The Cry Wolf Quote Bank chronicles the false predictions and hyperbole by opponents of these laws and protections. While the issues and specific policies change over time, the rhetoric and themes remained the same. You can search the Quote Bank for what opponents said to prevent these laws from passing. Using the drop down menus on the right their statements by issue, by specific law, by who said it and by the core themes they evoke. Elsewhere on the site, you can find articles, studies, and other material that debunks their claims.
[President Roosevelt’s endorsement of an inheritance tax gave] more encouragement to state socialism and centralization of government than all the frothy demagogues have accomplished in a quarter of a century of agitation of the muddy waters of discontent.
In Armour & Co.’s business not one atom of any condemned animal or carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, from any source, into any food product or food ingredient” [italics in original]. Every meat animal and every carcass slaughtered in the Union Stockyards, or in the stock yards at any of the markets of the United States, is carefully inspected by the United States Government.
[Government intervention would mean dealing with] a pestilential lot of spies, meddlers, and informers. The Federal Government was not created for the purpose of cutting your toe nails or corns. I believe there are millions of old women, white and black, who know more about good victuals and good eating than my friend Doctor Wiley and all his apothecary shop.
[99 percent of mining accidents] are due absolutely to the carelessness or willful negligence of the men employed in them [sic].
If the Federal Government should regulate Inter-state traffic in drugs on the basis of their therapeutic value, why not regulate traffic in theology, by excluding from transportation, all theological books which Dr. Wiley and his assistants, upon the examination, should find to be misleading in any particular?
Such accidents are little short of deliberate suicide. No legislation can reach such cases as this.
It is but the natural course of mining events that men should be injured and killed by accidents.
The fury of ignorant class hatred has dashed itself in vain against the constitution…Thanks to the court, our government is not to be dragged into communistic warfare against rights of property and the rewards of industry.
[This is] Class legislation and attempts of the majority to spoliate private property [that] would ultimately wreck the American republic.
[The Court must] bring the Congress back to a true sense of the limitations of its powers….[such a tax on wealth will lead to] communism, anarchy, and then, the ever following despotism.
