Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1893-03-08
A PALLIATIVE ONLY.

Nothing But NationalIsm Can Cure the
Evils Under Which the People Groan.
Those persons who cry out "pater-
nalism," whenever the people strike a
blow in self-defense, are likely to feel
badly over the Mcmahon bill for regu-
lating the price of coal which has just
YORK senate. The bill is presented as
the outcome of an investigation by
committee into the Reading deal and
possible remedies. The committee finds
that federal legislation alone can deal
with the matter effectively, covering as
it does several states, but meanwhile it
is thought New York can do something.
The Mcmahon bill will require all
persons engaged in the transportation
of anthracite coal to be used in the
state and all coal dealers in the state,
to take out licenses, without which
they are forbidden to do business The
carriers license shall fix maximum
rate per mile to be charged for railroad
transportation and the dealers license
maximum rate per ton to be charged
for coal at retail, exclusive of charge
for delivery. The board of railroad
licenses, will fix the maximum rates
and revise them every three months
Not over $3.50 per ton is under any
circumstances to be charged in New
York city or Brooklyn. Fines, with
revocation of licenses, are provided for
breaches of the law.
The coal people say that the bill is
unconstitutional, and we should not be
surprised if it were so. The state con-
stitutions are drawn so strongly in the
| interest of vested interests" that
there is always good likelihood that
any measure for the relief of the people
will be found unconstitutional. Con-
siderable constitution tinkering of a
radical sort is going to be necessary to
prepare the way for nationalism.
Meanwhile the Mcmahon bill sug-
gests certain reflections. Its drastic
way of going at the trouble as if it
meant to help the people without much
regard to who got hurt, is in cheerful
contrast with the average antitrust
law. At the same time the method is
the wrong one. Instead of system to
check the extortions of private coal
dealers while leaving them a monopoly
of the business, municipal coal yards
should be esta blished to sell at cost, a
necessary result of which would be that
private coal dealers would go out of
business.
This distinction between attempted
public regulation of businesses left in
private hands and the direct public as
sumption of such businesses, represents
precisely the difference between the
empirical and symptomatic remedies of
the superficial reformer and the scien-
tific radicalism of the nationalistic
method which deals with diseases of
the body polite by constitutional
treatment going to the root of the evil.
The root of the evil in this matter of
the coal supply extortion is private
greed. The Mcmahon bill proposes d
system of checks and balance to hinder
and modify this evil principle while
leaving it in force; the nationalist plan
of municipal coal yards, supplemented
as soon as possible by national man
| agement of coal mining. proposes TO
eliminate altogether the motive of
greed by making the business public
one. New Nation.
The ring politicians of both old
parties are beginning to wonder where
they are at" They were astonished
beyond measure when Harrison ap-
pointed jackson, of Tennessee, a rock
ribbed democrat, to the supreme bench;
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