Theodore Roosevelt

“ All the most important railroads are no longer State roads, but instruments of interstate commerce. Probably 85 per cent of their business is interstate business. It is the Nation alone which can with wisdom, justice, and effectiveness exercise over these interstate [39] railroads the thorough and complete supervision which should be exercised. One of the chief, and probably the chief, of the domestic causes for the adoption of the Constitution was the need to confer upon the Nation exclusive control over interstate commerce. ”

“ If the Mississippi is restored to its former place of importance as a highway of commerce, then the building of the Panama Canal will be felt as an immediate advantage to the business of every city and country district in the Mississippi Valley. I think that the building of that canal will be of especial advantage to the States that lie along the Pacific and the States that lie along the Gulf; and yet, after all, I feel that the advantage will be shared in an [16] only less degree by the States of the interior and of the Atlantic coast. ”

“ The Navy is not primarily of importance only to the coast regions. It is every bit as much the concern of the farmer who dwells a thousand miles from sea water as of the fisherman who makes his living on the ocean, for it is the concern of every good American who knows what the meaning of the word patriotism is. ”

“ Now that the questions of government are becoming so largely economic, the majority of our so-called constitutional cases really turn not upon the interpretation of the instrument itself, but upon the construction, the right apprehension of the living conditions to which it is to be applied. The Constitution is now and must remain what it always has been ”

“ The best place for a naval officer to learn his duties is at sea, by performing them, and only by actually putting through a voyage of this nature, a voyage longer than any [24] ever before undertaken by as large a fleet of any nation, can we find out just exactly what is necessary for us to know as to our naval needs and practice our officers and enlisted men in the highest duties of their profession. ”

“ This country is definitely committed to certain fundamental policies—to the Monroe doctrine, for instance, and to the duty not only of building, but, when it [21] is built, of policing and defending the Panama Canal. We have definitely taken our place among the great world powers, and it would be a sign of ignoble weakness, having taken such a place, to shirk its responsibilities. ”

“ If they prove to be insuperable resort must be had to the power of amendment. Let us first try to meet them by an exercise of all the powers of the National Government which [37] in the Marshall spirit of broad interpretation can be found in the Constitution as it is. They are of vast extent. The chief economic question of the day in this country is to provide a sovereign for the great corporations engaged in interstate business; that is, for the railroads and the interstate industrial corporations. At the moment our prime concern is with the railroads. ”

“ But this grant of power is worthless unless it is held to confer thoroughgoing and complete control over practically the sole instrumentalities of interstate commerce—the interstate railroads. The railroads themselves have been [40] exceedingly shortsighted in the rancorous bitterness which they have shown against the resumption by the Nation of this long-neglected power. Great capitalists, who pride themselves upon their extreme conservatism, often believe they are acting in the interests of property when following a course so shortsighted as to be really an assault upon property. ”

“ The control must exist somewhere; and unless it is by thoroughgoing and radical law placed upon the statute books of the Nation, it will be exercised in ever-increasing measure by the several States. The same considerations which made the founders of the Constitution deem it imperative [42] that the Nation should have complete control of interstate commerce apply with peculiar force to the control of interstate railroads at the present day ”

“ The growth of the railway system has been rapid all over the world, but nowhere so rapid as in the United States. Accompanying this there has grown in the United States a tendency toward the practically complete abandonment of the system of water transportation. ”

“ Moreover, while of course the matter of the improvement of the Mississippi River and its tributaries is one which especially concerns the great middle portion of our country, the region between the Alleghenies and the Rockies, yet it is of concern to the rest of the country also, for it can not too often be said that [14] whatever is really beneficial to one part of our country is ultimately of benefit to the whole. ”

“ They have shown extreme unwisdom in their violent opposition to the assumption of complete control over the railroads by the Federal Government. [41] The American people will not tolerate the happy-go-lucky system of no control over the great interstate railroads, with the insolent and manifold abuses which have so generally accompanied it. ”

“ The negation of this theory means, for instance, [30] that the Nation—that we, the ninety millions of people of this country—will be left helpless to control the huge corporations which now domineer in our industrial life, and that they will have the authority of the courts to work their desires unchecked ”

“ The danger of entering on any such scheme lies in the adoption of impossible and undesirable plans, plans the adoption of which means an outlay of money extravagant beyond all proportion to the return, or which, [12] though feasible, are not, relatively to other plans, of an importance which warrant their adoption. ”