The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-22
POLITICAL "A KERDOM PAST AND PRESENT

cheaper metal will drive the dearer from the hints, just as the baser conduct will drive the ehaster out of a mans life. There is just as much argument for an aYoirdupois pound of eight ounces, as a yardstick of eighteen inches to be en- ployed concurrentk with the 16-ounce pound and the 36-inch yard by the cross roads storekeeper as there Is for the con current coinage of gold and silver at 16 to 1, when the price of pig silver rules at any other figure than Sl.2J and frac- ton of per ounce in the market. Keen the market price of silver at S129 and a fraction and every mint In the world will open it's doors wide to the free and unlimited coinage of silver at l6 to IT. But that can no more be than you can keep an ounce of silver and bushel of wheat exactly at the dollar mark.
 Let LIS hope that there will be no moro campaigns like that of 1896
 Hardly had the silver craze given way to the imperfect gold standard than the G. o. P. screwed its courage to the point of enacting-and that has more than $55o, ,W000O basic money" founded on i6 to 1--when politics took another ht-the octopus chase that is now going on hot foot The Hon. Theodore Roosevelt is master of the hounds now after the var mint and the Hon. William Jennings Bryan Is master of the hounds that wants to get after the varmint. Editor John Temple Graves would have the Hon. Bryan go back in the rear and leave the completion of the thing to the Hon. Roosevelt, but that plan failed.
 The octopus is sorely prcssed-serves him right. While corporations have done wonderful things 10 advance the ma terial interests of the American people, they have practiced a deal of rascality to the oppression of the people. They, too, are hatists, for that fig what water in their securities amounts 10. They have established monopolies, not to benefit the public, as they could have done, but to reap where they had not sown and gather where they had not strewed. The Stand ard oil company might have had a friend in every voter: 1t has not a single friend In tho wide republic. The same is true of the beef trust. If was easier for them 10 have been benefactors; they chose to be oppressers. And now the day of judgment has come, and, as Ben Butler remarked: Tt is a d--d bad year TOT the wicked"
 But corporation is nothing but an artificial person that can be managed as easily as q natural person if the goy- ernment will go about 1t prlperly and put the constitution and the law to it. There is q popular belief that transporta- ton Of merchandise by steam and trans mission of intelligence by electricity have rendered the constitution of the United States impotent. Hence all this fake poli- government ownership, the initia- tive and referendum. child labor bills, United States government license, Unlted States government incorporation and what not.
 Until North Carolina bestirred herself the other day the tepth amendment of the federal constitution was as dead ds the pragmatic sanction that secured to the son of Marie Theresa the realm Of the Caesars and that Frederick the Great drove an army corps through, suatching Sllesla out of it. The states can manage