contrary. It is our boast that in our political affairs we have combined genuine political equality with high distinction in individual service. During a century and a third we here on this continent-more completely than anywhere else at any other time-have actually realized the democratic principle, the principle of popular government. Yet during this period we have produced, in the persons of Washington and Lincoln, two leaders who on the roll of the world's worthies stand higher than any other two men ever produced by any other country during a similar length of time. We believe that it is entirely possible to combine equality of rights and at least an approximate equality in the opportunity to achieve material well-being, with the opportunity for the highest kind of individual distinction. Hitherto our efforts towards this end have related to purely political matters; we must now strive to achieve the same end in economic matters.

To achieve our purpose we cannot trust merely to haphazard, easy-going methods with complete absence of official Government action and a too exclusively material standard. These did well enough in the pioneer days when problems were comparatively simple, and when the country was still so large that Uncle Sam could give every man a farm, so that, if any man did not succeed where he was, all he had to do was to move somewhere else.

We must be true to the spirit of our ancestors, and therefore we must avoid any servility to the letter of what they said and did. There must be equal rights for all, and special privileges for none; but we must remember that to achieve this ideal it is necessary to construe rights and privileges very differently from the way they were necessarily construed, by statesmen and people alike, a century ago. We must strive to achieve our ideal by an exercise of governmental power which the conditions did not render necessary a century ago, and of which our forefathers would have felt suspicious. This is no reflection on the wisdom of our forefathers; it is simply an acknowledgment that conditions have now changed. If our farmers now used the wasteful methods that served for their great-grandfathers, they would not merely fail in the

present, but would work a grave wrong to the American citizens of the future. In the same way we must apply new political methods to meet the new political needs, or else we shall suffer, and our children also. In the same way, when we speak of the " square deal," we include two thoughts, each supplementary to the other. The square deal can be secured in part by honest enforcement of existing laws, by honest application of the principles upon which this Government was founded, by the exercise of an aroused and enlightened public opinion. But in order completely to secure it, there must be whatever legislation is necessary to meet the new conditions caused by the extraordinary industrial change and development that have taken place during the last two generations. The greatest evils in our industrial system to-day are those which rise from the abuses of aggregated wealth; and our great problem is to overcome these evils and cut out these abuses. No one man can deal with this matter. It is the affair of the people as a whole. When aggregated wealth demands what is unfair, its immense power can be met only by the still greater power of the people as a whole, exerted in the only way it can be exerted, through the Government; and we must be resolutely prepared to use the power of the Government to any needed extent, even though it be necessary to tread paths which are yet untrod. The complete change in economic conditions means that governmental methods never yet resorted to may have to be employed in order to deal with them. We cannot tolerate anything approaching a monopoly, especially in the necessaries of life, except on terms of such thoroughgoing governmental control as will absolutely safeguard every right of the public. Moreover, one

of the most sinister manifestations of great corporate wealth during recent years has been its tendency to interfere and dominate in politics.

It is not merely that we want to see the game played fairly. We also want to see the rules changed, so that there shall be both less opportunity and less temptation to cheat, and less chance for some few people to gain a profit to which either they are not entitled at all, or else which is so enormous as to be greatly in excess

of what they deserve, even though their services have been great. We wish to do away with the profit that comes from the illegitimate exercise of cunning and craft. We also wish to secure a measurable equality of opportunity, a measurable equality of reward for services of similar value. To do all this, two mutually supplementary movements are necessary. On the one hand, there must be-I think there now is a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent.

We pride ourselves upon being a practical people, and therefore we should not be merely empirical in seeking to bring about results. We must set the end in view as the goal; and then, instead of making a fetish of some particular kind of means, we should adopt whatever honorable means will best accomplish the end. In so far as unrestricted individual liberty brings the best results, we should encourage it. But when a point is reached where this complete lack of restriction on individual liberty fails to achieve the best results, then, on behalf of the whole people, we should exercise the collective power of the people, through the State Legislatures in matters of purely local concern, and through the National Legislature when the purpose is so big that only National action can achieve it. There are good people who, being discontented with presentday conditions, think that these conditions can be cured by a return to what they call the "principles of the fathers." In so far as we have departed from the standards of lofty integrity in public and private life to which the greatest men among the founders of the Republic adhered, why, of course, we should return to these principles. We must always remember that no system of legislation can accomplish anything unless back of it we have the right type of National character; unless we have ideals to which our practice measurably conforms. But to go back to the governmental theories of a hundred years ago would accomplish nothing whatever; for it was under the conditions of unre

stricted individualism and freedom from Government interference, countenanced by those theories, that the trusts grew up, and private fortunes, enormous far beyond the deserts of the accumulators, were gathered. The old theories of government worked well in sparsely settled communities, before steam, electricity, and machinery had revolutionized our industrial system; but to return to them now would be as hopeless as for the farmers of the present to return to the agricultural implements which met the needs of their predecessors, the farmers who followed in the footsteps of Daniel Boone to Kentucky and Missouri. It may be that, in the past development of our country, complete freedom from all restrictions, and the consequent unlimited encouragement and reward given to the most successful industrial leaders, played a part in which the benefits outweighed the disadvantages. But nowadays such is not the case.

