Much of the legislation not only proposed but enacted against trusts is not one whit more intelligent than the mediæval bull against the comet, and has not been one particle more effective.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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When new evils appear there is always at first difficulty in finding the proper remedy; and as the evils grow more complex, the remedies become increasingly difficult of application.
Law is largely crystallized custom, largely a mass of remedies which have been slowly evolved to meet the wrongs with which humanity has become thoroughly familiar.
That abuses exist, and that they are of a very grave character, it is worse than idle to deny.
We must set about finding out what the real abuses are, with their causes, and to what extent remedies can be applied.
What remains for us to do, as practical men, is to look the conditions squarely in the face and not to permit the emotional side of the question, which has its proper place, to blind us to the fact that there are other sides.
We have moved far away from the old simple days when each community transacted almost all its work for itself and relied upon outsiders for but a fraction of the necessaries, and for not a very large portion even of the luxuries, of life.
The machinery of modern business is so vast and complicated that great caution must be exercised in introducing radical changes for fear the unforeseen effects may take the shape of widespread disaster.
We do not desire to destroy corporations; we do desire to put them fully at the service of the State and the people.
In yet others it is possible, by acting with wisdom, coolness and fearlessness, to apply a remedy which will wholly or in great part remove the evil while leaving the good behind.
In others, a remedy can be applied, but as yet only at a cost that would make it worse than the trouble itself.
Occasionally, moreover, the change is positively deleterious, and very often, even when it is on the whole beneficial, it has features which are the reverse.
The change which would be unaccompanied by hardship if it came slowly, may be fraught with severe suffering if it comes too fast, even when it is in the end beneficial.
Every new feature of this industrial revolution produces hardship because in its later stages it has been literally a revolution instead of an evolution.
The need can be met only by careful study of conditions, and by action which, while taken boldly and without hesitation, is neither heedless nor reckless.
It is almost equally dangerous either to blink evils and refuse to acknowledge their existence or to strike at them in a spirit of ignorant revenge, thereby doing far more harm than is remedied.
The point to be aimed at is the protection of the individual against wrong, not the attempt to limit and hamper the acquisition and output of wealth.
Were the rights of that individual, if they have been violated, insufficiently protected by law?
The true questions to be asked are: Has any given individual been injured by the acquisition of wealth by any man?
The occasional wrongs committed or injuries endured are on the whole far outweighed by the mass of good which has resulted.
Probably the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have been amassed, not by injuring mankind, but as an incident to the conferring of great benefits on the community—whatever the conscious purpose of those amassing…
Any attempt to interfere by statute in moral questions of this kind, by fettering the freedom of individual action, would be injurious to a degree far greater than is the evil aimed at.
In our great cities there is plainly in evidence much wealth contrasted with much poverty, and some of the wealth has been acquired, or is used, in a manner for which there is no moral justification.
Great fortunes are usually made under very complex conditions both of effort and of surrounding, and the mere fact of the complexity makes it difficult to deal with the new conditions thus created.
For almost every gain there is a penalty, and the great strides in the industrial upbuilding of the country, which have on the whole been attended with marked benefit, have also been attended by no little evil.
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