The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1909-06-18
ThTaldonn of Names
Roosevelt S Text
Political Problems Arising
From Corporation Power
Dis cuSSed With
EarnestnesS
\ lew YORK, June 17.-Discussion

IN
IN of the political problems con-
fronting the country through
the development of the power OF
large corporations is made in Wig
orous language by former President
Roosevelt in his article in this weeks
Outlook
Taking for his subject ''Thraldom
of Names" Mr.. Roosevelt says 1t be-
hooves our people never to be misled
by designing men who appeal to the
reverence for or antipathy toward a
given name in order to achieve some
alien purpose. -
Many excellent people are taken in
by the use of the word liberty at the
one time" says Mr.. Roosevelt. and
the use of the word order at the
other and ignore the simple fact that
despotism is despotism. tyranny tyran-
ny. oppression oppression. whether
committed by one individual or by
many individuals, by a state or by
a private corporation. All forms OF
tyranny and cruelty must alike be
condemned by honest men.
First, we must stand firmly on a
basis of good. sound ethics. If bust
ness is hurt by the stern exposure OF
crookedness and the result of efforts
to punish crooked men, then bust
ness must be hurt, even though good
men are involved in the hurting.
"On the other hand, we must beware
"a, 81 nv
wicked or foolish men who would con-
done homicide and violence, and apollo
gize for the dynamiter and the assas-
sin, because, forsooth, they choose to
take the ground that crime is no crime
If the wicked man happens also to
have been a shiftless and unthrifty or
lazy man who has never amassed
property.
ut is essential that we should wrest
the control of the government out of
unhealthy purposes, and should keep
it out of their hands; and to this end
the first requisite is to provide means
adequately to deal with corporations,
which are essential to modern bust
ness, but which, under the directions
sightedness of the public, have been
the chief factor in political and bust
ness debasement.
Those who advocate total lack of
regulation, those who advocate lawless-
ness in the business world, themselves
give the strongest impulse to what 1
believe would be the edeadening move
ment toward state socialism.
There must be law to control the
big man and, therefore, especially the
big corporations in the Industrial
world. in the interest of our Industrial
democracy of today. This law must
be efficient. and therefore it must be
aided by executive officers and not by
lawsuits in the courts. The move
ment for government control of the
great business corporations is no more
movement against liberty than
movement to put stop to violence Is
a movement against liberty"
Mr.. Roosevelt closes with a direct
reference to newspapers
Yet another thing" he says. NO
movement ever has done or ever will
do good in this country where assault
is made, not upon evil wherever found,
but simply upon evil as it happens to
be found in a particular class.
The big newspaper, owned or con-
trolled in Wall street, which is ever
lastingly preaching about the iniquity
of laboring men, which is quite willing
to hound politicians for their misdeeds,
but which with raving fury defends
all the malefactors of great wealth.
stands on an exact level with, and
neither above nor below, that other
newspaper whose whole attack is upon
men of wealth, which declines to con-
denim, or else condemns in an apollo
getic, perfunctory and wholly ineffi-
Client manner. outrages committed by
labor
This latter is the kind of paper
which, BY torrents of foul abuse, seeks
to stir up a bitter class hatred against
every man of means simply because
he is man of means, against every
man of wealth, whether he is an hon
est man, who by industry and ability
has honorably won his wealth and who
honorably spends 1t, or a man whose
wealth represents robbery and whose
life represents either profiigacy or at
best an inane, useless and tasteless
extravaganza
This. country can not afford to let
its conscience grow warped and
twisted, as it must grow if it takes
either one of these two positions. We
must draw the line, not on wealth nor
on poverty, but on conduct.
I'VE must stand for the good citizen
because he is a good citizen, whether
he be rich or whether he be poor. and
we must mercilessly attack the man
who does evil, wholly without regard
whether the evil is done in high or
low places. whether it takes the form
of homicidal violence among members
of federation of miners, or of un-
scrupulous craft and greed in the head
of some great Wall street corporation"