Arizona republican., 1906-12-05

lives who are themselves most potent
 Tn Increasing socialistic feeling. One of the most efficient methods of>avert- Ing the consequences of a dangerous agitation, which is so 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 unde- sirable move for the governmental ownership of railroads is to secure by the government on behalf of the people as whole such adequate control and regulation of the great interstate com mon carriers as will do away with the evils which give rise to the agitation against them. So the proper antidote to the dangerous and wicked agitation against the men of wealth as such is to secure by proper legislation and ex- ecutive action the abolition of the grave abuses which actually do obtain in connection with the business use Of wealth under our present system-or rather no system-of failure to exercise any adequate control at all. Some persons speak as if the exercise Of such governmental control would do away with the freedom of individual
 .
 This is not a fact It would be a yer
 itable calamity to fail to put a pre-
 mium upon individual initiative, indi-
 vidual capacity and effort; upon the energy, character. and foresight which IL is so important to encourage in the
 individual. But as a matter of fact the deadening and degrading effect of pure socialism, and especially of it's ex- treme form communism, and the de-
 struction of individual character which they would bring about, are in part achieved by the wholly unregulateG competition which results in a single individual or corporation rising Q the expense of all others until his or its rise effectually checks all competition and reduces former competitors to a
 position of utter inferiority and sub
 ordination.
 In enacting and enforcing such legis . lation as this congress already has to its credit, we are working on a coher- ent plan, with the steady endeavor to secure the needed reform by the joint action of the moderate men, the plain men who do not wish anything hys-
 tsIical or dangerous, but who do in
 tend 10 deal in resOlute common -sensc fashion with the real and great evils of the present system. The reaction aries and the violent extremists show symptoms of joining hands against us. Both assert, for instance, that If logi- cal, we should go 10 government own
 ership of railroads and the like; the reactionaries. because on such an issue
 they think the people would stand
 with them. while the extremists care rather to preach discontent and agita-
 ton than to achieve solid results. As a matter of fact, our position is as re- mote from that of the Bourbon reac-
 tiOnary as from that or the impracti-
 cable or sinister visionary We hold that the government should not con- duct the business Of the nation, but that it should exercise such supervis-
 ion as will insure it's being conducted in the interest of the nation. Our aim
 is, so far as may be, to secure, for ali decent, hard working men. equality of opportunity and equality of burden.
 The actual working of our laws has
 shown that the effort to prohibit al combination. good or bad is nOxiou.,
 where it is not ineffective Combina-
 ton of capital like combination of
 labor is a necessary element of our present industrial system. IL is nOt possible completely to prevent it; and
 if it were possible such complete pre- vention would do darnagA to the bod / polite. What we need is not vainly to
 try to prevent all combination. but to secure such rigorous and adequate control and supervision of the combi- nations as to prevent their injuring the public. or existing in such form as in l. evitably to threaten injury-for the
 mere fact that combination has SC . cured practically complete control oi , a necessary of life would under any ! circumstances show that such combi nation was to be presumed to he ad- verse to the public interest It is un- fortunate that our present laws should ! forbid all combinations, instead of
 sharply discriminating between those combinations which do good and those combinations which do evil. Rebates, 1 for instance. are as often due to the
 pressure of big shippers Gas was shown
 in the investigation of the Standard Oii company and as has been shown since by the investigation of the tobacco i and sugar trusts) as 10 the initiative
 of big railroads. Often railroads would ! like to combine for the purpose of pre-
 venting a big shipper from maintain | ing improper advantages at the ex- pense of small shippers and of the | general public. Such a combination
 instead of being forbidden by law i should be favored. In other words, it should be permitted to railroads ta make agreements. provided these
 agreements were sanctioned by the in- terstate commerce commission and were published. With these two condi tions complied with it is impossible to see what harm such a combination could do to the public at large. It Is a public evil to have on the statute books a law incapable of full enforce ment because both judges and juries realize tha it's full enforcement would | destroy the business of the country; 1 for the result is to make decent rail- road men violators of the law against their will. and to put a premium on the behavior of the wilful wrongdoers. Such a result in turn tends to throw the decent man and the wilful wrong doer into close association, and in the end to drag down the former 10 the | latter's level: for the man who becomes lawbreaker in one way unhappily | tends to lose all respect for law and to be willing to break it in many ways. Nh more scathing condemnation could