The national convention which framed the Constitution, and in which almost all the most eminent of the first generation of American statesmen sat, embodied the theory of the instrument in a resolution, to the effect that the National Government should have power in cases where the separate States were incompetent to act with full efficiency, and where the harmony of the United States would be interrupted by the exercise of such individual legislation. The interstate railroad situation is exactly a case in point. There will, of course, be local matters affecting railroads which can best be dealt with by local authority, but as national commercial agents the big interstate railroad ought to be completely subject to national authority. Only thus can we secure their complete subjection to, and control by, a single sovereign, representing the whole people, and capable both of protecting the public and of seeing that the railroads neither inflict nor endure injustice.
Personally I firmly believe that there should be national legislation to control all industrial corporations doing an interstate business, including the control of the output of their securities, but as to these the necessity for Federal control is less urgent and immediate than is the case with the railroads. Many of the abuses connected with these corporations will probably tend to disappear now that the Government—the public—is gradually getting the upper hand as regards putting a stop to the rebates and special privileges which some of these corporations have enjoyed at the hands of the common carriers. But ultimately it will be found that the complete remedy for these abuses lies in direct and affirmative action by the National Government. That there is constitutional power for the national regulation of these corporations I have myself no question. Two or three generations ago there was just as much hostility to national control of banks as there is now to national control of railroads or of industrial corporations doing an interstate business. That hostility now seems to us ludicrous in its lack of warrant; in like manner, gentlemen, our descendants will regard with wonder the present opposition to giving the National Government adequate power to control those great corporations, which it alone can fully, and yet wisely, safely, and justly control. Remember also that to regulate the formation of these corporations offers one of the most direct and efficient methods of regulating their activities.
I am not pleading for an extension of constitutional power. I am pleading that constitutional power which already exists shall be applied to new conditions which did not exist when the Constitution went into being. I ask that the national powers already conferred upon the National Government by the Constitution shall be so used as to bring national commerce and industry effectively under the authority of the Federal Government and thereby avert industrial chaos. My plea is not to bring about a condition of centralization. It is that the Government shall recognize a condition of centralization in a field where it already exists. When the national banking law was passed it represented in reality not centralization, but recognition of the fact that the country had so far advanced that the currency was already a matter of National concern and must be dealt with by the central authority at Washington. So it is with interstate industrialism and especially with the matter of interstate railroad operation to-day. Centralization has already taken place in the world of commerce and industry. All I ask is that the National Government look this fact in the face, accept it as a fact, and fit itself accordingly for a policy of supervision and control over this centralized commerce and industry.
