The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-12-09

under cover; and especially under cover of an appeal to states rights. It is not at all infrequent to read in the same speech a denunciatlon of predatory wealth fostered by special privilege and defiant of both the public welfare
 and law of the land, and denuncia- tion of standardization in the central
 government of the power to deal with this centralized and organized wealth. ! Of course the policy set forth in such ! twin denunciation amounts to absolute { ly nothing, for the first half is nulli- fled by the second half The chief req son, among the many sound and com
 polling reasons, that led to the forma- | tion of the national government was | the absolute need that the Union, and | not the several states should deal | with interstate and foreign commerce; I and the power to deal with interstate 1 commerce was granted absolutely and | plenarily to the central government and
 was exercised completely as regards the i only instruments of interstate com merce known in those days-the wa i terways, the highroads, as well as the ! partnerships of individuals who then | conducted all of what business the 1 was. Interstate commerce is now | chiefly conducted by railroads; and the i great corporation has supplanted the 1 mass of small partnerships or indiVid- l uals The proposal to make the na- 1 tional government supreme over, and l therefore to give it complete control i over, the railroads and other instru- l ments of interstate commerce is merely { a proposal to carry out to the letter one l of the prime purposes, if not the prime l purpose, for which the constitution was { founded It does not represent cen { tralization. It represents merely the f acknowledgment of the patent fact that
 x1.,-a e1nrx in | mess. If this irresponsible outside l business power is to be controlled in 1 the interest of the general public 1t ] can only be controlled in one way; by ! giving adequate power of control to | the one sovereignty capable of eXerc1s- 1 ing such power-the national govern : ment. Forty or 50 separate state gov. i ernments cannot exercise that power
 over corporations doing business in 1 most or all of them; first, because they | absolutely lack the auth ority to deal | with interstate business in any form; and second because of the inevitable ! connIct of authority sure to arise In | the effort to enforce different kinds Of i state regulation, often inconsistent with ane another and sometimes oppressive
 in themselves. Such divided authority
 cannot regulate commerce with wisdom and effect. The central government is | the only power which, without op- | l pression, can nevertheless thoroughly | and adequately control and supervise l the large corporations. To abandon the effort for national control means to
 abandon the effort for all adequate
 control and yet to render likely con-
 tinual bursts of action by state legis- I latures which cannot achieve the pur-
 pose sought for, but which can do a great deal of damage to the corpora
 ton without conferring any real beneht
 on the public.
 I believe that the more farsighted | corporations are themselves coming to
 recognize the unwisdom of the violent
 hostility they have displayed during the last few years to regulation and
 control by the national government of
 combinations engaged in interstate bus
 iness The truth Is that we who be- 1 lieve in this movement of asserting
 and exercising a genuine control, in the
 public interest, over these great cor | porations have to contend against two
 sets of enemies, who, though nominal l ly opposed to one another, are really
 allies in preventing a proper solution
 of the problem. There are, first, the | big corporation men, and the extreme 1 individualists among business men, who
 genuinely believe in utterly unregu-
 lated business-that Is, in the reign of l plutocracy; and, second, the men who,
 being blind to the economic movements
 of the day believe in a movement of
 repression rather than of regulation
 of corporations, and who denounce both
 the power of the railroads and the ex-
 ercise of the federal power which alone | really control the railroads. Those who
 believe in efficient national control, on
 the other hand, do not In the lest ob- | feet to combinations; do not in the least | bject to concentration In business ad- 4I,A nr1f. ~x hnU favor both, with the all important pro-
 viso that there shall be such publicity
 about their workings, and such thor | oughgoing control over them, as to in /, sure tn cir being in the interest, and not against the interest, of the general pub | lie. We do not object to the concen-
 tration of wealth and administration;
 but we do believe in the distribution | of the wealth in profits to the real own | CTS. and in securing to the public the
 full benefit of the concentrated admin 1 istration We believe that with con- | centration in administration there can come both the advantage of larger ownership and of more equitable dis tribution of profits, and at the same time a better service to the common l wealth. We believe that the adminis tration should be for the benefit of the
 many: and that greed and rasca1ity, 1 practiced on a large scale, should be
 punished as relentlessly as if practiced
 on small scale.
 We do not for a moment believe that
 the problem will be solved by any short l and easy method. The solution will
 come only by pressing various con
 current remedies. Some of these rem
 edies must lie outside the domain of all 1 government Some must lie outside the domain of the federal government. But there is Legislation which the fed
 eral government alone can enact and
 which is absolutely vital in order to
 secure the attainment of our purpose.
 Many laws are needed. - Tn ere should be regulation by the national govern
 ment of the great interstate corpora tions including simple method of account keeping, publicity, supervision | of the issue of securities, abolition of
 rebates and of special privilege. There
 should be short time franchises for all
 corporations engaged in public busi- 1 ness; including the corporations which get power from water rights. There should be national as well as state
 guardianship of mines and forests. The labor legislation hereinafter referred
 to should concurrently be enacted into law.
 To accomplish this means of course l certain increase in the use of-not the aroation of-nower by the central govern