Weekly Arizona journal-miner., 1907-05-01

In industrial matters our enormous prosperity has brought with it certain grave evils. IL is our duty to try to cut out these evils without at the same time destroying our well-being itself. This is an era of combination alike in the world of capital and in the world of labor. Each kind of combination can do good, and yet each, however power full, must be opposed when it does ilI At the moment the greatest problem before us is how to exercise such con trol over the business use of vast wealth, individual, but especially cor pOratc, as will insure it's not being used against the interest of the public. while yet permitting such ample legitimate profits as will encourage individual in itiative. It is our business to put a stop Co abuses and to prevent their recurrence, without showing a spirit of mere vindictiveness for what has been done in the past. In John Morlcy's brilliant sketch of Burke he lays cs- pecial stress upon the fact that Burke more than almost any other thinker or politician of his time realized the pro- found lesson that in politics we are
 
 with duties; not with abstract truth, but with practical morality. He es. pecially eulogizes the way in which in his efforts for economic reform, Burke combined unshakable resolution in pressing the reform with a profound temporativencss of spirit which made him, while bent on the extirpation of the evil system. refuse 10 cherish an un. reasoning and vindctivc i'll will toward the men who had benefited by it. Said Burke, "If l can not reform with equity, I will not reform at all CThere is) state to preserve as well as n state to rcform.'
 This is the exact spirit in which this country should move to the reform of abuses of corporate wealth. The wrong docr. the man who swindlcs and cheats, whether on a big scale or a little one, shall receive at our hands mercy as scant as if he committed crimes of viol cncc or brutality. We nre unnltcrahly determined to prevent wrongdoing in the future; we have no intention of trying to wreak such an indiscriminate vengeance for wrongs done in the past as would confound the innocent with the guilty. Our purpose is to build up rather than to tear down. We show ourselves inc truest friends of prop crty when we make it evident that we will not tolerate the abuses of property. We gre steadily bent on preserving the institution of private property; we combat every tendancy toward reduc- ing the people to economic servitude; and we care not whether the tendency is due to sinister agitation directed against all property, or whether it is due to the actions of those members of the predatory classes whose anti-soeial power is immeasurably increased be- cause of the very fact that they pos sess wealth.
 Above all. we insist that while fac ing changed conditions and new prob. lems, we must face them in the spirit which our forcfathcrs showed when they founded and preserved this Republic. The cornerstone of the Republic lies in our treating each man on his worth as a man, paying no heed to his creed, his birthplace, or his occupation, asking not whether hc is rich or poor. whether he labors with head or hand; asking only whether he acts deccntly and hon orably in the various relations of his life, whether he behaves we'll to his family, to his neighbors, to the State. We base our regard for each man on the essentials and not the accidents. We judge him not by his profession, but by his deeds; by his conduct, not by what he has acquired of this world . goods. Other republics have fallen, be- cause the citizens gradually grew to consider the interests of the whole; for when such was the case 1t mattered little whether 1t was the poor who plundered the rich or the rich who ex. plotted the poor; in either event the end of the Republic was at hand. We are resolutc in our purpose not to fall into such pit. This great Republic of ours shall never become the govern ment of plutocracy, and 1t shall never become the government of mob. God willing, it shall remain what our fathers who founded 1t meant it to be "a government in which each man stands on his worth as a man, where each is given the largest personal lib erty consistent with securing the we'll being of the whole, and where, 90 faI as m us lies, We strive continually to secure for each man such equality of opportunity that in the strife of life he may have fair chance to show the stufY that is in him. We arc proud of our schools and of the trained intelii' gcnce they give our children the oppor' tunity to acquire. But what we care | for most is the character of the average man; for we believe iha, if the average of character in the individual citizen is sufficiently high. if he possesses those qualities which make him worthy of respect in his family life and In hi work outside as well as the qualitiei which ft him for success in the har, struggle of actual existence that | such is the character of our individua citizenship, there is literally no neigh of triumph unattainable in this vas experiment of government by, of, an' fro. nan,.Ia