The Republican Party Stands By Mr. Roosevelt

Performed by William H. Taft
Recorded August 5, 1908

Gentlemen,

The strength of the Republican cause in the campaign at hand is in the fact that we represent policies essential to the reform of known abuses for the continuance of liberty and true prosperity and that we are determined that our platform unequivocally declare to maintain them and carry them on. The revelations of the breaches of trust, the disclosures of the rebates and discriminations by railways, the accumulating evidence of the violation of the antitrust law by a number of corporations, the over issue of stocks and bonds on interstate railways for the unlawful enriching of directors and for the purpose of concentrating control of railways in one management, all quickens the conscience of the people and brought on a moral awakening among them that boded well for the future of the country. The man who formulated the expression of the popular conscience, and who led the movement for practical reform, was Theodore Roosevelt. He laid down the doctrine that the rich violator of the law should be as amenable to restraint and punishment as the offender without wealth and without influence. And he proceeded by recommending legislation and directing executive action to make that principle good in actual performance. He secured the passage of the so called "rate bill" designed more effectively to restrain excessive and fix reasonable rates, and to punish secret rebates and discriminations which had been general in the practice of the railroads and which have done much to enable unlawful trust to drive out of business their competitors. It secured much closer supervision of railway transactions, and in order to avoid undue discrimination, forbade in future the combination of the transportation and shipping business under one control. President Roosevelt directed suits to be brought and prosecutions to be instituted under the antitrust law, to enforce its provisions against the most powerful of the industrial corporations. He pressed to passage the Pure Food Law and the Meat Inspection Law in the interests of the health of the public, clean business methods and great ultimate benefits to the trades themselves. He recommended the passage of the law, which the Republican convention has since specifically approved, restricting the future issue of stocks and bonds by interstate railways that such as may be authorized by federal authorities. He demonstrated to the people by what he said, by what he recommended to Congress, and by what he did. The sincerity of his efforts to command respect to the law, to secure equality of all before the law, and to save the country from the dangers of a plutocratic government towards which we were fast tending. In this work, Mr. Roosevelt has the support and sympathy of the Republican party, and his chief hope of success in the present controversy must rest on the confidence which the people of the country have in the sincerity of the party’s declaration in his platform that it intends to continue his policy.