Address of President Roosevelt at Chautauqua, New York, August 11, 1905Roosevelt, Theodore
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Address of President Roosevelt at Chautauqua, New York, August 11, 1905
Roosevelt, Theodore
Corporation law -- United States; Finance -- Dominican Republic; Monroe doctrine; Speeches, addresses, etc.
Under the course taken, stability and order and all the benefits
of peace are at last coming to Santo Domingo, all danger of foreign
intervention has ceased, and there is at last a prospect that all
creditors will get justice, no more and no less. If the arrangement
is terminated, chaos will follow; and if chaos follows, sooner or
later this Government may be involved in serious difficulties with
foreign governments over the island, or else may be forced itself to
intervene in the island in some unpleasant fashion. Under the present
arrangement the independence of the island is scrupulously respected,
the danger of violation of the Monroe Doctrine by the intervention of
foreign powers vanishes, and the interference of our Government is
minimized, so that we only act in conjunction with the Santo Domingo
authorities to secure the proper administration of the customs, and
therefore to secure the payment of just debts and to secure the Santo
Dominican Government against demands for unjust debts. The present
method prevents there being any need of our establishing any kind of
protectorate over the island and gives the people of Santo Domingo the
same chance to move onward and upward which we have already given to
the people of Cuba. It will be doubly to our discredit as a nation if
we fail to take advantage of this chance; for it will be of damage to
ourselves, and, above all, it will be of incalculable damage to Santo
Domingo. Every consideration of wise policy, and, above all, every
consideration of large generosity, bids us meet the request of Santo
Domingo as we are now trying to meet it.
So much for one feature of our foreign policy. Now for one feature
of our domestic policy. One of the main features of our national
governmental policy should be the effort to secure adequate and
effective supervisory and regulatory control over all great corporations
doing an interstate business. Much of the legislation aimed to prevent
the evils connected with the enormous development of these great
corporations has been ineffective, partly because it aimed at doing too
much, and partly because it did not confer on the Government a really
efficient method of holding any guilty corporation to account. The
effort to prevent all restraint of competition, whether harmful or
beneficial, has been ill-judged; what is needed is not so much the
effort to prevent combination as a vigilant and effective control of the
combinations formed, so as to secure just and equitable dealing on their
part alike toward the public generally, toward their smaller
competitors, and toward the wage-workers in their employ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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