"Theodore Roosevelt: A Warning From 1903"

"The time is coming in this country for a readjustment between the wage earner and the drawer of dividends. The radicals are almost half right. Corporation cunning has developed faster than the law of the nation or state. It is undoubtedly true that corporations have found ways to steal long before we have found that they were susceptible of punishment for theft.

But sooner or later, unless there is a season of readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement. It is true that some great fortunes are being accumulated lawfully but dishonestly. It is true that other fortunes are being accumulated honestly but illegally. There must come, in the proper growth of this nation, a readjustment. If it is not to come by sword and powder and blood it must come by peaceful compromise. These fools in Wall Street think they can go on forever! They can’t! I would like to be elected President of the United States to be the buffer between their foolishness and the wrath that is surely to come- unless they sober up.”

- Theodore Roosevelt, 1903