The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-02-13
JUDGE GROSSCUP TALKS AT BANQUET Politics Is First Themei Then
 Abraham Lincoln
PENALTY FOR OFFENDERS
Judge Declares That Progress of American Industries Will Be Rapid-Lincoln is Praised
 for His High Ideals.

TOT HIS 1l9U iuCdiSs
 Rock Island, III, February 12.-Judge Peter s. Grosscup of Chicago was the principal speaker tonight at the annual Lincoln day banquet of the Rock Island club. The affair was attended by 100' leading business and professional men.
 Judge Grosscup spoke as follows:
 MT. Burke Cochran, in a speech in the House the other day, said that what the country needs is a crusade and cru sader; and the whole House, without dis tinction of party, is said to have loudly applauded A crusade and crusader! Zeal put above judgment, mere vigor of enthusiasm above the sober earnest ness of the American common sense. Have the people gone mad?
 "A crusade against what2 Against the great new industrial domain of the coun- try that is in corporate form-the great new domain in which the energies and the fortunes of the American people are so largely bound up? The American farmer who has reaped prosperity out of the markets that the great new in corporated domain have established, and the American workingman who knows that in this domain alone, is to be found his field of opportunity, will think long and carefully before they go in for crusade like that.
 "A crusade against what? Against those who are said to be offenders of the law? Why should not the offenders of hn 1a Ina friA in Ia fIft1Ira as they have been in the past. accord ing to the forms of the law-to the ex- ecutive the duty and responsibility of presenting the charge, to the judiciary the duty and responsibility of determin- ing the guilt or innocence. Has any thing happened that the sober, Anglo Saxon way of enforcing law should be abandoned?
 After the Voter.
 "A crusade to catch the voter-to ob- tain a lease of political power at the ap- preaching elections? I am one of those who believe that an appeal to the sober common sense and love of justice of the American people will be infinitely more effective than any attempt to hurry them pell-mell into some other strange pro- gramme that they do not comprehend. As statesmen, Washington and Lincoln dI0 Sllll OuT AtlllpldIS-I cltis Liit I1CI- init, and Richard, the Lion Hearted, are only traditions.
 For two score years and more, ever since the close of the civil war, a new great industrial domain has been build ing. Through it's channels American man. ufactures and commerce are reaching ev- cry corner of the earth. Through the markets it established, and the business activity it has created, the American far bo hat hQVa made him the money-lender of the land, and the American working man wages that has made him the highest paid work ing man of all lands. But for the rise and growth of this great domain, we would not now be in the worlds lead as an industrial people; we would be back among the people whose farms harvest just enough to keep them alive from year to year, and whose working men have no prospect beyond the bread that is neces- sary to sustain life. And this great do- main, strange as 1t may seem, in the presence of what is being constantly said against the American corporation, is al most altogether an incorporated domain. Indeed, what government is to mankind politically organized, the corporation has become to modern industry organized.
 LincoIn's Ideal.
 ''The ideal of Lincoln was government of the people by the people and for the people, Lincoln believed in the capacity and integrity of America and the Amer ican-the American farmer, the Amer- can business man, the American working man, American character. The ideal of Mckinley was the prosperity of this coun- try-a prosperity of the people by the people and for the people-a prosperity shared in by every individual whowas ready with hand or brain to take part in it; and Mckinley lived long enough to see, not through any programme Of indiscriminate denunciation, but through legislation, both practical and effective, his ideal realized.
 "We have come, I believe, to a time which within the nations heart there stirs new ideal as deep and true as Lincoln san ideal that will eventually quicken the new great industrial domain into something that will make that do- main also a possession of the people, by the people and for the people-the Lin coin ideal enlarged, the Mckinley ideal broadened. But there will be no real be- ginning toward the realization of this ideal until the reformauve energy of the nation grapples with the work not mere ly in curbing the corporation as the cor poration is now allowed to construct it. self or of enforcing the law as the law now stands, but of so reconstructing the corporation, from the ground up, through national and state law, that 1t will be- come in truth and in fact trustworthy agent for the yielding of the nations en- ergy, and a trustworthy medium through which to work out the American instinct to have some individual proprietary share in the great new domain to which each individual American has contributed his energies.
 No Antagonism.
 ''Betwenn the engineer and other rail- way employees and the great railway cor poration, between the men who roll steel and the great steel corporations, between the working man generally and the cor poration for which he works, between the man whose thrift has put savings into the bank and the corporations that have borrowed them out, there will when real corporation reform is achieved, be no room for these feelings of antagooism that gives rise to crusade for when real corporation reform is accomplished when the broadened ideal Is on it's way to realization--the great new incorporated domain, as field for the requirement of an enduring individual possession, will be open to the working man as well as to the capitalist and to the man who has savings to put in the bank, as well as to the men who are now borrowing them