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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Published Every Afternoon Except Sunday By THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 20 East Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. Entered as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 3, 1579. Subscription Price —Delivered by carrier, 10 cents a week. By mail, $5.90 a year. Payable in advance. Trust Evils Should Be Ade quately Punished « n “The Trusts Should Be Regulated and Restricted. But They Should Not Be Destroyed.’’ The Stanley committee of congress has spent two years trying to find out what should be done to the trusts. It has come to the lame and impotent conclusion that “the control of corporations by the Federal government, as recommended by Mr. Carnegie, Judge Gary and others, is * • • semi-Socialistic in its nature and beyond the power invested by the constitution in congress.’’ The idea that the great corporations must in the end submit to reasonable and effective control by the government in the public in terest was not Mr. Carnegie’s idea, nor Judge Gary’s, and it is not semi-Socialistic. The idea was very definitely and briefly stated in a signed edi torial by William Randolph Hearst more than thirteen years ago— on June 6, 1899—when he said: "The trust is a labor-saving device that can lower the cost of produc tion. The trust is also a great power which can raise the price of Its com modities, rob Its weaker rivals, corrupt legislatures and oppress the public. These evils of the trust should be made criminal and adequately punished. The trusts should be regulated and restricted. But they should not be de stroyed. And, what is more, they can not be destroyed.” Three of the greatest trusts in the United States have been con victed in the Federal courts in the past five years of the sins Mr. Hearst predicted thirteen years ago, namely, “raising the prices of commodities, robbing weaker rivals, corrupting legislatures and op pressing the public.’’ These evils are now universally admitted. But they have never been adequately punished. The punitive power of justice has been shown to be weak. The criminal clause of the anti-trust law has been robbed of its sting. A mandate of dis solution from the highest court in the United States has not de prived the offending trust either of its profits or its dismembered parts. It has been found impossible to “unscramble an egg’’— to use Mr. Morgan’s happy phrase; the omelet has been divided into many parts, and in the process the market value of the whole has been increased. Chairman Stanley’s idea of limiting the power of trusts by put ting an arbitrary limit upon the amount of business that any cor poration shall do is not practicable and is not new. It is one of Mr. Bryan’s fanatic and extreme fads, suggested by him four years ago and discarded by everybody as silly, and finally abandoned even by him. It would be just as reasonable to put an arbitrary limit on the number of miles which a railroad shall operate, or the amount of -traffic which it shall haul. Formerly one traveled over eleven different railroads in mak ing the journey from New York to Chicago. Men and goods are now carried quicker, cheaper and better by one railroad than they possibly could be by eleven. Freight is carried long distances in the United States at an average ton rate lower than anywhere else in the world, and this is due to great railway systems, the genius of men, concentration, co-operation and to a volume of traffic undreamed of a few years ago. A single telephone company stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Although there are in numerable independent telephone companies in the slates traversed, a single company does more than half the telephone business of the country. It is possible to talk over its wires from New York to Den ver, 2,100 miles. According to Mr. Stanley’s foolish 30 per cent idea, this com pany would not be acquired by the government—a reasonable and beneficent step—but it should be split up into many parts aud every man would have three or four different telephones on his desk when one is more convenient. But every one realizes that the corporation has become so pow erful that nothing less than the government itself can supervise it and control it. To say. as ( hairman Stanley does, that congress has no power under the constitution is to say that the corporation is more powerful than all the people together. Congress represents the whole people. The constitution vests in congress the control of interstate commerce. That control has already been extended to the railroads. Even that right was stubbornly contested and stren uously denied for many years by men like Stanley, but it is now universally conceded. But single corporations are now greater than any single rail road, create more interstate commerce than any railroad, and affect the public interests more closely than any single railroad. The largest railroad system in the United States does in one year only about one-third the