The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1908-02-07

business men, honest workingmen,
honest farmers; and now they clamor
against the truth being told.
The keynote of all these attacks
upon the effort to secure honesty in
business and in politics is well ex-
pressed in brazen protests against any
effort for the moral regeneration OF
the business world, on the ground that
1t is unnatural, unwarranted and in
furious, and that business panic is the
accessory penalty for such effort to
secure business honesty. The outcry
against stopping dishonest practices
among wrongdoers who happen to be
wealthy is precisely siniler to the
outcry raised against every effort for
cleanliness and decency in city gov
eminent, because, forsooth, it will
"hurt business" The same cutlery is
made against the departments of JUS
tice for prosecuting the head of colos-
sal corporations that has been made
against the men who in San Francisco
have prosecuted with impartial severity
the wrongdoers; among business men,
public officials, and labor leaders
alike.
All OH Same Level.
The principle is the same in the
two cases. Just as the blackmailer
and bride giver stand on the same
evil eminence Of infamy, so the man
who makes an enormous fortune by
corrupting legislatures and municipal
tiles and fleeing his stockholders and
the public, stand on the same moral
level with the creature who fattens
on the blood money of the gambling
house and the saloon.
Corrupt business and corrupt poll
tics act and react with ever increasing
debasement, one on the other, the cor
rupt head Of corporation and the
corrupt labor leader are both in the
same degree the enemies of the hon.
est corporations and honest labor
unions; the rebate taher, the fran
chise trafficker, the manipulation of
securities, the purveyor and protector
Of vice. the Matchmaking ward boss,
the ballot box suffer, the demagogue,
the mob leader, the hired bully and
mankiller-all alike work at the same
web of corruption, and all alike
should be abhorred by honest men.
Undesirable Business.
The business" which is hurt by the
movement for honesty is the kind of
business which, in the long run, it
pays the country to have hurt. 1t is
the kind of business which has tended
to make the very name "high finance"
term of scandal to which all honest
American men of business should join
in putting an end. The special plead.
ers for business dishonesty in de-
nouncing the present administration
for enforcing the law against the huge
and corrupt corporations which have
defied the law, also denounce it for
endeavoring to secure sadly needed
labor legislation, such as far reach
ing law making employers liable for
injuries to their employees 1t is meet
and fit that the apologists for corrupt
wealth should oppose every effort 10
relieve weak and helpless people from
crushing misfortune brought upon
them by injury in the business from
which they gain a bare livelihood.
1t is hypocritical baseness to speak
of a girl who works in a factory
where the dangerous machinery is
unprotected as having the right
freely to contract to expose herself
to dangers to life and limb She has
alternative but to suffer want or else
to expose herself to such dangers, and
when she loses hand or is otherwise
manned or disfigured for life, it is a
of the risk necessarily incidental to
the crushing weight upon her weak
shoulders, and all who profit by her
work escape scot free. This is what
the opponents OF a just employers
liability law advocates; and it is con-
sistent that they should usually also
advocate immunity for those mos,
dangerous members of the criminal
class-the criminals OF great wealth.
Our opponents have recently been
bitterly criticizing two Judges refer
red to in communication from the
Standard Oil company and the Santa
Fee railroad for having imposed heavy
fines on these two corporations; and
yet these same critics of these two
judges exhaust themselves in de-
nouncing the most respectful and eau.
tious discussion of the official action
of Judge which results in immunity
to wealthy and powerful wrong doors
or which renders negatory a temper.
ate effort to better the conditions OF
life and work among those Of our fell
low countrymen whose need is
greatest.
Honesty Best Policy In 81 siness.
The opponents Of the measure VIC
champion single out now one and now
another measure for especial attack
and speak as If the movement in
which we are engaged was purely
economic. 1t has large economic
side, but it is fundamentally an ethi
cal movement. 1t Is not movement
to be completed in one year, or two
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