The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-21
Qualities of the Puritan.

Quallties of the Puritan.
 The Puritan owned his extraordinary success in subduing this continent and making it the foundation for a Social life of ordered liberty primarily to the fact that he combined in a very rema rx : able degree both the power of individ- ual initiative. of individual self-help, and the power of acting in combination with his fellows. and that furth erTnore he joined to high heart that shrewd common sense which saves a man from 1 the besetting sins of the visionary and the doctrnaire He was stout hearted and hard headed. He had lofty pur- poses. but he had practical good sense. too. He could hold his own in the rough workaday world without clam orous insistence upon being helped by others, and yet he could combine with
 others whenever 1t became nessary tV do a pob which could not be as well done by any one man individually.
 These were the qualities which en- abled 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 we first of all come in the spirit of trying to do our work today a they did their work in the yester- days that have vanished. The problems shift from generation to generation, tt the spirit in which they must he ap- preach ed. if they are to be successfully solved. remains ever the same. The Puritan tanned the wilderness, and built up a free government on the stump dotted clearings amid the primeval forest. His descendants must try to shape the life of our complex indus trial 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 Cor the sake of in novation, yet he did not hesitate to adopt anything new that would save his purpose. When he planted his com monwealth on this 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 our social and industrial life. We should certainly not adopt any new scheme for grappling with them merely because 1t is new and untried; but we cannot afford to shrink from grappling with tn em because they can only be grappled with by some new sch eme
 Spirit Of the Puritan.
 The Puritan was no Laodicean, no 1aisseZ- 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 regulate such conduct with instant, unquestioning promptness and effectiveness If there was no other way to secure conformity with the rule of right, then he smote down the trans gressor with the iron of his wrath
 The spirit of the Puritan was a spirit
 which never shrank from regulation of
 conduct if such regulation was neces-
 sary for the public veal and this is
 the spirit which we must show today
 whever it is necessary.
 The utterly changed conditions of our national life necessitate changes in cer- tain of our laws. of our governmental
 methods. Our federal system of gov
 ernment is based upon the theory of
 leaving to each community, to each
 state the control over those things
 which affect only it's own members and which the people of the locality them selves can best grapple with, while
 providing for national regulation in
 those matters which necessarily affect
 the nation as a whole. It seems 10 me that such questions as national soV- ereignty and states right need to be treated not empirically or academinal- ly, but from the standpoint Of the m terests of the people as a whole. Ma tional sovereignty is to be upheld in
 so far as 1t means the sovereignty of the people used for the real and ulti-
 mate good of the people, and state s rIgLts are to be upheld in so Tor as they mean the peoples rights. Espec- ially Is this true in dealing with the re-
 lations of the people as whole to the great corporations which are the dis tinguishing feature of modern business conditions.
 Control Over Business.
 Experience has shown that 1t Is neces-
 sary to exercise a far more efficient con
 trol than at present over the business use
 of those vast fortunes, chiefly corporate,
 which are used Gas under modern condi-
 tions they almost invariably are) In in-
 terstate business When the constitution
 was created none of the conditions of modern business existed. They are who'll ly new and we must create new agencies to deal effectively with them. There IS no objection in the minds Of this people
 to any mans earning any amount Of
 money if he does it honestly and fairly
 f he gets 1t as the result of special skill
 and enterprise, as a reward of ample ser
 vice actually rendered. But there is a
 growing determination that no man shall amass a great fortune by special priVi- lege by chicanery and wrong-doing, so far as it Is in the power of legislation to prevent and that the fortune when amassed shall not have business use l that IS antlSOClal. MOSI ldTEt CoIpOl dtiohs 1 do a business that is not confined to any 1 one state Experience has shown that l the effort to control these corporations by
 mere state action cannot produce whole
 some results. In most cases such effort l fails to correct the real abuses of which ] the corporation is or may be guilty; while 1 in other cases the effort is apt to cause l either hardship to the corporation itself, or else hardship to neighboring states ! which have not tried to grapple with the problem in the same manner; and of 1 course we must be as scrupulous to safe i guard the rights of the corporations as to 1 exact from them in return full measure 1 of justice to the public. l believe in a
 national incorporation law for corpora
 tions engaged in interstate business. l ] believe furthermore, that the need for
 action Is most pressing as regards those I corporations which, because they are i common carriers. exercise a quasi-public ] function; and which can be completely | controlled in all respects by the federal i government. by the exercise of the power
 conferred under the interstate commerce ] clause, and. If necessary, under the post ] road clause of the constitution. During l the last few years we have taken marked l strides in advance along the road of pro- 1 per regulation of these railroad corpora 1 tions; but we must not stop in the work. l The national government should exercise
 over them a similar supervision and con
 trol to that which 1t exercises over na-
 tonal banks We can do this only by
 proceeding farther along the lines marked
 out by the recent national legislation.