Leadership Quote by Henry A. Wallace

Monopoly, in Wallace's telling, isn't just an economic problem; it's a political temperament. The line is built like an indictment: not “might,” not “could,” but “would sacrifice democracy itself.” He’s warning that concentrated private power doesn’t merely distort markets - it develops a survival instinct that treats democratic competition the way a cartel treats a new entrant: as a threat to be crushed early, before it matures into a rival.

The specific intent is preventative, almost prosecutorial. Wallace is trying to inoculate the public against a comforting myth: that democracy and big business naturally harmonize as long as profits stay high. His choice of “growing up” is a shrewd bit of moral framing. Rivals aren’t faceless firms; they’re fledgling alternatives, future possibilities. To destroy them is to attack the future - the next generation of choices, voices, and leaders. That’s the subtext: democracy depends on the continual birth of rivals, not just in elections but in institutions, ideas, and ownership.

Context matters. Wallace, a New Deal liberal and vice president during the war years, watched fascism abroad marry state power to industrial giants, and he saw American industry’s capacity to mobilize as both asset and danger. The quote channels that era’s fear that emergency politics and corporate consolidation could quietly normalize each other. His punchline is that monopolists don’t need to hate democracy on principle; they only need to value control more than uncertainty. Democracy, being messy and plural, becomes collateral damage.