Big Business, Large Business Quotes
Ironically the far right wing Fascists and the far left wing Communists agreed on this point: nationalization.
“Combination” was then a word for a large corporate enterprise, monopoly or trust. Although large corporations are common in the modern economy, at the time there were very few of them and most of them use their power to crush competition and take advantage of helpless consumer. Instead of banning largeness as some wanted to do, President Theodore Roosevelt and others chose regulation, and the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act were passed. Individualism in the form of small businesses have proved amazingly resilient and have developed into a giants like Microsoft and a Google. Over half a of the new jobs created in our economy are done so by small businesses.
Roosevelt was on a crusade to eliminate the vicious monopolies and trusts of the time. The number of terms he used to describe them was large but this has become the most memorable and most frequently quoted. See {585244} for some of the other terms he used. While this phrase was original with FDR, his relative, Theodore Roosevelt, used the term “malefactors” in a similar meaning in {585244}.
Churchill detested Attlee both personally and for his political philosophy which was left wing especially favoring government nationalization of all large industry and business. Churchill walked into the very large men’s room and saw Attlee at a urinal and one end. Churchill, setting Attlee up, walked all the way to the other end of the row of urinals and began to use one there. Attlee commented that Churchill was appearing very standoffish to be urinating so far away. Churchill, then let loose with this repartee. See {620650} for another put down of Attlee.
The principle holds for politics also. The largest social problems the politician faces are the greatest opportunity for him/her to create a program to solve or ameliorate the problem.
This platform was not very different from those of many democratic political parties at the time. It was on this sort of basis that the German Nazis were elected. However the last sentence of this quotation turned out to be the undoing of the German people and most other people throughout Europe. The “common good” always was interpreted to be the good of the Nazi government which had been elected as against the individual god—the rights of the individual. Soon the state had all the rights and individuals, none. And no other political force could contest and election as that was not in the interest of the common weal.
