Los Angeles herald., 1908-02-01

honest farmers, and now they clamor
against the truth being told.
The keynote of all these attacks upon
efforts to secure honesty in business
and in politics is well expressed IN
brazen protests against any effort FOR
the moral regenration of the business
world, ond the ground that 1t IS un-
natural unwarranted ana injurious
and that business panic is the neces-
sary penalty for such efforts to secure
business honesty.
Brinqs About Good Results
The business" which is hurt by the
| movement for honesty is the KIND OF
| business which, in the long run, 1t pays
the country to have hurt. 1t is the
wind of business which has tended to
make the very name thigh finance" a
term of scandal to which all honest
American men of business should join
in putting an end. The pleaders Tor
business dishonesty, in denounclng the
present administration for indorsing
the law against the huge and corrupt
| corporations which have defted the law,
also denounces it for endeavoring TO
| secure sadly needed labor legislation,
such as a far-reaching law making en-
ployers liable for injuries to their en-
ployes.
for corrupt wealth should oppose every
effort to relieve weak and helpless peo-
pie from crushing misfortune brought
upon them by injury in the business
from which they gain bare livelihood.
| The burden should be distributed, as 1t
is hypocritical business to speak of a
girl who works in a factory when the
dangerous machinery is unprotected,
as having the right freely to con-
/ 20 hnrcaIf dangers tn
| life and limb.
| She has no alternative but to suffer
want or else to expose herself to such
dangers, and when she loses hand or
is otherwise manned, or dist1gured Tor
| life, it Is a moral wrong that the whole
burden of the risk necessarily Incl
dental to the business should be placed
with crushing weight upon her weak
| shoulders, and all who profit by her
work escape scot free.
| This Is what opponents of just en-
ployers' liability law advocates and it
is consistent that they should usually
also advocate immunity for those most
dangerous members of the criminal
class-the criminals of great wealth.
Our opponents have recently been
bitterly criticising the two judges re-
| ferred to in the accompanying COM
| munications from the Standard Oil
having imposed heavy fines on those
two corporations, and yet the same
critics of this two judges exhaust
| themselves in denouncing the most re-
| spectful and cautious discussion of the
official action of a judge which results
in immunity to wealth and to powerful
wrong-doers.
Most certainly it behooves us all to
treat with the utmost respect the high
office of Judge, and our judges, as a
whole, are brave and upright men. Re-
spect for the law must go hand in hand
with respect for the judge: and, as a
whole, it is true now as in the past that
the judges stand, in character and SER
vice, above all other men in their fellow
servants for the public. There is all the
greater need that the few who fail in
this great office, who fall below high
standard of integrity, of wisdom, oil
sympathetic understanding and OF
courage, should have their eyes opened
to the needs of their countrymen.
Judges Should Stand Firm
A Judge who, on the bench, either
| truckles to the mob and shrinks from
sternly depressing violence and disorder
| or bows down before a corporation
who fails to stand up valiantly for the
| rights of property on the one hand, OF
ON the other by misuse of the process OF
, Injunction or by his attitude toward all
measures for the betterment of the con-
ditions of labor makes the wage worker
feel with bitterness that the courts are
hostile to him, or who fails TO reaHze
that all public servants in their several
stations must strive to stop all abuses