Teddy Roosevelt & The Tillman Act of 1907:

[bvar22]

"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law;

directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes;

and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.

Not only should both the National and the several State Legislatures forbid any officer of a corporation from using the money of the corporation in or about any election, but they should also forbid such use of money in connection with any legislation save by the employment of counsel in public manner for distinctly legal services."

----President T Roosevelt, Address to Congress, 1905

This Address to Congress spawned the Tillman Act in 1907.

The Tillman Act of 1907

Be it enacted,

*that it shall be unlawful for any national bank, or any corporation organized by authority of any laws of Congress, to make a money contribution in connection with any election to any political office.

*It shall also be unlawful for any corporation whatever to make a money contribution in connection with any election at which Presidential and Vice-Presidential electors or a Representative in Congress is to be voted for or any election by any State legislature of a United States Senator.

*Every corporation which shall make any contribution in violation of the foregoing provisions shall be subject to a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and every officer or director of any corporation who shall consent to any contribution by the corporation in violation of the foregoing provisions shall upon conviction be punished by a fine of not exceeding one thousand and not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, or by imprisonment for a term of not more than one year, or both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court.

I heard about the Tillman Act on Thom Hartmann's RT Broadcast last week, and thought it deserved wider distribution.

[BillZBubb]

1. The right wing Roberts court would find it unconstitutional

After all "corporations are people too!"

[Jefferson23]

2. Recommend.

snip*The result was the Tillman Act of 1907, the first law to bar (in a very limited fashion) corporate money from political campaigns. The Tillman Act (still on the books but highly modified over the years) says, unambiguously:

That it shall be unlawful for any national bank, or any corporation organized by authority of any laws of Congress, to make a money contribution in connection with any election to any political office. It shall also be unlawful for any corporation whatever to make a money contribution in connection with any election at which Presidential and Vice-Presidential electors or a Representative in Congress...or any election...of a United States Senator.

The Tillman Act also said that “every officer or director of any corporation who shall consent to any contribution by the corporation” shall be fined or punished “by imprisonment for a term of not more than one year, or both fine and imprisonment at the discretion of the court.”

The Republican Roosevelt followed this by building a popular reputation as “the trustbuster” through his aggressive enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act, using it to break up more than forty large corporations during his presidency.

From 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft continued Teddy Roosevelt’s tradition by further breaking up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust into thirty-three separate companies as well as breaking up American Tobacco. Working people loved him for it, as did entrepreneurs who again had opportunities in the newly freed marketplace.

But in the first year of the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, the corporations reacted by trying to use the same law—the Sherman Anti-trust Act—to get unions outlawed. They essentially argued that if it was illegal for corporate persons to conspire or form monopolies for their own benefit, it should be equally illegal for human persons to do the same in the form of unions.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/878:unequal-protection-the-peoples-masters

[woo me with science]

3. K&R

[Enthusiast]

4. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

[bvar22]

5. I agree,

...and there was a time not too long ago that it would,
but the focus at DU has changed.

I was delighted to hear Thom Hartmann discuss the Tillman Act,
and marveled about how SIMPLE and FOCUSED it was.
Legislation used to be like that.

NOW, Bills in Congress have to be written by Lobbyists,
and be Hundreds if not Thousands of pages long
so that nobody has the opportunity to read them and understand them,
and the loopholes, poison pills, and trap doors can be more easily hidden.

[dmosh42]

6. Thanks for posting this. I never realized the info in the Tillman act...

I did know about the Sherman anti-trust act, and how it's forgotten because it takes some political courage to enforce it. TR was a progressive back then, and would be a real progressive in today's world!