Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-04-16

SOiQ py du OFu99iSlSs " IHS HhsS
bottle falls to benefit your money Is
returned
MILES MEDICAL CO., EI<hart, Ind.
that it is certain large. special interests
and not the people who maintain the
lobby; that the argument of the lobby
is oftentimes louder and more potent
than the argument of the hastings and
the floor of the representative body. He
would have found, moreover, that until
very recent years opinion had had very
difficult access, If any at all, in most
seasons, of the private conferences in
which candidates for office were chosen,
candidates for both administrative and
legislative office and that in the private
conferences where it was determined
who should be nominated and, there
fore, of course, who should be elected,
the same influences had established
themselves which ruled in the legisla-
tive lobby. That money, the money that
kept the whole organization together
flowed in, not from the general body
of the people, but from those who wish
ed to determine in their own private
interest what governors and legislators
should and should not do.
1T is plain, in such circumstances, what
he would have insisted, as we are insist
ing now, that if there could be found no
means by which the authority and pur-
pose of the people could break into these
private places and establish their rule
again, If the jungle proved too thick for
the common thought to explore, if the
coverts where the real power lurked were
too difficult to find, the forces of gen.
uine Democracy must move around them
instead of through them, must surround
and beleaguer them, must establish a
force outside of them by which they can
be dominated or overawed. 1t is with the
discussion of just such affairs that the
public mind is now preoccupied and en-
crossed. Debate is busy with them from
one end of the land to the other.
LAS regards the economic policy of the
country it is perfectly plain that Mr..
Jefferson would have insisted upon a
tariff fitted to actual conditions, by which
he would have meant not the interests
of the few men who find access to the
hearings of the ways and means commit
tee of the house and the finance COM
mittee of the senate, but the interests of
the business men and manufacturers and
farmers and workers and professional
men of every kind and class. He would
have insisted that the schedules should
be turned wrong side out and every other
item of their contents subjected to the
general scrutiny of all concerned. 1t is
plain, also, that he would he have insist
ed upon a currency system elastic indeed
and suited to the varying circumstances
of the money market in great Industrial
and trading nation, but absolutely forti-
fed and secured against a central control,
the influence of the lotteries and leagues
of banks to which it is now in constant
danger of being subjected. He would
have known that the currency question
is not only an economic question, but
political question, and that, above all
things else, control must be in the hands
of those who represent the general in
terest and not in the hands of those who
represent the things we are seeking to
guard against
GENERAL BUSINESS.
"In the general field of business his
thought would of course, have gone
about to establish freedom, to throw
business opportunity open to every point
to new men, to destroy the process of
monopoly, to exclude the poison of spe-
cial favors, to see that, whether big or
little, business was not dominate by any
thing but the law itself, and that that
law was made in the interest of plain, I'M
privileged men everywhere.
"Jefferson's principles are sources of
light because they are not made up of
pure reason, but spring out of aspiration,
impulse, vision, sympathy. They burn
with the fervor of the heart; they wear
the light of Interpretation he sought to
speak in, the authentic terms of honest,
human ambition. And the law in his
mind was the guardian of all legitimate
ambition. 1t was the great umpire
standing by to see that the game was
honorably and fairly played in the spirit
of generous rivalry and open the field
free to every sportsmanlike contestant.
constitutions are not inventions. They
do not create our liberty. They are
rooted in life, in fact in circumstances,
in environment. They are not the con-
dition Of our liberty but its expression.
They result from our life; they do not
create it. And so there beats in them
always, If they live at all, this pulse off
the large life of humanity. AS they
yield and answer to that they are per-
fected and exalted.
Indeed the whole spirit of government
is the spirit of men of every kind banded
together in a generous combination seek
ing the common good. Nations are ex-N
alted parties are made great as they
partake of this aspiration and are per-
mitted to see this vision of the nation as
whole struggling towards common
ideal and a common hope.
DEMOCRACY TODAY.
I'VE as Democrats are particularly
bound at this season of expectation and
of confidence to remember that it is
only in this spirit and with this vision
that we can ever serve either the nation
or ourselves. AS we approach the time
when we are to pick out a president
for i believe that is to be our privilege
we should fix our thought on this one
great fact, that no man is big enough
or great enough to be president alone.
He will be no stronger than his party.
His strength will lie in the counsel '
of his comrades. His success win spring !
/ \ eel
fish cooperation of his party, and his
party must be more than half the ma
ton. 1t must include, and genuinely in 4
clude, men of every class and race and
disposition. If he be indeed the repre-
sentative of his people, there may be
vouchsafed to him through them some ]
thing of the vision to conceive what
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