CONGRESS. (THE PBESIDENT'S MESSAGE.) 



141 



corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great 

 corporate fortunes has not been due to the tariff 

 nor to any other governmental action, but to 

 natural causes in the business world, operating in 

 other countries as they operate in our own. 



The process has aroused much antagonism, a 

 great part of which is wholly without warrant. 

 It is not true that as the rich have grown richer 

 the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, 

 never before has the average man, the wage- 

 worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well 

 off as in this country and at the present time. 

 There have been abuses connected with the accu- 

 mulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a 

 fortune accumulated in legitimate business can 

 be accumulated by the person specially benefited 

 only on condition of conferring immense inci- 

 dental benefits upon others. Successful enter- 

 prise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can 

 only exist if the conditions are such as to offer 

 great prizes as the rewards of success. 



The captains of industry, who have driven the 

 railway systems across this continent, who have 

 built up our commerce, who have developed our 

 manufactures, have on the whole done great good 

 to our people. Without them the material devel- 

 opment of which we are so justly proud could 

 never have taken place. Moreover, we should 

 recognize the immense importance to this mate- 

 rial development of leaving as unhampered as is 

 compatible with the public good the strong and 

 forceful men upon whom the success of business 

 operation inevitably rests. The slightest study of 

 business conditions will satisfy any one capable 

 of forming a judgment that the personal equa- 

 tion is the most important factor in a business 

 operation; that the business ability of the man 

 at the head of any business concern, big or little, 

 is usually the factor which fixes the gulf between 

 striking success and hopeless failure. 



An additional reason for caution in dealing 

 with corporations is to be found in the interna- 

 tional commercial conditions of to-day. The 

 same business conditions which have produced 

 the great aggregations of corporate and individ- 

 ual wealth have made them very potent factors 

 in international commercial competition. Busi- 

 ness concerns which have the largest means at 

 their disposal and are managed by the ablest men 

 are naturally those which take the lead in the 

 strife for commercial supremacy among the na- 

 tions of the world. America has only just 

 begun to assume that commanding position in 

 the international business world which we be- 

 lieve^ will more and more be hers. It is of the 

 utmost importance that this position be not 

 jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflow- 

 ing abundance of our own natural resources and 

 the skill, business energy, and mechanical apti- 

 tude of our people make foreign markets essen- 

 tial. Under such conditions it would be most 

 unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful 

 strength of our nation. 



Moreover, it can not too often be pointed out 

 that to strike with ignorant violence at the 

 interests of one set of men almost inevitably 

 endangers the interests of all. The fundamental 

 rule in our national life the rule which under- 

 lies 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 pros- 

 perity 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 enter- 

 prises can never have its effects limited to the 

 men at the top. It spreads throughout, 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 de- 

 prived of even bare necessities. 



The mechanism of modern business is so deli- 

 cate that extreme care must be taken not to 

 interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or igno- 

 rance. Many of those who have made it their 

 vocation to denounce the great industrial com- 

 binations which are popularly, although with 

 technical inaccuracy, known as " trusts," appeal 

 especially to hatred and fear. These are pre- 

 cisely the two emotions, particularly when com- 

 bined '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 unde- 

 sirable serve as the allies of the forces with 

 which they are nominally at war, for they ham- 

 per 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 prac- 

 ticable 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 overcapitalization because of its many bale- 

 ful consequences; and a resolute and practical 

 effort must be made to correct these evils. 



There is a wide-spread conviction in the minds 

 of the American people that the great corpora- 

 tions known as trusts are in certain of their 

 features and tendencies hurtful to the general wel- 

 fare. 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 convic- 

 tion that combination and concentration should 

 be, not prohibited, but supervised and within 

 reasonable limits controlled; and in my judg- 

 ment 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 truth- 



