Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-06-18
DECLARES SOME CORPORATIONS
HAVE BECOME FACTORS IN P0-
LITICAL DEBASEMENT.
MUST EXPOSE CROOKEDNESS.
If Business Suffers from Efforts to Pun
ish Dishonest Men, Then Business
Must Suffer, He Says.
DEMAGOGUES DANGEROUS, TOO.

NEW YORK, June 1I.-DiScuSSion of
the political problems confronting the
country through the development of pow
err by large corporations is made in vigor-
Gus language by ex-President Roosevelt
in his article in this weeks Outlook.
Taking for his subject The Thraldom
of Names" Mr. Roosevelt says it be
hooves the people never to be misled by
designing people who appeal to the
reverence for or antipathy toward a Civ
en- name in order TO achieve some alien
purpose. The rule of a mob, he de-
clares, may be as tyrannical and oppreS-
Sive rs the rule of q single individual.
and the rule of an oligarchy, whether
this oligarchy is Il plutocracy or Il bu-
reaucracy may be as Sordld and blood
thirsty as that of a mob; but the mob
leaders usually state that all that they
are doing is necessary in order to ad
vance the cause of liberty" while the
dictator and oligarchy are usually de-
Tended upon the ground that the course
they follow is absolutely necessary so as
to secure order"
MANY excellent people are taken i'll
by the use of the word liberty at the
enc time" says the eX-president, land
the use of the word order at the other
and ignore the simple fact that despot-
ism is despotism, tyranny tyranny, OPP
preston oppression, whether committed
by one individual or by many individ
uals by a state or by a private corpora
ton. All forms of tyranny and cruelty
must alike be condemned by honest men.
America Has Been Fortunate.
''We in this country have been very
fortunate. Thanks to the teaching and
the practice of the men whom we most
revere as leaders, of the men like Wash
ington and Lincoln, we have hitherto
escaped the twin CULTS of despotism and
mob rule, and we have never been in any
danger from the worst forms of religious
bitterness. But we should therefore be
all the more careful, as we deal without
Industrial and social problems, not to
fall into mistakes similar to those which
have brought lasting disaster on less
fortunately situated peoples.
First and foremost, we must stand
firmly on a basis of good sound ethics
We intend to do what is right for the
ample and sufficient reason that it is
right. If business is hurt by the stern
exposure of crookedness and the result
of efforts to punish the crooked men,
then business must be hurt, even though
good men are involved in the hurting
until it so adjusts itself that it is posi-
bic to prosecute wrOngdOing without
stanpeding the business community into
terror-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 VIC
lence, and apologize for the dynamiter
and the assassin because, forsOoth, they
choose to take the ground that crime is
no crime if the wicked man happens also
20 have been a shiftless and unthrifty or
lazy man who has never amassed prop
erty.