The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a peopleWilson, Woodrow
History
The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people
Wilson, Woodrow
United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
When we undertake the strategy which is going to be necessary to overcome
and destroy this far-reaching system of monopoly, we are rescuing the
business of this country, we are not injuring it; and when we separate the
interests from each other and dismember these communities of connection,
we have in mind a greater community of interest, a vaster community of
interest, the community of interest that binds the virtues of all men
together, that community of mankind which is broad and catholic enough to
take under the sweep of its comprehension all sorts and conditions of men;
that vision which sees that no society is renewed from the top but that
every society is renewed from the bottom. Limit opportunity, restrict the
field of originative achievement, and you have cut out the heart and root
of all prosperity.
The only thing that can ever make a free country is to keep a free and
hopeful heart under every jacket in it. Honest American industry has
always thriven, when it has thriven at all, on freedom; it has never
thriven on monopoly. It is a great deal better to shift for yourselves
than to be taken care of by a great combination of capital. I, for my
part, do not want to be taken care of. I would rather starve a free man
than be fed a mere thing at the caprice of those who are organizing
American industry as they please to organize it. I know, and every man in
his heart knows, that the only way to enrich America is to make it
possible for any man who has the brains to get into the game. I am not
jealous of the size of any business that has _grown_ to that size. I am
not jealous of any process of growth, no matter how huge the result,
provided the result was indeed obtained by the processes of wholesome
development, which are the processes of efficiency, of economy, of
intelligence, and of invention.
IX
BENEVOLENCE, OR JUSTICE?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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