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shape our legislation and administration as to minimize, if we cannot eradicate, the unpleasant and vicious features connected with that industrial development. I have said that there can be no patent remedy. There is not any one thing which can be done to remove all of the existing evils. There are a good many things which, if we do them all, will, I believe, make a very appreciable betterment in the existing conditions. To do that is not to make a promise that will evoke wild enthusiasm, but a promise that can be kept; and in the long run it is much more comfortable only to make promises that can be kept than to make promises which are sure of an immense reception when made, but which entail intolerable humiliation when it is attempted to carry them out.

I am sufficiently fortunate to be advocating now, as President, precisely the remedies that I advocated two years ago-advocating them not in any partisan spirit, because, gentlemen, this problem is one which affects the life of the nation as a whole-but advocating them simply as the American citizen who, for the time being, stands as the Chief Executive and, therefore, the special representative of his fellow-American citizens of all parties.

A century and a quarter ago there had been no development of industry such as to make it a matter of the least importance whether the Nation or the State had charge of the great corporations or supervised the great business and industrial organizations. A century and a quarter ago, here at Wheeling, commerce was carried on by pack train, by wagon train, by boat. That was the way it was carried on throughout the whole civilized world oars and sails, wheeled vehicles and beasts of burden-those were the means of carrying on commerce at the end of the eighteenth century, when this country became a nation.

There had been no radical change, no essential change, in the means of carrying on commerce from the days when

the Phoenician galleys ploughed the waters of the Mediterranean. For four or five thousand years, perhaps longer, from the immemorial past when Babylon and Nineveh stood in Mesopotamia, when Thebes and Memphis were mighty in the valley of the Nile-from that time on through the supremacy of Greece and of Rome, through the upbuilding of the great trading cities like Venice and Genoa in Italy, like the cities of the Rhine and the Netherlands in Northern Europe-on through the period of the great expansion of European civilization which followed the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, down to the time when this country became a nation-the means of commercial intercourse remained substantially unchanged. Those means, therefore, limited narrowly what could be done by any corporation, the growth that could take place in any community.

Suddenly, during our own lifetime as a nation—a lifetime trivial in duration compared to the period of recorded history-there came a revolution in the means of intercourse which made a change in commerce, and in all that springs from commerce, in industrial development, greater than all the changes of the preceding thousands of years. A greater change in the means of commerce of mankind has taken place since Wheeling was founded, since the first settlers built their log huts in the great forests on the banks of this river, than in all the previous period during which man had led an existence that can be called civilized.

Through the railway, the electric telegraph, and other developments, steam and electricity worked a complete revolution. This has meant, of course, that entirely new problems have sprung up. You have right in this immediate neighborhood a very much larger population than any similar region in all the United States held when the Continental Congress began its sessions; and the change in industrial conditions has been literally immeasurable. Those changed conditions need a corresponding change in

the governmental agencies necessary for their regulation and supervision.

Such agencies were not provided, and could not have been provided, in default of a knowledge of prophecy by the men who founded the Republic. In those days each State could take care perfectly well of any corporations within its limits, and all it had to do was to try to encourage their upbuilding. Now the big corporations, although nominally the creatures of one State, usually do business in other States, and in a very large number of cases the wide variety of State laws on the subject of corporations has brought about the fact that the corporation is made in one State, but does almost all its work in entirely different States.

It has proved utterly impossible to get anything like uniformity of legislation among the States. Some States have passed laws about corporations which, if they had not been ineffective, would have totally prevented any important corporate work being done within their limits. Other States have such lax laws that there is no effective effort made to control any of the abuses. As a result we have a system of divided control-where the nation has something to say, but it is a little difficult to know exactly how much, and where the different States have each. something to say, but where there is no supreme power that can speak with authority. It is, of course, a mere truism to say that every corporation, the smallest as well as the largest, is the creature of the State. Where the corporation is small there is very little need of exercising much supervision over it, but the stupendous corporations of the present day certainly should be under governmental supervision and regulation. The first effort to make is to give somebody the power to exercise that supervision, that regulation. We have already laws on the statute books. Those laws will be enforced, and are being enforced, with all the power of the National

Government, and wholly without regard to persons. But the power is very limited. Now I want you to take my words at their exact value. I think-I cannot say I am sure, because it has often happened in the past that Congress has passed a law with a given purpose in view, and when that law has been judicially interpreted it has proved that the purpose was not achieved-but I think that by legislation additional power in the way of regulation of at least a number of these great corporations can be conferred. But, gentlemen, I firmly believe that in the end power must be given to the National Government to exercise in full supervision and regulation of these great enterprises; and if necessary a constitutional amendment must be resorted to for this purpose.

That is not new doctrine for me. That is the doctrine that I advocated on the stump two years ago. Some of my ultra-conservative friends have professed to be greatly shocked at my advocating it now. I would explain to those gentlemen, once for all, that they err whenever they think that I advocate on the stump anything that I will not try to put into effect after election. The objection is made that working along these lines will take time. So it will. Let me go back to my illustration of the Mississippi River. It took time to build the levees, but we built them. And if we have the proper intelligence, the proper resolution, and the proper self-restraint, we can work out the solution along the lines that I have indicated. Thus, the first thing is to give the National Government the power. All the power that is given, I can assure you, will be used in a spirit as free as possible from rancor of any kind, but with the firmest determination to make big man and little man alike obey the law.

What we need first is power. Having gotten the power, remember the work won't be ended-it will be only fairly begun. And let me say again and again and again that you will not get the millennium-the millennium is some

way off yet. But you will be in a position to make a long stride in advance in the direction of securing a juster, fairer, wiser management of many of these corporations, both as regards the general public and as regards their relationship among themselves and to the investing public. When we have the power I most earnestly hope, and should most earnestly advocate, that it be used with the greatest wisdom and self-restraint.

The first thing to do would be to find out the facts. For that purpose I am absolutely clear that we need publicity that we need it not as a matter of favor from any one corporation, but as a matter of right, secured through the agents of the Government, from all the corporations concerned. The mere fact of the publicity itself will tend to stop many of the evils, and it will show that some other alleged evils are imaginary, and finally in making evident the remaining evils-those that are not imaginary and that are not cured by the simple light of day—it will give us an intelligent appreciation of the methods to take in getting at them. We should have, under such circumstances, one sovereign to whom the big corporations. should be responsible-a sovereign in whose courts a corporation could be held accountable for any failure to comply with the laws of the legislature of that sovereign. I do not think you can accomplish that among the fortysix sovereigns of the States. I think that it will have to be through the National Government.

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