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.Trusts could be controlled by amending or eliminating thehigh tariff, using the undisputed federal taxing power to tax trusts, amendingthe federal patent laws to prevent monopoly and using the federal postal lawsto prevent interstate fraud through the mails.The federal government hadunquestionable jurisdiction over these matters, and any of these remedies,• 129 •The Speculation Economyseparately or together, would have gone a long way toward regulating trusts.But the majority had proposed a constitutional amendment.The Democrats made clear their general disdain for constitutionalamendments.Noting that only three had been adopted since the nation’sfounding era (which, it is worth noting, were the Civil War amendments),the minority expressed some horror at constitutional amendment as a gen-eral proposition.States’ rights was the reason.The minority report devoted only a few paragraphs to states’ rights andthey were among the most moderate of the minority’s arguments against theamendment, except in their conclusion: “But State [ sic] rights need not be involved in the discussion, and we leave them for consideration at a moreconvenient season.The proposed amendment would take power from theStates and lodge it in Congress, with the proviso that if the States could fi ndsomething left when all had been taken away they might make use of whatthey might fi nd where there remains nothing to be found.” 37Corporate regulation traditionally had been left to the states.Federalpower was limited and adequate.The issue of states’ rights had a power-ful grip on the South and thus on the Democratic Party.This particularamendment, broadly drafted as it was, would have invited Congress to takeover almost the entire fi eld of corporate regulation.The Supreme Court’sholding that the commerce clause did not apply to manufacturing wouldhave disappeared.The federal government would have the power not onlyto regulate but also to defi ne what “trusts, monopolies, or combinations”meant, “whether existing in the form of a corporation or otherwise.” Suchlimitations as were read into the commerce clause would have evaporated.Congress could effectively have defi ned its own power.While the Democratswould eventually vote unanimously in favor of the one piece of federal cor-porate regulation to reach a vote during the decade, they preferred to taketheir chances with judicial interpretations of the commerce clause ratherthan with a new amendment that would have indisputably increased federalpower.r o o s e v e lt d i s c o v e r s t h e t r u s t sThe executive branch and its attitudes toward big business had changed bythe time the Industrial Commission had published its fi nal report.WithMcKinley’s assassination in September 1901 and the feisty Teddy Roosevelt’sdescent from the Adirondack Mountains to ascend to the presidency, publicscrutiny of business shifted from congressional commissions and civic as-sociations to the White House.The myth of Roosevelt as “trust buster” was• 130 •The Complex Wholelargely false; he was far more sympathetic to the concerns of big businessthan legend suggests.But while he saw its inevitability and benefi ts as clearly as anyone, Roosevelt wanted the federal government to take a more activerole in business regulation.By federal government, Roosevelt meant him-self, and this is one of the reasons that the regulation that Congress actuallypassed was far less reaching than it might have been.38It is diffi cult to tell how strongly Roosevelt really opposed the trusts.Hisinitial interest in the issue seems to have been largely to ensure his own po-litical safety.In fact, he thought public antitrust agitation was overblown.Ina letter to editor and sometime power-broker Hermann Kohlsaat in August1899, while governor of New York, he wrote: “How about trusts? I know thisis a very large question, but more and more it seems to me that there will be agood deal of importance to the trust matter in the next campaign, and I wantto consult with men whom I most trust as to what line of policy should bepursued.” He went on to note his concern with “popular unrest and populardistrust on the question,” as to which he wrote: “It is largely aimless and base-less,” but without some plan “multitudes will follow the crank who advocatesan absurd policy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]