Benjamin H. Hill Quotes

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

… strong national regulation of interstate corporations

The wise rule of action is to restrict the powers of corporations within the … constitutional barrier.

The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.

More and more it is evident that the State and if necessary the Nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations.

We do not wish to discourage enterprise. We do not desire to destroy corporations. We do desire to put them fully at the service of the State and the people.

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.

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.

Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.

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.

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism …. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.

We need new laws to rein in the forces of greed and to curb those ingenious legal advisors of the holders of vast corporate wealth.

Neither this people or any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government a still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also to be used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole…. [We must] keep the great highways of commerce open to all on reasonable and equitable terms.

The founders understood that concentrations of power in either government or the economy are dangerous, threatening the rule of the people. That’s why they curbed monopolies and strictly limited the corporate form, largely confining its use to educational institutions and churches and sometimes public-works projects. They wanted the people to govern the nation, not an elite, whether that elite resided in government or business.

I'm not against the corporations. They are our wealth. But they are getting too greedy. I don't want to do away with corporations. I want them to make our cars, however, not our laws.

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.

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 would write an amendment to the Constitution giving the Federal Government the right to regulate all private business and to enter into any business which it deemed proper …

Let business oversee itself.

In the past few months, as a result of our action, we have demanded of many citizens that they surrender certain licenses to do as they please in their business relationships; but we have asked this in exchange for the protection which the state can give against exploitation by their fellow men or by combinations of their fellow men.

Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.

The first is determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity.

The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing an interstate business.

The Republican approach would compel the trusts to conduct their business in a lawful manner while [William Jennings] Bryan and the Democrats would destroy the entire business in order to stamp out the evils which they have practiced.

We need fair rules of the road, so big corporations can't use their power to gain unfair advantages.