The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-02-21

thelr QeIe2atcS. he power IS the peO- ple's and only the peoples.
 Make Popular Rule Effective.
 I hold it to be the duty of every public servant and of every man who in public or in private life holds a posi- tion of leadership in thought or action to endeavor honestly and fearlessly to guide his fellow countrymen to right decisions, but I emphatically dissent from the view that it is either wise or necessary to try to devise methods which under the constitution will auto maticalIy prevent the people from de ciding for themselves what govern mental action they deem just and prop CT. It is impossible to invent constitu tionaI devices which will prevent the popular will from being effective for wrong without also preventing it from being effective for right. The only safe course to follow in this great American democracy is to provide for making the popular judgment really effective.
 Lincoln, with his clear vision. his in- grained sense of justice and his spirit of kindly friendliness to all, forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. What he said should be pOndered by capitalist and workingman alike. He spoke as follows q condense):
 hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind. Labor is prior to and independent of cap ital Labor is the superior of ca pital and deserves much the higher consideration Capital has it's rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor should this lead to a war upon property. Property Is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable is 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 assuring that his owr shall be safe from violence when built.
 This last sentence characteristically shows Lincoln's homely, kindly, com mon sense His is the attitude that we ought to take. He showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative esti- mates of capital and labor, of human rights and the rights of wealth.
 Prosperity Must Be Distributed.
 The ends of good government in our democracy are to secure by genuine popular rule a high average of moral and material well being among our citizens. It has been well said that in the past we have paid attention only to the accumulation of prosperity, and that from henceforth we must pay equal attention to the proper distribu- ton of prosperity. This is true The only prosperity worth having is that which affects the mass of the people. We are bound to strive for the fair dis tribution of prosperity. But it be- hooves us to remember that there is no use in devising methods for the proper distribution of prosperity unless the prosperity is there to distribute. ho.d it to be our duty to see that the wage worker, the. small producer, the ordi- nary consumer, shall get their fair share of the benefit of business pros perity. But 1t either is or ought to be evident to every one that business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit from 1t Therefore hold that he is the real progressive, that he is the genuine champion of the people. who endeavors to shape the policy alike of the nation and of the several states so as to encourage legitimate honest business at the same time that he wars against all crookedness and injustice and unfairness and tyranny in the busi- ness world, for of course we can only get business put on a basis of perma- nent prosperity when the element of in justice is taken out of it. This is the reason why I have for so many years insisted as regards our national gov ernment that it is both futile and mis- chievous to endeavor to correct the evils of big business by an attempt to restore business conditions as they were in the middle Of the last century, before railways and telegraphs had rem dered larger business organizations both inevitable and desirable.
 The effort to restore such conditions and to trust for justice solely to such proposed restoration is as foolish as if we should attempt to arm our troops with the fintlocks of Washington's Continentals instead of with modern weapons of precision. FIintlock legis- lation of the kind that seeks to pro hibft all combinations. good or bad, is bound to fail, and the effort, in so far as it accomplishes anything at all, merely means that some of the worst combinations are not checked and that honest business is checked. What is needed is, first. the recognition that modern business conditions have come to stay, in so far at least as these con ditions mean that business must be done in larger units, and then the cool
 
 introduce an effective method of reg ulating big corporations so as to help legitimate business as an incident to thoroughly and completely safeguard ing the interest of the people as q whole. We are a business people. The tillers of the soil. the wageworkers. the business men--these are the three big and vitally important divisions of our population. The welfare of each division is vitally necessary to the vel fare of the people as a whole. The great mass of business is, of course, done by men whose business is either small or of moderate size.
 Should Be Fixed Policy.
 The average business man of this type is, as 9 rule, a leading citizen of his community. foremost in everything that tells for its betterment, a man whom his neighbors look up to and re- spect. He is in no sense dangerous to his community just because he is an in-