Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1912-08-08

the human mind can not comprehend
their magnitude.
On the other hand, American bust
ness is uncertain and unsteady com
pared with the business of other ma
tons. American business men are the
best and bravest in the world, and yet
our business conditions hamper their
energies and chill their courage.
Present Business Evils.
With the growth of big business
came business evils just as great. It
is these evils of big business that hurt
the people and injure all other bust
ness. One of these wrongs is over
capitalization which taxes the peoples
very living. Another is the manipula-
ton of prices to the unsettlement of
all normal business and to the peo-
pies damage. Another is interference
in the making of the peoples laws and
the running of the peoples govern
ment in the unjust interest of evil
business. Getting laws that enable
particular interests to rob the people,
and even to gather criminal riches
from human health and life is still
another.
Trust Question Vital.
The people are tired of mock bat
tie with criminal capital. They do not
want to hurt business; but they do
want to get something done about the
trust question that amounts to some
thing. What good does it do any man
to read in his morning paper that the
courts have dissolved" the oil trust,
and then read in his evening paper
that he must thereafter pay a higher
price for his oil than ever before?
What good does it do the laborer who
smokes his pipe to be told that the
courts have dissolved the tobacco
trust and vet find tina the must pay
the same or a higher price for the
same short-weight package of tobac'
co? Yet all this is the practical re-
suit of the suits against these two
greatest trusts in the world,
We mean to put new business laws
on our statute books which will tell
American business men what they
can do and what they can not do. We
mean to make our business laws clear
instead of foggy-to make them plain
ly state just what things are criminal
and what are lawful. And we mean
that the penalty for things criminal
shall be prison sentences that actually
punish the real offender, instead of
money fines that hurt nobody but the
people, who must pay them in the end.
No Cause for Alarm to Business.
And then we mean to send the mes
| sage forth to hundreds of thousands
of brilliant minds and brave hearts
engaged in honest business, that they
are not criminals but honorable men
in their work to make good business
in this republic,
The next great business reform we
must have to steadily increase Ameri.
can prosperity is to change the meth.
cd of building our tariffs. The tariff
must be taken out of politics and
treated as a business question instead
of as q political question. Hereto
fore, we have just done the other
thing. That is why American bust
ness is upset every few years by un'
necessary tariff u~pheavals and is
weakened by uncertainty in the pc
RODS between. The greatest need OF
business is certainty; but the only
thing certain about our tariff is un
certainty,
A tariff high enough to give Ameri
can producers the American market
when they make honest goods and
sell them at honest prices but low
enough that when they sell dishonesr
, goods at dishonest prices, foreign
competition can correct both evils; {
tariff high enough to enable Ameri
can producers to pay our workingmer
American wages and so arranged tina
the workingmen will get such wages,
a business tariff whose changes will
be SO made as to reassure business in
stead OF disturbing it-this is the tar
if and the method Of its making il
which the Progressive party believes
for which it does battle and which !
proposes to write into the laws of tn
land.
The Payne-Aldrich tariff laws mus
be revised Immediately in accordanc
to these principles.
From certain sources we hear prea
From certain sources we hea
preachments about the danger of GU
reforms to American institutions