OUR FIRST SHIELD against BOLSHEVISM
Roosevelt’s chief service to his country while President was undoubtedly that of preventing the huge combinations and trusts which threatened to gain control of the country during his administration.
For years great business corporations had been in formation. They controlled enormous wealth and their financial power led them to disregard public opinion, even to the extent of defying the law.
Public disapproval was growing stronger and stronger. Independent newspapers and magazines had informed the public of the oppressive methods of these trusts. A leader was wanted. Roosevelt became that leader.
The foe was mighty. It had entrenched itself in Congress, yet Roosevelt won several noteworthy victories and started the nation in the way of ending this evil.
The warfare against the trusts was continued throughout Roosevelt’s entire administration. Measures for the control of the trusts were prepared and pressed on Congress with Rooseveltian strenuosity.
A railway rate bill was passed, forbidding under severe penalties the fraud of rebates. A general pure food law was passed, penalizing the act of adulteration, and requiring that every article of medicine or food should be labeled and sold for just what it was. With these and several other measures, corporation fraud was thus brought to a halt.
At this period Roosevelt was a flaming fire. His spirit was as a fierce blaze consuming the materialism that had crept from the ranks of business into public life. Popular grievances against unjust exploitation by leaders of industry became to him the signal to attack. His ordering of the suit of dissolution against the Northern Securities Company subjected him to the enmity of powerful men, yet before a short time passed the opinion became general that his decision had been vital to the public good.
He aroused the bitter opposition of Big Business by his successful endeavors to control it, but time proved that by his act on behalf of the people he had saved the vested interests from the wholesale division by Congress of such monopolies had they been formed.
While he was the first of our Presidents to come into conflict with corporate power, he nevertheless favored and promoted legitimate business, and he stood for the protection of American industries from the cheap labor of Europe.
His suit for the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company was one of the most significant acts of his administration. This suit was not brought to a successful conclusion until 1911, but the credit for its prosecution is due mainly to him.
In all these measures Roosevelt was simply carrying out his doctrine of the square deal, which he began to preach when he assumed public office and which in different language, but with unvarying purpose, he preached to the end of his life.
His doctrine of fair dealing is best summed up in this speech spoken at Dallas, Tex., April 5, 1905:
“When I say I believe in a square deal I do not mean, and probably nobody that speaks the truth can mean, that he believes it possible to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come, and he has not got the power to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing. In other words, it is not in the power of any human being to devise legislation or administration by which each man shall achieve success and have happiness; it not only is not in the power of any man to do that, but if any man says that he can do it, distrust him as a quack.... All any of us can pretend to do is to come as near as our imperfect abilities will allow to securing through governmental agencies an equal opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him; and that must be done with no more intention of discrimination against the rich man than the poor man, or against the poor man than the rich man; with the intention of safeguarding every man, rich or poor, poor or rich, in his rights, and giving him as nearly as may be a fair chance to do what his powers permit him to do; always providing he does not wrong his neighbor.”
This view he re-emphasized at another place:
“When I say a square deal I mean a square deal; exactly as much a square deal for the rich man as for the poor man; but no more. Let each stand on his merits, receive what is due him, and be judged according to his deserts. To more he is not entitled, and less he shall not have.”
“This government was formed with, as its basic idea, the principle of treating each man on his worth as a man, of paying no heed to whether he was rich or poor, no heed to his creed or social standing, but only to the way in which he performed his duties to himself, to his neighbor, to the state. From this principle we cannot afford to vary by so much as a hand’s breadth.”
It would be a mistake to think that while attacking the evils of corporate power he did not also attack those men of Bolshevik tendencies who out of mere discontent, tried to stir up class feeling.
This is what he had to say about these men:
“In dealing with both labor and capital and the questions affecting both corporations and trade unions, there is one matter more important to remember than aught else, and that is the infinite harm done by preachers of mere discontent. These are the men who seek to excite a violent class hatred against all men of wealth. They seek to turn wise and proper movements for the better control of corporations and for doing away with the abuses connected with wealth into a campaign of hysterical excitement and falsehood in which the aim is to inflame to madness the brutal passions of mankind....”
One shudders to think of what fate would have befallen the United States if the monopolies which Roosevelt curbed while he was President had been allowed to flourish until this era of revolution. That the working people of America are contented and peace-loving today is largely due to Roosevelt’s saving them from exploitation by the trusts.