An Autobiography

recommend to Congress that all corporations be made illegal. Mr. Wilson’s whole attack is largely based on a deft but far from ingenuous confounding of what we have said of monopoly, which we propose so far as possible to abolish, and what we have said of big corporations, which we propose to regulate; Mr. Wilson’s own vaguely set forth proposals being to attempt the destruction of both in ways that would harm neither. In our platform we use the word “monopoly” but once, and then we speak of it as an abuse of power, coupling it with stock-watering, unfair competition and unfair privileges. Does Mr. Wilson deny this? If he does, then where else will he assert that we speak of monopoly as he says we do? He certainly owes the people of the United States a plain answer to the question. In my speech of acceptance I said: “We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting agreements to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below cost in certain areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and all other unfair trade practices.” The platform pledges us to “guard and keep open equally to all, the highways of American commerce.” This is the exact negation of monopoly. Unless Mr. Wilson is prepared to show the contrary, surely he is bound in honor to admit frankly that he has been betrayed into a misrepresentation, and to correct it.

Mr. Wilson says that for sixteen years the National Administration has “been virtually under the regulation of the trusts,” and that the big businessmen “have already captured the Government.” Such a statement as this might perhaps be pardoned as mere rhetoric in a candidate seeking office⁠—although it is the kind of statement that never under any circumstances have I permitted myself to make, whether on the stump or off the stump, about any opponent, unless I was prepared to back it up with explicit facts. But there is an added seriousness to the charge when it is made deliberately and in cold blood by a man who is at the time President. In this volume I have set forth my relations with the trusts. I challenge Mr. Wilson to controvert anything I have said, or to name any trusts or any big businessmen who regulated, or in any shape or way controlled, or captured, the Government during my term as President. He must furnish specifications if his words are taken at their face value⁠—and I venture to say in advance that the absurdity of such a charge is patent to all my fellow-citizens, not excepting Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson says that the new party was founded “under the leadership of Mr. Roosevelt, with the conspicuous aid⁠—I mention him with no satirical intention, but merely to set the facts down accurately⁠—of Mr. George W. Perkins, organizer of the Steel Trust.” Whether Mr. Wilson’s intention was satirical or not is of no concern; but I call his attention to the fact that he has conspicuously and strikingly failed “to set the facts down accurately.” Mr. Perkins was not the organizer of the Steel Trust, and when it was organized he had no connection with it or with the Morgan people. This is well known, and it has again and again been testified to before Congressional committees controlled by Mr. Wilson’s friends who were endeavoring to find out something against Mr. Perkins. If Mr. Wilson does not know that my statement is correct, he ought to know it, and he is not to be excused for making such a misstatement as he has made when he has not a particle of evidence in support of it. Mr. Perkins was from the beginning in the Harvester Trust but, when Mr. Wilson points out this fact, why does he not add that he was the only man in that trust who supported me, and that the President of the trust ardently supported Mr. Wilson himself? It is disingenuous to endeavor to conceal these facts, and to mislead ordinary citizens about them. Under the administrations of both Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Perkins has been singled out for special attack, obviously not because he belonged to the Harvester and Steel Trusts, but because he alone among the prominent men of the two corporations, fearlessly supported the only party which afforded any real hope of checking the evil of the trusts.

Mr. Wilson states that the Progressives have “a program perfectly agreeable to monopolies.”

The plain and unmistakable inference to be drawn from this and other similar statements in his article, and the inference which he obviously desired to have drawn, is that the big corporations approved the Progressive plan and supported the Progressive candidate. If President Wilson does not know perfectly well that this is not the case, he is the only intelligent person in the United States who is thus ignorant. Everybody knows that the overwhelming majority of the heads of the big corporations supported him or Mr. Taft. It is equally well known that of the corporations he mentions, the Steel and the Harvester Trusts, there was but one man who took any part in the Progressive campaign, and that almost all the others, some thirty in number, were against us, and some of them, including the President of the Harvester Trust, openly and enthusiastically for Mr. Wilson himself. If he reads the newspapers at all, he must know that practically every man representing the great financial interests of the country, and without exception every newspaper controlled by Wall Street or State Street, actively supported either him or Mr. Taft, and showed perfect willingness to accept either if only they could prevent the Progressive party from coming into power and from putting its platform into effect.

Mr. Wilson says of the trust plank in that platform that it “did not anywhere condemn monopoly except in words.” Exactly