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PAGE TWO
| Public Opinion Throughout the Union
PRESIDENT AND PURITANS.
The address of the President at
Provincetown, Mass., yesterday, on
the occasion of the laying of the
cornerstone of a monument to the
Pilgrim Fathers, was in his best vein
and was altogether worthy of him.
We may or may not agree with his
estimate of the Puritans. They were
too cock sure, arrogant and overbear
ing for us. They demanded all sorts
of liberty of conscience for themselves
but didn’t want people who disa
greed with them to have any at all.
We like the Cavaliers better. But
the President’s address was high
ly felicitious and quite adapted to
the occasion.
It was upon present day topics,
however, that he was most interest
ing. He ran on parallel lines with
Secretary Taft the night before. If
the two collaborated upon the Secre
tary’s Ohio speech, as is said, they
must have collaborated also on this
address of yesterday. From their
“ laisser-faire, ” which the Secretary
used twice and the President once,
through the discussion of railroad
and other corporations and trusts, the
speeches are strikingly alike. There
is little in the President’s expres
sions about any of them to object to.
To bring them within the operations
of the law, to safeguard their inter
ests while protecting the people’s
rights —this is a proposition which no
just man can object to and there is
a great deal of merit in the sugges
tion that “the national government
should exercise over them (the great
railroad corporations) a similar su
persion and control to that which it
exercises over national banks.’’
In reference to dealing with trusts,
the President points out, as did Sec
retary Taft the extreme difficulty of
securing the conviction of individuals
and indicates two cases in which
trusts were convicted and their pres
idents, who had made them guilty,
were acquitted. He thinks that prog
ress has been made in dealing with
trusts and pledges the administration
to a continuance of its efforts in this
direction.
“The Department of Justice,” he
says, “has recently taken steps to
see if it is not possible, in certain con
tingencies and for certain reasons,
to put the trusts that are guil.y
wrong-doing in the hands of receiv
ers. The purpose of the administra
tion is to stamp out the evil; we shall
seek to find the most effective device
for this purpose; and shall then use
it whether the device can be found
in existing law or must be supplied
by legislation.”
While dwelling upon the impor
tance of wise legislation in protecting
and promoting ths interests of the
people, the president as usual exal s
the individual and gives him to under
stand that after all he must work
out his own salvation. He never for
gets the strenuous life. His address
yesterday was not radical but con
servative and rational, and who read*
it will be repaid. —Charlotte Obser
ver.
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
SENATOR TAYLOR DEFINES DE
MOCRACY.
“Democracy,” says Senator Bob
Taylor, “stands for putting the bit
in the mouth of aggregated capital,
and for a thorough overhauling of the
robber tariff system. The country
needs a man who would treat officials
of corporations who violate the law
the same as he would the humblest
citizen —not by fining them, but by
giving them a free pass to prison.”
When Senator Taylor said this he
was seated on the porch of the home
of William Jennings Bryan in Lin
coln, Neb., and the presumption is he
was giving utterance to sentiments
that would be pleasing to his host.
He went on to declare that the gen
eral government had long been en
croaching upon the rights of the
states, and he particularly denounced
the action of Judge Pritchard in
North Carolina.
Every day makes the trend towards
a states right issue in 1908 more dis
tinct, and it may readily become the
leading plank in the platform. It
cuts both ways, for while it seeks
to preserve the states from complete
<-bn tei a non as political entities it also
seeks to bring “aggregate capital”
under public control and supervision
within the state. —The Age Herald.
DEFEAT OF FEDERAL USURPA
TION.
The backbone of Governor Glenn,
of North Carolina, has established
the fact that one state, at least, has
some rights that Federal intermed
dlers have been compelled to respect.
The issuing of a writ of habeas, cor
pus, before the arrest of Finley of
the Southern Railway, by Pritchard
shows how eager Federal judges are
to serve their masters. The final sur
render of the railroad officials by
agreeing to comply with the law is a
triumph for state’s rights and an ig
nominious defeat for Federal usur
pation.
If the big stick is so potent why
is it not used against the Texas Anti-
Trust law and a few other’ drastic
measures passed by the Texas Legis
lature and rigidly enforced? Ohio
and other states passed rate laws that
have been enforced without Federal
interference. Just why a Southern
state should be selected for the pur
pose of asserting Federal authority
over state affairs is not clear.
The action of Governor Glenn
shows that the spirit of ’76 is not
dead in the old North State. A few
more state executives like the Gov.
ernor of North Carolina and state’s
rights will be firmly re-established.
The recent California Legislature,
which was composed largely of Espee
peons, in the matter of the Japanese
school question, puppied down at the
mere mention of the big stick. Other
states, both North and South, select
as a rule lawmakers who are not made
of putty, pass laws and enforce them
without so much as by your leave,
Mr. Broncho Buster. —Free Press, San
Bernardino, Cal.
