Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-11-02

a corporation by signing and filing a paper,
just as anybody can form partnership.
And the great mass of our business peo-
pie, especially those engaged in manufac
ture, are doing their business through
corporate form; our enormous manufacture
ing industry could not be carried on in any
other way. If you destroy corporations,
you close your mills and your furnaces,
you stop the payment of wages, you de-
stroy the purchasing power of the wage
workers, you reduce the sales of our mer-
chants and the market for farm products.
Corpora tons are not bad in themselves,
but the managers of some of them and
of many of the reatest ones have used them
as opportunities for wrOngdoing, If not
criminal Wrongdoing.
The thing needed is to cut out the wrong
doing and save the business, and these cor
pora tons are of so many different kinds.
engaged in so many kinds of varied and
complicated business, so intimately con-
nected with all the production and trade
and prosperity of the country, that the
same kind of patient, experienced and dis
eliminating skill is needed for the process
that the surgeon needs in cutting out tu
NOR from the human body and saving the
life of the patient.
Process Of Redress Going On.
Now. this process of intelligent and eff
fective redress Of wrongs is going on; great
and substantial progress has been made in
it; laws are being reformed so as to meet
the present evils; laws are being enforced
with vigor and success, malefactors are be-
ing punished according to law and not
against law: skill and wisdom and efficien-
cy and honest purpose never surpassed in
the history of this or any other country
have put their hands to the task and are
pressing 1t forward with untiring energy
The most conspicuous and fit representa-
1--WE of this great and beneficent work in
this state is Charles E. Hughes There was
never occasion to feel more proud of the
70 !,
Marshall and Webster and Lincoln and Til
uen belonged than when through the long
weary months of the insurance inyestiga-
tlon with pauent and untiring industry
with courage, skill and honesty, he followed
step by step the clues which led through all
The complicated affairs of the great com
panies 10 the laying bare of official wrong
uolns. Neither wealth, nor power, nor so
clal position, nor political influence turned
him aside one hairs breadth from his
course; nor did any thought of himself. any
desire Tor popularity, any faint of self-ad-
Nerusing or Disqualification obscure his
vision or affect his conduct He was the
skilled and single-minded instrument of in
exorable justice
When the facts were all uncovered he
arranged them and stated them so plainly
that child could understand their deep
significance, and then wisdom of no com
mon order guided his judgment upon the
legislative remedies for which the facts
called. This work was worth more than
hlillons or staring headlines and clever
sensational editorials, more than a wilder
ness of promises from one who seeks to
barter promises for votes. l cannot be-
lieve that the hundreds of thousands of
policyholders in this state are not grateful
for this service, that all good citizens
who justly resented the wrongs which he
uncloaked would not be glad to have such
man empowered to continue lust such
service in all departments of our state gov
eminent by election to the goyernorship
of the state.
The most conspicuous and fit represent
alive of this same great and beneficant
work in the federal government is Theo
dore Roosevelt, President of the United
states Let me state some of the cor
porate evils with which he has undertaken
10 deal, not all, but the principal ones
Many great corporations have united in
the formation of so-called trusts to get rid
or competition. create monopolies of the
business in which they are engaged, restrict
production and put down the prices at
which they purchase raw material and
put up the prices at which they sell their
products.
- Many great corporations ana trusts
nave undertaken to crush out their remain
ing competitors by unfair competition. and
especially by securing lower rates of freight
from the railroad companies for their
products than their smaller competitors
and as the railroads are bound by law to
give the same rates to all shippers this un-
fair advantage has taken the form Of Sc
cret rebates
3. Many railroad companies have exer-
Cised their arbitrary power to fix their
rates by arranging them in such a way
that even without giving rebates they have
favored the large shippers in special local
titles and have been unreasonable toward
small shippers in other localities By these
unfair means the big, ricn corporations
have been continually driving the small
weak men to the wall, taking away their
business and increasing their own wealth
4. The managers of many great cor
poratiOns not satisfied with the natural in
crease of successful business. have enor-
mously Increased their capitalization beyond
either their investment the value of
their property fairly used in business Much
of the watered stock has been sold to in
nocent investors much of 1t has been Sc
cured by the managers themselves through
various devices. for insufficient considera-
ton. These greatly excessive capitals and
the necessity of paying interest upon them
nave stood as barriers against the reduc-
ton of transportation rates or the prices
OF products to a point which would secure
fair business returns.
5. The offending corporations have clothed
their vast and complicated business af-
fairs with mantle of secrecy, so that 1t
has been almost impossible to get at the
facts of their offending and quite impossible
for any weak, private person or small cor
poration who has been injured by them
& One of the great obstacles to the re-
dress of these evils has been the unw,ll-
ingness or inability of the states to deal
state to control corporations doing bust
ness in all the states. The state cannot
control interstate commerce at ALL Many
of the states have by Their laws as well
as by their administration facilitated and
encouraged the Objectionable practices
President Has Charged With Energy.
Let me tell you that our own state is
not blameless in this respect and that we
need a Hughes at Albany with the skill
and courage to deal with that subject as
he dealt with the insurance subject. On
the other hand, the federal Cover niiient
has been met at every turn by the diff
Guilty of controlling state corporations in
the exercise of the powers conferred upon
them by the state in which they were
created.
Against these battlements of wrong the
President has charged with all the energy
and sincere conviction of his nature; he
has waged and is waging open warfare
not against wealth. but against ill-gotten
wealth, not against corporations, but
against the abuse of corporate power;
not against enterprise and prosperity, but
against the unfair and fraudulent devices
of selfish greed.
The honest poor man who has felt The
.l,,, Of Cot,