Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1910-06-07


question is considered only as local
issue, the lack of any great issue
affecting the country or the state
as a whole, opportunities are afford
ed the selfseeking and INSCRIPTIONS
politician to distort the conditions
and the solution of the economic
questions that necessarily come up
for settlement in this transition
period of our country. With our
wonderfully rapid growth and prog
ress, -railroads opening up new and
undeyeloped sections, the giant strides
OF electrical development, the net
work of te4ephonic communications
bringing thousands of miles within
speaking distance, offering to the
promoter yeritable Aladdin-Lamp-
opportunities for enrichment, it would
be strange indeed if there should not
result encroachments and discrimina-
lions. This necessarily requires regu-
latioD and wise adjustment not only
to safeguard the thousands of invest
ors but also to protect every rightful
interest of the public; but it has been
the general experience that whenever
such regulation has been advanced
whatever sane and workable enact
ments resulted from the agitation
were made possible by the patriotic
and disinterested earnest service of
the conservative men who had been
successful in their own business or
vocation and not by the agitations
and loud-mouthed reformers who had
excoriated and made political issues
OF these natural shortcomings for
their own personal ends. Whenever
one of these reformers attempted to
follow his mouthings by draft of a
law to correct what in many cases
had become evil, the inexperience of
attaining practical results at once be-
came apparent, and whatever became
of value in correction and regulation
was due to those who approached the
| subject not as extremists and agi-
| tatOrS, but with determination of
doing justice to all interests prospect
i've of criticism or personal political
| advantage. Thus we find in this state
| not one single enactment nor a single
| section of such a corrective enactment
penned by the hand of Robert NJ La
| Toilette ana this is true not only of
the individual but as type.
Still there is a constant straining
for new issues and every conceivable
means for their creation finds employ
ment; investigating committees and
commissions are appointed to discover
new occupation and lengthen the
| political lease of the reformer bound
to uplift the present generation and
those still unborn, conditioned only
upon the reformer being permitted to
officially lead along the utopian way.
Conservation! Well rounded term;
SO appealing to the imagination and
so filled with possibilities. What a
field for political activity, glowing
argument, denunciation and bathos.
| What opportunities for stirring ora
tory and how suitable for phrase
mongering and rivet anew the atten-
ton of Gods patient poor to the only
real thing in reform leadership. OF
what account the fact that the con-
servation of our natural resources for
posterity is not nearly so important as
is the conservation of the property
rights of the individual here and nOu,
| and that without the conservation
nOlo of individual rights, posterity
will have little to be thankful for.
True, there has been a waste of our
natural resources, often seemingly
reckless waste because of the profusion
which under conditions became re-
tarding element. Right here in Mara.
thon County the pioneer will still
bear witness of the great abundance
of natures blessings a wilderness oil
richest timber, the choicest of which
was deemed worthy only of the labor
to market. Considering the labor
the toll, the vital force and privatior
to raft this choice timber to market
was it waste to burn and slash the
less valuable that the wilderness be
come a human bee hive of activity
giving birth to the City of Wausau,
And this is no exception, for every
where throughout this land of ours
the sword, the gun, the axe and fire
have blazed the way, yea, almost
devastated, that more needed anG
better things arise. The very abund
ance has caused only the selection oil
the best for immediate use or profit
and left for destruction what was oil
less immediate value because of the
inability TO profitably employ it. This
same condition does and will prevail
in any new or undeyeloped section
conservation of such resources would
often simply mean useless waste by
undevebpment.
Then consider the water powers
These powers were here when the
country was wilderness; the water
continued to flow and its energies
were unemployed. The early explorer