The Forrest City times., 1906-12-07

moral nature permanently lowered Every lynching means just 60 much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it. and therefore Just so much additional trouble for the next generation of
 Let justice be both sure and swift; but let it be justice under the law, and not the wild and crooked savagery of a mob.
 Capital and Labor.
 On the subject of capital and labor the president takes the agitators of class hatred to task and says to preach hatred to the rich man. as such. ness honest men whose lives are hard and who have not the kind of mental training which will permit them to ap- preached is to commit a crime against the body polite and to be false to every worthy principle and tradition of Amer lcan national life. Continuing on this subject he says:
 The plain people who think-,he mechanics farmers. merchants. work CTS with head or hand. the men to whom American traditions are dear who love their country and try to act decently by their nelghbors. owe it to themselves to remember that the most damaging blow that can be given pop ular government is to elect an un- worthy and sinister agitator on a platform of violence and hypocrisy Whenever such an issue Is raised in this country nothing can be gained by ninching from It, for in such case dem oeraey Is Itself on trial. popular self government under republican forms is mob is just as evil thing as the tri- umph of the plutocracy. and to have escaped one danger avails nothing Whatever if we sucuumb to the other In the end the honest man, whether rich or poor. who earns his own living and tries to deal justly by his fellows. has as much to fear from the insincere and unworthy demagog. promising much and performing nothing. or else performing nothing but evil who would set on the mob to plunder the who, for his own ends. would permit the common people to be exploited by the very wealthy. If we ever let this government fall into the hands of men show ourselves false to America's s past Moreover. the demagog and corrup- tionist often work hand in hand. There are at this moment wealthy reaction aries of such obtuse morality that they regard the public servant who prose- cutes them when they violate the law or who seeks to make them bear their proper share of the public burdens. as being even more objectionable than the violent agitator who hounds on the mob to plunder the rich. There Is nothing to choose between such a re- actionary and such ap agitator; funda- mentally they are alike in their selfish disregard of the rights of others; and 1t Is natural that they should join in opposition to any movement of which the aim is fearlessly to do exact and even justice to all"
 Railroad EmpIoyees' Hours.
 He asks for the passing of the bill linn. iting the number of hours of one. He says the aim of all should be to steadily reduce the number of hours Of labor. with as goal the general in- troduction of an eight-hour day, but in- sists that on the lsthmus of Panama the conditions are different from what they are here that the introduction of an eight-hour day on the canal would be absurd, and continues. Just about as ab- surd as it is. so far as the isthmus Is concerned, where white labor cannot be employed, to bother as to whether the work is done by alien black men or alien yellow men,"
 He urges the enactment of drastic child labor law for the District of Co., lumbia and the territories. and a federal investigation of the subject of child and female labor throughout the country He reviews the work of the commission appointed to investigate labor conditions in the coal fields of Pennsylvania in 1902 and refers to the wish of the commission that the state and federal governments should provide the machinery for what may be called the compulsory investiga- tion of controversies between employers and employees when they arise."
 Control of Corporations.
 A considerable portion of the message is devoted to the subject of federal con- trol of corporations in what he refers to rate. meat inspection and food laws. and says that all of these have already justi- fled their enactment, but recommends the amendment of ehe meat inspection meat products, and also to place the cost of inspection on the packers rather than on the government, Continuing on this subject of the control of corporations by the federal government he says
 "lt cannot too often be repeated that ex- perience has conclusively shown the i'm nearly half a hundred different state legislatures anything but ineffective chaos in the way of dealing with the exclusively within the limits of any one state. In some method, whether by a national license law or in other fashion, date. far more complete control than at present over these great corpora tions-a control that will among other things prevent the evils of excessive the disclosures by each big corporation of it's stockholders and of It's properties and business, whether owned directly or thru subsidiary or affiliated eorpo ations This will tend to put stop to the secur- ing of inordinate profits by favored individuals at the expense whether of IS the wageworkers. Our effort should be not so much to prevent consolidation as such, but so to supervise and control 1t as to see that it results in no harm to the people. The reactonary or ultracon- servative apologists for the misuse of wealth assail the effort to secure such control as a step toward socialism. As a matter of fact it is these reactionaries and ultraconservative who are them selves most potent in increasing socialis- tic feeling One of the most efficient ct nF tha 0f dangerous agitation, which Is 80 per cent. wrong, is to remedy the 20 per cent. of evil as to which the agitation Is we'll founded. The best way to avert the very undesirable move for the governmental ownership of railways is to secure by the government on behalf of the people as a whole such adequate control and regulation of the great interstate com mon caOers as will do away with the evils which give rise to the agitation against them. So the proper antidote against the men of wealth as such Is to secure by proper legislation and execu- tive action the abolition of the grave abuses which actually do obtain in con nection with the business use of wealth under our present system--or rather no system-of failure to exercise any ade- quate control at all. Some persons speak as if the exercise of such governmental control would do away with the freedom viduai effort This is not fact. It would be a veritable calamity to fail to put a premium upon individual initiative. individual capacity and effort; upon the energy character and foresight which it Is so important to encourage in the