1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: From the National standpoint nothing can be worse - nothing can be full of graver menace - for the National life than to have the Federal courts active in nullifying State action to remedy the evils arising from the abuse of great wealth, unless the Federal authorities, executive, legislative, and judicial alike, do their full duty in effectually meeting the need of a thoroughgoing and radical supervision and control of big inter-State business in all its forms. Many great financiers, and many of the great corporation lawyers who advise them, still oppose any effective regulation of big business by the National Government, because, for the time being, it serves their interest to trust to the chaos which is caused on the one hand by inefficient laws and conflicting and often unwise efforts at regulation by State governments, and, on the other hand, by the efficient protection against such regulation afforded by the Federal courts. In the end this condition will prove intolerable, and will hurt most of all the very class which it at present benefits. The continuation of such conditions would mean that the corporations would find that they had purchased immunity from the efficient exercise of Federal regulative power at the cost of being submitted to a violent and radical local supervision, inflamed to fury by having repeatedly been thwarted, and not chastened by exercised responsibility. To refuse to take, or to permit others to take, wise and practical action for the remedying of abuses is to invite unwise action under the lead of violent extremists.
