James Baird Weaver Quotes

No business is above government, and government must be empowered to deal adequately with any business that tries to rise above government.

Unfair methods of competition in commerce are hereby declared unlawful. The commission is hereby empowered and directed to prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations, except banks, and common carriers subject to the Acts to regulate commerce, from using unfair methods of competition in commerce.

To follow the example of other states would deprive Wisconsin of a large measure of its sovereign prerogative, and establish great corporations as independent powers within the state, a sort of imperia in imperiis (empire within an empire), baffling state order, state economy, state policy.

Free competition and the open market system as they were known in the old days, have lost their places in the system, and that the only substitute for them, in these modern times, is government regulation and control.

I do not dread these corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them.

… strong national regulation of interstate corporations

Deregulation played virtually no role

Thousands of interests that have known no Federal regulation and control will be welded to the Government hereafter, and can only grow and develop under the hands of Congress and the President.

Is regulation per se bad? Is better regulation bad? I think better regulation is good for the business community, and I think that's something we should get together on.

Generally I'm against regulation.

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.

The mere declaration by a legislature that a business is affected with a public interest is not conclusive of the question whether its attempted regulation on that ground is justified.

When the Federal Government undertakes to go into commercial business it must at once set up the organization and administration of that business, and it immediately finds itself in a labyrinth, every alley of which leads to the destruction of self government.

Business, too, need to mend its ways. For many years various sections of American industry have asked for special legislation which offered a temporary benefit at the expense of normal economic processes. Business has asked for special subsidies and special tariffs, for special protection against price cutters or low cost producers, for government appropriations for this or that special purpose. Business cannot ask for government interference at one time, and then indignantly reject it at another.

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.

I recommend that a law be enacted to regulate interstate commerce in misbranded and adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs.... Traffic in foodstuffs which have been debased or adulterated so as to injure health or to deceive purchasers should be forbidden.

Self regulation is important but it is not enough.

The job of government must be to provide the rules and the climate that will let the system work.

In undertaking the regulation of inter-State commerce, Congress is entering upon a new and untried field.

The private sector, when left alone, can make better decisions than government can.

Regulation of private enterprise and not Government ownership or operation is the course rightly to be pursued in our relation to business.

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.

Take the commerce of the states out of the hands of the states and place it under the superintendence of Congress.

The institution of a bank has also a natural relation to the regulation of trade between the States, in so far as it is conducive to the creation of a convenient medium of exchange between them, and to the keeping up a full circulation, by preventing the frequent displacement of the metals in reciprocal remittances Money is the very hinge on which commerce turns. And this does not merely mean gold and silver; many other things have served the purpose, with different degrees of utility. Paper has been extensively employed.

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.