Any feeling of special hatred toward these men is as absurd as any feeling of special regard.

Some of them have gained their power by cheating and swindling, just as some very small business men cheat and swindle; but, as a whole, big men are no better and no worse than their small competitors, from a moral standpoint.

We grudge no man a fortune which represents merely his own power and sagacity exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.

But the fortune must not only be honorably obtained and well used; it is also essential that it should not represent a necessary incident of widespread, even though partial, economic privation.

It is not even enough that the fortune should have been gained without doing damage to the community.

We should only permit it to be gained and kept so long as the gaining and the keeping represent benefit to the community.

This I know implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions than we have hitherto seen in this country; but I think we have to face the fact that such increase in governmental activity is…

We should work cautiously and patiently and with complete absence of animosity, except toward the individuals whom we are certain have been guilty of flagrant evil; but we should also work firmly to realize the democratic purpose…

We must make popular government responsible for the betterment both of the individual and of society at large.

In other words, our democracy depends on individual improvement just as much as upon collective effort to achieve our common social improvement.

The most serious troubles of the present day are unquestionably due in large part to lack of efficient governmental action, and cannot be remedied without such action; but neither can any remedy permanently avail unless back of it stands a…

But the betterment must be accomplished partly, and I believe mainly, through the National Government.

I do not ask for over-centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we deal with what concerns our people as a whole.

Each community should be required to deal with all that is of merely local interest; and nothing should be undertaken by the Government of the whole country which can thus wisely be left to local management.

But those functions of government which no wisdom on the part of the States will enable them satisfactorily to perform must be performed by the National Government.

We are all Americans; our common interests are as broad as the continent; the most vital problems are those that affect us all alike.

The National power over inter-State commerce warrants our dealing with such questions as employers’ liability in inter-State business, and the protection and compensation for injuries of railway employees.

The National Government of right has, and must exercise, its power for the protection of labor which is connected with the instrumentalities of inter-State commerce.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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…