The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1905-07-07
DIVORCE BUSINESS FROM
POLITICS.

That Judge Alton b. Parker has not
lost his standing, his verility, his tren-
cleanliness, from the fact that defeat
met his candidacy for the presidency
last fall, is evinced by the following
letter written to Secretary Thomas f.
Smith, secretary of the Tammany So
ciety of New York, which celebrated
the Fourth of July, as it is wont to do
each year:
because greed, left to run riot, has
produced some bad conditions in cities
and in great corporations, we are adj
vised to run headlong into municipal
or government ownership and opera
ton. This policy is advocated, in spite
Of the fact that in other countries, and
in the surroundings far more favorable
for these experiments than our own,
they have uniformly interfered with
development and curbed initiative. In
other words, the only alternative thus
presented for the curling of greed is
that of rushing wildly into all the
perils Of over-government.
"The fact that this incipient stage of
socialism finds advocacy ought not to
excite surprise. For nearly half GEN.
fury we have been preaching and prac-
ticing it on larger scale than ever be-
fore tried We have thrown greed,
organized a. 1t never was before, into
au active par nership with government.
In order to swell the public revenues
by one dollar we have permitted a
small, exclusive, grasping class TO put
into their own pockets at least three
dollars drawn in the form of inordinate
and eXtortionate profits from the whole
body of consumers of every calling and
employment 1t is no cause for Won
der if some of the latter have reached
the conclusion that no formal socialism
could be more dangerous or demoraliz-
ing thsn the fiscal system which, pro-
ducng such results, grows by what It
feeds on.
The demoralizing effect of this sys-
TEN is seen in the alliance resulting
and necessary between greed and peli-
tics, which finds illustration at every
step. Thus we ought not TO be surprised
when we see a managemen MT in some OF
our great fiduciary institutions which
is dangerous, corrupt and selfish 1t is
then realized that under the workings
of this system, in which lobbying,
blackmail and corruption are the sim
plest elements, we are only looking
upon the application in all the success
sive circles of society of the vicious
practices inherent in an unjust fiscal
system.
ut is thus made incumbent upon US
to recognize, in the first place, that, as
the dangers which confront US are new,
they require nothing but the old re-
spect for law, demand for its rigid ex-
ecution and recognition of those doc
trines and practices which fix unalter
ably the limits of right and wrong. We
do not need to look for new cures for
the old diseases; we have only to apply
the old remedies in drastic doses.
Following the recognition of this
fact comes the necessity for the divorce
of business and politics-a union which
has been so long continued and so fer
tile in evil progeny that the process Of
separation will be long and difficult.
The Democratic party must do all that
lies in its power to promote an end so
give new potency to the principles and
policies for which it has consistently
contended during all the changes Of
more than a century,