The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-02

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 Needs Wise Laws.
 Therefore we need wise laws, and we need to have them resolutey admins tered We can get such lawA and such administration only if the people are alive to their interests. The other day l lis tened to an admirable sermon by Bishop Johnston, of western Texas. His theme was that the vital element in judging any man should be his conduct, and neither his position nor his pretensions; and, furthermore, that freedom could only stay with people which has the habit of self-mastery. As he said, the price of liberty is not only eternal vigilance, but eternal virtue; and I may add, eter- nal common sense. Each man here knows that he himself has been able to use his freedom to advantage only provided that he could master himself, that he could control his own passions and direct his own faculties. Each of you fathers and mothers here knows that if your sons are to do well in the world they must know how to master themselyes. Every man must have a master if he is not his own master. then somebody else will be. This is just as true of public life as of private life. If We cannot master ourselves, control ourselves, then 6pplti oI ldltE We SlHll lldNe lO SuDHlll to outside control. for there must be control somewhere
 Exercising Control.
 One way of exercising such control is through the laws of the land. Ours is a government of liberty, but it is a government of that orderly liberty which comes by and through the hon est enforcement of and obedience to the law. At intervals during the last few months the appeal has been made to me not to enforce the law against certain wrongdoers of great wealth because to do so would interfere with the business prosperity of the country. Under the effects of that kind of fright which when sufficiently acute we call panic, this appeal has been made to me even by men who ordinarily be- have as decent citizens. One news paper which has itself strongly ad Vanced this view, gave prominence to the statement of certain man Of great wealth to the effect that the so called financial weakness was due en- tirely to the admitted intention of President Roosevelt to punish the large moneyed interests which had trans gressed the laws" I do not admit that this has been the main cause of any business troubles we have had; but it is possible that 1t has been contribu- tory cause. If so, friends. as far as I am concerned it must be accepted as a disagreeable but unavoidable feature in a course of policy which as long as l am President will not be changed. In any great movement for righteousness where the forces Of evil are strongly intrenched, Ii Is unfor- tunately inevitable that some unonend- ing people should suffer in company with the real offenders. This is not f- tlao fa 1lf af thnCn n whose deceptive action these innocent people owe their false position, year or two ago certain representa- lives of labor called upon me and in the course of a very pleasant conVer- sation told me that they regarded me as "the friend of labor l answered that l certainly was and that l would do everything in my power for the Iaboring man except anything that was wrong | have the same answer to make to the business man. l will do everything 1 can do to help business conditions. except anything that IS wrong And 1t would be not merely wrong but infamous to fall to do all that can be done to secure the pun ishment of those wrongdoers whose deeds are peculiarly repreh ensible be- cause they are not committ>d under the stress of want. Whenever a seri- ous effort is made to cut out what Is evil in our political life whether the effort takes the shape of warning against the gross and sordid forms of evil in some municipality, or wheth- CT 1t takes the shape of trying to secure the honest enforcement of the law as against very powerful and wealthy people. there are sure to be certain individuals who demand that the movement stop because 1t may hurt business. In each case the an swer must be that we earnestly hope and believe that there will be no per manent damage to business from the movement. but that if righteousness conflicts with the fancied needs of business then the latter must go to the wall. We cannot afford to sub stitute any other test for that of guilt or innocence, of wrongdoing or we'll doing. in judging any man. If a man does well, if he acts honestly, he has nothing to fear from the administra- ton. But so far as in me lies the cor rupt politician, great or small, the private citizen who transgresses the law-be he rich or poor--shall be brought before the impartial justice of a court. Perhaps l am most anX ious to get at the politician who is corrupt, because he betrays great trust but assuredly I shall not spare his brother curruptionist who shows him
  according to our power, crimes of fraud and cunning shall be prosecuted as relentlessly as crimes of brutality and physical violence.
 Need Good Laws.
 We need good laws and we need above all things the hearty aid of good citizens in supporting and enforcing the laws. Nevertheless, men and wom- en of this great state. men and women of the middle west. never forget that law and the administration of law, im- portant though they are. must always occupy a wholly secondary place as compared with the character of the average citizen himself On this trip I shall speak to audiences in each of which there will be many men who fought in the civil war You who wore the blue and your brothers of the south who wore the gray know that in war no general, no matter how good: no organization, no matter how perfect, can avail if the average man in the ranks has not got the figh ting edge. We need the organization, the preparation; we need the good gem eral but we need most the fighting edge in the individual soldier. So it is in private life. We live in a rough workaday world, and We are yet a long way from the millennium. We cannot as a nation and we cannot as 10 a,1x tl