The Monmouth inquirer., 1906-10-11
ON TRUSTS
Advocates Extension of National
Power Over Corporations
Doing Interstate Trade.
NO GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP

Efficient Supervision Over Common
Carriers Will Obviate Necessity of
Taking Them Over, Says Executive.
MonopoIies Evil In Themselves and
Also as Accusing Agitation.
Washington, Oct. 10.-During Presi-
dent Roosevelt's flying trip to Harris
burg and York, Pa, he made speech
in each city.
At Harrisburg the president deliv-
cred the grafton at the dedication of
the beautiful new state capitol, which
has just been completed at cost of
S13,000,000, to take the place of the old
statehouse, destroyed by fire in 1897.
His speech was regarded by many
who heard it as the first direct public
answer by the president to the beliefs
set forth by William Jennings Bryan
in his Madison Square Garden speech
in New York, in which the Nebraskan
came out squarely in favor of govern
ment ownership of trunk lines.
Praise For Pennsylvania.
President Roosevelt began his adj
dress with a eulogy of Pennsylvania,
on whose soil the Declaration of indie
pendence was signed and the constitu-
tional convention was held, where
Washington at Valley Forge saved the
republic and where Gettysburg saved
the Union. Pennsylvania was ittingly
called, he said, the Keystone State.
The president advocated an extern
sion of the national power to oversee
and secure correct behavior in the
management of all great corporations
engaged in interstate business. The
government, he asserted, ought not to
conduct the business of the country,
but to regulate it so that it shall be
conducted in the public interest
Some of the statements made by the
president in his Harrisburg address
were as follows:
Wants Fortunes Controlled.
GAIL honest men must abhor and
reprobate any effort to excite hostility
to men of wealth as such. We should
do all we can to encourage thrift and
business energy, to put a premium
upon the conduct of the man who hon
estIy earns his livelihood and more
than his livelihood, and who honestly
uses the money that he has earned
But it is our clear duty to see, in the
interest of the people, that there is ade-
quate supervision and control over the
business use of the swollen fortunes Of
today. and also wisely to determine
the conditions upon which these for
tunes are to be transmitted and the
percentage that they shall pay to the
government whose protecting arm
alone enables them to exist Only the
nation can do this work. To relegate
it to the states is a farce and is simply
another way of saying it shall not be
done at all.
sUnder a wise and far seeing inter
pretation of the interstate commerce
clause of the constitution / maintain
that the national government should
have complete power to deal with all
this wealth which in any way goes in
to the commerce between the states,
and practically all of it that is EN-
ployed in the great corporations does
thus go in.
ut shall and must ultimately be I'M
derstood that the United States gov
eminent on behalf of the people of the
United States has and is to exercise
control over the business use of this
wealth, in the first place over all the
work of the common carriers of the
nation and In the next place over the
work of all great corporations which
directly or indirectly do any interstate
business whatever, and this includes
almost all of the great corporations.
Opposes Government Ownership.
$40 exercise a constantly increasing
and constantly more efficient supervi
sion and control over the great com
mon carriers of the country prevents
all necessity for seriously considering
such a project as the government own
ership of railroads, policy which
would be evil in it's results from every
standpoint
eve have actually accomplished
much, but we have not accomplished
all nor anything like all that we feel
must be accomplished. We shall not
halt: we shall steadily follow the path
we have succeeded in putting upon the
statute books with absolute impartial
ity as between man and man and I'M
resting in our endeavor to strengthen
and supplement these by further laws
which shall enable US in more efficient
and more summary fashion to achieve
the ends we have in view.
sit behooves us Americans to look
ahead and plan out the right kind of
civilization as that which we intend to
develop from these wonderful new con
ditions of vast industrial growth II
must not be, it shall not be, the civil
cation of a mere plutocracy, banking
house, Wall street syndicate civiliza
ton, nor yet can there be submission ia
class hatred, to rancor, brutality and
mob violence, for that would mean the
end of all civilization.
Trusts Double Evil.