Theodore Roosevelt

“ It is to be wished that some of those who preach and practise a gospel of mere materialism and greed, and who speak as if the heaping up of wealth by the community or by the individual were in itself the be-all and end-all of life, would learn from the most widely read and oldest of books that true wisdom which teaches that it is well to have neither great poverty nor great riches. ”

“ The tyranny of politicians with a bureaucracy behind them and a mass of ignorant people supporting them would be just as insufferable as the tyranny of big corporations. The tyranny would be the same in each case, and it would make no more difference that one was called individualism and the other collectivism than it made in French history whether tyranny was exercised in the name of the Commune or of the Emperor, of a committee of national safety, or of a king. ”

“ This is the kind of paper which by torrents of foul abuse seeks to stir up a bitter class hatred against every man of means simply because he is a man of means, against every man of wealth, whether he is an honest man who by industry and ability has honorably won his wealth, and who honorably spends it, or a man whose wealth represents robbery and whose life represents either profligacy or at best an inane, useless, and tasteless extravagance. This country can not afford to let its conscience grow warped and twisted, as it must grow if it takes either one of these two positions. ”

“ Steevens says, that Americans feel that the one end of life is to get dollars; but the statement contains a very unpleasant element of truth. The hard materialism of greed is just as objectionable as the hard materialism of brutality, and the greed of the "haves" is just as objectionable as the greed of the "have-nots," and no more so. The envious and sinister creature who declaims against a great corporation because he really desires himself to enjoy what in hard, selfish, brutal fashion the head of that great corporation enjoys, offers a spectacle which is both sad and repellent. ”

“ If the one is left to his own devices he will make such an exhibition of brutal and selfish greed as to utterly discredit the entire system of government by individual initiative; and if the other is allowed to work his will he, in his turn, will make men so loathe interference and control by the state that any abuses connected with the untrammelled control of all business by private individuals will seem small by comparison. ”

“ The brutal arrogance and grasping greed of the one man are in reality the same thing as the bitter envy and hatred and grasping greed of the other. That kind of "have" and that kind of "have-not" stand on the same eminence of infamy. It is as important for the one as for the other to learn the lesson of the true relations of life. Of course, the first duty of any man is to pay his own way, to be able to earn his own livelihood, to support himself and his wife and his children and those dependent upon him. ”

“ The movement for government control of the great business corporations is no more a movement against liberty than a movement to put a stop to violence is a movement against liberty. On the contrary, in each case alike it is a movement for liberty; in the one case a movement on behalf of the hard-working man of small means, just as in the other case it is a movement on behalf of the peaceable citizen who does not wish a "liberty" which puts him at the mercy of any rowdy who is stronger than he is. ”

“ The mob leaders usually state that all that they are doing is necessary in order to advance the cause of "liberty," while the dictator and the oligarchy are usually defended upon the ground that the course they follow is absolutely necessary so as to secure "order." Many excellent people are taken in by the use of the word "liberty" at the one time, and the use of the word "order" at the other, and ignore the simple fact that despotism is despotism, tyranny tyranny, oppression oppression, whether committed by one individual or by many individuals, by a state or by a private corporation. ”

“ But it would be just as bad to put the control of the government into the hands of demagogues and visionaries who seek to pander to ignorance and prejudice by penalizing thrift and business enterprise, and ruining all men of means, with, as an attendant result, the ruin of the entire community. ”

“ We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.
There must be law to control the big men, and therefore especially the big corporations, in the industrial world in the interest of our industrial democracy of to-day. ”

“ Individual initiative, the reign of individualism, may be crushed out just as effectively by the unchecked growth of private monopoly, if the state does not interfere at all, as it would be crushed out under communism, or as it would disappear, together with everything else that makes life worth living, if we adopted the tenets of the extreme Socialists. ”

“ We can not afford to be empirical. We must judge each case on its merits. It is absolutely indispensable to foster the spirit of individual initiative, of self-reliance, of self-help; but this does not mean that we are to refuse to face facts and to recognize that the growth of our complex civilization necessitates an increase in the exercise of the functions of the state. It has been shown beyond power of refutation that unrestricted individualism, for instance, means the destruction of our forests and our water supply. ”

“ Society is, of course, infinitely more complex than the human body. The influences that tell upon it are countless; they are closely interwoven, interdependent, and each is acted upon by many others. It is pathetically absurd, when such are the conditions, to believe that some one simple panacea for all evils can be found. Slowly, with infinite difficulty, with bitter disappointments, with stumblings and haltings, we are working our way upward and onward. ”

“ In the United States legal organization of industry has been left wholly wanting. Little is done by the state. All is left to the initiative of the individual. The apparent negligence is explained partly by the American horror of retarding mechanical progress, and partly by their reliance on competition. They have cast overboard the law as the safeguard of individual rights, and have put themselves under the protection of competition, and of it alone. ”

“ The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack. Neither doctrinaire socialism nor unrestricted individualism nor any other ism will bring about the millennium. Collectivism and individualism must be used as supplementary, not as antagonistic, philosophies. ”

