Franklin Henry Giddings Quotes

We ... deceive ourselves in believing that competition can secure for the public fair treatment in such cases.

Regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anti-competitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical.

The presumed causes of Americas troubles can be summed up simply: the evils of unlimited competition, and abuses by those with economic power.

The time has come when the Executive branch of this Government must enforce the plain letter of the law and check monopoly, or it must turn the people over boldly into the hands of exploiters grown impudent and ruthlessly aggressive through long years of wanton violation of the law.

The only way you can stop the unregulated monopoly ... from gouging ... is to introduce competition.

Every monopoly and all exclusive privileges are granted at the expense of the public.

The people were told in the last campaign that trusts [corporate monopolies] were a natural evolution, and that the only way to deal with them was to regulate them. The people are tired of being told such things. What they want is the kind of opportunity that formerly existed in this country.

The executive [President] could have saved the people from the appalling conditions which confront us today, if all the power of this government had been put forth to enforce the [Sherman] Anti-Trust law.

The citizens of the several States composing the Union are entitled, of right, to buy goods in the State where they are manufactured, or in any other State, without being confronted by an illegal combination whose business extends throughout the whole country, which by the law everywhere is an enemy to the public interests, and which prevents such buying, except at prices arbitrarily fixed by it. I insist that the free course of trade among the States cannot coexist with such combinations.

New Yorkers pay a price of untold millions to the great private monopolies every year an excessive price because these monopolies use their power to defeat effective regulation.-

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.

I don’t believe rolling back some regulations on Wall Street will in any way help the small business.

We as Americans assume that big companies are bad, and big power companies are even worse.

Let's not allow the voice of the people to be overwhelmed by the siren song of those who opposed regulation, who demanded that government should stand aside and let finance and business run the show.

The American people are being victimized more than any free market would warrant.

I made it real clear to the business community - if your plan for innovation is to trick people, is to fool them, is not to tell them the truth about the price, then you're right: I'm going to be right in the way.

I am just as anxious as Mr. Brandeis can be, to have trade regulated by competition as far as possible; but as a matter of fact, competition has broken down hopelessly in this country to adequately control prices, to adequately control quality, and we all know it… it is the theory regarding competition that it will regulate prices and quality; that it will give us reasonable prices and superior quality. That is a beautiful theory. But if this theory has ever corresponded to the facts in the past (and this I doubt) we may be sure that in the future it will never again do so.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

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.

We stand for a nobler America; we stand for a broader liberty, a fuller justice; we stand for intelligent co-operation instead of reckless competition; we stand for mutual helpfulness instead of mutual hatred; we stand for equal rights as a fact of life instead of a catch-word of politics; we stand for the rule of the people as a practical truth instead of a meaningless pretense.

There must be reasonable restrictions upon competition else we shall see competition destroyed.

The existence of immense aggregations of kindred enterprises and combinations of business interests formed for the purpose of limiting production and fixing prices is inconsistent with the fair field which ought to be open to every independent activity. Legitimate strife in business should not be superseded by an enforced concession to the demands of combinations that have the power to destroy, nor should the people to be served lose the benefit of cheapness which usually results from wholesome competition.

Competition doesn't work well in the transportation business.

The trusts are getting less than lawful rates from the railroads.

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.