The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-02-22


 for navigation in the everglades.
 
 MY HAT IS IN THE
 REINSTATEMENT
 OF COL. ROOSEVELT
 CONTINUED FROM PAGE ID -~e~'----~r>->-''-~------ ----'---~.>----- what governmental action they deem just and proper. People Should Rule 'Tt is impossible to invent constitu- | tional devices which will prevent the popular will from being effective for wrong without also preventing 1t from being effective for right. The only safe course to follow in this great Amer 1 ican democracy is to provide for making the popular judgment really effective. l But it is a false constitutionalism, a false statesmanship, to endeavor by the exercise of a perverted ingenuity to seem to give the people full power and at the same time to trick them out of 1t.
 The Real Progressive T hold that he Is the real progress sive. that he Is the genuine champion of the people who endeavors to shape 1 the policy alike of the nation and of l the several states so as to encourage Legitimate and honest business at the l same time that he wars against all crookedness and injustice and unfair mess and tyranny in the business~world This is the reason why I have for so | many years insisted as regards our na- tional government that 1t Is both fu- tile and mischieyous to endeayor to correct the evils of big business by an attempt to restore business conditions as they were in the middle of the last hafOrp e had rendered larger business organi- | cations both inevitable and desirable.
 "Flintlock legislation of the kind that seeks to prohibit all combinations, good or bad. is bound to fail. and the effort, in so far as 1t accomplshes some of the worst combinations are not checked. and that honest business is checked.
 ''What is needed Is, first, the recogni- tion that. modern business conditions have come to stay, in so far at least as these conditions mean that business must be done in larger units and then the cool headed and resolute determina- ton 10 introduce an effective method of regulating big corporations as to help legitimate business as an incident to thoroughly and completely safe guarding the interests of the people as a whole.
 The middle sized business men form an element of strength which is of lit erally incalculable value to the nation. The average business man of this type is, as a rule, a leading citizen of his rf rfcommunity, foremost In everything that tells for its betterment. a man whom his neighbors look up to and respect.
 Unwitting Transgressors
 "Yet nowadays many men of this kind. when they come to make necessary trade a wifi selves in danger of becoming unwitting transgressors of the law and are at a loss to know what the law forbids and what it permits. This is all wrong There should be a fixed governmental policy, a policy which shall clearly define and punish wrongdoing, and shall give in ad- vance full information to any man as to just what he can and just what he can not legally and properly do.
 Tt is absurd and wicked to treat the deliberate lawbreaker as on an exact par with the man eager to obey the law whose only desire is to find out from some com petent governmental authority what the law is and then live up to it. Tt is absurd | to endeavor to regulate business in the interest of the public by means of long drawn lawsuits without any accompani- ment of administrative control and regu- lation.
 Control Big Business
 Tt is imperative to exercise over big business control and supervision which is unnecessary as regards small business. I do not believe in making mere size of and by itself criminal
 "The antitrust law does good in so far as it can be invoked against combinations which really are monopolies or which re- strict production which artificialy raise l.prices. But in so far as its workings are uncertain, or as it threatens corporations which have not been guilty of anti-social | conduct, it does harm. Moreover, it can not by itself accomplish more than a trifing part of the governmental regula- tion of big business which is needed. The nation and the states must cooperate in this matter.
 Should Get Square Deal
 "our demand is that bigebusiness give the people a square deal and that the peo- pie give square deal to any man en- gagged in big business who honestly en- deavors to do what is right and proper.
 "The chief trouble with big business has arisen from the fact that big business has so often refused to abide by the principle of the square deal: the opposition which personally have encountered from pig business has in every case arisen not be- cause did not give square deal but be- cause I did.
 l "All business into which the element of monopoly in any way or degree enters. and where it proves in practice impossible totally to eliminate this element of mo- nopoly should be carefully supervised, regulated and controlled by governmental authority: and such control should be ex- ercised by administrative, rather than by judicial, officers. No effort should be made to destroy : big corporation merely because 1t is pig, merely because 1t has shown itself a peculiarly efficient busi- ness instrument
 '.The legislature should make 1t more |