THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL One of the vital questions with which as President I had to deal was the attitude of the Nation toward the great corporations.

Men who understand and practice the deep underlying philosophy of the Lincoln school of American political thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and efficient National Government and Jeffersonian in their belief in the people as the ultimate authority, and in the welfare of the people as the end of Government.

The men who first applied the extreme Democratic theory in American life were, like Jefferson, ultra individualists, for at that time what was demanded by our people was the largest liberty for the individual.

During the century that had elapsed since Jefferson became President the need had been exactly reversed.
There had been in our country a riot of individualistic materialism, under which complete freedom for the individual--that ancient license which President Wilson a century after the term was excusable has called the "New" Freedom--turned out in practice to mean perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak.

The total absence of governmental control had led to a portentous growth in the financial and industrial world both of natural individuals and of artificial individuals--that is, corporations.