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the country. Only the people who are in positions of power such as bankers control it. They are able to give the yes or no to what should be done. Or the operators of great industries, absorbing other industries, preventing little industries from getting control, control it.”
There's a dispute, I understand, which I know nothing about, as to who wrote those words in the speech - whether it was Bob Sherwood or Sam Rosenman. Both of them, I understand, claim them. It sounds more like Bob Sherwood to me. I'm sure that Roosevelt didn't invent the phrase, but he jolly well relished it. I know that Roosevelt didn't mean that anybody rich was wrong. What he objected to always were these power people, the people who because they had control of a bank, or because they had control of a chemical industry, for instance, would prohibit and prevent the development of other chemical industries, or of other firms getting started, keeping everything up close. That was what he objected to. It was the same thing that Theodore Roosevelt objected to in his anti-trust fight, the same thing that the trust-busters objected to. They objected to the tendency of the few to get the control of the money. That didn't mean that everybody who was rich was controlling the industry or the economic life of the country. Only a few were doing that. I know that's what Roosevelt meant.
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