Open Market Quotes
To the modern reader utterances such as this from a Conservative Prime Minister seem astounding. However, the Great Depression existed in Canada as well as the United States, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not the only world leader who would reach the conclusion that business and capitalism must be profoundly regulated and the system changed if it was to be saved.
The Elkins Act was a cornerstone of Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” program. It authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to impose heavy fines on railroads that offered rebates, and upon the shippers that accepted these rebates. The large corporations and monopolies would get rebates from the railroads and thus pay far less than their smaller competitors to ship their goods. It drove thousands of small companies out of business. This was a basic part of American law until the deregulation of the latter part of the 20th century. So what had been illegal, unethical, and immoral for almost a century, became legal, ethical and moral, but again discriminated against small companies.
He and his brother were the largest political contributors in the United States, so they had enormous influence on Republicans (they only made political contributions to conservative organizations).
