When we come to deal with great corporations the need for the Government to act directly is far greater than in the case of labor, because great corporations can become such only by engaging in interstate commerce, and interstate commerce is peculiarly the field of the General Government.  It is an absurdity to expect to eliminate the abuses in great corporations by State action.  It is difficult to be patient with an argument that such matters should be left to the States because more than one State pursues the policy of creating on easy terms corporations which are never operated within that State at all, but in other States whose laws they ignore.  The National Government alone can deal adequately with these great corporations.  To try to deal with them in an intemperate, destructive, or demagogic spirit would, in all probability, mean that nothing whatever would be accomplished, and, with absolute certainty, that if anything were accomplished it would be of a harmful nature.  The American people need to continue to show the very qualities that they have shown—­that is, moderation, good sense, the earnest desire to avoid doing any damage, and yet the quiet determination to proceed, step by step, without halt and without hurry, in eliminating or at least in minimizing whatever of mischief or evil there is to interstate commerce in the conduct of great corporations.  They are acting in no spirit of hostility to wealth, either individual or corporate.  They are not against the rich man any more than against the poor man.  On the contrary, they are friendly alike toward rich man and toward poor man, provided only that each acts in a spirit of justice and decency toward his fellows.  Great corporations are necessary, and only men of great and singular mental power can manage such corporations successfully, and such men must have great rewards.  But these corporations should be managed with due regard to the interest of the public as a whole.  Where this can be done under the present laws it must be done.  Where these laws come short others should be enacted to supplement them.

Yet we must never forget the determining factor in every kind of work, of head or hand, must be the man’s own good sense, courage, and kindliness.  More important than any legislation is the gradual growth of a feeling of responsibility and forbearance among capitalists, and wage-workers alike; a feeling of respect on the part of each man for the rights of others; a feeling of broad community of interest, not merely of capitalists among themselves, and of wage-workers among themselves, but of capitalists and wage-workers in their relations to each other, and of both in their relations to their fellows who with them make up the body politic.  There are many captains of industry, many labor leaders, who realize this.  A recent speech by the president of one of our great railroad systems to the employees of that system contains sound common sense.  It rims in part as follows: