The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-27

NA-- FNN@NCA AL OlAAy " -NN~ they. possess the power of government from within. A sovereign can not make excuses for his failures; SOW ereign must accept the responsibility for the exercise of the power that in- heres in him; and where, as is true in our republic, the people are sovereign, then the people must show sober un- derstanding and sane and steadtast purpose If they are to perserve that orderly liebrty upon which as foun- dation every republic must rest.
 In industrial matters our enormous prosperity has brought with 1t certain grave evils. It 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 powerful, must be opposed when it does H. At the moment the greatest problem before us is how to exercise such control over the business use of vast wealth, in- dividual, but especially corporate, as will insure it's not being used against the interest of the public, while yet permitting such ample legitimate prof. Its as will encourage individual in- itiative. It is our business to put a stop to abuses and to prevent their recurrence, without showing a spirit of mere vindictiveness for what has been done in the past. In John Morleys brilliant sketch of Burke he lays es- pecial stress upon the fact that Burke more than almost any other thinker or politician of his time realized the profound lesson that In politics we are concerned not with barren rights but 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 profound temperateness of spirit which made him, while bent on the extirpation of the evil system, refuse to cherish an unreasoning and vindictive ill will to- ward the men who had benefited by it. Said Burke, If 1 can not reform with equity, I will not reform at all. (There is) a state to preserve as well as state to reform.
 This is the exact spirit in which this country should move to the reform of abuses of corporate wealth. The wrongdoers, the man who swndles and cheats, whether on a big scale or a lit- tie one, shall receive at our hands mercy as scant as if he committed crimes of violence or brutality. We are unalterably determined to prevent wrongdoing in the future; we have nc intention of trying to wreak such an in. discriminate vengeance for wrongs done in the past as would confound the lnno. cent with the guilty. Our purpose is to build up rather than to tear down | W. show ourselves the truest friends oi property when we make 1t evident that We will not tolerate the abuses of prop. erty. We are steadily bent on preserv- ing the institution of private property; we combat every tendency toward re- ducing the people to economic servi. tude; and we care not whether the tendency Is due to sinister agitation directed against all property, or wheth. CT it is due to the actions of those members of the predatory classes whose anti-soclal power is immeasurably in. creased because of the very fact thai they possess wealth.
 Above all, we insist that while facing changed conditions and new problems we must face them in the spirit which our forefathers showed when they founded and preserved this republic The corner stone 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 he is rich or poor, whether he labors with head or hand asking only whether he acts decently and hon. orably in the various relations of his | life, whether he behaves well 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; by his deeds; by his conduct. not by what he has acquired of this world g goods Other republics have fallen, be- cause the citizens gradually grew tc consider the interests of class before the interests of the whole; for when such was the case 1t mattered little whether it was the poor who plunderet the rich or the rich who exploited the l