Page:Address of Theodore Roosevelt NPP - 1912.djvu/20

 country. Not one particle of benefit to the community at large was gained; on the contrary, the prices went up to consumers, independent competitors were placed in greater jeopardy than ever before, and the of the wrong-doers greatly app d in value. There never was a more flagrant travesty of justice, never an instance in which wealthy wrong-doers benefited more conspicuously by a law which was supposed to be aimed at them, and which undoubtedly would have brought about severe punishment of less wealthy wrong-doers.

The Progressive proposal is definite. It is practicable. We promise nothing that we cannot carry out. We promise nothing which will jeopardize honest business. We promise adequate control of all big business and the stern suppression of the evils connected with big business, and this promise we can absolutely keep. Our proposal is to help honest business activity, however extensive, and to see that it is rewarded with fair returns so that there may be no oppression either of business men or of the common people. We propose to make it worth while for our business men to develop the most efficient business agencies for use in international trade; for it is to the interest of our whole people that we should do well in international business. But we propose to make those business agencies do complete justice to our own people. Every dishonest business man will unquestionably prefer either the programme of the Republican Convention or the programme of the Democratic Convention to our proposal, because neither of these programmes means or can mean what it purports to mean. But every honest business man, big or little, should support the Progressive programme, and it is the one and only programme which offers real hope to all our people; for it is the one programme under which the Government can be used with real efficiency to see justice done by the big corporation alike to the wage-earners it employs, to the small rivals with whom it competes, to the investors who purchase its securities, and to the consumers who purchase its products or to the general public which it ought to serve, as well as to the business man himself.

We favor co-operation in business, and ask only that it be carried on in a spirit of honesty and fairness. We are against crooked business, big or little. We are in favor of honest business, big or little. We propose to penalize conduct and not size. But all very big business, even though honestly conducted, is fraught with such potentiality of menace that there should be thoroughgoing governmental control over it, so that its efficiency in promoting prosperity at home and increasing the power of the Nation in international commerce may be maintained, and at the same time fair play insured to the wage-workers the small business competitors, the investors, and the general public. Wherever it is practicable we propose to preserve competition ; but where under modern conditions competition has been eliminated and cannot be successfully restored, then the Government must step in and itself supply the needed control on behalf of the people as a whole.

It is imperative to the welfare of our people that we enlarge and extend our foreign commerc. We are pre-eminently fitted to do this