Los Angeles herald., 1910-09-01
Saws Special Interests Must Be Driven from Politics

This issue is joined, and we must hght
or fail
"In every wise struggle for human
betterment one of the main objects,
and often the only object, has been to
achieve In largest measure equality OF
opportunity. In the struggle for this
great end nations rise from barbar-
ism to civilization, and through 1t
peoples press forward from one stage
of enlightenment to the next. One of
the chief factors in progress is the
destruction of special privilege. The
essence of any struggle for healthy
liberty has always been and must al
ways be to take from some one man
or class of men the right to enjoy
power, or wealth, or position or inn
munity, which has not been earned
by service to his or their fellows.
CONFLICT IN PROGRESS
"Ar many stages in the advance of
humanity this conflict between the
men who possess more than they have
earned and the men who have earned
more than they possess is the central
condition of progress. In our day it
appears as the struggle of free men
to gain and hold the right of self
government as against the special in
| terests, who twist the methods of free
government into machinery for de-
feating the popular will. At every
stage and under all circumstances the
essence of the struggle is to equalize
opportunity, destroy privilege, and
! give to the life and citizenship of
every individual the highest possible
value both to himself and to the COM
monwealth.
Practical equality of opportunity for
all citizens, when we achieve 1t, VIII
have two great results. First, every
man will have fair chance to make
| Lee hi nn NI,nf In, n i'm
reach the highest point to which his
capacities, unassisted by special privi-
! lege of his own and unhampered by
the special privilege of others, can
carry him, and to get for himself and
his family substantially what he has
earned. Second, equaRty of opportu-
nifty means that the commonwealth
will get from every citizen the
| highest service of which he is capa-
BILE. No man who carries the burden
of special privileges of another can
give to the commonwealth that serv-
ice to which it is fairly entitled.
"I stand for the square deal. But
when 1 say that l am for the square
deal mean not merely that 1 stand
for fair play under the present rules
| of the game, but that / stand for haV-
ing those rules changed SO as to work
for a more substantial equality of op-
portunity and of reward for equally
| good service.
"This means that our governments,
national and state, must be freed
| from the sinister influence or control
| of special interests. Exactly as the
| special interests of cotton and slavery
threatened our political integrity be-
fore the Civil War, so now the great
| special business interests too often
control and corrupt the men and
methods of government for their own
profit.
POLITICS MUST BE PURGED
eve must drive the special inter
ests out OF politics. That is one of
our tasks today. Every special inter
est is entitled to justice-full. fair, and
| complete-but not one is entitled to, a
vote in congress, a voice on the bench,
or to representation in any public Of
| flee. The constitution guarantees pro-
lection to property. and we must make
| that promise good. But 1t does not
| give the right of suffrage to any cor.
! poration.
"The true friend of property, the true
| conservative, is he who insists that
| property shall be the servant and not
the master of the commonwealth; who
| insists that the creature of mans MAX
| ing shall be the servant and not the
master of the man who made 1t. The
citizens of the United States must eb-
fectively control the mighty CONNER
cial forces which they have themselves
called into being.
There can be no effective control of
corporations while their political ac
tivity remains. To put an end to 1t
will be neither a short nor an easy
] task, but it can be done.
I'VE must have complete and effec-
tive publicity of corporate affairs. so
| that the people may know beyond
! dUanfIIrn vyhafI1ar fhn
tions obey the law and whether their
management entities them to the con-
fidence of the public. 1t is necessary
that laws should be passed to prohibit
the use of corporate funds directly or
indirectly for political purposes; it is
| still more necessary that such laws
| should be thoroughly enforced. Cor
porate expenditures for political pur-
poses, and especially such expendi-
lures by public service corporations,
have supplied one of the principal
sources of corruption in our political
affairs.
''It has become entirely clear that we
must have government supervision of
the capitalization not only of public
service corporations including partic-
ularly railways, but of all corporations
doing an interstate business. I do
not wish to see the nation forced into
ownership of the railways if it can
| POSSIBLY De avoided, ana In0 only al
tentative is thorough-going and ef-
fective regulation, which shall be
based on a. full knowledge OF all the
facts, including a physical valuation Of
the property. This physical valuation
is not needed, or at least is very rarely
needed, for fixing rates; but 1t is needed
as the basis of honest capitalization.
FRANCHISES SHOULD BE LIMITED
1--WE have come to recognize that
franchises should never be granted ex-
cept for limited time and never with
out proper provision for compensation
to the public 1t is my personal belief
that the same kind and degree of con-
troll and supervision which should be
exercised over public service corpora
tions should be extended also to COM
binations which control neeessaries of
life, such as meat. oil and coal, or
which deal in them on an important
scale.
II believe that the officers, and espe-
cially the directors, of corporations
should be held personally responsible
when, any corporation breaks the law.
Combinations In industry are the re-
suit of an imperative economic law
which cannot be repealed by political
Legislation. The effort at prohibiting
all combination has substantially failed.
The way out lies not in attempting to
prevent such combinations, but in COM
pletely controlling them In the interest
| of the public welfare. For that pur-
pose the federal bureau of corporations
is an agency of the first Importance.