The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1909-11-02

been easy for these enemies to raise
the cry of illegality, novelty, and ex
cess of zeal. But in every instance
the service is fortified either by eX-
press statutes, or by decisions of the
supreme court and other courts, OF
the secretary of the interior of the
comptroller. or the attorney general
or by general principles of law which
are beyond dispute. If there is nov
city, it consists simply in the way these
statutes, decisions, and principles have
been used to protect the public. The
law officers of the forest service have
the national for their client, and they
are proud to work as jealousy for
the public as they would in private
practice for a fee.
$50 1 think the ghost of illegality
in the forest service may fairly be laid
at rest But it is not the only one
which is clouding the issues of conser-
walton in the public mind. Another
misconceptiOn is that the friends of
conservation are trying to prevent the
development of water power by prl-
vate capital. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. The friends of con-
servation were the first to call public
attention to the enormous saving to
the nation which follows the substi-
tuition of the power of falling water,
which is constantly renewed, for our
coal, which can never be renewed.
They favor development by private
capital and not by the government,
but they also favor attaching such
reasonable conditions to the right to
develop as will protect the public and
control water power monopoly in the
public interest, while at the same time
giving to enterprising capital its just
and full reward. They believe that
perpetuity is a wrongful mortgage of
the welfare of our descendants, and
to grant them without insisting on
some return for value received is to
rob ourselves.
Il believe in dividends for the peo-
pie as we'll as taxes. Fifty years is
long enough for the certainty of
profitable investment in water power,
and to fix on the amount Of return
that will be fair to the public and
the corporation is not impossible.
What city does not regret some ILL
considered franchise? And why should
not the nation profit by the expert
ence of it's citizens?
There is no reason why the water
power interests should be given the
peoples property freely and forever
except that they would like to have
it that way. I suspect that the mere
wishes Of the special interests, al
though they have been the handspring
of much public action for many years,
have begun to lose their compelling
power A good way to begin to regu
late corporations would be to stop
them from regulating us.
''The sober fact is that mere is the
imminent battle-ground in the endless
contest for the rights of the people.
Nothing that can be said or done will
suffice to postpone longer the active
phases Of this fight and that is why
I attach SO great Importance to the
attitude of administrative officers in
protecting the public welfare in the
enforcement of the law.
From time TO time a few strong
leaders have tried to unite the peo-
pie in the fight of the many for the
entitled. But the people have only just
begun to take this fight in earnest.
They have not realized until recently
the vital Importance and far-reaching
consequences of their own passive po-
sition.
Now that the fight is passing into
an acute stage it is easily seen that
the special interests have used the
period of public indifference to ma
neuver themselves into a position of
exceeding strength. In the first place,
the constitutional position of property
in the United States is stronger than
in any other nation. In the second
place, it is we'll understood that the
influence of the corporations in our
law making bodies is usually excess
sive, not seldom to the point of de-
feating the will of the people stead
lily and with ease. In the third place
cases are not unknown in which the
special interests, not satisfied with
making the laws, have assumed also
| to interpret them, through that worst
of evils in the body polite. an unjust
judge.
when an interest or an enemy is
entrenched in a position rendered i'm
pregnable against an expected mode
of attack, there is but one remedy, TO
shift the ground and follow lines
against which no preparation has been
made.