River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1907-12-05
public opinion would probably have
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brought about prompt adjustment.
''It is idle to hold that without good
laws evils such as child labor as the
over-working of women, as the fail
ure to protect employees from loss of
life or limb, can be effectively reached.
any more than the evils of rebates and
stock-watering can be reached without
good laws. To fail to stop these prac-
tees by legislation means to force
honest men into them, because other
wise the dishonest who surely will
take advantage of them will have
everything their own way. If the states
will correct these evils, well and good;
but the nation must stand ready to aid
them.
When the department of agriculture
was founded there was much sneering as
to it's usefulness. No department of the
government, however, has more en-
phatically indicated its usefulness, and
none save the post office department
comes so continually and intimately into
touch with the people. The two citizens
whose welfare is in the aggregate most
vital to the welfare of the nation, and
therefore to the welfare of all other citi-
ZenS, are the wage-Worker who does
manual labor and the tiller of the soil,
the farmer. There are, of course, kinds
of labor where the work must be purely
mental, and there are other kinds OF
very little demand indeed is made upon
the mind, though I am glad to say that
the proportion of men engaged in this
kind of work is diminishing. But in any
community with the solid, healthy quail
ties which make up really great nation
the bulk of the people should do work
which calls for the exercise of both body
and mind. Progress can not permanently
exist in the abandonment of physical
labor, but in the development of physical
labor, so that it shall represent more and
more the work of the trained mind in the
trained body. Our school system is
gravely. defective in so far as it it puts
premium upon mere literary training and
tends therefore to train the boy away
from the farm and the workshop. Moth
ing is more needed than the best type of
industrial school, the school for me-
chanical industries in the city, the school
for practically teaching agriculture in the
country. The calling of the skilled tiller
of the soil, the calling of the skilled me-
chanic, should alike be recognized as
professions, just as emphatically as the
callings of lawyer, doctor, merchant, or
clerk. The schools should recognize this
fact and it should be equally. recognized
in popular opinion. The young man who
has the farsightedness and courage to
recognize it and get over the idea that
it makes a difference whether what he
earns is called salary or wages, and who
refuses to enter the crowded field of the
So-called professions, and takes to con-
structive industry instead, is reasonably
sure of an ample reward in earnings, in
health, in opportunity to marry early,
and to establish a home with a fair
amount of freedom from worry. 1t
should be one of our prime objects to put
both the farmer and the mechanic on
higher plane of efficiency and reward, so
as to increase their effectiveness in the
economic world, and therefore the dig
nifty, the remuneration, and the power of
their positions in the social world.
Inland Waterway Systems
Should he Developed.
"The conservation of our national re-
sources and their proper use constitute
the fundamental problem which under
lies almost every other problem of our
national life. We must maintain for
our civilization the adequate material
basis without which that civilization
cannot exist. We must show foresight,
we must look ahead AS a nation we
not only enjoy wonderful measure OF
present prosperity but if this prosper
ity is used Alright it is an earnest of
future success such as no other nation
will have. The reward of foresight for
this nation is great and easily foretold.
But there must be the look ahead,
there must be realization of the fact
that to waste, to destroy, our natural
resources, to skin and exhaust the land
instead of using it SO as to increase its
usefulness, will result in undermining
in the days of our children the very
prosperity which we ought by right to
hand down to them amplified and devel-
oped. For the last few years, through
several agencies, the government has
been endeavOring to get our people to
look ahead and to substitute a planned
1N.1xr 01~~@,
sources in place of a haphazard striv-
ing for immediate profit Our great
river systems should be developed as
national water highways; the MisSis-
Sippi with it's tributaries, standing first
in Importance, and the Columbia Sec
ond, although there are many others of
Importance on the Pacific and Atlantic
and the gulf slopes. The national gov
eminent should undertake this work,
and I hope a beginning will be made
in the present congress; and the great
est of all our rivers, the Mississippi,
should receive especial attention. From
the Great Lakes to the mouth of the
Mississippi there should be deep wa
terway, with deep waterways leading
from it to the east and the west. Such
a waterway would practically mean
the extension of our coast line into the
very heart of our country. 1t would be
of incalculable benefit to our people. If
begun at once it can be carried through
in time appreciably to relieve the con-.
gestion of our great freight-carrying
lines of railroads. The work should be
Systematically and continuously carried
forward in accordance with some we'll
conceived plan. The main streams
should be improved to the highest
point of efficiency before the improve
ment of the branches is attempted; and
the work should be kept free from
every faint of recklessness or jobbery."
Attention is called to the work of ir-
rigation and reclamation of govern
ment lands. In the same connection he
asks for a revision of the public land
laws along the lines proposed by the
public lands commission. Believes the
government should increase it's efforts
to conserve our forests and should in
crease by purchase the existing forest
preserves. On the subject of the natural
resources of the nation he says:
I'm the eastern United States the
mineral fuels have already passed into
the hands of large private owners, and
those of the west are rapidly following
1t is obvious that these fuels should be
conserved and not wasted, and it would
be well to protect the people against
unjust and extortionate prices, so far
as that can still be done. What has
been accomplished in the great oil
fields of the Indian Territory by the
action of the administration offers a
striking example of the good results
of such a policy. In my Judgment the
government should have the right to
keep the fee of the coal, oil and gas
fields in its own possession and to lease
the rights to develop them under
proper regulations; or else if the con-