A vital factor in the success of any enterprise is the guiding intelligence of the man at the top, and there is need in the interest of all of us to encourage rather than to discourage the activity of the exceptional men who guide average men so that their labor may result in increased production of the kind which is demanded at the time. Normally we help the wage-worker, we help the man of small means, by making conditions such that the man of exceptional business ability receives an exceptional reward for that ability. But while insisting with all emphasis upon this, it is also true that experience has shown that when there is no governmental restraint or supervision, some of the exceptional men use their energies, not in ways that are for the common good, but in ways which tell against this common good; and that by so doing they not only wrong smaller and less able men—whether wage-workers or small producers and traders—but force other men of exceptional abilities themselves to do what is wrong under penalty of falling behind in the keen race for success. There is need of legislation to strive to meet such abuses. At one time or in one place this legislation may take the form of factory laws and employers’ liability laws. Under other conditions it may take the form of dealing with the franchises which derive their value from the grant of the representatives of the people. It may be aimed at the manifold abuses, far-reaching in their effects, which spring from overcapitalization. Or it may be necessary to meet such conditions as those with which I am now dealing and to strive to procure proper supervision and regulation by the National Government of all great corporations engaged in interstate commerce or doing an interstate business. There are good people who are afraid of each type of legislation; and much the same kind of argument that is now advanced against the effort to regulate big corporations has been again and again advanced against the effort to secure proper employers’ liability laws or proper factory laws with reference to women and children; much the same kind of argument was advanced but five years ago against the franchise-tax law enacted in this State while I was Governor. Of course there is always the danger of abuse if legislation of this type is approached in a hysterical or sentimental spirit, or, above all, if it is approached in a spirit of envy and hatred toward men of wealth. We must not try to go too fast, under penalty of finding that we may be going in the wrong direction; and, in any event, we ought always to proceed by evolution and not by revolution. The laws must be conceived and executed in a spirit of sanity and justice, and with exactly as much regard for the rights of the big man as for the rights of the little man—treating big man and little man exactly alike.