The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-10

The late Tom Carter was a delightful man, but touching the controversy be- tween Bill and Dick, he was prone to be cynical and partisan of Bill. In his phi losophy it was not only impossible to set the skillet level. but it was not desirable that it should be so arranged. He de. clared that nature was opposed to 1t. and cited that she had made the oak of one plant and the thistle of another, or eX- ample like that. But the soil affords N7ual opportunity to the vegetable and C the weed, and the skillet is the soil for this illustration. Tom contended that if the skillet should be set level Bill would
 get more than his share and Dick less
 than his anyhow. and that perhaps is l true; but in that event 1t would be Dicks l fault now it is Dicks misfortune.
 Tom Carter was an altogether practical
 man. At one time in his career he was
 a book agent, and so successful was he 1 that. if allowed a hearing, he could sell a book to a lamp post. He became a law yer not erudite or profound in the pro- fession, but an able and a skillful prac- titioner. No senator employed better Eng fish. but he had slow and painful de- livery. He was very strong debater and had the temerity to engage the truculent Hepburn himself and best him too He was hand-and-a-half in the tremendous struggle in the republican congressional caucus in 1889 when Reed and Mckinley were candidates for speaker. He was for the big fellow and landed him a winner And Carter subsequently, agreed with those, who saw in the result the final tri- umph of Mckinley, and who believed that had Mckinley been speaker of the Fifty first Congress and Reed chairman of ways and means, Reed. and not Me Kinley. would have been the republican nominee for President in 1S96
 
 Carter was a standpatter. He never lacked faih in privileged class. He sim cerely believed that some men should be allowed advantages to WAX great in order that they might take care of the little He could have imbibed great consolation from the ninth chapter of St Paul's eps- tie to the Romans He cited Shakespeare as one specially endowed by nature to be great, one who would find his way to the deep sop. He pointed to Rockefeller as one who would have been rich any where or at any time because God had given him the genius for acquisition
 That is all true, but it is no less true that the skillet ought to be set as fair for the peasant as it is for the peer Ev- erybody knows that it is not so adjusted Look at the Tobacco trust. Actually it absorbed companies that did not want to be absorbed. It uttered securities of diff ferent dignities, apportioning the more vainable among it's favorites. All in all 1t is the very worst of all the bad trusts, getting all the sop in the skillet. leaving none at all for Dick
 And what pity 'tis that all the trusts are not good as they all could be- Here are capital and labor both sopping the Skillet, each after the deep sop, regard less of the rights of the other Both ought to have sense enough to know that the peace and prosperity of each depend On an equal and fair division of the deep sop so that each will get his fair share, no more and no less.
 Tom Carter did not believe that any trust was bad not even the beef trust that is accused and condemned in every quotation of the price of cattle in the stock wards and of it's products in the 1 slaushterhouse. But the American people are at fault. Some two years ago every 1 body was complaining of the prices of meats and millions of families joined in l a solemn boycott of the meat trust A rev of them abstained from eating meat few days and then resumed it. A phase
 Of this miserable failure was an advance
 In the prices of all meats as long as the 1 boycott continued
 | The heather Chnee orders 1t better 1 When our country heaped humiliation 1 upon him the Chinese in their own coun- 1 try entered upon boycott of American | goods and 1t was boycott that boycot- 1 ted. Then We surrendered and our great ana lihihaculaie government yielded
 Mammon what it had denied Justice Our l laws touching the Chinese were moi
 changed in the slightest particular: hut | the Roosevelt administration that did not have very high opinion of the law, any
 how. made a radical change in the en- forcement of the law. The Chinese was appeased, the. boycott was lifted and
 America got her profits again, ad that is l the main chance
 But the skillet ought to be better ad- justed in the interest of fair play and
 for the sake of Dick. and in the true in-
 terest of Bill himself