Roosevelt's Speech Analysis

In his speech to Civil War veterans in Osawatomie, Kansas, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that, “the object of the government is the welfare of the people” (p. 140). Furthermore, Roosevelt claimed that the welfare of the people is dependent on each citizen having equal opportunity to pursue the American Dream and advance their station in life. Therefore, the government has an obligation to provide equal opportunity to all of its citizens in order to ensure this moral requirement is met. However, trusts, due to their immense power, stand in the way of equal opportunity because they allow men to reap rewards greater than their efforts through siphoning off the bounty of less powerful, and more hardworking men. Roosevelt postulates that in order to combat this injustice, the government is duty-bound to regulate trusts. He argues that the first step to regulation is removing the special interests of trusts from the political conversation as they are too powerful for any meaningful regulation to take place. Furthermore, Roosevelt puts forth several possibilities for regulation, such as a graduated
Wilson agrees with Roosevelt that the government should ensure that equal opportunity is afforded to all citizens. However, Wilson claims that monopolies are unable to be regulated because they spring up from the well of greed common to the human condition. Furthermore, Wilson argues that there is no need for trusts as they are not a natural evolution of big business, but rather the invention of men attempting to grab an ever-increasing amount of power. Due to these factors, it is impossible for the government to guarantee equal opportunity to its citizens while trusts are still in existence. Therefore, the government has an obligation to exterminate existing trusts and prevent the creation of future