By scientific attention to soil
survey and possible new crops, to breeding of
new varieties of plants, to experimental
shipments, to animal industry and applied
chemistry, very practical aid has been given our
farming and stock-growing interests. The
products of the farm have taken an unprecedented
place in our export trade during the year that
has just closed.
Public opinion throughout the United States has
moved steadily toward a just appreciation of the
value of forests, whether planted or of natural
growth. The great part played by them in the
creation and maintenance of the national wealth
is now more fully realized than ever before.
Wise forest protection does not mean the
withdrawal of forest resources, whether of wood,
water, or grass, from contributing their full
share to the welfare of the people, but, on the
contrary, gives the assurance of larger and more
certain supplies. The fundamental idea of
forestry is the perpetuation of forests by use.
Forest protection is not an end of itself; it is
a means to increase and sustain the resources of
our country and the industries which depend upon
them. The preservation of our forests is an
imperative business necessity. We have come to
see clearly that whatever destroys the forest,
except to make way for agriculture, threatens
our well being.
The practical usefulness of the national forest
reserves to the mining, grazing, irrigation, and
other interests of the regions in which the
reserves lie has led to a widespread demand by
the people of the West for their protection and
extension. The forest reserves will inevitably
be of still greater use in the future than in
the past. Additions should be made to them
whenever practicable, and their usefulness
should be increased by a thoroughly
business-like management.
At present the protection of the forest reserves
rests with the General Land Office, the mapping
and description of their timber with the United
States Geological Survey, and the preparation of
plans for their conservative use with the Bureau
of Forestry, which is also charged with the
general advancement of practical forestry in the
United States. These various functions should be
united in the Bureau of Forestry, to which they
properly belong. The present diffusion of
responsibility is bad from every standpoint. It
prevents that effective co-operation between the
Government and the men who utilize the resources
of the reserves, without which the interests of
both must suffer. The scientific bureaus
generally should be put under the Department of
Agriculture. The President should have by law
the power of transferring lands for use as
forest reserves to the Department of
Agriculture. He already has such power in the
case of lands needed by the Departments of War
and the Navy.
The wise administration of the forest reserves
will be not less helpful to the interests which
depend on water than to those which depend on
wood and grass. The water supply itself depends
upon the forest. In the arid region it is water,
not land, which measures production. The western
half of the United States would sustain a
population greater than that of our whole
country to-day if the waters that now run to
waste were saved and used for irrigation. The
forest and water problems are perhaps the most
vital internal questions of the United States.
Certain of the forest reserves should also be
made preserves for the wild forest creatures.
All of the reserves should be better protected
from fires. Many of them need special protection
because of the great injury done by live stock,
above all by sheep. The increase in deer, elk,
and other animals in the Yellowstone Park shows
what may be expected when other mountain forests
are properly protected by law and properly
guarded. Some of these areas have been so
denuded of surface vegetation by overgrazing
that the ground breeding birds, including grouse
and quail, and many mammals, including deer,
have been exterminated or driven away. At the
same time the water-storing capacity of the
surface has been decreased or destroyed, thus
promoting floods in times of rain and
diminishing the flow of streams between rains.
In cases where natural conditions have been
restored for a few years, vegetation has again
carpeted the ground, birds and deer are coming
back, and hundreds of persons, especially from
the immediate neighborhood, come each summer to
enjoy the privilege of camping. Some at least of
the forest reserves should afford perpetual
protection to the native fauna and flora, safe
havens of refuge to our rapidly diminishing wild
animals of the larger kinds, and free camping
grounds for the ever-increasing numbers of men
and women who have learned to find rest, health,
and recreation in the splendid forests and
flower-clad meadows of our mountains. The forest
reserves should be set apart forever for the use
and benefit of our people as a whole and not
sacrificed to the shortsighted greed of a few.
The forests are natural reservoirs. By
restraining the streams in flood and
replenishing them in drought they make possible
the use of waters otherwise wasted. They prevent
the soil from washing, and so protect the
storage reservoirs from filling up with silt.
Forest conservation is therefore an essential
condition of water conservation.
The forests alone cannot, however, fully
regulate and conserve the waters of the arid
region. Great storage works are necessary to
equalize the flow of streams and to save the
flood waters. Their construction has been
conclusively shown to be an undertaking too vast
for private effort. Nor can it be best
accomplished by the individual States acting
alone. Far-reaching interstate problems are
involved; and the resources of single States
would often be inadequate. It is properly a
national function, at least in some of its
features. It is as right for the National
Government to make the streams and rivers of the
arid region useful by engineering works for
water storage as to make useful the rivers and
harbors of the humid region by engineering works
of another kind. The storing of the floods in
reservoirs at the headwaters of our rivers is
but an enlargement of our present policy of
river control, under which levees are built on
the lower reaches of the same streams.
The Government should construct and maintain
these reservoirs as it does other public works.
Where their purpose is to regulate the flow of
streams, the water should be turned freely into
the channels in the dry season to take the same
course under the same laws as the natural flow.
The reclamation of the unsettled arid public
lands presents a different problem. Here it is
not enough to regulate the flow of streams. The
object of the Government is to dispose of the
land to settlers who will build homes upon it.
To accomplish this object water must be brought
within their reach.
