TOPICS OF TFIE DAY.
MR. ROOSEVELT'S SPEECH.
MR.ROOSEVELT'S speech at Provincetown was in every way worthy of the occasion and of the man who made it. It had, however, in it nothing in the nature of surprise, but was exactly what one would have expected. The only surprising thing about it, indeed, is the fact that any one could have imagined that the President should or would adopt a tone different from that which he did adopt. Consider the situation. During the last ten years the national Legislature has passed a series of Acta regulating and controlling the actions of the great trading corporations and Trusts. Hitherto, partly owing to Executive weakness and apathy, but still more to the almost infinite capacity for delay dis- played by all branches of the Judicature in the United States, the law has not been put into operation, or when it has been the ingenuity of the corporation lawyers has sufficed to evade it. At last, however, the Courts have got to close quarters with a Trust, and a Judge has actually declared the elementary truth, as we regard it here, that if a company, no matter how powerful, breaks the law, it must take the consequences in the matter of fines and other punishments provided by the statute, just as if it were a poor individual or a small trading company. Nevertheless, so strange has the notion that even the Trusts must obey the law grown to the people of the United States, and so ingrained has become the belief that if only a trading corporation is big enough and wealthy enough it stands above, or at any rate outside, the law, that a vast number of Americans appear to have expected that the President would shrink back when he saw the results of the laws he has called for or approved, and that he would somehow or other prevent those laws being applied. He would, it was averred, " save the situation " and " restore confidence " by preventing the " persecution " of industrial enterprises. Those who, in effect, asked that the Trusts should be given a position of privilege have had their answer from Mr. Roosevelt's own lips. In terms that cannot be mistaken, the President has told his fellow-citizens that the law is no respecter of persons, and that there cannot be one law for the rich company and another for the poor individual. That the enunciation of such commonplaces should have caused " disturbance," " sensation," " anxiety," and " gloom " in business circles is a measure of how far the spirit of lawlessness has affected the mind of America. One might gather from some of the comments on Mr. Roosevelt's speech that he was a red-hot Socialist bent, torch in hand, on the ruin of his country.
If we turn to the text of Mr. Roosevelt's speech, it will be seen that we have in no way exaggerated the spirit in which he deals with the problem with which the United States is faced :—" There is a growing determination in our country that no man shall amass a great fortune by special privilege, chicanery, and wrongdoing, so far as it is in the power of legislation to prevent it, and that fortunes when amassed shall not have a business use that is anti-social." " Experience," continued Mr. Roose- velt, " has shown that an effort to control great corpora- tions by mere State action cannot produce wholesome results. I believe in a national incorporation law for corporations engaged in inter-State business. I believe, furthermore, that the need for action is most pressing as regards the corporations which, because they are common carriers, exercise a quasi-public function, and which can be completely controlled in all respects by the Federal Government by the exercise of the power conferred upon it under the inter-State commerce clause, and, if necessary, under the post-road clause of the Constitution." After noting the allegation that the Government had caused the recent disturbance in the stock markets, and ought to do something to ease the situation, the President dealt directly with the question we have touched on above,- i.e., whether breakers of the law should be exempt if only rich enough and engaged in sufficiently enormous enterprises :-
"But it may well be that the determination of the Govern- ment, in which, gentlemen, it will not waver, to punish certain malefactors of great wealth has been responsible for something
of the troubles, rat least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as they possibly can, in order to discredit the policy of the Government, and thereby to secure the reversal of that policy so that they may enjoy the fruits of their own evildoing. T. That they have misled many good people into believing that there should be such a reversal of policy is possible. If so, I am sorry, but it will not alter my attitude. Once and for all let me say that, so far as I am concerned, and for the eighteen months of my administration that remain, there will be no change in the policy we have stead. fastly pursued. It is idle to ask me not to prosecute criminals, rich or poor, but I desire no less emphatically to have it under- stood that we have undertaken, and will undertake, no action of a vindictive type, and, above all, no action which shall inflict great or unmerited suffering upon innocent stockholders and upon the public as a whole. Our purpose is to act with the minimum of harshness compatible with obtaining our ends. In the man of great wealth who has earned his wealth honestly and used it wisely we recognise a good citizen, worthy of all praise and respect. Business can only be done, under modern conditions, through corporations, and our purpose is heartily to favour corporations that do well."
There is no need to make Mr. Roosevelt's plain speaking plainer. No one who is not anxious, or, rather, determined, to mistake him can imagine that he is any enemy to industry or to the legitimate accumulation of wealth, or that he has any Socialistic bias. On the contrary, it is clear that he is to be counted as the best friend of property and of a State organised on individualistic lines. He stands for the rights of property and the rights of the individual against a lawlessness which, if persisted in, can only have one end,—the destruction of a State based on individual freedom and private property.
If we look at the President's speech as a whole, we shall see that he is striking against what is in reality the chief defect of modern America on the political side. The story of the politician who was asked to give his opinion on the Prohibition Law is one of those " luciferous sayings " of which Bacon speaks. " I'm for the law, but agin its enforce- ment," said the politician. The people of the United States have hitherto believed too much in the virtue of the printed statute, and have thought too little of how to carry out the law. Careless in their easy optimism, and persuaded by clap- trap rhetoricians that the principles of democracy would be infringed by giving their Judges the pay, the prestige, and the social power and influence which they possess in this country—a power and influence which greatly facilitate even-handed justice when millionaires and politicians with a " pull " are to be dealt with, and in no way prejudice the poor man's cause—they have too often allowed their Courts to be impotent when faced by great and wealthy trading organisations. The American people have been too apt to think, in fact, that when a thing is ordered to be done it is done. They have forgotten that there is another stage quite as important as giving an order, and that is seeing to its execution. Unless ample provision is made for such execution, it is better not to give the order at all. Every disregarded or imperfectly obeyed order is a serious danger and source of weakness to those who give it. Men are taught to think that it is safe and easy to disobey. If, then, Mr. Roosevelt can teach his fellow-countrymen that they must give up the national habit of passing laws and then forgetting to carry them out, he will have conferred on them an incalculable benefit. The man who is for a law but against its enforcement is a national disgrace and a national danger. Those who tolerate and are amused by such an attitude can expect nothing but scandal heaped on scandal, and the gradual degradation of every social and political institution.
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