William Howard Taft Quotes

The issue is whether the trusts or the people shall rule …whether the Railroad [Louisville & Nashville Railroad] is the servant or the master of the people.

Many advantages … may be gained through the establishment of trade commissions, national and state. At first, we should be conservative in giving additional powers to these commissions. The powers given should be based upon the same principles that have been applied in the pure-food laws, and in the control of the public utilities. The American people always move slowly in these matters, and step by step. I should not expect that these trade commissions, if created, would at once be granted all the powers which they would finally exercise. In this matter I should expect the same slow development to take place that has occurred regarding the commissions which control the public utilities.

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

The locomotive is coming into contact with the framework of our institutions. In this country of simple government, the most powerful civilizing force which civilization has yet produced must … assume its relation to that political machinery which is to control and regulate it.

We can continue to have a policy in which the public interest means whatever they [broadcasters and communications companies] want it to mean in order to make money. Or we can give it real meaning.

The railroads saw that they must either accept control by the State of control the State.

All chartered monopolies, not regulated and controlled by law, have proved in that respect detrimental to the public prosperity, corrupting in their management, and dangerous to republican institutions.

The importance of supervising the business of great railways and industrial combinations and the necessary investigation and prosecution of unlawful business methods are another necessary tax upon Government which did not exist half a century ago.

We want government to control business and industry enough to protect us as consumers from being cheated, but we oppose government interference in private enterprise. We want government to ensure standards and equality in education, but many of us balk at the idea of a government-imposed curriculum.

It satisfies the public clamor for a government supervision of the railroads at the same time that the supervision is almost entirely nominal.

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

Only the corporation that shirks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be over-sensitive.

Men may differ as to the particular form of governmental activity with respect to industry and business, but nearly all are agreed that private enterprise in times such as these cannot be left without assistance and without reasonable safeguards lest it destroy not only itself but also our processes of civilization.

I do not believe in government ownership of anything which can with propriety be left in private hands, and in particular I should most strenuously object to government ownership of railroads. In my judgment public ownership of railroads is highly undesirable and would probably in this country entail far-reaching disaster.

Is there anything in the existing condition that makes the duty of Congress to put the liberty of all the people of the United States in jeopardy?... Are we going to take up the question of what a man shall eat and what a man shall drink, and put him under severe penalties if he is eating or drinking something different from what the chemists of the Agricultural Department think desirable?

We should like to see such legislation as would beggar the lot of them and confiscate their roads, lands, rolling stock and all that is theirs.... These men have set themselves apart—have divorced their interests from those of all other classes. They have deliberately antagonized civilization and affronted humanity. Their methods are so exceptional that they can be reached only by exceptional methods. They have presumed on our reluctance to apply them.

In matters relating to business, finance, industrial and labor conditions, health and the public welfare, great leeway is now granted the legislature, for there is no guarantee in the Constitution that the status quo will be preserved against regulation by government.

Television should be regulated like a toaster.

The Department of Insurance should be a state watchdog for the people, not a lap dog.

Just because there is a market failure, doesn’t mean there is a government solution.

Regulations are a form of legislation and should be decided by a political process, not more or better benefit-cost analyses.

When you are dealing with the United States Government and the Department of Justice you have to always be looking over your shoulder.

The railways of the world, except in those countries where they have been held under the strict regulation and supervision of the government, have proved themselves arbitrary, extortionate and as opposed to free institutions and free commerce between states as were the feudal barons of the middle ages.

We urge the passage of a bill enforcing the principle that railroads are public highways, and requiring railroads to make connections with all roads whose tracks meet or cross their own, and to receive and transmit cars and trains offered over their roads at reasonable maximum rates, whether offered at such crossings, or at stations along their roads, and empowering the making of connections by municipal corporations for that purpose, and for the public use. We hold, declare and resolve, that this despotism, which defies our laws, plunders our shippers, impoverishes our people, and corrupts our government, shall be subdued and made to subserve the public interest at whatever cost.

The government’s role is to motivate the private sector, to assure that it performs in a way which serves the public interest.