If our farmers now used the wasteful methods that served for their great-grandfathers, they would not merely fail in the present, but would work a grave wrong to the American citizens of the future.

In the same way we must apply new political methods to meet the new political needs, or else we shall suffer, and our children also.

The square deal can be secured in part by honest enforcement of existing laws, by honest application of the principles upon which this Government was founded, by the exercise of an aroused and enlightened public opinion.

But in order completely to secure it, there must be whatever legislation is necessary to meet the new conditions caused by the extraordinary industrial change and development that have taken place during the last two generations.

The greatest evils in our industrial system to-day are those which rise from the abuses of aggregated wealth; and our great problem is to overcome these evils and cut out these abuses.

The complete change in economic conditions means that governmental methods never yet resorted to may have to be employed in order to deal with them.

We cannot tolerate anything approaching a monopoly, especially in the necessaries of life, except on terms of such thoroughgoing governmental control as will absolutely safeguard every right of the public.

Moreover, one of the most sinister manifestations of great corporate wealth during recent years has been its tendency to interfere and dominate in politics.

We wish to do away with the profit that comes from the illegitimate exercise of cunning and craft.

We also wish to secure a measurable equality of opportunity, a measurable equality of reward for services of similar value.

We must set the end in view as the goal; and then, instead of making a fetish of some particular kind of means, we should adopt whatever honorable means will best accomplish the end.

We must always remember that no system of legislation can accomplish anything unless back of it we have the right type of National character; unless we have ideals to which our practice measurably conforms.

Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights....

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world.

Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of…

A great democratic commonwealth should seek to produce and reward that individual distinction which results in the efficient performance of needed work, for such performance is of high value to the whole community.

But hand in hand with this purpose must go the purpose which Abraham Lincoln designated as the “amelioration of mankind.” Only by an intelligent effort to realize this joint process of individual and social betterment can we keep our…

The wage-earner primarily needs what it is pre-eminently to the interest of our democratic commonwealth that he should obtain—that is, a high standard of living, and the opportunity to acquire the means whereby to secure it.

The collective power of the State can help; but it is the individual’s own power of self-help which is most important.

We should set our faces like flint against any such abuse.

We should make it fully understood by the workingmen—by the men of small means—that we will do everything in our power for them except what is wrong; but that we will do wrong for no man—neither for them nor for any one else.

Nevertheless, the fact that there are dangers in following a given course merely means that we should follow it with a cautious realization of these dangers, and not that we should abandon it, if on the whole it is the right course.

Nevertheless, we as Americans must now face the fact that this great freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed in the past has produced evils which were inevitable from its unrestrained exercise.

It is this very freedom—this absence of State and National restraint—that has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.