The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-08-31

Dle leSSOD 10 us or tOQay. but InlS wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart.
 We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.
 In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects and often the only object has been to achieve in larger measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end nations rise from barbarism to civilization, aud through it peoples press forward from one stage of en- lightenment 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 always 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.
 Struggle For Self Government.
 At 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 interests who twist the meth ods of free government into machin- cry for defeating the popular will.
 At every stage and under all circum- stances the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy priv ilege and give to the life and citizen ship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.
 Practical equality of opportunity for have two great results. First, every man will have fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies, to reach the highest point to which his capaci- ties. unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the spe- cial privileges of others, can car " him and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned; second, equality of op- portunity means that the, common wealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capa- ble No man who carries the burden of the 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 I say that I am for the square deal mean not merely that l stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for hav- ing those rules changed so, as to work for 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 spe- cial interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threat ened our political integrity before the civil war, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of gov ernment for their own profit.
 We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks today. Every special interest is entitled to justice-full, fair and com plete-but not one is entitled to vote in congress, 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 it does not give the right of suffrage to any cor poration.
 Control Commercial Forces.
 The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonweaIth-wh insists that the creature of mans mak- ing shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must eff Actively control the mighty commer- cial forces which they have them selves called into being.
 There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activ- fty remains. To put an end to it will be neither short nor an easy task, but it can be done.
 We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond perad venture whether the corporations obey the law and whether their manage ment entities them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or in- directly for political purposes. It is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
 Corporate expenditures for political purposes and especially such expendi- lures by public service corporations have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our politica, affairs
 It has become entirely clear tha, we must have government supervision of the capitalization not only of pub lie service corporations, including par ticularly railways, but of all corpora lions doing an interstate business. l do not wish to see the nation forced into ownership of tha railuavs if if