Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1903-02-19
.GR0SSCUP'S VIEWS
CHICAGO JUDGE is NOT ENTIRELY
PESSIMySTIC.
HAS FAITH IN THE PEOPLE
In Address Before Good Government
Club at Ann Arbor He Declares
That the Exigencies of the Future
Will be Bravely Met--UnrepubIican
Situation Now Menaces.

Ann Arbor. Mich, Feb. 17-Judge
Peter S. Grosscup of the United States
circuit court spoke before the Good
Government club Of the the University
Of Michigan last evening on the gen
eral theme of good government. He
said in part:
in the very nature of things we
must expect that men who do not see
their way clear to an Improvement Of
their conditions under the old forms
of industrial liberty will entertain
sympathy for a system that promises
something new. The separation Of
labor from pToprietorsniD-the sep
arate mobilization OF these two
courses as enemies, instead of their
commingling in common interests
the most unrepublican and menacing
| fact that now confronts the American
| IeOpie.
The consolidation idea has thus fac
| accentuated this menace. It has done
what is still more menacing-in nal-
rowing the personnel of the proprietor
ship of the country, it is detaching
il ON the friends of property the great
! liberal body Of citizenship. However
We may wish it, this oid-time con-
| servatiye force will not, thus isolated
remain stationary It will swing in
| time 10 those whose attitude is already
opposed to the institution Of property,
and in this movement would give to
socialism allies that would make So
ciaIism invincible. Could the old ideals
stand up against an alliance suCn as
| that? Will the great body Of the peU-
| pie, excluded from participation in
| the property of the country, even
though it be through their own district,
| remain loyal to the order of things
to which property must look for us
| bulwark? Can we expect bystander
| to have the interest of one who has a
stake in events? Can We invoke the
name Of America in an order of
| events that in their practical out
| come are essentially un-American and
| unrepublican?
Our first duty is to wake UP to the
/
! to put the forces of industrial freedom
in order. Not until we have done
these-not until the time when the
property acquiring instinct of the
country is again unified upon basis
| fair alike to all-can we rest assured
that the outcome Of the encounter
need be no longer feared.
| But what is such fair basis? What
| changes can we make in corporate
| policy that will lead to the peopleiza-
ton Of the proprietorship Of the coun-
try? viii the people under any condi-
tons, to any large extent, enter the
| field of corporate ownership? These
are practical inquiries that rise natur-
ally TO mind. For my own part, l
| believe that once corporate Organiza-
| ton and management is cleared of
| thimble-rigging and pitfalls, so that
! the fortunes Of an enterprise will be
! bound up, not in an Overstrained or
ganization, but solely in the vicissi-
tudes of the business itself, the Amer
lean people will be found ready to take
up again their share in the proprietor
ship Of the country
"The measures pending in congress
make no change in the basis Of cor
porate organization, nor do they pro
| vide for visitation. They exhibit no
purpose-at least no controlling pur-
pOse-tO widen the prUprfetOrship OF
the country. The publicity proposed
is confined to the gathering and publ
cation of statistics, valuable possibly,
to the Spectator or the trained in
weston, but ineffective and worthless
to the ordinary man who may be seek
| ing ownership. What chiefly is need
| ed-the intervention of government as
trustee not as mere neWs-gatherer, a
! guaranty that when a corporation is
! created its creator has seen to it that
it is fairly organized, not mere stat1s-
tics of hap-hazard corporate organiza-
ton, that the people cannot compre-
| hend-is absent from the bills. In
short the measures pending miss sight
of the prime mischief to be remedies
and thus running astray, miss the
remedies to be adopted.
But though we cannot expect
adequate legislation now, it will come
! The public mind is forming. Unless
am greatly deceived, the mad-dOg
policy of treating corporations, pro
posed by some, will be rejected; the
American people will not, in blind
fury, pull down about them the in
| dustrial edifice But any policy cal
culated to merely temporize will, with
equal conclusiveness, be rejected;
there will be no room, when the public
mind is made up, for the diversions OF
the political masquerade.
and the public mind will in the end
be made up. The people Of the United
States. will, in time, come face to face
with the full significance Of the situa-
/ ton on which they are entering. Side
issues that now obscure will then clear
I'D. and sordid interests that now or
struct. will be brushed aside; and 1t
will be made corporate policy, we are
on our way either to socialism, or to a
form of government no longer republI-
can. Then viii come about deter
mined public will to set our house IN
order: to establish, on the secure
foundations of popular proprietorship
and industrial liberty, the property in
terest of the republic; to restore
those ideals, into the depths Of whose
armament the people of America have
always looked, and look now, for lights
to guide them on their courses"