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

by Theodore Roosevelt

But do not think that I fail to understand the importance of our material well-being. I congratulate Denver with all my heart that it is the centre of the great mining and livestock industries. It is of enormous consequence to all our people that any section of this country should do well. Do not forget that. So far from its being a hurt to any one section to see another section prosper, we can on the contrary count it as certain that if a part of this country prospers much the rest of the country will as a whole feel some good effects from the result of the prosperity. As Senator Patterson was just saying to me, when three years ago we succeeded in getting through that law which I am so very proud should have been enacted during my administration, the law by which the Nation undertook to do its share in the great work of reclamation of the arid lands of the West; when we got through that law there were certain shortsighted people, representing as they believed the interests of the non-arid Eastern lands, who objected to its passage on the ground that it would help build up their rivals; whereas, they ought to have seen that whatever built up the inter-mountain States would add to the prosperity of all the United States. There is just one safe motto for Americans to act on; that is, the motto of all men up; not some men down.

In a very small way I am trying to build up an other industry for the benefit of the whole country, which we are starting here in Colorado. Through Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture, in connection with your Agricultural College, we are starting the development of a breed of American horse which may be called the general utility horse. If I have any influence with this Administration I am going to have this work continued! Also, incidentally (if any of you have come from Vermont you will appreciate this), I think that for this end we should develop the old breed of Morgan horse, because we have in the Morgan horse a type which is not surpassed in any country for the purpose to be served by the breed of horse most important for us to develop. I do not think that the perpetuation of that fine old stock should be left to private breeders. I think the Government should take part in it. The reason we have started this horse breeding by the Government here in Colorado is that we find, for reasons that I am not wholly able to explain, that the stoutest forelegs in horses are developed here in Colorado; and so I hope the Senators from Colorado will help me to develop the Morgan horse in Colorado.

Gentlemen, I want to say a word as to a governmental policy in which I feel that this whole country ought to take a great interest and which is itself but part of a general policy into which I think our Government must go. I speak of the policy of extending the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, of giving them the power to fix rates and to have the rates that they fix go into effect practically at once. As I say, that represents in my mind part of what should be the general policy of this country, the policy of giving not to the State but to the National Government an increased supervisory and regulatory power over corporations. The first step and to my mind the most important step in this general policy is to give the Nation in effective form this power over the great transportation corporations of this country. In the days of the fathers of the older among you the highways of commerce for civilized nations were what they had always been—waterways and roads. Therefore they were open to all who chose to travel upon them. Within the last two generations we have seen a system grow up under which the old methods were completely revolutionized, and now the typical highway of commerce is the railroad. Compared to the railroad the ordinary road for wheeled vehicles, and the waterway, whether natural or artificial, have lost their importance. Here in Colorado, for instance, it is the railroads which, of course, are the only highways that you need take into account in dealing with the question of commerce in the State or outside of the State. Therefore, under this changed system, we see highways of commerce grow up each of which is controlled by a single corporation or individual; sometimes several of them being controlled in combination by corporations or a few individuals. When such is the case, in my judgment it is absolutely necessary that the Nation (for the separate States can not possibly do it) should assume a supervisory and regulatory function over the great corporations which practically control the highways of commerce.

Now fix clearly in your minds two facts at the outset. As with everything else mundane, when you get that supervisory and regulatory power on behalf of the Nation you will not have cured all the evils that existed and you will not equal the expectations of the amiable but ill-regulated enthusiast who thinks that you ought to have cured all those evils. A measure of good will come, some good will be done, some injustice will have been prevented; but we shall be a long way from the millennium. Get that fact clear in your mind or you will be laying up for your selves a store of incalculable disappointment in the future. That is the first thing.

