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

the business communit <irto 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 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 1t 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
eminent into the hands of dema-
gogues and visionaries 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 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 REPUTATION that unrestricted indi-
vidualism. for instance, means the
destruction of our forests and our
water supply. The dogma of 'in-
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 it 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 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 II 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 1t 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
it 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.