The power to investigate the financial operations and accounts of the railways has been one of the most valuable features in recent legislation.

It is to the interest of all of them that no swindling stock speculation should be allowed, and that there should be no improper issuance of securities.

To give any one of them undue and improper consideration is to do injustice to the others.

It is hard to say whether most damage to the country at large would come from entire failure on the part of the public to supervise and control the actions of the great corporations, or from the exercise of the necessary governmental power…

Both the preachers of an unrestricted individualism, and the preachers of an oppression which would deny to able men of business the just reward of their initiative and business sagacity, are advocating policies that would be fraught with…

On the other hand, to attack these wrongs in that spirit of demagogy which can see wrong only when committed by the man of wealth, and is dumb and blind in the presence of wrong committed against men of property or by men of no property…

The war we wage must be waged against misconduct, against wrongdoing wherever it is found; and we must stand heartily for the rights of every decent man, whether he be a man of great wealth or a man who earns his livelihood as a…

Of course there are many sincere men who now believe in unrestricted individualism in business, just as there were formerly many sincere men who believed in slavery--that is, in the unrestricted right of an individual to own another…

The effective fight against adequate Government control and supervision of individual, and especially of corporate, wealth engaged in interstate business is chiefly done under cover; and especially under cover of an appeal to State's…

It is not at all infrequent to read in the same speech a denunciation of predatory wealth fostered by special privilege and defiant of both the public welfare and law of the land, and a denunciation of centralization in the Central…

The proposal to make the National Government supreme over, and therefore to give it complete control over, the railroads and other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry out to the letter one of the prime…

If this irresponsible outside business power is to be controlled in the interest of the general public it can only be controlled in one way--by giving adequate power of control to the one sovereignty capable of exercising such power--the…

Such divided authority can not regulate commerce with wisdom and effect.

The Central Government is the only power which, without oppression, can nevertheless thoroughly and adequately control and supervise the large corporations.

I believe that the more farsighted corporations are themselves coming to recognize the unwisdom of the violent hostility they have displayed during the last few years to regulation and control by the National Government of combinations…

The truth is that we who believe in this movement of asserting and exercising a genuine control, in the public interest, over these great corporations have to contend against two sets of enemies, who, though nominally opposed to one…

Those who believe in efficient national control, on the other hand, do not in the least object to combinations; do not in the least object to concentration in business administration.

On the contrary, they favor both, with the all important proviso that there shall be such publicity about their workings, and such thoroughgoing control over them, as to insure their being in the interest, and not against the interest, of…

We do not object to the concentration of wealth and administration; but we do believe in the distribution of the wealth in profits to the real owners, and in securing to the public the full benefit of the concentrated administration.

We believe that with concentration in administration there can come both be advantage of a larger ownership and of a more equitable distribution of profits, and at the same time a better service to the commonwealth.

We believe that the administration should be for the benefit of the many; and that greed and rascality, practiced on a large scale, should be punished as relentlessly as if practiced on a small scale.

But there is legislation which the Federal Government alone can enact and which is absolutely vital in order to secure the attainment of our purpose.

There should be regulation by the National Government of the great interstate corporations, including a simple method of account keeping, publicity, supervision of the issue securities, abolition of rebates, and of special privileges.

There should be short time franchises for all corporations engaged in public business; including the corporations which get power from water rights.

There should be National as well as State guardianship of mines and forests.