" *
* C. G. Washburn, 128, 129.
Although the list is by no means complete, it shows that
Roosevelt's receptive and sleepless mind fastened on the full
circle of questions which interested American life, so far as
that is controlled or directed by national legislation. Some of
the laws passed were simply readjustments--new statutes on old
matters. Other laws were new, embodying the first attempt to
define the attitude which the courts should hold towards new
questions which had grown suddenly into great importance. The
decade which had favored the springing-up and amazing expansion
of the Big Interests, had to be followed by the decade which
framed legislation for regulating and curbing these interests.
Quite naturally, the monopolists affected did not like to be
harnessed or controlled, and, to put it mildly, they resented the
interference of the formidable young President whom they could
neither frighten, inveigle, nor cajole.
And yet it is as evident to all Americans now, as it was to some
Americans at the time, that that legislation had to be passed;
because if the monopolists had been allowed to go on
unrestrained, they would either have perverted this Republic into
an open Plutocracy, in which individual liberty and equality
before the law would have disappeared, or they would have hurried
on the Social Revolution, the Armageddon of Labor and Capital,
the merciless conflict of class with class, which many persons
already vaguely dreaded, or thought they saw looming like an
ominous cloud on the horizon.
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