East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1912-08-07
Nation Impatient Of Partisan Make-Believe, /
Awakening to Sense Of Neglected Ideals
TARIFF HAS BECOME SYSTEM OF FAVORS. HE SAYS
Rule Of Justice and Right Must Be Inaugurated People
Need New Point Of View and New Method and Spirit
of Counsel.

nation has awakaned to a sense of
neglected ideals and neglected duties;
to consciousness that the rank and
file of her people find life very hard
to sustain, that her young men find
opportunity embarrassed and that her
older men find business difficult to
renew and maintain because of cir
cumstances of privilege and private
advantage which have interlaced their
subtle threads throughout almost ev-
cry part of the framework of our
present law she has awakened to
the knowledge that she has lost GER
tain cherished liberties and wasted
priceless resources which she had
solemnly undertaken to hold in trust
for posterity and for all mankind;
and to the conviction that she stands
confronted with an occasion for con-
structive craftsmanship such as has
not arisen since the great days in
which her government was set up.
What is there to do? 1t is hard
to sum the great task up, but ap-
parently this Is the sum of the mat
ter: There are two great things to
do. One is to set up the rule Of JUS
tice and of right in such matters as
the tariff. the regulation of the
trusts and the prevention of monop-
oily, the adaptation OF our banking
and currency laws to the varied uses
to which our people must put them.
the treatment of those who do the
daily labor in our factories and mines
and throughout all our great indus
trial and commercial undertakings,
and the political life of the people
of the Philippines, for whom we hold
governmental power in trust, for their
service not our own The other, the
additional duty is the great task of
protecting our people and our re-
sources and of keeping open to the
whole people the doors of opportuni-
ty through which they must, genera
ton by generation, pass If they are
to make conquest of their fortunes in
health. in freedom, in peace, and in
contentment. In the performance of
this second great duty we are face
to face with questions of conserva-
ton and of development, questions of
forests and water powers and mines
and water ways. of the building of
an adequate merchant marine, and
the opening of every highway and
facility and the setting up of every
safeguard needed by a great indus
trious, expanding nation.
Need New Method.
These are all great matters upon
which everybody should be heard
We have got into trouble in recent
years chiefly because these large
things. which ought to have been
handled by taking counsel with as
! large a number of persons as possi-
! BILE, because they touched every in
| terest and the life of every class and
region, have in fact been too often
! handled in private conference. They
| have been settled by very small, and
often deliberately exclusive, groups
| of men who undertook to speak foi
the whole nation, or, rather, fol
themselves in the terms of the whole
nation-very honestly it may be, bu
very ignorantly sometimes, and very
shortsightedly, too-a poor substitute
for genuine common counsel Nc
group of directors, economic or poll
teal, can speak for people. They
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