Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents | Page 6

in our national life--the rule
which underlies all others--is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we
shall go up or down together. There are exceptions; and in times of
prosperity some will prosper far more, and in times of adversity, some
will suffer far more, than others; but speaking generally, a period of
good times means that all share more or less in them, and in a period of
hard times all feel the stress to a greater or less degree. It surely ought
not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this statement; the
memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can
contrast them with the conditions in this very year which is now closing.
Disaster to great business enterprises can never have its effects limited
to the men at the top. It spreads through-out, and while it is bad for
everybody, it is worst for those farthest down. The capitalist may be
shorn of his luxuries; but the wage-worker may be deprived of even
bare necessities.
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care
must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance.
Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great
industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical
inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and fear.
These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with
ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady

judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the
world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and
ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober
self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed at the trusts would have
been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been entirely ineffective.
In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or
reckless agitator has been the really effective friend of the evils which
he has been nominally opposing. In dealing with business interests, for
the Government to undertake by crude and ill-considered legislation to
do what may turn out to be bad, would be to incur the risk of such
far-reaching national disaster that it would be preferable to undertake
nothing at all. The men who demand the impossible or the undesirable
serve as the allies of the forces with which they are nominally at war,
for they hamper those who would endeavor to find out in rational
fashion what the wrongs really are and to what extent and in what
manner it is practicable to apply remedies.
All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils,
one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many baleful
consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made to
correct these evils.
There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people
that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their
features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs
from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the great
industrial achievements that have placed this country at the head of the
nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not rest upon a
lack of intelligent appreciation of the necessity of meeting changing
and changed conditions of trade with new methods, nor upon ignorance
of the fact that combination of capital in the effort to accomplish great
things is necessary when the world's progress demands that great things
be done. It is based upon sincere conviction that combination and
concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within
reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is
right.
It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require
that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing
business under corporate form, which frees them from individual

responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital
of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations
as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested.
Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if
they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It
should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment to
rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body
politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they
are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our
right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these
institutions.
The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial
combinations is knowledge of the facts--publicity. In the interest