business of the United States Steel Cor poration in good times. We are sorry that Chairman Stanley’s long, arduous and con scientious work should have led him to such a weak conclusion- to such contradictory and extraordinary idtfas as that congress, on one hand, has no power to supervise and regulate interstate cor porations, but. on the other hand, has power to put some limit upon the size of corporations and the amount of business permitted to be done. In his first conclusion Mr. Stanley belittles congress; in the second he magnifies its powers beyond all reason. Mr. Stanley underestimates organization, co-operation and con solidation. He overestimates the power of congress in thinking that it can do what it ought not to do and can not do. Irresistible natural forces and tendencies are behind the great growth of the corporations. To say that these irresistible forces can be stopped by an act of the legislature is to confound an act of congress with an act of God. The trusts, which are already more powerful than any indi vidual or any state, are not more powerful than all the people, and they can be controlled in the public interest by all the people acting through congress. The “Come Back” Farm A “Come Back’’ farm, where derelicts may get a new grip on life and pave the way for future usefulness, is planned by the Chi cago city officials. It is one thing to provide work for an idle man and another to keep him interested in it. This is the problem that confronts the committee now looking into the matter. Only a few days ago such a plan was tried in the oil regions and found to work well. There is a great deal in habit, and work is a habit as much as idleness. Therefore it is safe to say that once the toilers on the “come back’’ farm become accustomed to their tasks they will be as loathe to resume their old ways as they were unwilling to make a fresh start in life. At any rate, it is an experiment worth the trying. If successful, it will do much toward solving the disposition of hundreds of starv ing men during the cold months The Atlanta Georgian THE GUIDING HAND The Real Force Behind the Gangster Scandal in New York. By HAL COFFMAN. ■ 1 '■ A'-iy W/ 111 she Siren of Perpetual Motion Man Still Longs to Get Something for Nothing, But Only Succeeds in Giving Something and Getting Nothing. By GARRETT P. SERVISS. I HAVE received a letter from an intelligent man who is evidently w'eli educated, except in that which for his present purpose he should have known best of all —the science of physics. He has a lucra tive profession, and yet he tells me that he has expended nearly all his hard won money in unsuccessful ef forts to perfect a perpetual motion machine. He asks for advice, but it is plain that he would scorn the only advice I could give him, which would he to either throw away his machine at once or else to set it aside until he has mastered the laws of mechanics, after which he would be sure to throw it away without waiting for advice. Everybody who has the reputa tion of being a “scientist" soon be comes painfully aware of the multi tude of the worshipers of this siren of perpetual motion. They are con tinually asking for advice—and never taking it. They are like fool ish, ignorant little fish that can not be dissuaded from swallowing a templing bail, which all wise fish have known for generations to be only a deadly lure. But 1 shall, perhaps, be asked, as some of these same misled invent ors have already asked me, "Why do you. who have said so much to encourage invention, now denounce this particular form of it as im possible?” Well, 1 do not denounce It as im possible. 1 say simply that it is only pos sible in case the whole basis of ex isting science can first be over turned. It files in the face of the great principle of the conservation of energy , which, being interpreted, means that you can not get some thing for nothing, and that what you receive, in mechanics, can never be more than the exact equiv alent of what you give. Let us illustrate tills by some ex amples. When a steam engine runs It uses energy which has been brought to it in another form. In the first place, there is the coal which is burnt. Millions of years ago, when that coal was in the form of growing plants, it had energy stored up in it. It was energy In the form of chemical combination, exercised TUESDAY, JULY 30, 1912. through the influence of the sun’s rays. The sun had to pay, dollar for dollar, for all that stored en ergy. The sun’s pocket is the poor er for every lump of coal on the earth. We put the coal in a fur nace and set it on lire. locked up energy is brought out in the form of heat. The heat passes into the water in the boiler and inspires its molecules with unwonted mo tion. They vibrate more and more violently until they are torn asun der. and the water is turned Into steam. The pressure of the ex panding steam acts against the pis ton, and the wheels of the engine turn. You could not make the en gine go by whistling to it, or by making cabalistic signs over it. The one essential thing is to supply it