The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-02-28
SEEING HIM UP.

R%eH<rW @AA@@ NAs
 It takes The PhiiadeIphia Record to hit off some Rooseveltian weaknesses and inconsistencies in way not to be misunderstood In one of his latest homiiies the President speaks some what contemptuously and reprovingiy of what he calls "a curious revival or the doctrine of States rights"--a doc Urine which. as The Record says, Is to be found In the decisions of the su- preme Court from the time of John Marshall down to the present day. The President also refers to what he calls the idle critics" who invoke this doc- Urine to prevent the enactment of a national child labor law, and to inter- fere with the immigration laws To all this The Record says:
 Who are these idle critics" In the Senate of the United States the Repuo- lican majority gave no further consia eration to Senator Beveridges cnild labor bill than to expose II as almlng the Federal government. In the House the Judiciary Committee, containing some of it's ablest Republican members, made a unanimous report against the bill as an enCrOaGnment upon tHt. PO- lice power of the several States. such are the idle critics"-"the faddists and doctrinaires"- whom is due "a curious revival of the doctrine or state rights"
 AS to the Presidents allusion to the attempt ito break the force of the con- tract labor laws" that attempt came out of his own administration In the decision of his Secretary of the De- partment of Commerce that South Car .Is r.. ~f lat. in violation of these laws. Nor Is there anything In the new immigration act that denies the right of State to re- cruit labor through it's own agents and at it's own expense in foreign lands. When, therefore, President Roosevelt denounces the idle critics" who have opposed the child labor bill and favored South Carolina's importation of con- tract labor, he makes an incorporate attack upon the whole body of Con gross, including the Republican major ity, and upon leading officials of his own administration. Instead of look ing beyond the windows of the White House for faddists and doctrinaires, he will find a most robust specimen of the tribe in looking into his own mirror. . There are none more dangerous than such as would break down the barriers of the Constitution that safeguard the most sacred rights of the people against the arbitrary power of changing ma- JOA AbA~S &Aa (Oh SSS 1At0 0tehSS 1NAASA lures.
 That was from a Democratic news paper, but the Republican New Bedford Standard is equally uncomplimentary, saying.
 A Washington correspondent of a Boston newspaper says that the Pres ident has more than once said he was for States rights so long as they were the peoples rights and no longer" We should really like to know what the President or the correspondent, or both of them. mean, or think they mean, by the distinction between States rights States but the people who live in them, and what are the rights of the States but the rights of the people? What are any rights-State rights or Federal rights-but the rights of the people? ? Neither State nor nation has the small est scrap of rights as a dualitc or a function apart from the rights of the people, and when any person sets up either one or the other as something different from the rights of the people, he shows that he has an exceedingly poor conception of the whole subject. A so-called States right that Is not a right of the people is no right at all- no more, for that matter, is a so-cafled Federal right. Some nersons do not appear to comprehend this fundamen- tai truth of the American system.
 The truth is that some of Roosevelt's talk at Harvard was what, in a less exalted parsonage. would be designated as maundering. Any one who would read his remarks on that occasion and take them as gospel truth would con- clude that the rights of the States is e mere doctrinal or theoretical beliei which had long since been discarded and of which some meddlers are try. ing to bring about revival" instead of being vital, constitutional and well-estabIished principle of our gov ernment, and which he and some oth- CTS are diligently trying to abolish and destroy.
 In the language of The New York Commercial the President fails to state the thing fairly or intelligently however, when he declares that the States cannot with justice to both sides control the corporations and that the advocates of State control really want no control at all. Nobody waxes more enthusiastic and eloquent than Theodore Roosevelt when he con- templates the marvellous, unprecedented achievement of this country in recent years in it's industrial and commercial progress. Yet this has been possible only through the very general incor, poration of capital and talents, and thS States have held this in their own con troll strictly and absolutely; and noth. ing is more notable in their recent leg, islation than the Jealousy with whicf they guard this right of control anC assert 1t In new ways whenever tn, occasion arises. There is no man of in telligence and reason who advocate non-control or wants it. To do s, would be to invite anarchy"
 To those of us who live in this mil, climate 1t is difficult to und s.'slani how