Experience has shown that it is necessary to exercise a far more efficient control than at present over the business use of those vast fortunes, chiefly corporate, which are used (as under modern conditions they almost invariably are) in interstate business. When the Constitution was created none of the conditions of modern business existed. They are wholly new and we must create new agencies to deal effectively with them. There is no objection in the minds of this people to any man’s earning any amount of money if he does it honestly and fairly, if he gets it as the result of special skill and enterprise, as a reward of ample service actually rendered. But there is a growing determination that no man shall amass a great fortune by special privilege, by chicanery and wrongdoing, so far as it is in the power of legislation to prevent; and that a fortune, however amassed, shall not have a business use that is antisocial. Most large corporations do a business that is not confined to any one State. Experience has shown that the effort to control these corporations by mere State action can not produce wholesome results. In most cases such effort fails to correct the real abuses of which the corporation is or may be guilty; while in other cases the effort is apt to cause either hardship to the corporation itself, or else hardship to neighboring States which have not tried to grapple with the problem in the same manner; and of course we must be as scrupulous to safeguard the rights of the corporations as to exact from them in return a full measure of justice to the public. I believe in a national incorporation law for corporations engaged in interstate business. I believe, furthermore, that the need for action is most pressing as regards those corporations which, because they are common carriers, exercise a quasi-public function; and which can be completely controlled, in all respects by the Federal Government, by the exercise of the power conferred under the interstate-commerce clause, and, if necessary, under the post-road clause, of the Constitution. During the last few years we have taken marked strides in advance along the road of proper regulation of these railroad corporations; but we must not stop in the work. The National Government should exercise over them a similar supervision and control to that which it exercises over national banks. We can do this only by proceeding farther along the lines marked out by the recent national legislation.