with energy in a form which it can use. You have borrowed that en ergy directly from the coal, and ul timately from the sun. When a trolley’ car speeds along the track it goes by virtue of the electric energy which is flowing through the wire overhead. That energy comes from a great dynamo, which is spinning far away, and the dynamo borrows its energy either from an engine, which takes it from coal burrfing under a boiler, or from a motor set in motion by water fall ing from a height. The dynamo turns the energy it receives into an electric current, in order that it may be readily delivered, through a wire, to the place where it is to be utilized. The trolley takes the elec tric energy from the wire, and de livers it to the motor on the car, and that turns it back again into mechanical energy, which drives the wheels. It is an endless chain of give and take. But there Is always a loss in the process. At the end of it you can not get back all the nergy originally expended. It is like the traveler changing his money as he goes from country to country. Every time he changes dollars into franas, and francs into marks, and marks into ilorins, and * florins into liras, and liras into pesetas, the banks take out their commission. But the commissions demanded by human machinery, turning energy into its various forms, are so exorbitant that if the same rates prevailed in money mat ters the bankers would soon have everything and the public nothing. The best steam engine does not de liver. in the form of work, more than a third of the energy derived from the burning coal. Now, the idea of the perpetual motion inventors is that they can devise a machine which will cheat nature of its commissions. They expect to set the machine going, and then see it go on forever with out supplying it with any energy to keep it in action. There have been such machines which worked for a time, but. invariably, after a while, they fail, and, also invaria bly, it has been found that while they did work they were obeying the law of the conservation of en ergy, so that they were not really perpetual motion machines at all. Mr. Phin in his "Seven Follies of Science” has described a number of these devices, about which you might read with profit. Remember, the principle is sim ply this: There is a fixed amount of energy available in nature. Prob ably there is ten times, or a hun dred times, as much energy within our reach as we have ever utilized. That is for the future to determine. But. in any case, while we can turn the energies of nature into a multitude of different forms, we can not add to their sum. If we take with one hand we must give with the other. The capital is in variable, and nature pays no in terest. Now, this principle rests on hu man experience. No departure from it has ever been observed. Still, a philosopher must admit that we do not know everything, and that even experience may mislead. Our time is very short and our powers are very limited. It is within the range of possibility that there is some other law in nature which we have not discovered, and which, when discovered, will upset our present science. If you believe that you can discover this revolu tionary law, don’t undertake the job without first educating your self in all that is already known, or believed to be known. Then ask nobody's advice, but go ahead. But, before you begin, get to gether ten million, or, better, a hundred million dollars, to pay for your experiments, and to insure yourself against the danger of im poverishing your family and end ing in the poor house. THE HOME PAPER Dr. Parkhurst’s Article on Education in the Work We Do —and— Presidential Vote Cast by Socialists Written For The Georgian By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst PEOPLE are educated by the work that they do; that Is, if it is educating work, and a good deal of it Is not. A good deal of it is work that a man might go on doing all his life long, and at the end know no more than he did at the beginning. That so much of the work that is being done is of the uneducating kind is one of the bad fruits of our civilization. It is work of the kind that is given to the people that are down and keeps them down. It is em ployment that is of such a sort that it gives the wmrker nothing in par ticular to think about, to exercise his mind over, or to be Interested In. And work that can be done with out having to think 7 about it ear nestly and become interested in it deeply never makes any wiser the man that does it. For example, a man who shovels gravel does not thereby become more of a man any more than a steam shovel by being operated be comes more of a steam shovel. And very much of the labor that is being performed is of precisely that character. Consider, for instance, the condi tion of a mill operative, a ticket chopper on the elevated railroad, a truckman, a street sweeper, a seamstress, a bank clerk, pinned down to one particular, narrow, repetitious line of service. Workers Become Mere Machines. A very great deal of what is be ing done is much of that order. It