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2 Public Opinion Throughout the Union EMIGRATION SOUTHWARD. (The Washington Post.) The dilution of the black population in the southern Atlantic coast states by white immigration may be imper ceptible for a long time, but it is a fac tor that will be borne in mind by southerners who are seeking some practical solution of the race question. The reduction of the proportion of blacks may be slow, but it is a very sure method of relieving the situation. Perhaps the immigration movement may assist powerfully in this sociolog ical reform when established immi grants begin to send for their relatives and friends, as they have been doing in the north for many years. There is no reason apparent why a current of immigration may not be started to ward the South which will become au tomatic. •ft THE WALL STREET VIEW. (The New York Sun.) Mr. Roosevelt has destroyed the credit of the railroads. Even with his great power and his passionate pur suit of his quarry, he could not have effected his purpose had it not been, first, for the public indignation at the disclosures of the system of criminal rebates, and secondly, the popular dis gust and rage precipitated by the Har riman-Kuhn-Loeb-Schiff revelations. These two causes, brought into high relief with all of Mr. Roosevelt’s unde niable dramatic skill, have sufficiently inflamed the public mind to damn all the railroads in the country and paint the whole industry in Chicago and Al ton black. •ft DEMAGOGUES AND GAMBLERS. (The New York Tinies.) For business undertakings there is no way to success save through busi nesslike management. The exploita tion and looting of railroad systems for private gain is as unbusinesslike as the exploitation and paralyzing of them for political gain. The people of the country ought to pray with equal fervor to be delivered from the dema gogues on the one hand and from the manipulators on the other. Both are dangerous. •ft THE NEW DOUMA. (The London Times.) The last douma failed because it wanted to remold at once the whole constitution of the empire; the new douma seems to be meeting in a very different spirit of discretion and self control, and will have, we hope, the sa gacity to work with the implements at hand. •ft MUST MAKE PEACE. (The Chicago News.) The railroads must make their peace with the people. They must obey the laws and must do it in away that will disarm hostility. They must have the public confidence. If the railroad presidents of the United States can hit upon a program that the people will accept as fair, there is good reason to think the results will be immediately beneficial to all interests. •ft THE JAP WAR SCARE. (The Chattanooga Times.) Mr. Hudson Maxim, the greatest liv ing American inventor of munitions of war, talking to the Washington Post the other day while in that city on his way to witness a test of smokeless powder, said: “I measure my words when I make this prediction: We shall have war with Japan as sure as the sun rises and sets, and that, too, within five years.” Other makers of war material, such as armor plate for battle ships, gun makers, etc., all more or less share Mr. Maxim’s opinion and it may be that by constantly talking it, they may get our lawmakers and impetuous jingoes to the point where they will be ready to foment the trou ble for wnich they are looking. Mak ers of war munitions, like men engag ed in other business, are constantly looking for trade, and they are of course never so busy as when a war is going on. •ft FROTH ON THE FINANCIAL BEER. (The Philadelphia Record.) The vast number of shares held as investments did not enter into the reckoning at all; nor was their actual value to the holders diminished. If they have been bought at a fair price, and bring the owner the same returns in dividends first as last, their invest ment value to him remains what it was. He is no poorer except in the sense of the fellow who made a cor rect guess of the winnning horse at the race and failed to bet on it. Real, concrete wealth is neither made nor dissipated by the rise or fall of quota tions. The fictitious values clicked over the ticker are to the wealth of the country what the froth is to the beer. •ft A JOLT TO G. W. (The New York Times.) Beyond question the president’s method of communicating directly with the governor of a state respect ing pending state legislation, and di rectly with the mayor of a city respect ing pending municipal legislation, would nave made George Washington “stare and gasp.” Not only the people of San Francisco and of California, but all the people of the United States are taken into the confidence of the government in its diplomatic opera tions. It is a startling novelty in pro cedure. But in this case it seems to have worked. •ft NO HONEST FOLK HURT. (The Philadelphia Press.) No creditors are affected by the smash in stock values this week. No failures have followed, x\o bank or financial institution is in trouble. Busi ness is not touched by this wholesale decrease in share values any more than it was in May, 1901, by a like fall then. Then, as now, the liquidation is not in mercantile credits, but in stock speculation, a wholly different matter. •ft RECOGNIZING STATE RIGHTS. (The New York Times.) “Assisted immigration” in South Carolina has been a subject of anxious discussion at the White House since Attorney General Bonaparte’s adverse ruling under the new contract labor law was submitted. The southern peo ple, not unwarrantably, have raised the cry of bad faith and sectional dis crimination. When they sent dele gates to the president recently, he found it expedient to hear them. Now it is given out that the attorney gen eral’s opinion was merely an “obiter,” quite outside the case he was deciding, which was under the old immigration law. The intent of congress, as the debate in the senate shows, was not to interfere with the right of states to offer substantial inducements to immi grants to come in and build up their territory. THE