The Roswell daily record. [volume] (Roswell, N.M.) 1903-current, 1907-06-06
r. II. McCune
In Patterson's Harness Store.
"DIsTRIBuTIvE JUSTICE"

civilian Allen White in Emporia
Gazette.)
Not long ago Senator Stephen B.
Elkins of West Virginia-one of the
conservatives of the American con
gress said that the economic history
of America had reached a point where
we no longer need so many laws re-
lating to the accumulation of wealth,
but that in the future we must devote
ourselves to framing laws That will
look to the equitable distribution of
wealth. Last week in Kansas City,
Chief Justice Gaylor, of the New York
supreme court said, 1.-The prime OBJ
ject of government is to promote dis
tributive justice tt all" "Distributive
justice" is n of those apt phrases
that is likely to become popular. And
in the phrase may be found every is
sue of our modern American politics.
During the decade in which we now
live popular political thought in Amer
lea mas divided itself into two schools
those VINO honestly and consistent
lly believe that government is merely
a policeman, whose duty it is to see
that peace prevails in a nation, a state
or a city; that contracts are carried
out, in the spirit and the letter, n
that in matters concerning h rela-
lions between the weak and the strong
government has no business to inter
fere. That is the old-fasnioned Gais-
seq faire school. 1t reached its height
of popularity in America under the
regime of NJ. A. Hanna. Mckinley
was just breaking AWAY from it when
he died.
The other school of politics believes
that government should not only keep
the peace, and see that contracts are
enforced, but that government Mould
look into the nature of h contracts,
to see that in them is nothing which
if performed will be detrimental to the
best interests of society; for instance,
if the contract is a wage contract,
| that it provide for a living wage-one
at which the worker may be able to
subsist with mis- family, and grow in
tellectually so that government at
the ballot box may have b advan-
tage of an enlightened man at the
polls. Or if the contract be n be-
tween shipper and railroad those who
believe in d%istributive justice, believe
that government should intervene in
the contract to see that the contract
| does not give one shipper a rate that
will ruin another shipper to whom the
rate is denied or that the need of the
shipper is not made a part of the rate.
Or again. the believers in government
interference in securing equitable dis
triSution of wealth contend that 1t IS
only fair that government shall act
as guardian of the weak against the
Strong-hence the pure food laws,
hence the restrictions of vice, hence
the government supervision of corp
orations.
These are issues in American poll
tics today. 1t is distributive justice
against the devil take the hindermost.
The tariff is an issue only as to wne-
Their or not it shall be revised-which
is of course d~istributfve justice again.
The ~so-called Roosevelt policies" are
without exception, policies concerned
! with d~istributive Justice: The income
tax the inheritance tax; the license
for corporation and the further extern
sion of the rate law-tnese are purely
measures which concern the distri-
button and not b accumulation OF
wealth. They are the issues that nus