“Nothing could be more repugnant to (Woodrow) Wilson and (Louis) Brandeis than the idea of accepting the great trusts and then using government to regulate them. To the evil of monopoly would be added the evil of big government controlling the market. The market had to be free so that men could test themselves. “What this country needs above everything else,” Wilson declared, “is a body of laws which will look after the men who are on the make rather than the men who are already made.” Where Roosevelt (Teddy) argued for greater efficiency of the big unit, Wilson spoke for the democratic value of the small unit. These smaller entities, as Brandeis recognized, could be inefficient and wasteful at times, but democracy is a wasteful system; people cheerfully put up with it because their liberties more than compensate for the wastage. Brandeis and Wilson feared big and ruthlessly efficient government as much as Roosevelt opposed excessive individualism.  The former called for greater individual liberty under a simple government, the latter favored a stronger, more efficient social organism, superior to any combination of selfish individuals.”

From Louis D. Brandeis- A Life by Melvin I Urofsky

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