Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1908-02-06
IN SPECIAL MESSAGE
President Urges Necessity Of Ger
tain Labor Legislation.
FOR ENFORCING TIE LAWS
Refers to the Bitter and Persistent
Attacks Now Being Made on
the Administration.

Washington, Feb. 1. - President
Roosevelt has sent special message
to congress in which he again calls
attention to the abuse of injunctions
In labor cases and urges remedial leg
islation. The president also recon-
mends the re-enactment OF the en-
ployers' liability act, recently de-
clared unconstitutional, limited in
scope to apply only TO interstate com
merce. He refers at length to gam
bling in stocks and futures and urges
that action be taken to prevent at
least the making of large sales of
what men do not possess and corner
ing the market. In recommending the
strengthening of antitrust laws he
calls attention to the bitter and per
sistent attacks on the administration
now being made by corporations
brought to the bar of justice Tor viola
ton of law, On this subject he says,
in part:
The attack by the great corpora
tions on the Administrations actions
have been given a wide circulation
throughout the country, in the news
papers and otherwise, by those writer's
and speakers who, consciously or un-
consciously, act as the representatives
of predatory wealth-of the wealth
accumulated on giant scale Dy ali
forms of iniquity, ranging from the
oppression of wage workers to unfair
and unwholesome methods of crushing
out competition, and to defrauding
the public by stock jobbing and the
manipulation of securities. The ad-
ministration and those who support
its views are not only not engaged in
an assault on property, but are siren.
nous upholders of the rights of prop
erty. The books and pamphlets, the
controlled newspapers, the speeches
by public or private men to which
refer, are usually and especially In
the interest of the Standard Oil trust
and of certain notorious railroad com
binations. but they also defend other
individuals and corporations of great
wealth that have been guilty Of wrong
doing. 1t is only rarely that the men
responsible for the wrongdoing them
selves speak or write. Normally they
hire others to do their bidding or find
others who will do 1t without hire
Every Honest Measure Opposed.
From the railroad rate law to the
pure food law every measure for hon
esty In business that has been passe
during the last six years has been OPP
posed by these men on Its passage
and in its administration with every
resource that bitter and unscrupulous
craft could suggest and the command
of almost unlimited money secure. But
for the last year the attack has been
made with most bitterness upon the
actual administration of the law, espe
cially through the department of jus
tice, but also through the interstate
commerce commission and the bureau
of corporations. The extraordinary
violence of the assaults upon our pol
icy contained in these speeches, edi
torials, articles, advertisements anc
pamphlets and the enormous sums Of
money spent in these various ways
give fairly accurate measure of the
anger and terror which our public ac
tions have caused the corrupt mer
of vast wealth to feel in the very mar
row of their being.
We act In no vindictive spirit and
we are no respecter of persons. We
seek to stop wrongdoing and we de
sire to punish wrongdoers only so far
as IL is necessary to achieve this end
We seek to control law defyins
wealth; in the first place to prevent
its doing dire evil to the republic and
in the neyt place to avoid the vindic
tive and dreadful radicalism which, II
left uncontrolled, 1t is certain in the
end TO arouse.
The methods by which the Standard
Oil people and others have achieved
great fortunes can only be justified by
the advocacy of system of morals
which would also justify every form
Of criminality on the part of labor
union and every form of violence, cor
ruption and fraud, from murder to
n