Volume 14 , Issue 28

1912 - Teddy Roosevelt Denounces Anti-Trust Law

It was in Oyster Bay, New York, 6 July 1912, that Theodore Roosevelt repeated his attack upon the platforms of the two great parties, which he considered radically wrong. What his own platform was to be in the 1912 campaign, he said he hopes to be able to announce within a week or two. Roosevelt's utterance indicated a tentative return to "the new nationalism" and the familiar gospel preached at Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1910.

In calling for a rigid enforcement of the Sherman anti-trust law, Colonel Roosevelt took the Democratic and Republican parties severely to task. For his part, he said that he believed the law an unjust one, and one never meant to be enforced literally. Any endeavor to redeem their platform pledges by enforcing this law would end disastrously, damaging principally the farmer and other members of co-operative associations.

That law was on the books for years and although Teddy Roosevelt denounced it in messages and speeches, he was the first president to enforce it because it was a law.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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