Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1904-07-21

tentative is the labor union or starve.
Relief Must Come from the People.
The primary purpose of trusts is to
destroy competition and relief from
the consequent burdens will never
come from the unselfishness of the
trusts. II relief comes it must come
from the people, using all their pow
er through proper legislation.
Provided no special privileges are
given in the form of tariff and railroad
determinations, no monopoly can en-
dure and maintain extortionate prices.
1t is only through this unnatural sup.
port that competition may be stifled.
Take away these special privileges
and competition will return and we
will have fair prices and natural COM
binations.
There has been to much legislation
in favor of personal and corporate in
terests and the public has been lost
sight of.
These powerful combinations have
taken to themselves the creations of
labor saving machinery which were
mans own invention and should light
en- his burden and have forced man to
become a commodity, serf, means
to their mad rush for gold.
The Issue of Imperialism.
One OF the greatest dangers to our
peace and prosperity is the determin-
alton of our opponents to establish
over seas, colonial possessions. I'M
perialisln is their hope in whose wake
follows militarism, which has proved
the undoing of the nations of the old
world No longer can it be claimed
that the constitution follows the flag
and that the Philippine islands are a
part Of this republic. For has not the
supreme court of the United States de-
cded that an American citizen in the
Philippines, once placed in jeopardy
and discharged, can again and again
be brought to the bar of Justice to an
swer with his life and liberty the
same charge and his most sacred right
that of trial by jury of his peers,
be denied him?
We are unable to subscribe to ex-
pansion of this kind. We believe this
nation expanded within it's rights
when the treaty with France for the
purchase of Louisiana was signed.
We believe we were within the rule
when we took in the great empire of
Texas in 1S45 and again in 1S48 when
we secured New Mexico. The trea-
ties in each case provided that the
territory acquired became part of
the republic and the people, citizens.
The history of the United States
presents a picture Of expansion on
the grandest scale the world has ever
known, and it is to the credit of the
democratic party that every foot of
soil constitutionally added to the re-
public except Alaska was given to the
nation by democratic. administra-
ton. The commonwealth which
fringed the Atlantic at the time of the
revolution are a small part of the
present republic. Their citizens NOV
ed into the unpeopled west, swarming
along the Ohio and the Mississippi I'M
til leaving the plains behind they
scaled the Rocky mountains and
broke the silence of the Pacific.
We have grown from within out
ward, by the appropriation Of practic-
ally unpeopled and contiguous Ameri-
can territory-an overflow of Ameri-
can people and an extension of Ameri-
can government. AS we enlarged Our
republic by securing additional conGg-
uous territory, we set up new state
which became vital part Of the union
into which we carried our constitution
laws and institutions, making one or
ganic whole, strengthened and vitaliz-
ed by half hundred commonwealth.
This is the form of expansion that we
oft ho To o,,fy
How unlike this phase of
national expansian is our assump-
ton Of sovereignty over the
Philippine islands! Taking pos
session by force of arms of vast
territory, thousands of miles
from home, already well peopled by a
race who have long made it their
home, who resent the intrusion and
demand their independence. Our re-
publican friends refer to the islands
as "Our Possessions" and calmly con-
clude that we may do with them what
we will, treat the country as a depend
ency, the people as subjects. In advo-
eating this old barbarous principle of
expansion the republican party is
driving the Ship of State upon the
same rock of disaster that wrecked
the great colonial powers of the sew.
enth century. If we will but study
the political lessons Of the republics
of the past and apply them to the
great problem that now confronts us,
we will be able to save the grandest
republic the world ever knew from
perishing from the dry rot Of colonial
ism.
We are asked to embark upon a
system of conquest and colonization,
to abandon the ideals of our national
lifetime for the feeting phantolns OF
an old world policy. We, whose feet
have once pressed the lofty pathways
our fathers trod would now be guild,
ed on the weary pilgrimage of greed
and despotic power. For the white
beams Of liberty and peace they would
substitute the lurid glare Of vassal-
age and war.
The Waste of Militarisn.
France, a military despotism that
swaggers in the vestments of repub-
lie, second in area of the great colon
izing powers of the world, spends six
teen million dollars annually on her
colonies and receives nothing in re-
turn except an increase in exports in