Camas Prairie chronicle. [volume] (Cottonwood, Idaho) 1901-1917, 1910-02-18

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Imperative, to enter upon systematic
improvement, upon large and com
lprehensive plan, just to all portions Of
the country, of the waterways, har-
bors and Great Lakes, whose natural
adaptability to the increasing traffic
of the land is one of the greatest gifts
of benign providence.
I'm accordance with this plank,
measures for the conservation of the
public domain, for the reclassifca-
ton of lands according to their great
est utility, and the vesting of power in
the executive to dispose of coal, phos-
phate, oil and mineral lands, and of
water power sites in such way as to
prevent their monopoly and union of
ownership in syndicate or combination,
have been already introduced, and will
doubtless, in a form approved by con-
gress, be made into law.
"sThe subject has attracted the
widest interest, and its Importance is
becoming more and more impressed
upon the American people.
The river and harbor bill, which
has just been reported by the river
and harbor committee of the house, has
been framed with a view to complying
with the plank of the platform which
| have above quoted. 1t has taken
the plan for the Improvement of the
Ohio from Pittsburg to Cairo as a
project to be carried out in certain
namber of years, and it has treated
similar projects for improvement of
the Missouri from Kansas City to St.
Louis; for the Improvement of the Mis-
sissippi from st. Paul to St. Louis,
and of the same river from st. Louis
to Cairo, and, by continuing contracts
and regular appropriations, these pro-
jects will go on until they are com
pleted. This is change from the pre-
vious plans, and is the result of an
extended popular agitation in favor of
such system.
Roosevelt Aroused the Country.
"Mr. Roosevelt aroused the country
and the people to the danger we were
in of having all our politics and all our
places of government authority con
trolled by corporate interests and to
serve the greed of selfish but powerful
men. During his two terms of office,
Fly what almost may be compared TO
la religious crusade, he aroused the
people to the point of protecting
themselves and the public interests
against the aggressions of corporate
greed, and has left public opinion in a
condition to bring about the reforms
needed to cIinch his policies and to
enacted law.
"But as an inevitable aftermath of
such agitation, we find a condition of
hysteria on the part of certain in
dividuals, and on the part of others a
condition of hypocrisy manifesting it.,
self in the blind denunciation of all
wealth and in the impeachment of the
motives of men of the highest echarac
ter, and by demagogic appeals to the
imagination of people greatly
aroused upon the subject of party and
honesty in the administration of gov
eminent.
'FThe tendency is to resent attach
AAOhG ~ PdI W VI pdlN OISdnlAdIiOn
and to an assertion of individual opin-
ion and purpose, at the expense of
party discipline. The movement is to-
ward factionalism and small groups,
rather than toward large party or
ganization, and the leaders of the
party organization are subjected to the
seyerest attacks and to the question
ing of their motives without any ade-
|quate evidence to justify it.
81 am far from saying the repub-
ilican party is perfect. No party which
has achieved such power as it has
achieved for the last II years could
be expected to maintain either in it's
rank and file or in its management only
men of the purest and highest mo-
tives, and / am the last one to advo-
cate any halt in the prosecution and
condemnation of republicans, however
prominent and powerful, whose con-
duct requires criminal or other prose
cution and condemnation.
TT should be we'll understood that,
with the republican party in its pres
,ent condition, with the various di-
visions subjected to the cross fire of
its own newspapers and its own fac
ttions, any halt or failure on the part
of those in authority to punish and
condemn corruption or corrupt meth
DDS viii properly be visited upon the
party itself, however many good men
it contains.
awe shall be called upon to respond
to the charge in the next campaign
that the tariff, for which we are re-
sponsible, has raised prices. If the
people listen to reasonable arguments
it would be easy to demonstrate that
high prices proceed from an entirely
different cause, and that the present
tariff, being largely a revision down
ward, except with respect to silks and
liquors, which are Injuries, can not
be charged with having increased any
prices.
'FBut this viii not prevent our demo-
cratic friends, on the principle of post
hoe propter hoe that because high
prices followed the tariff they are the
result of it. And we must not be
blinded to the weight of such an argu-
uoant IN ouu aIao+iou examination