Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1907-08-21

noble ease and those who would teach
us to admire successful wrong doing.
Our ideals should be high, and vet
they should be capable of achievement
In practical fashion; and we are as
little to be excused If we permit our
Ideals to be tainted with what is sor-
did and mean and base, as If we al
low our power of achievement to
atrophy and become either incapable
of effort or capable only of such fan
taStlc effort as to accomplish nothing
of permanent good. The true doctrine
to preach to this nation, as to the in
dividuals composing this nation, is
not the life of ease, but the life of eff
fort. If 1t were in my power to prom
Use the people of this land anything,
| would not promise them pleasure.
would promise them that stern hap
plness which comes from the sense of
having done in practical fashion a
difficult work which was worth do
ing.
The Puritan owed his extraordinary
success In subduing this continent
and making it the foundation for a
social life of ordered liberty primarily
to the fact that he combined i'm a
very remarkable degree both the
power of individual initiative, of in
dividual self-help, and the power of
acting in combination with his fell
lows; and that furthermore he Joined
to a high heart that shrewd common
sense which saves a man from the be-
setting sins OF the visionary and the
doctrinaire He was stout hearted
and hard-headed. He had lofty pur-
poses. but he had practical good sense.
too. He could hold his own in the
rough workaday world without clam
orous insistence upon being helped by
others, and yet he could combine
with others whenever it became nee
essary to do a job which could not be
as well done by any one man indi-
vidually
These were the qualities which en-
abled him to do his work. and they
are the very qualities which we must
show in doing our work today. There
IS no use in our coming here to pay
homage to the men who founded this
nation unless we first of all come in
the spirit of trying to do our work
today as they did their work i'm the
yesterdays that have vanished. The
problems shift from generation to
generation, but the spirit in which
they must be approached, If they are
to be successfully solved, remains ever
the same, The Puritan tanned the
wilderness, and built up free gov
ernment on the stump-dotted clear
ings amid the primeval forest His
descendants must try to shape the life
of our complex industrial civilization
by new devices, by new methods, so
as to achieve In the end the same re-
suits of justice and fair dealing to-
ward all. He cast aside nothing old
merely for the sake of innovation, vet
he did not hesitate to adopt anything
new that would save his purpose.
When he planted his commonwealths
on this rugged coast he faced wholly
new conditions and he had to devise
new methods of meeting them. SO we
of today face wholly new conditions
in our social and industrial life. We
should certainly not adopt any new
scheme for graphing with them
merely because II is new and un-
tried; but we can not afford to shrink
from praggling with them because
they can only be grappled with by
some new scheme.
The Puritan was no Laodlcean, no
laisseZ-faire theorst. When he saw
conduct which was in violation of his
rights-of the rights of man. the
rights of God, as he understood them
he attempted to regulate such con-
duct with instant, unquestioning
prOmptness and effectiveness. If
there was no other way TO secure con-
fOrmity with the rule of right, then
he smote down the transgressor with
the iron of his wrath The spirit of
the Puritan was a spirit which never
shrank from regulation of conduct II
such regulation was necessary for the
public veal: and this is the spirit
which we must show today whenever
II Is necessary.
The utterly changed conditions OF
our national life necessltates changes
In certain of our laws Of our govern
mental methods. our federal system
of government is based upon the
theory of leaving to each community
10 each state, the control over those
things which affect only It's own
members and which the people OF the
locality themselves can best grqpple
with, while providing for national reg
ulatlon In those matters which neces-
sarily affect the nation az whole
II seems 10 me that such questions AZ
national sovereignty and states rights
need TO be treated not emplrieally OF
academlcally but from the stand
point of the interests Of the people
AZ whole. National sovereignty II
to be upheld In SO far as II means the
Sovereignty Of the people used for the
real and ultimate good of the people
and states rights are to be upheld In
50 far as they mean the peoples
rights. Especially Is this true In
dealing with the relations of the peo.
pie as whole to the great corpora.
tlons which are the distinguishing fea'
tufe of modern business conditions.
essary to exercise a far more efficient
control than at present over the bust.
ness use Of those vast fortunes. chiefly
corporate, which are used (as undei