The Delta independent., 1907-06-28
THE PRESIDENT ON HIS POLICY
philadelphia North Amerian)

philadelphia North American)
The presidents speech at Indianapo-
lis on Memorial day was a defense and
reaffirmation of his policy with re-
spect to the relation of the nation to its
common carriers. 1t was, perhaps, the
most notable and virile of all his public
utterances. 1t was temperate. judi
cious, positive, and SO clear in its state
ments that no man can fail to under
stand the meaning of his purposes.
1t should end misrepresentation and
silence calumny. This man aims at no
conclusion apart from the public inter-
est. He is not an assailant, but con-
servator, of property. He would hurt
nobody but the men who would hurt
their fellows. His motives are not de-
rived from the impulses of ambition,
but from the inspiration of lofty and
devoted patriotism.
Observe the drift of his argument:
Grimes of cunning crimes of the
Wall street stock waterer, the offenses
of the giver of railroad rebates, the
misdeeds of the man who corners the
necessaries of human life-must be
stopped and punished. as well as the
crimes of violence.
The rights of the investor in corpora
tion securities must be safe-guarded.
The railroad wrecker must be made i'm
potent. The railroad business must
have publicity and government super
vision, and the guarantee supplied by
government control, as the national
banks have them.
Railroad capital must be devoted to
improvements and not to speculation or
political corruption. Overcapitalization
of American railroads, he thinks, is not
the general rule, but congress should
have the railroads valued. Extensions
by absorption of connecting lines are to
be encouraged, and pooling, under gov
ernmental control, may be desirable;
but acquisition of competing lines
should be forbidden, and railroads
should be compelled to confine their op-
erations to the business of transporta-
ton.
To every one of these propositions
The North American heretofore and
many times has given its hearty appro
baton. We do not fear that they will
have any other fate at the hands of
the American people. In them. and in
all the remainder of his speech, the
president maintains fully the position
he has taken in the past. The move
ment to regulate railroads." he de-
clares, has come to stay. Every fed
eral law passed for that purpose has
been just and proper.
There is no regret. There will be
no halt in the forward movement. We
ask the consent of no man in carrying
out this policy" proclaimed the presi-
dent; and the consent of no man is re-
quired in presence of the incontrov erti-
bic fact that the policy has the approv-
al Of the whole body Of the people.
The president not only holds the ad-
vanced ground, but he pushes forward
a little way. He offers the sugg estion
that the authority given to the govern
ment by the constitution for the contr ol
of post roads may cover the whole case
between the railroads and the federal
power. II there be not authority enough
it may perhaps lie there. The
court of last resort will probably have
to determine that issue before the
struggle with corporate power is ended.
A right estimate of this great speech
will be obtained only if the fact be OBJ
served that we are now in the full
stress of conflict between the people on
the one hand, represented by the presi-
dent and the government, and vast
and powerful conspiracy of predatory
wealth on the other hand. The war is
waged not at all upon the railroads,
but upon the men. like Hartman, who
have used the railroads for the robbery
of the people, and upon the other over
rich Wall street men who, by crimes of
cunning, filch from the people the
wealth the people have created.
These men know, better than the or
dinary Industrious citizen knows, that,
If the president shall win, the game
will be up for them. There will be no
more opportunities for them to make
twenty millions in twenty minutes, and
to operate schemes for plunder of both
stockholders and shippers.
Many people have had but insufficient
comprehension of the dimensions of the
stakes for which the gamblers and the
pirates played; but for Hartman and
Rockefeller and Rogers and Morgan,
and men of that kind, the promise that
they will no longer hsVe . chance to
prey upQp pruducers excites rare and