The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-12-22
GrOsscup SAYS R0oseVeIts Fault
is Attempting Too Much
HIGH PRAISE FOR PRESIDENT
How Can property and Prosperity
Nation Be Distributed Among
Entire People of the
Country.

Springfield, O.. December 81. Judge
Peter S Grosscup of Chicago made an
address here tonight under the auspices
of the Commercial club and Wttenberg
college.
In discussing Control of Corporations
he spoke in part as follows:
81 have Il friend up the state, who the
morning of every election day votes his
party ticket, and votes it with as much
publicity as the laws permit, but in the
evening waits for the returns, his heart
full of the wish that the other party has
won. There are many men in public life
today who have just that kind of fealty
to the President and his politics My re-
spect for him is not of that kind. No
other individual career in recent years
has so conspicuously broken into public
atmosphere that had become stasnant
clearing it up as an electrical storm
clears up a sultry summer day. In the
character of a great moral force, l loot
upon Mr.. Roosevelt as one of the great
figures of the times in which we live
10 no other individual has been given so
great an opportunity to lay anew tbs
foundations on which our country's fu-
ture peace and prosperity must rest; TO
the extent that he is effectively using
that opportunity-ge getting results out OF
the popular awakening--I follow him as
my leader. But, like every great man in
the crisis of great career, the President
stands now at point where it will be
speedily determined, whether foundations
that go deep enough to sustain the new
great industrial life on which America
has entered are to be laid by him, leav-
ing it to his successors to carry up ths
superstructure, or whether he is to %
off the stage the great evangel, but an
evangel only, of the future thai
awaits us.
Too Many Things at Once.
1.-THE danger that threatens him is the
old, old danger that turks in every at
tempt to do too many things at one and
the same time The American people do
but one thing at time. And the one
great thing that is upon this generation
of Americans to settle-to so settle that
it will stay settled-is the ways and
means through which the property and
the prosperity of the country, indisputa-
bly, great, and growing greater every day
shall be put on their way to becoming the
property and the prosperity of the entire
people of the country. When that great
work is accomplished, or fairly on is
way toward accomplishment, the obliga-
ton of this generation of Americans will
have been discharged But that great
work will never be put on its way to
accomplishment by anything less than an
earnest, organized, popular movement,
movement, that denying to itself every
thing else, concentrates itself upon a cor
poration reform, that like the great Ger
man corporation reform of thirty years
ago, will go to the bottom of the wrong
mo mere so-called federal license plan
will fulfill that end the reform to bring
back the people of the country into the
ownership and control of the property of
the country must not rest upon COR
poration policy as it exists today, changed
III no particular except that the corpora
tons arc to be subjected to a little ad-
ditional scrutiny at Washington.
'The mere prosecution of corporations
that are dlsobeying the law, the law
exists today, will not fulfill that end;
something more must be done with the
corporation than to put it on the docket
of the criminal courts.
mo mere policy of curtailng great for
tunes, by system of income or inheri-
tance taxes, will, standing alone, fulfill
that end. To restore to the people of the
country the ownership and control of the
property of the country requires that we
should be concerned much more for
state of things that will create many lit
tie property fortunes, than for state
OF things that admits of no great for
tunes.