“ The huge, irresponsible corporation which demands liberty from the supervision of government agents stands on the same ground as the less dangerous criminal of the streets who wishes liberty from police interference. ”

“ Moreover, tyranny exercised on behalf of one set of people is very apt in the long run to damage especially the representatives of that very class by the violence of the reaction which it invites. The course of the second republic in France was such, with its mobs, its bloody civil tumults, its national workshops, its bitter factional divisions, as to invite and indeed insure its overthrow and the establishment of a dictatorship ”

“ Steevens here clearly points out, what every one ought to recognize, that if individualism is left absolutely uncontrolled as a modern business condition the curious result will follow that all power of individual achievement and individual effort in the average man will be crushed out just as effectively as if the state took absolute control of everything. ”

“ The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. ”

“ The simple truth is that the defenders of the theory of unregulated lawlessness in the business world are either insincere or blind to the facts when they speak of their system as permitting a healthy individualism and individual initiative. ”

“ The unscrupulous big man who gets complete control of a given forest tract, or of a network of railways which alone give access to a certain region, or who, in combination with his fellows, acquires control of a certain industry, may crush out in the great mass of citizens affected all individual initiative quite as much as it would be crushed out by state control. ”

“ It would be easy to name several big corporations each one of which has within its sphere crushed out all competition so as to make, not only its rivals, but its customers as dependent upon it as if the government had assumed complete charge of the product. ”

“ The big newspaper, owned or controlled in Wall Street, which is everlastingly preaching about the iniquity of laboring men, which is quite willing to hound politicians for their misdeeds, but which with raving fury defends all the malefactors of great wealth, stands on an exact level with, and neither above nor below, that other newspaper whose whole attack is upon men of wealth, which declines to condemn, or else condemns in apologetic, perfunctory, and wholly inefficient manner, outrages committed by labor. ”

“ A healthy social system must of necessity represent the sum of very many moral, intellectual, and economic forces, and each such force must depend in its turn partly upon the whole system; and all these many forces are needed to develop a high grade of character in the individual men and women who make up the nation. No individual man could be kept healthy by living in accordance with a plan which took cognizance only of one set of muscles or set of organs ”

“ If business is hurt by the stern exposure of crookedness and the result of efforts to punish the crooked man, then business must be hurt, even though good men are involved in the hurting, until it so adjusts itself that it is possible to prosecute wrong-doing without stampeding the business community into a terror-struck defence of the wrong-doers and an angry assault upon those who have exposed them. ”

“ To halt in the movement, as those blinded men wish who care only for the immediate relief from all obstacles which would thwart their getting what is not theirs, would work wide-reaching damage. Such a halt would turn away the energies of the energetic and forceful men who desire to reform matters from a legitimate object into the channel of bitter and destructive agitation. ”

“ Something more can be done by the resolute effort for a many-sided higher life. This life must largely come to each individual from within, by his own effort, but toward the attainment of it each of us can help many others. ”

“ Such a life must represent the struggle for a higher and broader humanity, to be shown not merely in the dealings of each of us within the realm of the state, but even more by the dealings of each of us in the more intimate realm of the family ”

“ But we should therefore be all the more careful, as we deal with our industrial and social problems, not to fall into mistakes similar to those which have brought lasting disaster on less fortunately situated peoples. ”

“ Where regulating acts are proposed, the companies unite to oppose them; where such acts exist, they bribe corrupt officials to ignore them. When they want any act for themselves, it can always be bought for cash. [This is of course a gross exaggeration; and allusion should have been made to the violent and demagogic attacks upon corporations, which are even more common than and are quite as noxious as acts of oppression by corporations.] ”

“ But the genuine ethical revolt against these forces was aided by a very ugly materialism, and this materialism at one time claimed the victory as exclusively its own, and advanced it as a warrant and license for the refusal to interfere with any misdeeds on the part of men of wealth. ”

“ This movement is a healthy movement. It aims to replace sullen discontent, restless pessimism, and evil preparation for revolution, by an aggressive, healthy determination to get to the bottom of our troubles and remedy them. ”

“ The dogma of "individualism" can not be permitted to interfere with the duty of a great city to see that householders, small as well as big, live in decent and healthy buildings, drink good water, and have the streets adequately lighted and kept clean. ”

“ On the other hand, we must beware, above all things, of being misled by wicked or foolish men who would condone homicide and violence, and apologize for the dynamiter and the assassin because, forsooth, they choose to take the ground that crime is no crime if the wicked man happens also to have been a shiftless and unthrifty or lazy man who has never amassed property. ”

“ He must be able to give those for whom it is his duty to care food and clothing, shelter, medicine, an education, a legitimate chance for reasonable and healthy amusements, and the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and power which will fit them in their turn to do good work in the world. ”

“ It is certain that commercial concerns make frequent, powerful, and successful combinations to override the public interest. All such corporations are left unfettered in a way that to an Englishman appears almost a return to savagery. ”