Wise man that Teddy Roosevelt:
". . . . . our government, national and state, must be freed from the sinister
influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special
interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity
before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too
often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their
own profit.
We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is
one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice —
full, fair, and complete — and, now, mind you, if there were any
attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special
interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man,
whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would
fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have
justice.
For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one
is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to
representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees
protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does
not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists
that property shall be the servant and not the master of the
commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the
servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the
United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces
which they have called into being.
There can be no effective control of corporations while their
political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short
nor an easy task, but it can be done."
". . . . . No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly
earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of
service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The
really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size
acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree
from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore,
I
believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax
which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated
inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion,
and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."