WEEKLY JEFFERSOJtIAR. UNUSUAL, BUT RIGHT. (The Fort Worth Telegram.) Southern blood is warm and impul sive, quick to right a wrong, and al ways ready to stand up in defense of woman’s honor. It was a little unus ual, however, for a southern judge to congratulate a jury upon its findings as was the case in the Strother trial. It was singly a case, however, of the chivalry in southern nature asserting itself over what may have been judi cial dignity. Such cases are a little rare, but they have occurred, and doubtless will continue to occur.. The men of the south love their women, and when wrong of any kind is done them, there will always be a day of reckoning. Lynch law is al ways a regrettable procedure, and any man who takes the enforcement of the law into his own hands is commit ting a great wrong against the law. But therQ are times when, unfortu nately, there seems to be no other available procedure. Such was the condition of affairs connected with the Virginia case under discussion, and the prompt acquittal of the execu tioners serves to show the proper ver dict in such cases. •ft WHY JURIES GO WRONG. (The Chicago Post.) There is always much criticism of the jury system. Men in good stand ing—especially business men who have lost their case in a jury trial —are often heard to deplore the stupidity and inc’onsequentiality of juries. They tell stories of verdicts being decided in a hurry in order that supper might not go by, or of extra weight being given to evidence because the court had ordered it excluded. But these same critics are not above offering misleading physicians’ certificates when their own turn comes. They for get their inconsistency in their haste to act on the theory that personal con venience is the first law of happiness. •ft PERMANENT PROTECTION. (The New York Herald.) Every intelligent Cuban knows that the island never has had independent government and that its people are not yet prepared for successful self gov ernment. In the Platt amendment there is a protectorate, but one which will bring the Americans to the isl and after revolution, bloodshed and destruction of property. What every intelligent Cuban wants is merely a change in the form of that protector ate so that revolutions shall be pre vented. •ft A LABOR VICTORY. (The Philadelphia Public Ledger.) It is wholly unjust to insinuate that the president is not responsive to pub lic opinion. With the issuance of his recent executive order, excluding Jap anese and Korean immigrant laborers, he has met the wishes of labor men on the Pacific coast swiftly and complete ly. It has been a long time since labor has secured so great and so impres sive a triumph. SCARE OF THE RAILROADS. (The Indianapolis Sentinel.) The railroad men seem to be almost paralyzed with astonishment, not so much over what has been done, as over what they think is threatened, over what they believe to be the tem per of the people. They have aban doned the policy of attempting to in fluence legislatures even in legitimate ways. The spirit of the people Is run- ning so strong against them that they have evidently made up their minds that it is not worth while to try to re sist it. And it is the same people over whom they used to drive with an en tire disregard of their rights. It would be well for our friends to understand that the change in the spirit of the people has not been wrought by dema gogues or agitators or a yellow press. It is the product of unfairness of the railroads themselves. •ft THE LESSON OF HARRIMAN. (The Long Branch Record.) We have nothing whatever against him personally, but we can only con sider the fate which has overtaken him to be most exemplary. He thought that the people upon whom he was preying were defenseless. He boast ed that he had gone only “so far as the law allowed him.” Perhaps he is right in thinking that he has nothing to dread from the courts and juries. But there is something more formida ble and crushing than a legal process. It is the deliberately formed opinion of 80,000,000 of people that a man’s wealth is ill-gotten because his meth ods have been dishonorable and heart less. Against that what can uncount ed millions do? •ft YES, CHEER UP. (The New York Times.) Congress has adjourned. They are scrubbing up the summer capital at Oyster Bay. The state legislatures are doing more talking than legislat ing. Our demagogues are no worse than other people’s demagogues. Our pirates are no more ruthless than other people’s pirates, and they are too busy cutting one another’s throats to work irreparable injury to the com munity. Our fools are no more pestif erous than other people’s fools. The sun shines as often as every other day now. The rain has cleaned the streets. Spring is coming. Cheer up. •ft A COMPOSITE SETTLEMENT. (The Philadelphia Record.) By a fortuitous combination of leg islative and executive acts and diplo matic agreements with the mikado, on the one hand, and the labor unionist mayor of San Francisco and the gover nor of California, on the other, the peace of the world has been secured; and a little code of laws has been evolved covering matters of municipal, state, federal and international regu lation of the utmost complexity. Who says that our composite system of gov ernment cannot be worked? TRUST BAITING IN JERSEY. (The Baltimore American.) New Jersey is after 8,000 corpora tions fostered by its laws, for neglect in complying with certain legal pro visions, and purposes to collect fines amounting to $2,000,000. By the irony of fate, the trusts are being exposed as hitherto unknown mines to states lucky enough to possess keen-scented and energetic public officials. Trust baiting is apt to become more popu lar than ever if it is found that there are millions in it. HEROES IN JAPAN. (The Philadelphia Ledger.) By a vote taken in the Tokio schools, Washington was declared first among the world’s immortal heroes, and Lincoln second. However, the in cident is worthless as support of the theory that Japan sits up nights to hate America.