12 N-0O°RS i 
Se. fe 
BREEZE 
Ghe Crusts, the Penple, and the Square Aral 
AN EDITORIAL BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN 
(Continued from last week.) 
‘‘Reudalism, with its domains, its 
untaxed lords, tneir retailers, 1ts 
exemptions and privileges, made 
war upon the aspiring spirit or hu- 
manity, and ie win all its 
granaeurs. Its spirit walks the 
earth and haunts tue stitutions of 
today, in the great corporations, 
with the control or the National 
highways, their occupation of great 
domains, their power to tax, their 
cynical contempt tor the law, their 
sorcery to debase most guted men 
to the capacity of spiendid slaves, 
their polluuon oi the ermine of the 
judge and the robe ol the Senator, 
their aggregation in one man ol 
wealth so enormous as to make 
Croesus seem a pauper, their picked, 
paid, and skilled retaimers who are 
summoned by the message oi elec- 
tricity and appear upon the wings 
of steam. It we took ito the origin 
of feudalism and of the modern cor- 
_ porations—those Dromios of history 
——we find that the former originated 
in a strict paternalism, which is 
scouted by modern economists, and 
that the latter has grown from an 
unrestrained freedom of action, ag- 
gression, and development, which 
they commend as the very ideal of 
political wisdom. Laissez-faire, says 
the professor, when it often means 
bind and gag that the strongest may 
work his will. It is a plea for the 
survival of the fittest—the strongest 
male to take possession of the herd 
by a process of extermination. oki 
we examine this battle ery of politi- 
cal polemics, we find that it is based 
upon the conception of the divine 
right of property, and the preoccu- 
pation by older or more favored or 
more alert or richer men or nations, 
of territory, of the forces of nature, 
of machinery, of all the functions of 
what we eall civilization. Some of 
these men, who are really great, fol- 
low these conceptions to their con- 
clusions with dauntless intrepidity.”’ 
When Senator Davis spoke, few 
men of great power had the sympa- 
thy and the vision necessary to per- 
ceive the menace contained in the 
growth of corporations; and the 
men who did see the evil were 
struggling blindly to get rid of it, 
not by frankly meeting the new sit- 
uation with new methods, but by in- 
sisting upon the entirely tutile 
eitort to abolish what modern con- 
ditions had rendered absolutely 
inevitable. Senator Davis was un- 
der no such iliusion. He realized 
keenly that it was absolutely im- 
possible to go back to an outworn 
social status, and that we must 
abandon detinitely the laissez-faire 
theory of political economy, and 
fearlessly champion a system of in- 
creased Governmental control, pay- 
ing no heed to the cries of the 
worthy people who denounce this as 
Socialistic. He saw that, in order 
to meet the inevitable im¢rease in 
the power of corporations produced 
by modern industriai conditions, it 
would be necessary to increase in 
like fashion the activity of the sov- 
ereign power which alone could con- 
trol such corporations. As has been 
aptly said, the only way to meet a 
billion-dollar corporation is by in- 
voking the protection of a hundred- 
billion-dollar government; in other 
words, of the National Government, 
for no State Government is strong 
enough both to do justice to corpo- 
rations and to exact justice from 
them. Said Senator Davis in this 
admirable address, which should be 
reprinted and distributed broadcast : 
‘<The liberty of the individual has 
been annihilated by the logical proc- 
ess constructed to maintain it. We 
have come to a political deification 
of Mammon. Laissez-faire is not ut- 
terly blameworthy. It begat mod- 
ern democracy, and made the mod- 
ern republic possible. There can be 
no doubt of that. But there it be- 
gan its limit of political benefaction, 
and began to incline toward the 
point where extremes meet. : 
To every assertion that the people in 
their collective capacity of a govern- 
ment ought to exert their indefeas- 
ible right of self-defense, it is said 
you toueh the sacred rights of 
property.’’ 
The Senator then goes on to say 
that we now have to deal with an 
oligarchy of wealth, and that the 
Government must develop power 
sufficient enough to enable it to do 
the task. 
Few will dispute the fact that 
the present situation is not satis- 
factory, and cannot be put on a per- 
“THE OUTLOOK”’ 
OF NOV. 18 
manently satisfactory basis unless 
we put an end to the period of 
groping and declare for a_ fixed 
policy, a policy which shall clearly 
define and punish wrong-doing, 
which shall put a stop to the iniqui- 
ties done in the name of business, 
but which shall do strict equity to 
business. We demand that big busi- 
ness give the people a square deal; 
in return we must insist that when 
any one engaged in big business 
honestly endeavors to do right he 
shall himself be given a square deal; 
and the first, and most elementary, 
kind of square deal is to give him 
in advance full information as _ to 
just what he can, and what he can- 
not, legally and properly do. It is 
absurd, and much worse than ab- 
surd, to treat the deliberate law- 
breaker as on an exact par with the 
man eager to obey the law, whose 
only desire is to find out from some 
competent Governmental authority 
what the law is, and then to live up 
to it. Moreover, it is absurd to treat 
the size of a corporation as in itself 
a crime. As Judge Hook says in his 
opinion in the Standard Oil Case: 
‘‘Magnitude of business does not 
alone constitute a monopoly . 
the genius and industry of man 
when kept to ethical standards still 
have full play, and what. he achieves 
in his ... success and magnitude 
of business, the rewards of fair and 
honorable endeavor (are not  for- 
bidden) . .. (the public welfare is. 
threatened only when success is at- 
tained) by wrongful or unlawful 
methods.’’ Size may, and in my 
opinion does, make a_ corporation 
fraught with potential menace to the 
community; and may, and in my 
opinion should, therefore make it in- 
cumbent upon the community to ex- 
ercise through its administrative 
(not merely through its judicial) 
officers a strict supervision over that 
corporation in order to see that it 
does not go wrong; but the size in 
itself does not signify wrong-doing, 
and should not be held to signify 
wrong-doing. 
Not only should any huge corpo- 
ration which has gained its position 
by unfair methods, and by interfer- 
ence with the rights of others, by 
demoralizing and corrupt practices, 
in short, by sheer baseness and 
