Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1903-07-04
FOR FAIR PLAY IN BUSINESS.
What the Department Of Commerce Is
Desianed to Do.

D0SiSU00 " OOs
The department Of commerce, by
pricking the bubble Of business shams,
through merciless publicity, win put
the person who misappropriates and
misapplies money, whether Of stock
holders or depositors or creditors of
any sort, upon exactly the social and
moral plane with the man who hypoth-
coates a horse, writes William Allen
White, in the Saturday Evening Post.
Under its jurisdiction the commission
er of corporations can compel the hum
blest corporate brickyard to disclose
it's intimate affairs as readily as he
can make the officers Of the Standard
Oil corporation divulge their secrets.
The commissioner Of corporations can
compel the concern which is afflicted
with labor strike to publish whether
or not the profits of the concern war
rant the demands Of the strikers. He can
not compel arbitration, but he can give
the public the real facts and the equi-
ties of the case are known absolutely
beyond a question. Public sentiment
is a compulsory arbitration board from
which there Is no appeal, and when
public sentiment is reliably informed
1t is tremendous engine. No labor
union and no industrial corporation
can stand up against it. No other act
created during this generation is so
powerful to promote industrial peace
as this act, creating the department of
commerce, will be If it is wisely en-
forced.
A law, however, Is only as efficient
as the men who. are employed to en-
force 1t, and no more 80. Better a
good man and a poor law than a poor
man and good law. The members of
the Legion family who are in politics
and dislike Theodore Roosevelt, the
man, and can find no comfort in him
as president, were unspeakably offen-
ded at the appointment Of George B.
Cortelyou as secretary Of commerce
and labor. These gentlemen said that
the place called for tried and exper-
fenced business man, and not a mere
clerk! Others who admire the presi-
dent, and are Of the type that goes
through life looking for things to gasp
at, were stricken that a man who
began life so humbly-as a stenogra-
pher, forsooth!-should become a
member Of the cabinet. Which Is more
or less funny, since every member of
the cabinet, with one exception, had
even an humber beginning than that
Of stenographer.
The real marvel Of Mr.. Cortelyou's
rise Is not that he rose from a stenog-
rapher to member Of the cabinet; a
thousand men in this country have
travelled farther in life than that. The
wonder is that he rose, step by step, in
government work, with one promotion
following another, until the appoint
ment to a cabinet portfolio was prac-
tically civil service promotion. There
Is no denying the fact that Mr.. Cortei-
you does not bring to the work before
him a training as business man; but
on the other hand, the mysteries of
business training are hardly Sibyline;
there is nothing so sacred and holy
about business training, except that
1t teaches industry, and If a man is
reasonably honest 1t teaches him that
honesty pays. AS secretary to three
presidents and as confidential friend
to two, Mr.. Cortelyou has been in the
engine room Of some weighty matters
matters infinitely more weighty, for
instance, than any deal or job or pool
or combination that has been made on
Wall street for generation. To rise
as Mr.. Cortelyou has risen he has had
to work-twelve hours a day has been
his average for many years-and his
place was one in which he took his
business to bed with him and snuggled
up to 1t as closely before falling asleep
as any business man in America.
Mr.. Cortelyou is a particularly strong
man for the place. He Is strong,
practical man, endowed with the
worlds every day moral sense; but he
has not the moral sense Of high fl
nance" which sanctions a pool and re-
CARDS the man in a pool who unloads
his stock on his confreres as shrewd
instead of dastardly; and, with this
moral sense Mr.. Cortelyou has trained