Teddy Roosevelt

Nothing needs closer attention, nothing deserves to be treated with more courage, caution and sanity, than the relations of the State to corporate wealth, and indeed to vast individual wealth.

Any legislation permitting private ownership should be annulled.

There is grave danger in attempting to establish invariable rules; indeed it may be that each case will have to be determined upon its own merits.

On the other hand, when private ownership entails grave abuses, and where the work is of a kind that can be performed with efficiency by the State or municipality acting in its collective capacity, no theory or tradition should interfere…

Everything that tends to deaden individual initiative is to be avoided, and unless in a given case there is some very evident gain which will flow from State or municipal ownership, it should not be adopted.

Obviously it is undesirable that the government should do anything that private individuals could do with better results to the community.

On the other hand, pure logic has a very restricted application to actual social and civic life, and there is no possible reason for changing from one system to the other simply because the change would make our political system in theory…

There is no possible reason in pure logic why a city, for instance, should supply its inhabitants with water, and allow private companies to supply them with gas, any more than there is why the general government should take charge of the…

But it is intended that property which derives its value from the grant of a privilege by the public, shall be taxed proportionately to the value of the privilege granted.

But the corporations owning valuable public franchises must pay their full and proper share of the public burdens.

At the same time a change should never be shirked on the ground of its being radical, when the abuse has become flagrant and no other remedy appears possible.

It is infinitely better when needed social and civic changes can be brought about as the result of natural and healthy growth than when they come with the violent dislocation and widespread wreck and damage inevitably attendant upon any…

There is also plenty of honorable and disinterested effort to prevent such misconduct or to minimize its effects.

There is plenty of misconduct, plenty of selfish disregard of the rights of others, and especially of the weak.

Our laws should be so drawn as to protect and encourage corporations which do their honest duty by the public; and to discriminate sharply against those organized in a spirit of mere greed, or for improper speculative purposes.

In all these matters of taxation, however, it is necessary to proceed with extreme caution, the path never being so simple and clear as the advocates of any particular measure invariably believe.

Again and again in recent years this has been recognized, and through legislative enactment certain species of property which had escaped taxation have been made to pay their proper share of the public burdens.

On certain points the failure of the tax laws has become so evident that it is possible to provide more or less complete remedies without waiting for a general scheme of reorganization.

This calls for legislation which shall provide, in a broad and fair spirit, for taxing foreign capital in this State, whether in corporate or individual form, exactly as we tax domestic capital doing business along the same lines.

Some kinds of taxes are so fertile in tempting to perjury and sharp dealing that they amount to taxes on honesty—the last quality on which we should impose a needless burden.

The law must not only be correct in the abstract; it must work well in the concrete.

Absolute equality, absolute justice in matters of taxation will probably never be realized; but we can approximate it much more closely than at present.

Either by taxing them as realty we shall tax them at their full value, or we shall not; if, as we hold, the former is the case, it would be unjust to tax them for more than their full value, and this would happen were not these existing…

There can be no possible opposition to putting it in the law by any man who is anxious to tax corporations as other property is taxed, and who believes that this end can be attained by taxing them as realty.

In no other way is it possible to tax these corporations with uniformity and equity.