The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)Roosevelt, Theodore
General
The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)
Roosevelt, Theodore
United States -- Colonial question; United States -- Politics and government
Nor can legislation stop only with what are termed labor questions.
The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of
capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system,
create new conditions and necessitate a change from the old attitude
of the State and the nation toward property. It is probably true that
the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have
been amassed not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the
conferring of great benefits upon the community; and this, no matter
what may have been the conscious purpose of those amassing them. There
is but the scantiest justification for most of the outcry against the
men of wealth _as such_; and it ought to be unnecessary to state that
any appeal which directly or indirectly leads to suspicion and hatred
among ourselves, which tends to limit opportunity, and therefore to
shut the door of success against poor men of talent, and, finally,
which entails the possibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack
upon the fundamental properties of American citizenship. Our interests
are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together.
Yet more and more it is evident that the State, and if necessary the
Nation, must possess the right of supervision and control as regards
the great corporations which are its creatures, particularly as regards
the great business combinations which derive a portion of their
importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right
should be exercised with caution and self-restraint; but it should
exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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