State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
History
State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
But, unfortunately for the country, when attention is called to, or attack
is made on specific misuses of capital, there has been a deliberate purpose
on the part of the condemned minority to distort the criticism into an
attack on all capital. That is wilful deception but it does not long
deceive.
If attention is called to, or attack made on, certain wrongful business
practices, there are those who are eager to call it "an attack on all
business." That, too, is wilful deception that will not long deceive. Let
us consider certain facts:
There are practices today which most people believe should be ended. They
include tax avoidance through corporate and other methods, which I have
previously mentioned; excessive capitalization, investment write-ups and
security manipulations; price rigging and collusive bidding in defiance of
the spirit of the antitrust laws by methods which baffle prosecution under
the present statutes. They include high-pressure salesmanship which creates
cycles of overproduction within given industries and consequent recessions
in production until such time as the surplus is consumed; the use of patent
laws to enable larger corporations to maintain high prices and withhold
from the public the advantages of the progress of science; unfair
competition which drives the smaller producer out of business locally,
regionally or even on a national scale; intimidation of local or state
government to prevent the enactment of laws for the protection of labor by
threatening to move elsewhere; the shifting of actual production from one
locality or region to another in pursuit of the cheapest wage scale.
The enumeration of these abuses does not mean that business as a whole is
guilty of them. Again, it is deception that will not long deceive to tell
the country that an attack on these abuses is an attack on business.
Another group of problems affecting business, which cannot be termed
specific abuses, gives us food for grave thought about the future.
Generically such problems arise out of the concentration of economic
control to the detriment of the body politic--control of other people's
money, other people's labor, other people's lives.
In many instances such concentrations cannot be justified on the ground of
operating efficiency, but have been created for the sake of securities
profits, financial control, the suppression of competition and the ambition
for power over others. In some lines of industry a very small numerical
group is in such a position of influence that its actions are of necessity
followed by the other units operating in the same field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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