The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-22

the country nave come Io dn dpprecl-
 ation of the idea that these great pub
 lie agencies, which have conferred
 upon them the right of eminent do- main and perpetual franchises to en-
 able them to do public service, can not give special rates to some men without doing injustice to other men; and that the common right of the peo- | pie demands equality of facility and
 of cost in the transportation which 1 the railroads are bound to furnish, and condemns special privileges to one as against another. The lesson of all Ithis is that the prosecutions and con- yictions for violation of the anti-re- bate Iaw-things which were never heard of thirty years ago-are not evidence that we are growing worse, but evidence that we are growing bet ter; that our government is applying
 higher standard of justice in the control of public utilities
 The same is true of the manage
 ment of corporations and the manipu-
 lation of securities, to which attention has recently been called sharply by
 the testimony before the interstate
 commerce commissionu regarding the
 reorganization of the Chicago and
 Alton railroad. Thirty or forty years ago, when the management of the
 Erie railroad and the Atlantic and Great Western and the Union Pacific railroad attracted public attention,
 the things done by corporate managers
 were so much worse than the Chicago and Alton affair would not have re-
 ceived any notice at all. The railroad
 Wrecker was a common type of rail-
 road manager A large part of our people assumed that to be a perrnissi-
 ble game to play, and the rules of the
 game did not go much beyond the ex- clusion of ordinary forgery larceny,
 and fraud at common law. Since then
 higher standard is asserting itself,
 which recognizes the scrupulous
 obligation of trusteeship on the part of the railroad manager and promoter
 and under that standard much is properly condemned which before would have passed without notice It | is perfectly safe to assert that the standard of probity and fidelity among the corporation managers of the coun- try is higher now than it ever has been before; and yet there is more complaint now than there ever has
 been before, because our people de-
 mand that more rigid rule of mor-
 ality shall be applied by statute and 1 by the courts and in administrative
 supervision than they formerly con- sidered necessary.
 | The prosecutions which the depart
 ments of the interior and of justice | have been conducting against the land thieves in the west-the men who have
 been appropriating to themselves the public timber lands and grazing lands | and coal lands-have awakened in
 tense indignation among the defend-
 ants and their friends, because the
 wrong was so inveterate that they had
 come to look upon It as right. For 1 more than a generation 1t had been
 regarded as a natural and unobjec-
 tionable thing to get possession of the
 public land by hook or by crook; and
 when the officers of the law presented | and enforced the novel idea that it was as dishonest to deprive the gov-s
 ernment of its land illegally as to de-
 prive an individual of his land illegal lly. it seemed cruel injustice. There
 was simply little advance Of the
 moral standard which gave life to l laws that had been dead before. The
 whole system of the federal govern
 ments has been lifted up to a higher
 plane of clearer moral vision, just as
 the whole system of British adminis-
 tration has been lifted up since the
 corrupt days of Walpole.
 The elective franchise has become a more honest expression of popular will Only men who are now growing
 old can remember. and history has
 not yet adequately recorded, the gross frauds, the tricks and devices,
 and acts of violence which prevented | fair elections forty-odd years ago, be-
 fore the federal election laws of 1870 and 1S71--laws which have passed out
 of existence, but have left their im-
 press upon the legislation of the states | of the union. Tn those days, before there was any registration of voters, the wayfaring man could vote the
 resident out of house and home, and 1 the count of votes was at the mercy of anybody who could succeed in buy ling local election officer. The bal 1 lots with which to vote were fur nished only by the local party organ ! ization, and were printed and folded l and punched and distributed by the workers of each party. 1 have known 1 the voters of a congressional district to go to the polls on election day and find all the congressional ballots dis 1 tributed for one candidate, because the | local leader on one side had been bought by the other side. have seen a file of men marched out of tramp | lodging house with their ballots held aloft in one hand continuously in
 plain sight until they had deposited | them in the ballot box, in order to give the necessary evidence that they were voting according to the contract under which they were immediately thereaf- i ter to be paid. Now, the system of registration and the revision of the registry lists are substantially effective to confine voting to the qualified vot-
 CTS. The ballot is furnished by the
 state the method of voting upon the
 Australian ballot in all it's forms, by marking it in secret, makes bribery uncertain and unprofitable, because it
 is impossible to tell how anyone votes
 and the man who would take money for his vote can not be depended upon
 to vote. as he has agreed. Both the voting and the counting are protected by adequate supervision and full op- portunity for watchers in the interest