The Alaska citizen., 1910-07-30

. as every interest is safeguarded and one interest is not bettered by at tacking another But our fundamen- tai law. our constitutions themselves. afford abundant protection to prop erty and established enterprise. to everything that rests upon valid title
 the government and the fibre of
 our institutions are firm and stiff and enduring We need not fear
 10 strain them by pressing forward to secure the things which are meant to serve the people as whole rather than particular vested inter ests. It is our privilege and our duty to show our faith in the peo- pie by serving them. not in groups
 and sections, but as a whole.
 Their Judgments Biased.
 Tn the second place. it is our con- viction that the interests, by which I mean the men whose energies are concentrated upon particular enter prises established under the condi-
 tons of existing law, cannot see
 the welfare of the country as whole or in true proportion and per
 spective They stand too near their
 own affairs, are too much engaged
 upon a particular purpose, are too
 entirely immersed in the promotion
 of particular interests to see the peoples interest in it's entirety or to hold anything off at arms length and see how it stands related TO
 the affairs of the nation as whole. These things can be seen only from
 outside the interests, only by those whose thought it is to accommodate the interests to the general welfare,
 whether that be pleasing to the in
 terests or not.
 "A third fundamental principle up lon which l believe Democratic party
 action should rest is that the indi-
 vidual. not the corporation, the sin gle living person, not the ar tifcial group of persons exist
 ing merely by permission of the law,
 is the only rightful possessor alike
 of rights and of privileges The cor .poratton is convenience, not a natural member of society. Society
 must be organized so that the indi-
 vidual will not be crushed, will not : be unnecessarily hampered. Every legal instrument created for his con , venience. like the corporation, must : be created only for his convenience and never for his government or , suppression.
 We believe in the fourth place
 that the division of political power in
 this country as between the States and the Federal government and be-
 tween the several parts of and or
 gans of the Federal government it
 self is fixed in law and principle and not simply in desire and con venience We are a party of law and : of service only within the law. We believe that our constitutions are sufficiently liberal and elastic to serve every legitimate purpose of
 public policy. We do not believe that the policy of the moment or the convenience of the moment would ever justify us in demanding
 of that fundamental law something more than elasticity Our cOnsciences and our views of public policy alike condemn the effort to read into ex-
 isting law what it was obviously
 not meant to contain. If we cannot serve the country under the law, We will ask the people to change the law. We will not take it upon our selves to change it without their
 formal consent
 But principles are much easier to state than policies. It is compar- atively easy to say what we believe; it is comparatively easy to say what we desire We have not lost our
 identity as the party of the people
 nor the party of reform. But it is |, quite another matter to say in what g explicit ways we should sek to re- g alize our principles in action,
 I "A party at once conservative in 9 respect of the law and radical in l respect of the service we mean to l render the people; our policies do r not cut to the alteration of institu- 8 tutions, but to the effectuation of ] measures, and it is of the first con- l. sequence that we should have a l. very definite program as to what y we mean our measures to be.
 '- Character of Legislation. n T do not mean, of course, to be S guilty of the egotism and audacity o of putting forth program of spec c fife measures, but l do think 1t
 possible to state in very definite l. terms the character we should ,t wish to give to legislation.
 d Tn the first place, we should wish e not merely to curb the trusts, and y above all, we should not wish tc y regulate them in such way as o will make them either partners ol