The Spokane press. [volume] (Spokane, Wash.) 1902-1939, 1909-06-18
VOICE FROM THE
JUNGLE
Continued from page II

wrongdoing, without tRnape6lng
the business communit Into 4 ter
ror-struck defense of the wrong
doors and an angry assault upon
| those who have exposed them. On
the other hand, we must beware,
above all things, of being misled
| by wicked or foolish men who
would condone homicide and vio-
lence, and apologize for the dyna-
inter and the assassin because,
forsooth, they choose to take the
ground that crime is no crime If the
wicked man happens also to have
| been a shiftless and unthrifty or
lazy man who has never amassed
property. 1t is essential that we
should wrest the control of the gov
| eminent out of the hands of rich
men who use it for unhealthy pur-
| poses, and should keep it out Of
their hands; and to this end the
| first requisite is to provide means
adequately to deal with corpora
tions, which are essential to mod
ern business, but which, under the
decisions of the courts, and be-
cause of the short sightedness of
the public, have become the chief
factors in political and business de-
basement. But it would be just as
bad to put the control of the gov
q -, into tho ho 6c of
gogues and Missionaries who seek to
, pander to ignorance and prejudice
by penalizing thrift and business
enterprise, and running all men or
means, with, as an attendant re-
suit, the ruin of the entire COM
munity. The tyranny of poll
ticians with a bureaucracy behind
them and mass of ignorant peo-
pie supporting them would be just
as insufferable as the tyranny of
big corporations.
The sinister and adroit reaction
airy, the sinister and violent radf-
cal, are alike in this, that each
works in the end for the destruc-
ton of the cause that he professed-
ly champions.
1t has been shown beyond power
of refutation that unrestricted indi-
vidualism, for instance, means the
destruction of our forests and our
water supply. The dogma of lin
dividualism" cannot be permitted
to interfere with the duty of a
great city to see that householders,
small as well as big, live in decent
and healthy buildings, drink good
water and have the streets ade-
quately lighted and kept clean. In
dividual initiative, the reign of in
dividualism, may be crushed out
just as effectively by the uncheck-
ed growth of private monopoly, If
the state does not interfere at all,
as 1t would be crushed out under
communism, or as it would disap-
pear, together with everything else
that makes life worth living, if we
adopted the tenets of the extreme
socialists.
In 1896 the party of discomfort
met with a smashing defeat for the
very reason that, together with
legitimate attacks on real abuses,
they combined wholly illegitimate
advocacy even of the methods of
dealing with these real abuses, and
in addition stood for abuses of
their own which, in far-reaching
damage, would have cast into the
shade the effects of the abuses
against which they warred. 1t was
essential both to the material and
| moral progress of the country that
these forces should be beaten; and
beaten they were, overwhelmingly.
1t would be easy to name several
big corporations, ach one of which
has within its sphere crushed out
all competition, so as to make, not
only its rivals, but it's customers, as
dependent upon it if the govern
ment had assumed complete charge
of the product. 1t would, in my
| judgment, be very unhealthy
thing for the government thus to
assume complete charge; but it rs
even more unhealthy to permit a
private monopoly thus to assume it..
There must be law to control the
big men, and therefore especially
the big corporations, in the indus
trial world, in the interest of our
industrial democracy of today. This
law must be efficient, and therefore
1t must be~administered by execu-
tive officers, and not by lawsuits in
the courts. If this is not done, the
agitation to increase out of all
measure the share of the govern.
ment in this work will receive an
enormous impetus.