The morning journal-courier., 1907-12-31
An Absurd Aecukation.

An Absurd Accusation.
 Again, it is said that the rate bill for which the administration is re- sponsible caused the present panic. Could anything be ntore absurd? 1? The object of the rate bill was mere ly to bring the railroads! under closer supervision of a tribunalI which could act upon complaints bf individuals suffering from their injustice The immediate effect of it's passage was the voluntary reduction eof rates. Sub sequently, under normal circum- stances justifying 1t, the rates of the railways generally were increased. The continuance of the abuses of the rail- way management were made by the rate bill much more dAfticult; but the rate bill has not had the slightest ef- feet upon the legitimate business earnings of the railways. The utter hollowness in the cry that the rate bill caused the panic is seen in the fact that those who now venture to ad- vance this proposition have been for more than year contending that the rate bill was a hunbug and fraud because it had no effect whatever-he- cause it had given promise of a re- duction of rates and no reduction of rates followed.
 Lawlessness and Discrimination Re
 5. sponsible.
 Then state legislation against rail- roads is pointed to as a cause for shrinkage in the value of the stocks and for the panic. MT. Roosevelt and the national administration are not re- sponsible for this. It was oceasioned by the same revelations of lawless- ness and discrimination in railway management that made the federal rate bill a necessity. If the state measures have been too drastic the cause of This injustice is not with the national government. Instead of mak- ing a panic, the national policy, of ending the lawlessness of corporations in interstate commerce, and of taking away their power of issuing, without supervision, stocks and 5oids, will produce change in their manage ment and remove one fruitful cause for loss of public confidence.
 Shall Prosecutions Be Dropped?
 The business men in the past have sympathized with the effort to eradi- cate from the business system of this country the influence and control of those who have achieved success by H. legal methods. Is all this 10 be changed by the panic? Is it proposed, because of 1t, to repeal the rate bill? Shall we dismiss the prosecutions for violations of the antitrust law? Shall we permit and encourage rebates and discriminations by railways? Is this the condition of sanity, to which we are invited to return? Shall we join in the sheer at the fight of the ad n1inistraton for honesty and legality in business as a youthful attempt at an alleged moral regeneration of our business system? No panic, however severe, can make wrong right. No man who sincerely believed the ad- right in it's measures to punish violations of law can now be turned from the earnest support of that policy to-day,
 Stands for Right of Personal Property.
 1 believe myself to be as conserva- tive as anyone within this company. I | believe that in connection with per sonal liberty, the right of personal property is the basis of all our material | in the development of man kind, and that any change in our so- cial and political system which impairs the right of private property and ma terially diminishes the motive for the | of capital by the individ- ual is a blow at our whole civilization. But no one can have been an observer | of the operation of the exercise of the | right of property and the accumulation of capital and it's use in business by the individual and the combination of |