The pioneer settlers on the arid public domain
chose their homes along streams from which they
could themselves divert the water to reclaim
their holdings. Such opportunities are
practically gone. There remain, however, vast
areas of public land which can be made available
for homestead settlement, but only by reservoirs
and main-line canals impracticable for private
enterprise. These irrigation works should be
built by the National Government. The lands
reclaimed by them should be reserved by the
Government for actual settlers, and the cost of
construction should so far as possible be repaid
by the land reclaimed. The distribution of the
water, the division of the streams among
irrigators, should be left to the settlers
themselves in conformity with State laws and
without interference with those laws or with
vested fights. The policy of the National
Government should be to aid irrigation in the
several States and Territories in such manner as
will enable the people in the local communities
to help themselves, and as will stimulate needed
reforms in the State laws and regulations
governing irrigation.
The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands
will enrich every portion of our country, just
as the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys brought prosperity to the Atlantic
States. The increased demand for manufactured
articles will stimulate industrial production,
while wider home markets and the trade of Asia
will consume the larger food supplies and
effectually prevent Western competition with
Eastern agriculture. Indeed, the products of
irrigation will be consumed chiefly in
upbuilding local centers of mining and other
industries, which would otherwise not come into
existence at all. Our people as a whole will
profit, for successful home-making is but
another name for the upbuilding of the nation.
The necessary foundation has already been laid
for the inauguration of the policy just
described. It would be unwise to begin by doing
too much, for a great deal will doubtless be
learned, both as to what can and what cannot be
safely attempted, by the early efforts, which
must of necessity be partly experimental in
character. At the very beginning the Government
should make clear, beyond shadow of doubt, its
intention to pursue this policy on lines of the
broadest public interest. No reservoir or canal
should ever be built to satisfy selfish personal
or local interests; but only in accordance with
the advice of trained experts, after long
investigation has shown the locality where all
the conditions combine to make the work most
needed and fraught with the greatest usefulness
to the community as a whole. There should be no
extravagance, and the believers in the need of
irrigation will most benefit their cause by
seeing to it that it is free from the least
taint of excessive or reckless expenditure of
the public moneys.
Whatever the nation does for the extension of
irrigation should harmonize with, and tend to
improve, the condition of those now living on
irrigated land. We are not at the starting point
of this development. Over two hundred millions
of private capital has already been expended in
the construction of irrigation works, and many
million acres of arid land reclaimed. A high
degree of enterprise and ability has been shown
in the work itself; but as much cannot be said
in reference to the laws relating thereto. The
security and value of the homes created depend
largely on the stability of titles to water; but
the majority of these rest on the uncertain
foundation of court decisions rendered in
ordinary suits at law. With a few creditable
exceptions, the arid States have failed to
provide for the certain and just division of
streams in times of scarcity. Lax and uncertain
laws have made it possible to establish rights
to water in excess of actual uses or
necessities, and many streams have already
passed into private ownership, or a control
equivalent to ownership.
Whoever controls a stream practically controls
the land it renders productive, and the doctrine
of private ownership of water apart from land
cannot prevail without causing enduring wrong.
The recognition of such ownership, which has
been permitted to grow up in the arid regions,
should give way to a more enlightened and larger
recognition of the rights of the public in the
control and disposal of the public water
supplies. Laws founded upon conditions obtaining
in humid regions, where water is too abundant to
justify hoarding it, have no proper application
in a dry country.
In the arid States the only right to water which
should be recognized is that of use. In
irrigation this right should attach to the land
reclaimed and be inseparable therefrom. Granting
perpetual water rights to others than users,
without compensation to the public, is open to
all the objections which apply to giving away
perpetual franchises to the public utilities of
cities. A few of the Western States have already
recognized this, and have incorporated in their
constitutions the doctrine of perpetual State
ownership of water.
The benefits which have followed the unaided
development of the past justify the nation's aid
and co-operation in the more difficult and
important work yet to be accomplished. Laws so
vitally affecting homes as those which control
the water supply will only be effective when
they have the sanction of the irrigators;
reforms can only be final and satisfactory when
they come through the enlightenment of the
people most concerned. The larger development
which national aid insures should, however,
awaken in every arid State the determination to
make its irrigation system equal in justice and
effectiveness that of any country in the
civilized world. Nothing could be more unwise
than for isolated communities to continue to
learn everything experimentally, instead of
profiting by what is already known elsewhere. We
are dealing with a new and momentous question,
in the pregnant years while institutions are
forming, and what we do will affect not only the
present but future generations.
Our aim should be not simply to reclaim the
largest area of land and provide homes for the
largest number of people, but to create for this
new industry the best possible social and
industrial conditions; and this requires that we
not only understand the existing situation, but
avail ourselves of the best experience of the
time in the solution of its problems. A careful
study should be made, both by the Nation and the
States, of the irrigation laws and conditions
here and abroad. Ultimately it will probably be
necessary for the Nation to co-operate with the
several arid States in proportion as these
States by their legislation and administration
show themselves fit to receive it.
In Hawaii our aim must be to develop the
Territory on the traditional American lines. We
do not wish a region of large estates tilled by
cheap labor; we wish a healthy American
community of men who themselves till the farms
they own. All our legislation for the islands
should be shaped with this end in view; the
well-being of the average home-maker must afford
the true test of the healthy development of the
islands. The land policy should as nearly as
possible be modeled on our homestead system.
It is a pleasure to say that it is hardly more
necessary to report as to Puerto Rico than as to
any State or Territory within our continental
limits. The island is thriving as never before,
and it is being administered efficiently and
honestly. Its people are now enjoying liberty
and order under the protection of the United
States, and upon this fact we congratulate them
and ourselves. Their material welfare must be as
carefully and jealously considered as the
welfare of any other portion of our country. We
have given them the great gift of free access
for their products to the markets of the United
States. I ask the attention of the Congress to
the need of legislation concerning the public
lands of Puerto Rico.
This is page 1 of
2 of Roosevelt's speech. Go to
page 2.
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