Lincoln had to meet special and peculiar problems, and therefore there was no need and no opportunity for him to devote attention to those other problems which we face, and which in his day were so much less intense than in ours. Nevertheless, he very clearly put the proper democratic view when he said: "I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition but to assist in ameliorating mankind." And again: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed but for labor. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example showing that his own shall be safe from violence when built." It seems to me that in these words Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in so many others, he

taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of to-day, for if we approach the work of reform in a spirit of vindictiveness-in a spirit of reckless disregard for the rights of others, or of hatred for men because they are better off than ourselves—we are sure in the end to do not good but damage to all mankind, and especially to those whose especial champions we profess ourselves to be. Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights. The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and untruthfulness, and the visionary who promises perfection and accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard to ethical standards, who profits by and breeds corruption, and robs and swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those "business interests" that only too often regard him with mean admiration and heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity.

Now, the object we seek to achieve is twofold. A great democratic commonwealth should seek to produce and reward that individual distinction which results in the efficient performance of needed work, for such performance is of high value to the whole community. But hand in hand with this purpose must go the purpose which Abraham Lincoln designated as the "amelioration of mankind." Only by an intelligent effort to realize this joint process of individual and social betterment can we keep our democracy sound. We all admit this to be true politically; but we have not paid much heed to the question from its economic side. The wageearner primarily needs what it is pre-eminently to the interest of our democratic commonwealth that he should obtain-that is, a high standard of living, and the opportunity to acquire the means whereby to secure it. Every power of the Nation should be used in helping him to this end; taking care, however, that the help shall

be given in such fashion as to represent real help, and not harm; for the worst injury that could be done him or any other man would be to teach him to rely primarily on "the State" instead of on himself. . The collective power of the State can help; but it is the individual's own power of self-help which is most important.

Now, I am well aware that demagogues and doctrinaire reformers of a certain type may try to turn such use of the powers of the State into an abuse. We should set our faces like flint against any such abuse. We should make it fully understood by the workingmen-by the men of small means-that we will do everything in our power for them except what is wrong; but that we will do wrong for no manneither for them nor for any one else. Nevertheless, the fact that there are dangers in following a given course merely means that we should follow it with a cautious realization of these dangers, and not that we should abandon it, if on the whole it is the right course.

It is just so with personal liberty. The unlimited freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed has been of use to this country in many ways, and we can continue our prosperous economic career only by retaining an economic organization which will offer to the men of the stamp of the great captains of industry the opportunity and inducement to earn distinction. Nevertheless, we as Americans must now face the fact that this great freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed in the past has produced evils which were inevitable from its unrestrained exercise. It is this very freedom-this absence of State and National restraint that has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. Any feeling of special hatred toward these men is as absurd as any feeling of special regard. Some of them have gained their power by cheating and swindling, just as some very small business men cheat and swindle; but, as a whole, big men are no better and no worse than their small competitors, from a moral standpoint. Where they do wrong it is even more important to pun

ish them than to punish a small man who does wrong, because their position makes it especially wicked for them to yield to temptation; but the prime need is to change the conditions which enable them to accumulate a power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise, and to make this change not only without vindictiveness, without doing injustice to individuals, but also in a cautious and temperate spirit, testing our theories by actual practice, so that our legislation may represent the minimum of restrictions upon the individual initiative of the exceptional man which is compatible with obtaining the maximum of welfare for the average man. We grudge no man a fortune which represents merely his own power and sagacity exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. But the fortune must not only be honorably obtained and well used; it is also essential that it should not represent a necessary incident of widespread, even though partial, economic privation. It is not even enough that the fortune should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should only permit it to be gained and kept so long as the gaining and the keeping represert benefit to the community. This I know implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions than we have hitherto seen in this country; but I think we have to face the fact that such increase in governmental activity is now necessary. We should work cautiously and patiently and with complete absence of animosity, except toward the individuals whom we are certain have been guilty of flagrant evil; but we should also work firmly to realize the democratic purpose, economically and socially as well as politically. We must make popular government responsible for the betterment both of the individual and of society at large.

