This was the situation that called forth the demand for the national regulation of large corporate enterprises, and brought about the demand for a strengthening of the Federal government, either by a constitutional amendment or judicial interpretation, which received the name of "New Nationalism." Wide currency was given to this term by Mr. Roosevelt, in his speech delivered at Ossawatomie on August 31, 1910. After outlining a legislative policy which he deemed to be demanded by the changed economic conditions of our time, Mr. Roosevelt attacked the idea of "a neutral zone between the national and state legislatures," guarded only by the Federal judiciary; and pleaded for the strengthening of the Federal government so as to make it competent for every national purpose.
"There must remain no neutral ground," he said, "to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the national legislature fails to do its duty in providing a national remedy so that the only national activity is the purely negative activity of the judiciary in forbidding the state to exercise the power in the premises.
"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The national government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the national government. The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the national government.
"The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantages. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from overdivision of government powers, the impotence which makes it impossible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people."
FOOTNOTES:
[70] The political history of the initiative and referendum has never been written. Some valuable materials are to be found in Direct Legislation, Senate Document No. 340, 55th Cong., 2d Sess. (1898); and in "The Direct Legislation Record," founded in May, 1894; and in the "Equity Series," now published at Philadelphia. See also Oberholtzer, The Initiative, Referendum, and Recall in America, ed. 1911.
[71] The Initiative, Referendum, and Recall, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September, 1912, pp. 84 ff.
[72] Arizona was admitted without the judicial recall provision, but immediately set to work and reinserted it in the constitution, and devised a plan for the recall of Federal district judges as well.
[73] See below, p. 325.