The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1910-09-01


lead 70 a war upon the owners Of prop
erty. Property is the fruit Of labor; prop
erty is desirable; 10 a positive good in
the world. Let not him who Is houseless
pull down the house Of another but let
him work diligently and build one for
himself thus by example showing that
his own shall be safe from violence when
built" It seems to me that in these
words Lincoln took substantially the atti-
tude that we ought to take; he showed
the proper sense of proportion in his rela-
tive estimates of capital and labor. of
human rights and property rights. Above
all, in this speech, as in many others, he
taught a lesson in wise hndlIness and
charity; an indispensable lesson to us of
today. But this wise kindiness and char
ity 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 join
ed, and we must fight or fail.
Equality Of Opportunity.
In every wise struggle for human bet
terment 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, ma
tions rise from barbarian to civilization,
and through it 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 lib
erty has always been and must always
be to take from some one man or class
or men the right to enjoy power, or
wealth, or position, or immunity, which
has not been earned by service to his
or their fellows.
At many stages In the advance Of hu-
manity 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 prog
ress. In our day It appears as the strug-
gle Of free men to gain and hold the
right of self-government as against the
special interests, who twist the methods
of free government into machinery for
defeating the popular will. At every
| stage and under all circumstances the
essence Of the struggle Is to equalize op-
portunity, destroy privilege and give to
the life and citizenship OF every individ-
ual the highest possible value both to
| himself and to the commonwealth.
Practical equality of opportunity for all
| citizens, when we achieve 1t, will have
two great results. First, every man will
have a fair chance to make Of himself all
| that in him lies, to reach the highest point
to which his capacities, unassisted by
| special privilege of his own and unham-
pered by the special privileges Of others,
can carry him, and to get for himself
and his family substantially what he has
earned. Second, equality Of opportunity
means that the commonwealth will get
from every citizen the highest service of
which he Is capable. No man who car
| ries the burden of the special privileges
of another can give TO the commonwealth
that service to which 1t IL fairly en-
titled.
l stand for the square deal. But when
say that am for the square deal
| mean not merely that stand for fair
| play under the present rules OF the game
but that I stand for having those rules
changed 10 as to work for more sub
stantial equality Of opportunity, and of
| reward for equally good service.
This means that our governments, lIa-
tional 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 po-
litical integrity before 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. We must drive the special inter-
ests 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 a vote in
congress, voice on the bench, or to rep
| resentation in any public office. The Con-
stitution guarantees protection to proper
ty, and we must make that promise good
But It does not give the right of suffrage
to any corporation.
Property Should Be the Servant.
The true friend of property the true
conservative, is he who insists that prop
| erty shall be the servant and not the
master of the commonwealth; who insists
that the creature Of mans making shall
be the servant and not the master of the
man who made IT. The citizen Of the
United States must effectively control the
mighty commercial forces which they
have themselves called into being.
| There can be no effective control Of
corporations while their political activity
remains. To put an end to it will be
neither a 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 peradventure
whether the corporations obey the law
and whether their management entities
them to the confidence of the public 1t
is necessary that laws should be passed
to prohibit the use of corporate funds
directly or indirectly for political pur-
| poses 1t Is still more necessary that
such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
| Corporate expenditures for political pur-
poses, and especially such expenditures
by public service corporations, have sup
piled one of the principal sources of cor
I ruption in our political affairs.
| 1t has become entirely clear that we
must have government supervision of the
capitalization not only Of public service
corporations, including particularly rail-
ways, but of all corporations doing an
Interstate business. I do not wish to
see the Nation forced into ownership Of
the railwaya If 1t can possibly be avoided,
and the only alternative is thorough going
and effective regulation, which shall be
based on 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.
| We have come to recognize that fran
chises should never be granted except
for limited time, and never without
proper provision for compensation to the
| public. 1t is my personal belief that the
same kind and degree Of control and
supervision which should be exercised
over public service corporations should
be extended also to combinations which
control necessaries of life, such as meat,
oil, and coal, or which deal in them on
an important scale.
| l believe that the officers, and espe-
cially the directors, Of corporations,
should be held personally responsible
when any corporation breaks the law.
Dealing With Combinations.
Combinations in industry are the result
| Of an imperative economic law which can
not 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 completely controll-
ing them in the interest Of the public well
fare. For that purpose the Federal Bu-
reau Of Corporations Is an agency Of the
first Importance. It's power and there
fore its efficiency, as well as that of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, should
be largely increased. We have a right to
[ expect from the Bureau of Cnrnnra tinna