Let me repeat once more that, while such responsible governmental action is an absolutely necessary thing to achieve our purpose, yet it will be worse than useless if it is not accompanied by a serious effort on the part of the individuals composing the community thus to achieve each for himself a higher standard of individual betterment, not merely material but

spiritual and intellectual. In other words, our democracy depends on individual improvement just as much as upon collective effort to achieve our common social improvement. The most serious troubles of the present day are unquestionably due in large part to lack of efficient governmental action, and cannot be remedied without such action; but neither can any remedy permanently avail unless back of it stands a high general character of individual citizenship.

But

This governmental improvement can be accomplished partly by the States, in so far as any given evil affects only one State, or one or two States; in so far as a merely local remedy is needed for a merely local disease. But the betterment must be accomplished partly, and I believe mainly, through the National Government. I do not ask for over-centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we deal with what concerns our people as a whole. I no more make a fetish of centralization than of decentralization. Any given case must be treated on its special merits. Each community should be required to deal with all that is of merely local interest; and nothing should be undertaken by the Government of the whole country which can thus wisely be left to local management. those functions of government which no wisdom on the part of the States will enable them satisfactorily to perform must be performed by the National Government. We are all Americans; our common interests are as broad as the continent; the most vital problems are those that affect us all alike. The regulation of big business, and therefore the control of big property in the public interest, are preeminently instances of such functions which can only be performed efficiently and wisely by the Nation; and, moreover, so far as labor is employed in connection with inter-State business, it should also be treated as a matter for the National Government. The National power over inter-State commerce warrants our dealing with such questions as employers' liability in inter-State business, and the protection and compensation for injuries of railway employees. The National Government of right has, and must exercise,

its power for the protection of labor which is connected with the instrumentalities of inter-State commerce.

The National Government belongs to the whole American people; and where the whole American people are interested that interest can be effectively guarded only by the National Government. We ought to use the National Government as an agency, a tool, wherever it is necessary, in order that we may organize our entire political, economical, and social life in accordance with a far-reaching democratic purpose. We should make the National governmental machinery an adequate and constructive instrument for constructive work in the realization of a National democratic ideal. I lay emphasis upon the word constructive. Too often the Federal Government, and above all the Federal judiciary, has permitted itself to be employed for purely negative purposes—that is, to thwart the action of the States while not permitting efficient National action in its place. From the National standpoint nothing can be worse-nothing can be full of graver menace—for the National life than to have the Federal courts active in nullifying State action to remedy the evils arising from the abuse of great wealth, unless the Federal authorities, executive, legislative, and judicial alike, do their full duty in effectually meeting the need of a thoroughgoing and radical supervision and control of big inter-State business in all its forms. Many great financiers, and many of the great corporation lawyers who advise them, still oppose any effective regulation of big business by the National Government, because, for the time being, it serves their interest to trust to the chaos which is caused on the one hand by inefficient laws and conflicting and often unwise efforts at regulation by State governments, and, on the other hand, by the efficient protection against such regulation afforded by the Federal courts. In the end this condition will prove intolerable, and will hurt most of all the very class which it at present benefits. The continuation of such conditions would mean that the corporations would find that they had purchased immunity from the efficient exercise of Federal regulative power at the cost of being submitted to a violent and radical

local supervision, inflamed to fury by having repeatedly been thwarted, and not chastened by exercised responsibility. To refuse to take, or to permit others to take, wise and practical action for the remedying of abuses is to invite unwise action under the lead of violent extremists.

I do not wish to see the Nation forced into ownership of the railways if it can possibly be avoided; and the only alternative is thoroughgoing and effective regulation, which shall be based on full knowledge of all the facts, including a physical valuation of the property, the details of its capitalization, and the like. We should immediately set about securing this physical valuation. The Government should oversee the issuance of all stocks and bonds, and should have complete power over rates and traffic agreements. The railways are really highways, and it is the fundamental right of the people as a whole to see that they are open to use on just and reasonable terms, equal to all persons. The Hepburn Bill marked a great step in advance; the law of last session, in its final shape and as actually passed, marks, on the whole, another decided step in advance.

Corporate regulation is merely one phase of a vast problem. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.

Corporations are necessary to the effective use of the forces of production and commerce under modern conditions. We cannot effectively prohibit all combinations without doing far-reaching economic harm; and it is mere folly to do as we have done in the past-to try to combine incompatible systems—that is, to try both to prohibit and regulate combinations. Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The only course left is active corporate regulation—that is, the