ROOSEVELT ON TRUSTS.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 11663, 23 January 1902, Page 4

ROOSEVELT ON TRUSTS.

The following is a portion o: President lvooseveit's Message to Coigress, in which he deals with " Trusts " and " Combines' :

liie tremendous and liighly coiuples industrial development whicn went on wuu ever-acceleratea rapidity auring the latter hall or the 19th century brings us face to face at the beginning of the 2Gth century witc. very serious social problems. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased tne productive power of rnar-kind, old laws and old customs which had almost the binding force of law, are an longer sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. The building tip of great industrial centres has meant a startling increase not merely in the aggregate oi wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of very large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate fortunes is not due to tariff nor to other Governmental action, but to natural carxses in the business of the world operating in other conntries as they operate in ours. The process has aroused much antagonism, a great pan of which is wholly unwarranted. It is untrue that as the rich have grown richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the wage-worker, farmer, small trader, been so well off in the United States. There have been abuses connected with the accumulations of wealth, yet the fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person esjecially benefited only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon 'others. The captains of industry who have driven railway systems across the continent, built up commerce, and developed manufacture. have, c-n the whole, done great good to the people. Without them the material development of which we are so justly proud could never have taken place. America has only just begun to assume a commanding positir.n in the international business of the world of which we believe more will be hers. The utmost importance of this position must not be jeopardised, especially at a time when overflowing abundance of our natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of oar people make foreign markets esserti?,!. Under such conditions it would be most u;;wise to cramp and fetter the youthful strength of the nation. Many of those who liai'e Inade it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations, popularly, although with technical inaccuracv. known a* trusts, appeal especially to hatred and fe:ir. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history nf (fie world shows thnt legislation will generally be unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm irif|i:::v and with sober self restraint. In dealinc with business interests for a Governments undertake, by crude and ill-considered legislation, to de what may turn out to !.? bid. would be to incur a risk of such frrreichinar national disaster that it would preferable to undertake nothing at all.

Yet it is tnie that there are real arid crave evils, one of the chief bein? over-capitnlin-tton. ac-d a resolute practical effort must be made to correct these evils. Combination and concentration should not be prohibited but snpemsedV-&nd within reasonable' Em-

its controlled. When men receive from the Government the privilege of doing business under a corporate form which frees them from individual rtrponsibility and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public they should do so upon absolutely truthful representations of the value of the pioperty in which capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interState commerce should be regulated, if they are found to exercise a license -working the public injurv. It should be as much the aim of those"seeking social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entite bcdy politic of crimes of violence. Our right "and duty is to see the gieat corporations work in harmony witn our institutions. ' The first essential in determining how to deal with great industrial combinations is knowledge of facts and publicity. In the interests of the public, the Government should have a right to inspect and examine the workings of srreat corporations engaged in inter-State business. Publicity is the onlv sure remedv we can now invoke. What further remedies are needed, in the wav of governmental regulation or taxation, can'onlv be determined after publicity ha* been obtained by process of law and in course of administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full complete knowledge, which mav be made public to the world. The nation should assume the power of supervision and regulation of anv corporation doing inter-State business. There can be no hardship in such supervision.