544 Presidential Addresses 



full and accurate information as to their operations 

 should be made public regularly at reasonable in- 

 tervals. 



The large corporations, commonly called trusts, 

 though organized in One State, always do business 

 in many States, often doing very little business in 

 the State where they are incorporated. There is 

 utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about 

 them ; and as no State has any exclusive interest in 

 or power over their acts, it has in practice proved 

 impossible to get adequate regulation through State 

 action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole peo- 

 ple, the Nation should, without interfering with the 

 power of the States in the matter itself, also assume 

 power of supervision and regulation over all corpo- 

 rations doing an interstate business. This is es- 

 pecially true where the corporation derives a portion 

 of its wealth from the existence of some monopolistic 

 element or tendency in its business. There would 

 be no hardship in such supervision; banks are sub- 

 ject to it, and in their case it is now accepted as a 

 ^simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable that 

 supervision of corporations by the National Govern- 

 ment need not go so far as is now the case with the 

 supervision exercised over them by so conservative 

 a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce ex- 

 cellent results. 



When the Constitution was adopted, at the end 

 of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could 

 foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial 

 and political conditions, which were to take place 



