184 Presidential Addresses 



will be dealt, and is being dealt, to all men, without 

 regard to persons. 



I wish to repeat with all emphasis that desirable 

 though it is that the nation should have the power 

 I suggest, it is equally desirable that it should be 

 used with wisdom and self-restraint. The mechan 

 ism of modern business is tremendous in its size 

 and complexity, and ignorant intermeddling with it 

 would be disastrous. We should not be made timid 

 or daunted by the size of the problem ; we should 

 not fear to undertake it; but we should undertake 

 it with ever present in our minds dread of the sin 

 ister spirits of rancor, ignorance, and vanity. We 

 need to keep steadily in mind the fact that besides 

 the tangible property in each corporation there lies 

 behind the spirit which brings it success, and in the 

 case of each very successful corporation this is 

 usually the spirit of some one man or set of men. 

 Under exactly similar conditions one corporation 

 will make a stupendous success where another makes 

 a stupendous failure, simply because one is well man 

 aged and the other is not. While making it clear 

 that we do not intend to allow wrong-doing by one 

 of the captains of industry any more than by the 

 humblest private in the industrial ranks, we must 

 also in the interests of all of us avoid cramping a 

 strength which, if beneficently used, will be for the 

 good of all of us. The marvelous prosperity we 

 have been enjoying for the past few years has been 

 due primarily to the high average of honesty, thrift, 

 and business capacity among our people as a whole; 