Now the second and even more important matter: When you give the Nation that power, remember that harm and not good will come unless you give it with the firm determination not only to get justice for yourselves, but to do justice to others. You must be as jealous to do justice to the railroads as to exact justice from them. We can not afford in any shape or way in this country to encourage a feeling which would do injustice to a man of property, any more than to submit to injustice from a man of property. Whether the man owns the biggest railroad or the greatest outside corporation in the land, or whether he makes each day’s bread by the sweat of that day’s toil, he is entitled to justice and fair dealing, to no more and to no less. A spirit of envy on the part of those less well off against the better off is as bad as and no worse than a spirit of arrogant disregard for the rights of the man of small means on the part of the man of large means. The arrogance and the envy are not two different qualities; they are the same quality shown by men under different circumstances.

We must make up our minds that nothing but harm will come from any scheme to exercise such supervision as that I advocate over corporations, and especially over the common carriers, unless we have it clearly fixed in our minds that the scheme is to be one of substantial justice alike to the common carrier and to the public. If I have the appointment or retention of any commission and power to administer a law of such increased powers I shall neither appoint nor retain the man who would fail to do justice to the railroads any more than I would appoint or retain the man who would fail to exact justice from the railroads. I want that understood as a preliminary. If I have the appointment of any of those men, or their retention, they will give a square deal all around or else their shrift will be short.

But with that statement as a preliminary I wish to urge with all the earnestness I possess, not only upon the public, but upon those interested in the great railway corporations, the absolute need of acquiescence in the enactment of such law. As has been well set forth by the Attorney-General, Mr. Moody, in his recent masterly argument presented to the committee of the Senate which is investigating the matter, the Legislators have the right and as I believe the duty to confer these powers upon some executive body. It can not confer them upon any court, nor can it take away the court’s power to interfere if the law is administered in a way that amounts to confiscation of property. Of course, it would be possible to come much short of such confiscation and yet do great damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to the great corporations engaged in interstate commerce. We must remember always that most of the men who are responsible for the management of these great corporations, and who have profited thereby, have made their fortunes not as incidental to damaging, but to benefiting the community as a whole. We must be careful that nothing is done that would jeopardize their industries and that would therefore work harm of the most far-reaching kind not only to all, from the humblest to the highest, engaged in these industries, but to the business community as a whole. We must be careful to see that the law is administered with sanity and conservatism. But the power must exist, if justice is to be done as between the public and the common carrier, in some governmental executive tribunal, not only to fix rates and alter them, when convinced that existing rates do injustice, but to see that the rate thus fixed goes into effect practically at once.

I do not ascribe it to any moral culpability of the men engaged in handling these great corporations that they can not see some of the bad effects of certain things they do. It is most natural for a man who is trying to carry on his business in competition with some other business to think that whatever he does that would beat his competitor is a pretty good thing for the community at large; and often I do not blame him for what he does; but I intend to prevent his doing it when it is against the public weal.

I can not attempt to speak in detail of all that should be put into the law as I hope it will be enacted at the next session of the National Congress. Not only should this power over rates go in, but in my belief we should at the same time deal with the private car question, which, as regards certain industries, offers an even greater menace than is offered by the present system of fixing rates. I do not think that the law will have to deal with many subjects, but I do feel that with the two I have mentioned and with perhaps one or two others it should deal effectively. There will be the argument made on the other side (doubtless the argument being made in their own minds by certain of my hearers) that such power is liable to abuse. Of course it is. The power of taxation is liable to grave abuse, and yet it must exist in the appropriate legislative body. You can not give any needed power to the representatives of the people without exposing yourselves to the danger of that power being abused. There must be the possibility of abuse or there can not be the possibility of effective use.

In closing I wish to mention one governmental project which I have been instrumental, I think, in having started which will have a certain bearing upon this question, and that is the Panama Canal. It is perhaps unnecessary for me to say that I am perfectly aware that many most admirable gentlemen disagreed with me in my action toward the Panama Canal. But I am in a wholly unrepentant frame of mind in reference thereto. The ethical conception upon which I acted was that I did not intend that Uncle Sam should be held up while he was doing a great work for himself and all mankind. But without regard to that, when the canal comes into operation I think it will have a very important regulatory effect in connection with the transcontinental commerce of the great railroads. I think when such is the case those great railroads will have to revise their way of looking at the interests of certain inland cities.