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

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…

Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation.

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…

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.

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…

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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…

A man of hardihood, thrift, perseverance, and bodily strength could surely make a comfortable living for himself and his family, if only he could settle on a good tract of rich soil; and this he could do if he went to the new country.

The land was the real treasury-chest of the country.

It was the one commodity which appealed to the ambitious and adventurous side of the industrial character at that time and in that place.

It was the one commodity the management of which opened chances of procuring vast wealth, and especially vast speculative wealth.

If he lived elsewhere, his one chance of acquiring great wealth, and his best chance to acquire even moderate wealth without long and plodding labor, was to speculate in wild land.

Accordingly the audacious and enterprising business men who would nowadays go into speculation in stocks, were then forced into speculation in land.

But there came early into the land many men of high purpose and pure life whose influence upon their fellows, though quiet, was very great.

Moreover, the clergyman and the school-teacher, the two beings who had done so much for colonial civilization on the seaboard, were already becoming important factors in the life of the frontier communities.

The opinion of any mere passer-through a country is always less valuable than that of an intelligent man who dwells and works among the people, and who possesses both insight and sympathy.

A class of gentlefolks soon sprang up in the land, whose members were not so separated from other citizens as to be in any way alien to them, and who yet stood sufficiently above the mass to be recognized as the natural leaders, social and…