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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.