Arizona republican., 1902-12-03

There are more deposits in the savings banks, more owners of farms, more well-paid wage-workers in this country now than ever before in our history. { Of course. when the conditions have | favored the growth of so much that was good, they have also favored some what the growth of what was evil. It | is eminently necessary that we should
 endeavor to cut out this evil, but let
 us keep a due sense of proportion; let
 us not in fixing our gaze upon the | lesser evil forget the greater good. The evils are real and some of them are menacing, but they are the out growth. not of misery or decadence, but of prosperity-of the progress of our gigantic industrial development. This industrial development must not be checked. but side by side with it should go such progressive regula ton as will diminish the evils. We should fail in
 our duty if we did not try to remedy
 the evils. but we shall succeed only If we proceed patiently, with practical common sense as well as resolution, separating the good from the bad and
 holding on to the former while endeav-
 bring to get rid of the latter.
 THE TRUSTS.
 In my message to the present con- gress at it's. first session I discussed at
 length the question of the regulation
 of those big corporations commonly doing an interstate business, often with
 some tendency to monopoly, which are pCpularly known as trusts. The eX- perience of the past year has empha-
 sized, in my opinion, the desirability
 of the steps I then proposed. A funda-
 mental requisite of social efficiency is a | high standard of individual energy and l excellence: but this is in no wise incon- l sistent with power to act in combina tion for aims which cannot so well be
 achieved by the individual acting alone. A fundamental base of civili-
 zation is the inviolability of property:
 but this is in no wise inconsistent with
 the right of society to regulate the ex-
 ercise of the artificial powers which
 it confers upon the owners of property.
 under the name of corporate franchises, in such a way as to prevent the mis-
 use of these powers. Corporations, and especially combinations of corporations,
 should be managed under public regu- lation. Experience has shown that un- hGt Oul SySNCIil Ol government the neC-
 essary supervision cannot be obtaineI
 by state action. It must therefore be
 achieved by national action. Our aim
 is not to do away with corporations: on
 the contrary, these big aggregations
 are an inevitable development of mod ern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless
 accomplished in ways that would work 1 the mischief fn he ,7x polite. We can do nothing of good in
 the way of regulating and supervising
 these corporations until we fix clearly
 in our minds that we are not attacking
 the corporations, but endeavoring to dc
 away with any evil in them. We arc
 not hostile to them; we are merely de-
 termined that they shall be so handled
 as to subserve the public good. w
 draw the line against misconduct not
 against wealth. The capitalist who
 alone or in conjunction with his fel-
 lows, performs some great industrial
 feat by which he wins money is l
 welldoer, not a wrongdoer. provided
 only he works in proper and legitimate
 lines. We wish to favor such a mar
 when he does well. We wish to super.
 wise and control his actions only to pre-
 vent him from doing i'll. Publicity car
 do no harm to the honest corporation
 and we need not be overtender about sparing the dishonest corporation.
 CONTROL WITHOUT RUIN.
 . In curbing and regulating the corn. binations of capital which are or may become injurious to the public we mus be careful not to stop the great enter prises which have legitimately reduced the cost of production. not to abandon the place which our country mas wo- in the leadership of the internationa industrial world, not to strike dow7 l wealth with the result of closing fac tories and mines. of turning the wage ] worker idle in the streets and leavins the farmer without a market for wha he grows. Insistence upon the impos sible means delay in achieving the DOS sible, exactly as, on the other hand ] the stubborn defense alike of what i.
 good and what is bad in the existin. system, the resolute effort to obstruc any attempt at betterment betrayi s blindness to the historic truth that Wis evolution is the sure safeguard agains revolution.
 No more important subject can com $ before the congress than this of tn regulation of interstate business. Thi country cannot afford to sit supine ol the plea that under our peculiar sys tenn of government we are helpless il the presence of the new conditions ard unable to grapple with them or t cut out whatever of evil has arisen il connection with them. The power . the congress to regulate interstate ccn