The daily sentinel., 1907-08-20

Nl5lOudTN anu LAt uOGAA man g ~ 49,
stout hearted and hard headed. He
had lofty purposes. but he had prac-
tical good sense, too. He could hold
his own in the rough workaday world
without clamorous insistence upon
being helped by others, and yet he
could combine with others whenever
1t became necessary to do job which
could not be as well done by any one
man individually.
These were the qualities which
enabled 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 to do our work today
as they did their work in the yester-
days that have vanished. The prob
lens shift from generation to gener-
alton. but the spirit in which they
must be approached. IL they are to
be successfully solved. remains the
same. The Puritan tanned the wilder
ness. and built up a free government
on the stump dotted clearlngs amid
the primeval forest. His descendants
must try to shape the life of our COM
plex Industrial civilization by new
devices, by new methods, so as to
achieve in the end the same results
of Justice and fair dealing toward all
He cast aside nothing old merely for
the sake of innovation, yet he did
hesitate to adopt anything new that
would save his purpose. When he
planted his commonwealths on thls
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
social and Industrial 1ifa We
should certainly not adopt any new
sch ene for tDappling with them
merely because they can only crap
pling with some new scheme.
The Puritan was no Laodicean, no
laissez-faire theorist. 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 rgulate such
conduct with instant unquestioning
prompness and effectiveness. If there
was no other way to secure conform
ity with the rule of right, then he
smote down the transgressor with tho
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 spir-
/ II WHICH We Hiuhl oubM Abuhs Nhth
ever 1t is necessary
The utterly changed conditions OF
our national life necessitates chang
es In certain of our laws, of our gov
ernmental methods. Our federal sys-
TEN of government is based upon the
theory of leaving to each community.
/ to each state, the control over those
things which affect only its own mem
bers and which the people of the To-
cality themselves can best grapple.
| with vi lie providing fer matte nal
sovereignty and states rights need
to be treated not empirically or aea-
demically, but from the standpoint of
the interest of the people as whole.
National sovereignty is to be upheld
in so far as II means the Sovereignty
of the people used for the real AMI ul-
innate good of the people; and states
rights are to be upheld in so far as
\ they mean the peoples rights.
Especially is this true in dealing with
the relations of the people as whole
| to the great corporations which are
the distinguishing feature of modern
| business condition.
Experience has shown that 1t is
necessary to exercise a far more ef-
ficient control than at present over
4 the business use OF those vast for
tunes, chiefly corporate, which are us
ed (as under modern conditions they
almost invariably are) in interstate
| business. When the Constitution was
created none of the conditions of mod
ern business existed. They are Who'll
/ ~ new and we must create new agen-
| cles to deal effectively with them
There Is no objection in the minds
of this people to any mans earn
ing any amount of money IL he does
II honestly and fairly, II he gets 1t as
the result of special skill and enter
/ prise as reward of ample serv-
i've actually rendered. But there Is
/ a growing determination that no man
shall amass a great fortune by spec
ial privilege. by chicanery and wrong
doing so far as 1t is in the power OF
| legislation to prevent; and that the
| fortune when amassed shall not have
| business use that is anti-social. Most
large corporations do n business thar
is not confined to any one state. EN-
perience has shown that the effor,
to control these corporations by mere
state action can not produce whole
some results. In most cases such EFF
| fort fails to correct the real abuses
of which the corporations is or may
j be guilty; while in other cases the
effort is apt to cause either hardship
to the corporation itself, or else hard
ship to neighboring states which have
not tried to grapple with the prob
Il lem in the same manner; and ol
course we must be as scrupulous to
safeguard the rights of the corpora
tions as to exact from them in re-
1 turn a full measure OF justice to the
lpublic. l believe In national incor'
lporation law for corporations engag'
4 ed in Interstate business. ! believe
4 furthermore, that the need for ac'
tion is most pressing as regards those
corporations, which, because they ar,
common carriers, exercise quasi
public function; and which can be
completely controlled, in all respects
by the Federal Government, by the
exercise of the power conferred under
the Interstate commerce clause, and
il necessary, under. the post-roaj
clause. of the Constitution. During
the last few years we have taken
marked strides in advance along the
road of proper regulation of these
railroad corporations; but we must
not stop In the work. The National
Eovernment should exercise over
them a similar supervision and con-
/