SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT
engaged in inter-State business —the Anti-Trust Law is
radically and vitally defective, and any effort to
strengthen it would be worse than futile, and would
result only in prolonging the time during which the
corporations will escape control of the kind demanded
in the interests of the people. Outlook, June 3, 1911, p.
censes by the Federal Government to corporations
doing an interstate or international business.
Corporations which did not take out such licenses or
comply with the rules of the Government's
administrative board would be subject to the Sherman
Law. The others would be under government control
and would be encouraged to coöperate and in every
way to become prosperous and efficient, the
Government guaranteeing by its supervision that the
corporations' prosperity and efficiency were in the
public interest. (January 8, 1918.) Roosevelt in the
Kansas City Star, 86-87.
SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT—
ENFORCEMENT OF. When I came into office that
law was dead; I took it up and for the first time had it
enforced. We gained this much by the enforcement: we
gained the establishment of the principle that the
government was supreme over the great corporations;
but that is almost the end of the good that came through
our lawsuits. Outlook, September 21, 1912, p. 105.
____________. When I took office the anti-trust law
was practically a dead letter and the interstate
commerce law in as poor a condition. I had to revive
both laws. I did. I enforced both. It will be easy enough
to do now what I did then, but the reason that it is easy
now is because I did it when it was hard.
Nobody was doing anything. I found speedily that
the interstate commerce law by being made more
perfect could be made a most useful instrument for
helping solve some of our industrial problems. So with
the antitrust law. I speedily found that almost the only
positive good achieved by such a successful lawsuit as
the Northern Securities suit, for instance, was in
establishing the principle that the government was
supreme over the big corporation, but that by itself that
law did not accomplish any of the things that we ought
to have accomplished; and so I began to fight for the
amendment of the law along the lines of the interstate
commerce law. (At Milwaukee, Wis., October 14,
1912.) Mem. Ed. XIX, 448; Nat. Ed. XVII, 326.
SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT—
INEFFECTIVENESS OF. As construed by the
Supreme Court, the Anti-Trust Law accomplishes a
certain amount of good, and it has been a good thing to
obtain the decision that has been obtained against the
Standard Oil Company. But as a means of effectually
grappling on behalf of the whole people with the
problem created by what are commonly called trusts—
that is, of enormous combinations of corporate capital
239.
____________. Again and again while I was President,
from 1902 to 1908, I pointed out that under the antitrust
law alone it was neither possible to put a stop to
business abuses nor possible to secure the highest
efficiency in the service rendered by business to the
general public. The antitrust law must be kept on our
statute-books, and, as hereafter shown, must be
rendered more effective in the cases where it is applied.
But to treat the antitrust law as an adequate, or as by
itself a wise, measure of relief and betterment is a sign
not of progress, but of Toryism and reaction. It has been
of benefit so far as it has implied the recognition of a
real and great evil, and the at least sporadic application
of the principle that all men alike must obey the law.
But as a sole remedy, universally applicable, it has in
actual practice completely broken down; as now
applied it works more mischief than benefit. It
represents the waste of effort—always damaging to a
community—which arises from the attempt to meet
new conditions by the application of out-worn remedies
instead of fearlessly and in common-sense fashion
facing the new conditions and devising the new
remedies which alone can work effectively for good.
(Before Progressive National Convention, Chicago,
August 6, 1912.) Mem. Ed. XIX, 381; Nat. Ed. XVII,
274.
____________. It is utterly hopeless to attempt to
control the trusts merely by the anti-trust law, or by any
law the same in principle, no matter what the
modifications may be in detail. In the first place, these
great corporations cannot possibly be controlled merely
by a succession of lawsuits. The administrative branch
of the government must exercise such control. The
preposterous failure of the Commerce Court has shown
that only damage comes from the effort to substitute
judicial for administrative control of great corporations.
In the next place, a loosely drawn law which promises
to do everything would reduce business to complete
ruin if it were not also so drawn as to accomplish
almost nothing. (Before Progressive National
Convention, Chicago, August 6,
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