Speech 4
NATIONAL   SUPERVISION   OF   GREAT
COMBINATIONS OF CAPITAL AND OF LABOR

FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN CHARLESTON, ON THE OCCASION OF THE EXPOSITION.  APRIL 9, I9O2

THIS Exposition is rendered possible because of the period of industrial prosperity through which we are passing.  While material well being is never all sufficient to the life of a nation, yet it is the merest truism to say that its absence means ruin.  We need to build a higher life upon it as a foundation; but we can build little indeed unless this foundation of prosperity is deep and broad.  The well being which we are now enjoying can be secured only through general business prosperity, and such prosperity is conditioned upon the energy and hard work, the sanity and the mutual respect, of all classes of capitalists, large and small, of wage workers of every degree.  As is inevitable in a time of business prosperity, some men succeed more than others, and it is unfortunately also inevitable that when this is the case some unwise people are sure to try to appeal to the envy and jealousy of those who succeed least.  It is a good thing when these appeals are made to remember that while it is difficult to increase prosperity by law, it is easy enough to ruin it, and that there is small satisfaction to the less prosperous if they succeed in overthrowing both the more prosperous and themselves in the crash of a common disaster.

Every industrial exposition of this type necessarily calls up the thought of the complex social and economic questions which are involved in our present industrial system.  Our astounding material prosperity, the sweep and rush rather than the mere march of our progressive material development, have brought grave troubles in their train.  We can not afford to blink these troubles, any more than because of them we can afford to accept as true the gloomy forebodings of the prophets of evil.  There are great problems before us.  They are not insoluble, but they can be solved only if we approach them in a spirit of resolute fearlessness, of commonsense, and of honest intention to do fair and equal justice to all men alike.  We are certain to fail if we adopt the policy of the demagogue who raves against the wealth which is simply the form of embodied thrift, foresight, and intelligence; who would shut the door of opportunity against those whose energy we should especially foster, by penalizing the qualities which tell for success.  Just as little can we afford to follow those who fear to recognize injustice and to endeavor to cut it out because the task is difficult or even — if performed by unskillful hands — dangerous.

This is an era of great combinations both of labor and of capital.  In many ways these combinations have worked for good; but they must work under the law, and the laws concerning them must be just and wise, or they will inevitably do evil; and this applies as much to the richest corporation as to the most powerful labor union.  Our laws must be wise, sane, healthy, conceived in the spirit of those who scorn the mere agitator, the mere inciter of class or sectional hatred; who wish justice for all men; who recognize the need of adhering so far as possible to the old American doctrine of giving the widest possible scope for the free exercise of individual initiative, and yet who recognize also that after combinations have reached a certain stage it is indispensable to the general welfare that the Nation should exercise over them, cautiously and with self-restraint, but firmly, the power of supervision and regulation.

Above all, the administration of the government, the enforcement of the laws, must be fair and honest.  The laws are not to be administered either in the interest of the poor man or the interest of the rich man.  They are simply to be administered justly; in the interest of justice to each man be he rich or be he poor — giving immunity to no violator, whatever form the violation may assume.  Such is the obligation which every public servant takes, and to it he must be true under penalty of forfeiting the respect both of himself and of his fellows.