Teddy Roosevelt

We should be as sure of the proper conduct of inter-State railways and the proper management of inter-State business as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the National banks, and we should have as effective supervision in one…

The National Bureau of Corporations has not been given the powers or the funds to develop its full usefulness, and yet it offers one of the prime means at the disposal of the people of keeping them fully acquainted with all the facts about…

This should be so exercised that the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own…

There are concrete instances of unfair competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation, and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts.

The issue of securities should be subject to rigorous Government supervision.

The average American citizen should have presented to him in a simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor, as voter.

Such control should protect and favor the corporation which acts honestly, exactly as it should check and punish, when it cannot prevent, every species of dishonesty.

Such control should imply the issuance of securities by corporations only under thoroughgoing Governmental supervision, and after compliance with Governmental requirements which shall effectually prevent overcapitalization.

It may be that National incorporation is not at the moment possible; but there must be some affirmative National control, on terms which will secure publicity in the affairs of and complete supervision and control over the big, Nation-wide…

Such really effective control over great inter-State business can come only from the National Government.

Instead of punishing him by a long and doubtful process of the law after the wrong has been committed, there should be such effective Government regulation as to check the evil tendencies at the moment that they start to develop.

But a man who grasps and holds business power by breaking the industrial efficiency of others, who wins success by methods which are against the public interest and degrading to the public morals, should not be permitted to exercise such…

The corporate manager who achieves success by honest efficiency in giving the best service to the public should be favored because we all benefit by his efficiency.

The only course left is active corporate regulation—that is, the control of corporations for the common good—the suppression of the evils that they work, and the retention, as far as may be, of that business efficiency in their use which…

Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation.

We cannot effectively prohibit all combinations without doing far-reaching economic harm; and it is mere folly to do as we have done in the past—to try to combine incompatible systems—that is, to try both to prohibit and regulate…

The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the…

The railways are really highways, and it is the fundamental right of the people as a whole to see that they are open to use on just and reasonable terms, equal to all persons.

To refuse to take, or to permit others to take, wise and practical action for the remedying of abuses is to invite unwise action under the lead of violent extremists.

In the end this condition will prove intolerable, and will hurt most of all the very class which it at present benefits.

Too often the Federal Government, and above all the Federal judiciary, has permitted itself to be employed for purely negative purposes—that is, to thwart the action of the States while not permitting efficient National action in its place.

We should make the National governmental machinery an adequate and constructive instrument for constructive work in the realization of a National democratic ideal.

We ought to use the National Government as an agency, a tool, wherever it is necessary, in order that we may organize our entire political, economical, and social life in accordance with a far-reaching democratic purpose.

The National Government belongs to the whole American people; and where the whole American people are interested that interest can be effectively guarded only by the National Government.