Is work that runs in a rut, and hardly Is there any more thought required in the doing of it than is required of a car wheel in its move ment along the railroad irons. Workers become in that way lit tle more than human machines, and, like machines of the other sort, grow worse rather than better by the using, to be kept running till they finally wear out, break down and are thrown on the scrap heap. This situation is intensified by the increasing tendency toward the division of labor, which is all the time making the grooves of indi vidual service narrower and nar rower, the ruts deeper and deeper, with always less opportunity for independent thought and action, and thought must be independent and action must be self-determined if it is going to conduce to the ad vantage of the worker. That, then, Is the drift of events with us. That is the way things are going. And they are going faster and faster. This is a severe criticism upon our civilization, but it is true. THE presidential vote cast by the Socialists Is no longer a negligible quantity, running from 94,000 in 1900 to 434,000, in 1908. The estimated strength of the party in 1910 was 50 per cent greater than in 1908. Mr. Debs is again proposed as presidential candidate, and the cal culation is that he will poll some thing over 1,000,000 votes in No vember, or ten per cent of the en tire ballot cast. This increase in The Spice of It By JAMES RAVENSCROFT. CITY folks to the country go When they're having their vacations; M here the milk cows low and the roosters crow. And they set out man-size rations. They leave off starchy, padded clothes. And they roam the hills and valleys; And they call it great, and they say they hate To go back to streets and alleys. Country folks to the city hie In their recreative leisure; Where for half the night there are lanes of light W ith the lure of life and pleasure They put on clothes they swelter in. And they go while they've cash to go on; And going away they wish they could stay Right there—and so forth and so on. “Went to a farm,” town folks enthuse, “For rest from the hurly-burly.” Say the farm folk: "Well, we've been for a spell Where they don't get up so early.” Each could have got more rest, of course, Staying at home, but that's not it; They wanted things strange, they wanted a change, And couldn't rest ill! they got It. Em strength, both rapid and uniform, gives non-Socialists something to think about. ‘ * Collective Ownership ’ ’ Is Chief Feature. But there is also a good deal for Socialists themselves to think about, more perhaps than has been seriously considered by the rank and file of the party. The Social ist program is simple and easily de signed, and, like all programs, en counters no difficulty till it reaches the point of execution. The fundamental feature of the plan Is "collective ownership,” whatever exactly may be the dis tinction between that and ‘‘govern ment ownership.” This much, however, is evident ly intended—that certain properties shall be taken out from under in dividual control and become the holdings of the people taken col lectively or of some governmental representative of the people. Since confiscation is not a con fessed part of the scheme—a fea ture that would be strenuously re sisted by none more than by prop erty-holding Socialists themselves, who are more concerned to add to their possessions than to lose what they have got—it follows that dis possessed individual holders are to be compensated upon surrendering their property to collective owner ship. The properties thus to be sur rendered and paid for out of the "collective" treasury include rail roads, telegraphs, all "large scale industries,” all distributing agen cies, etc., etc. A student who has given more thought to this matter than most people has roughly estimated the amount required for so immense a purchase at hundreds of billions of dollars. Supposing we make a "try” at the matter by calling it $500,000,- 000,000. That would mean a per capita outlay of $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. Cheaper to Plan Than to Work. As that would be impracticable, and as the "collective” treasury, being empty, would be unable to reimburse individual holders, the "collective” administrators of the treasury (and only the powers above would have an imagination fertile enough to conceive what or who that could be) would have to issue, in behalf of impecunious collec tivity, certificates of obligation, carrying with them, of course, an interest pledge of, say, 4 per cent, the total amount of which would be twenty billions annually. That sum it would devolve upon the people to pay every twelve months, except so far as the prin cipal was reduced by some hypo thetical sinking fund held by im pecunious collectivity. As said at the outset, it is cheaper to construct a program than to work it. No scheme of the kind will be practically undertaken till the solid sense of the country has forgotten its brains and the intelligence of the majority been taken captive by the uncalculating infatuation of the minority.