The daily sentinel., 1908-04-28

der both more efficient and more
iwse the control of the national gov
ernment over the great corporations
doing an interstate business. He then
goes to considerable length in dis
cussing these two measures and sets
forth a great series of reasons and
support of the passage of each meas
ure.
Regarding antitrust legislation,
Mr.. Roosevelt says in part:
Every farsighted patriot should
protest first of all against the
growth in this country of that evil
sciousness.' The demagogue, the
sinister or socialist, visionary who
strives to arouse this feeling of class
consciousness in our working people,
does foul and evil thing; for he is
no true American, he is no self-re-
specting citizen of this republic, he
forfeits his right to stand with manly
self-reliance on footing of entire
equality with all other citizens who
Dows to envy and greed, who erects
this doctrine of class hatred into a
shibboleth, who substitutes loyalty
to men of particular status, whether
rich or poor, for loyalty to those
eternal and immutable principles of
righteousness which bid us treat
each man without regard to his
wealth or his poverty. But evil
though the influence of these dem
agogues and visionaries is, it is no
worse in its consequences than the
influence exercised by the man of
great wealth or the man of power
and position in the industrial world
who by his lack of sympathy with !
and lack of understanding of, still
more by any exhibition of uncom-
promising hostility to, the millions
of our working people, tends to unite !
them against their fellow Americans
who are better off in this worlds
goods. 1t is bad thing to teach
our working people that men of
means who have the largest proper
ton of the substantial comforts of
life are necessarily greedy, grasp
ing and cold hearted and that they
unjustly demand and appropriate
more than their share of the sub
stance of the many. Stern condem-
nation should be visited upon DEM
agogue and visionary who teach this |
untruth, and even sterner upon those |
capitalists who are in truth grasping |
and greedy and brutally disregard !
full of this right of others, and who |
by their actions teach the dreadful |
lesson far more effectively than any |
mere preacher of unrest. A class
grievance left too long without
remedy breeds class conscious and
therefore, class resentment.
"The strengthening of antitrust
law is demanded upon both more
and economic grounds. Our purpose
in strengthening it is to secure more
effective control by the national gov
ernment over the business use of the
~. I
tally of corporate veal which at the
present time monopolized most of
the interstate business of the coun-
try; and we believe the control can
best be exercised by preventing the
growth of abuses, rather than merely II
by trying TO destroy them when they II
have already grown In the higher H
sense of the word this movement for
thorough control of the business use II
of this great wealth is conservative. II
We are trying to steer a safe middle
course which alone can save us from
a plutocratic class movement on the
one hand or a socialistic class gov
ernment on the other, either of
which would be fraught with dis
aster to our free institutions, state
and national. We are trying to avoid
alike the evils which would flow
from government ownership of the
public utilities by which interstate
commerce is chiefly carried on, and
the evils which flow from riot and
chaos of unrestricted individualism.
There is grave danger to our free
in the corrupting influ-
ence exercised by great wealth sud
denly concentrated in the hands of a
few. We should in a same manner
try to remedy this danger. in spite
a. 30 9 NOR l
and with the full purpose to protect
them in all their rights at the very
time that we require them to deal
with Others
Continuing he deals with the eff
forts made from time to time to
control corporate wealth and combin-
ations and the abuses of privileges
of which the trusts have been guilty.