We can therefore see in the attitude and views of the great corporations, with their wealth and political influence, a possible menace to our Republic and its free institutions.
This is a matter of vast and vital concern to our citizens, and it is high time that their serious attention should be called to the fact that the powers with which the President is invested over the business of all classes of corporations have become so extended and far reaching that the Trusts and their railway and financial allies, are ready to sacrifice any moral principle, and pay any price within their power, to control the policy of the Federal Government.
So the greatest of all the National corporation problems we have now to deal with is how to curb and regulate, without injustice, the increasing political power and pernicious political activity of these and other corporations, and prevent them from accomplishing their great object, Government control, for this indeed would be a National calamity.
To President Roosevelt we are almost entirely indebted for the development we have witnessed in the National control of corporations under the authority of that provision of the Constitution which invests Congress with the power to regulate commerce between the States. This was a great task well performed, and only second to it in importance has been his activity in promoting Congressional legislation for the investigation, conservation and increase of the country’s National resources, including the irrigation of arid regions, the establishment in the public domain of forest reserves, which had been too long neglected, and the extension and increased efficiency of the geological survey.
Closely allied to those National interests and the Federal management and control of corporations has been the President’s direction of the work of the Department of Commerce and Labor, the act creating which provides that it shall be its duty “to foster, promote and develop the foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing and fishing industries, the labor interests and the transportation interests of the United States.”
As all the business of the country outside of banking and finance, is practically covered by this Department, its importance can hardly be overestimated, especially in relation to the great corporations; and it is in co-operation between these and the commercial organizations of the United States, in common with all the other designated business interests of the country, and this branch of the Federal Government, that harmony and good corporate management can be best promoted, and the political power and aspirations of the Trusts, the railways and the other corporations be effectually regulated and permanently curbed. To this result that Department’s energies should steadily tend, for the political domination of this country by Trusts and the money power would be an intolerable evil, however much it might be hidden and disguised. It would be inimical to our form of government, and the spirit of all American institutions, and to ward off this threatened danger, by nipping it in the bud, is a public duty that the government owes to the people.
It is indeed likely to become our great National corporation problem; all the other problems relating to the Trusts, the banks and the railways being subordinate to this in importance, for it aims at political power for Capital, which would undermine the very foundations of our great and glorious republic—the government for which the patriots of the American Revolution fought so bravely at Bunker Hill, and then, crowned with victory, made 1776 glorious with the Declaration of Independence.
But forewarned, forearmed, and public opinion the great court of appeal, will always govern and keep the Trusts as well as all our other great business interests in line for the advancement of our National welfare and the prosperity of the people.