Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)

by Theodore Roosevelt

ADDRESS AT THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB, PHILADELPHIA, PA., JAN. 30, 1905

Mr. President; and Gentlemen of the Union League:

This club was founded to uphold the hands of Abraham Lincoln when he stood as the great leader in the struggle for union and liberty. We have a right, therefore, to appeal to this club for aid in every governmental or social effort made along the lines marked out by Lincoln. The great President taught many lessons which we who come after him should learn. Among the most important of these was the lesson that for weal or woe we are indissolubly bound together, in whatever part of the country we live, whatever our social standing, whatever our wealth or our poverty, whatever form of mental or physical activity our life work may assume. Lincoln, who was, more emphatically than any other President we have ever had, the President of the plain people, was yet as far removed as Washington himself from the slightest taint of demagogy. With his usual farsighted clearness of vision he saw that in a republic such as ours permanent prosperity of any part of our people was conditioned upon the prosperity of all; and that on the other hand any effort to raise the general level of happiness by striking at the well-being of a portion of the people could not be but in the end disastrous to all.

The principles which Lincoln applied to the solution of the problems of his day are those which we must apply if we expect successfully to solve the different problems of our own day—problems which are so largely industrial. Exactly as it is impossible to develop a high morality unless we have as a foundation those qualities which give at least a certain minimum of material prosperity, so it is impossible permanently to keep material prosperity unless there is back of it a basis of right living and right thinking. In the last analysis, of course, the dominant factor in obtaining this good conduct must be the individual character of the average citizen. If there is not this condition of individual character in the average citizenship of the country, all effort to supply its place by the wisest legislation and administration will in the end prove futile. But given this average of individual character, then wise laws and the honest administration of the laws can do much to supplement it. If either the business world or the world of labor loses its head, then it has lost something which can not be made good by any governmental effort. Our faith in the future of the Republic is firm, because we believe that on the whole and in the long run our people think clearly and act rightly.

Unquestionably, however, the great development of industrialism means that there must be an increase in the supervision exercised by the Government over business enterprises. This supervision should not take the form of violent and ill-advised interference; and assuredly there is danger lest it take such form if the business leaders of the business community confine themselves to trying to thwart the effort at regulation instead of guiding it aright. Such men as the members of this club should lead in the effort to secure proper supervision and regulation of corporate activity by the Government, not only because it is for the interest of the community as a whole that there should be this supervision and regulation, but because in the long run it will be in the interest above all of the very people who often betray alarm and anger when the proposition is first made.

Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the Government the still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole. Our peculiar form of government, a Government in which the Nation is supreme throughout the Union in certain respects, while each of nearly half a hundred States is supreme in its part of the Union in certain other respects, renders the task of dealing with these conditions especially difficult. No finally satisfactory result can be expected from merely State action. The action must come through the Federal Government. The business of the country is now carried on in a way of which the founders of our Constitution could by no possibility have had any idea.

All great business concerns are engaged in interstate commerce, and it was beyond question the intention of the founders of our Government that interstate commerce in all its branches and aspects should be under national and not State control. If the courts decide that this intention was not carried out and made effective in the Constitution as it now stands, then in the end the Constitution, if not construed differently, will have to be amended so that the original undoubted intention may be made effective. But, of course, a constitutional amendment is only to be used as a last resort, if every effort of legislation and administration shall have been proved inadequate.

Meanwhile the men in public life and the men who direct the great business interests of the country should work not in antagonism but in harmony toward this given end. In entering a field where the progress must of necessity be so largely experimental it is essential that the effort to make progress should be tentative and cautious. We must grow by evolution, not by revolution. There must be no hurry, but there must also be no halt; and those who are anxious that there should be no sudden and violent changes must remember that precisely these sudden and violent changes will be rendered likely if we refuse to make the needed changes in cautious and moderate manner.

At the present moment the greatest need is for an increase in the power of the National Government to keep the great highways of commerce open alike to all on reasonable and equitable terms. Less than a century ago these highways were still, as they had been since the dawn of history, either waterways, natural or artificial, or else ordinary roads for wheel vehicles drawn by animal power. The railroad, which was utterly unknown when our Government was formed and when the great principles of our jurisprudence were laid down, has now become almost everywhere the most important, and, in many large regions, the only form of highway for commerce. The man who controls its use can not be permitted to control it in his own interest alone.

It is not only just, but it is in the interest of the public, that this man should receive the amplest payment for the masterful business capacity which enables him to benefit himself while benefiting the public; but in return he must himself recognize his duty to the public. He will not and can not do this if our laws are so defective that in the sharp competition of the business world the conscientious man is put at a disadvantage by his less scrupulous fellows. It is in the interest of the conscientious and public-spirited railway man that there should be such governmental supervision of the railway traffic of the country as to require from his less scrupulous competitors, and from unscrupulous big shippers as well, that heed to the public welfare which he himself would willingly give, and which is of vital consequence to the small shipper. Every important railroad is engaged in interstate commerce. Therefore, this control over the railroads must come through the National Government.