Politics & Power Quote by Henry A. Wallace

Wallace’s warning lands with the blunt moral certainty of a wartime statesman who’s seen how power concentrates when the public is distracted. The pairing is the point: “oppressive government” and “industrial oligarchy” are presented as twin threats, not rivals. He’s rejecting the comforting civics lesson that liberty is only endangered by the state. In Wallace’s framing, monopoly and cartel power can govern by other means - through prices, wages, access, and the quiet ability to set the boundaries of what’s economically possible.

The verb choice, “must not tolerate,” is less policy memo than civic instruction. Wallace isn’t lobbying for a tweak in antitrust enforcement; he’s trying to stiffen democratic reflexes. “Tolerate” implies a slow acclimation, the way citizens come to accept concentrated power because it arrives as efficiency, stability, or “just how the market works.” His subtext is that authoritarianism doesn’t always march in wearing a uniform. Sometimes it carries a balance sheet.

Context matters: Wallace served as vice president during World War II, when the federal government dramatically expanded and industry consolidated to meet wartime demand. That was a moment when Americans were asked to trust centralized authority - and when corporate giants gained scale, contracts, and permanence. The line reads as a preemptive strike against the postwar hangover: victory abroad paired with submission at home, whether to bureaucratic overreach or boardroom rule. It’s a democratic litmus test with teeth: if you oppose tyranny, you don’t outsource it.