We must preserve the right of the railway employee to proper wages and the right of the investor to proper interest as scrupulously as we preserve the right of the shipper and the producer and the consumer.

We cannot afford to do injustice, or suffer it to be done, to any of these.

But in order to do justice we must have full knowledge.

We must have the right to find out every fact connected with the business of the railway, so as to base our judgment, not on any one fact, but on all taken together.

If we find that high rates are due to overcapitalization in the past, or to any kind of sharp practice in the past, then, whether or not it is possible to take action which will partly remedy the wrong, we are certainly in a better…

When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having these rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of…

So far as possible, the reward should be based upon service; and this necessarily implies that where a man renders us service in return for the fortune he receives, he has the right to receive it only on terms just to the whole people.

For this reason there should be a heavily progressive National inheritance tax on big fortunes.

The really big fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.

A heavily progressive inheritance tax on all such fortunes (heaviest on absentees) has the good qualities of an income tax, without its drawbacks; it is far more beneficial to the community at large, and far less burdensome to private…

A moderate, but progressive, income tax, carefully devised to fall genuinely on those who ought to pay, would, I believe, be a good thing; but a heavy and heavily progressive inheritance tax on great fortunes would be a far better thing.

I believe in property rights, but I believe in them as adjuncts to, and not as substitutes for, human rights.

I believe that normally the rights of property coincide with the rights of man; but where they do not, then the rights of man must be put above the rights of property.

I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property; but wherever the alternative must be faced, I am for man and not for property.

I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character.

I know well that if there is not sufficient prosperity the people will in the end rebel against any system, no matter how exalted morally; and reformers must not bring upon the people permanent economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will…

And those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our National life brings us nothing whatever but a swollen and badly distributed material prosperity.

In other words, I feel that material interests are chiefly good, not in themselves, but as an indispensable foundation upon which we should build a higher superstructure, a superstructure without which the foundation becomes worthless.

Therefore I believe that the destinies of this country should be shaped primarily by moral forces, and by material forces only as they are subordinated to these moral forces.

I think one end of government should be to achieve prosperity; but it should follow this end chiefly to serve an even higher and more important end—that of promoting the character and welfare of the average man.

In the long run, and inevitably, the actual control of the government will be determined by the chief end which the government subserves.

If the end and aim of government action is merely to accumulate general material prosperity, treating such prosperity as an end in itself and not as a means, then it is inevitable that material wealth and the masters of that wealth will…

Then we are free to seek not only the heaping up of material wealth, but a wise and generous distribution of such wealth so as to diminish grinding poverty, and, so far as may be, to equalize social and economic no less than political…

The people as a whole can be benefited morally and materially by a system which shall permit of ample reward for exceptional efficiency, but which shall nevertheless secure to the average man who does his work faithfully and well, the…

I realize entirely that in the last analysis, with the nation as with the individual, it is private character that counts for most.