WHY NOT?
A standpatter with an eye on the
“farmer vote” struggles to express
his horror at Mr. Whitney’s sugges
tion that the tariff be removed from
articles of food which the vast ma
jority of the people of Massachu
setts and of New England buy, but
do not raise. Is farming an “infant
industry?” Do not our agriculturists
need protection against the fields and
labor of Europe? Last year we ex
ported of meat and dairy products
$210,990,015, and of breadstuffs $186,-
468,901. Why not relieve our con
sumers, burdened by the increased
cost of living, of taxes levied for the
benefit of the beef trust and of a
little string of producers along our
Canadian border? —Boston Herald.
CHILD WASTE.
There is much human nature about
man. We are such creatures of habit
that at times we exhibit our supposed
nexus to the lower animal order. Man
is a groove machine, and lives, moves
and has his being in ruts. The Japa
nese women are said to disport in the
fashion plates of 2,500 years ago. We
become so inured to that which re
dounds to our hurt as to rebel against
changed relations that make for bet
terment. The Chinese prisoner, who
slept for half a century on a pallet of
spikes, when released,- refused a bed
of eiderdown. Our boasted educa
tional system contains as a corner
stone one of the most remarkable
anamolies known amongst men. We
are more prodigal in child waste than
a half drunken debauche with ances
tral dollars under the witchery of the
glitter and splendor of Monte Carlo.
We throw aw y ay one-third of every
school year of every child in the land
in what the dunder-headed stupidity
of custom calls vacation. We do this,
though there are growing areas of en-_
lightened communities acutely alive to
the work of the child spoiler and
bending every energy to exercise the
fetish custom. This suggestion that
the annual three months’ intermission
is a waste of vital energy, a retarda
tion of social progress and utterly and
wickedly criminal, strikes the aver
age man as a long-haired vagary, a
visionary dream. Yet, we maintain
that this surprised incredulity in its
abandoned trifling with vita] concerns
but accentuates our opinion that man
is a creature of habit, just as is the
ape who gathers socoanuts in the
same way as did the Simians in the
Garden of Eden.
There is not one substantial rea
son in the facts of nature, either of
climate, of human endurance or in
the receptivity of the mind, that jus
tifies the unexcusable waste of ono
third of a child’s school years. If
our summers are too hot for intellec
tual work, the whole year in torrid
and subtropical zones is too hot, for
the average temperature is higher
than our highest. Yet there are
schools in those regions. Nor is there
any cessation here in any line of hu
man endeavor or mental labor save
school work. If the children spent
their vacations in cool retreats, at
seashore resorts or under the tower
ing mountain peaks, there might be
found a foothold for some plausible
argument for three months of dry rot.
But how many are thus favored, and
what parent but knows that during
the summer season no healthy child
fails to burn up tenfold more energy
of body and mind than is required for
the successful prosecution of any
reasonable educational curriculum?
We shall hereafter elaborate these
suggestions, which have long con
vinced us of the tremendous waste of
child life; but for the present, and
until public opinion in this commu
nity works to the point of view on
this important question, which is
taken in vast sections of this and
other lands, we submit a modest re
form. Give a full month’s vacation,
and during the other two wasted
moons let there be, whenever possi
ble, a short session each day, say a
couple of hours, of study. We are
not oblivious of the practical objec
tions and obstacles to the line of
conduct we have sketched. But other
people have met and mastered the
difficulties, and we can do so, and
must do so, if man is to utilize all
his opportunities and be perfect in
every good word and work. —Rich-
mond Journal.
AMERICANISM.
(From N. Y. American.)
If Peary finds the Pole this time
there will be nothing left for explor
ers but Mars.
Hereafter the ordinary criminals
will feel the disgrace keenly when
fined $lO or S2O.
In Chicago five men die to every
two women. This seems to prove
that the soda fountain is healthier
than the saloon.
" ■ ■
The latest evidence of the world *s
progress comes from Korea. The na
tives of that serene and listless cliire
have actually taken enough interest
in life to fight.
Senator “Pat” McCarren is out
defending the trusts. The corpora
tions have few defenders*these days,
and they are unfortunate in even the
( ones they have.
I T -
President Shonts, of the Inter
borough-Metropolitan, admits that
the Second, Sixth end Ninth avenue
elevated roads are not run at their
full capacity. Passengers who have
to stand will remember this.
►
Lieutenant Peary is reported in a
gteat temper because his ship, the
Roosevelt, is not ready to put out
( on another voyage to the Pole. He
might know that he could never tret
a vessel of that name away from this
country till after the next presiden
tial election.