Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1912-08-05


lem of the hour. Hundreds of thou
sands of Woodworking Americans find
l. difficult TO get enough to live on.
The average income of an American
laborer is less than $500 a year. With
this he must furnish food. shelter
and clothing for a family.
women, whose ~nourishing and pro.
lection should be the first care of the.
State, not only are driven into the
mighty army of wage-earners, but are
forced to work under unfair and de-
grading conditions. The right of a
child to grow into a normal human
being is sacred; and yet, while small
and poor countries, packed with peo-
pie, have abolished child labor, Amer.
lean mills, mines, factories and sweat
shops are destroying hundreds of
thousands of American children in
body, mind and soul.
AT the same time men have grasped
fortunes in this country so great fiat
the human mind can not comprehend
| their magnitude. These mountaina of
wealth are far larger than even that
lavish reward which no one would
deny to business risk or geniIs.
"On the other hand, American bust
ness is uncertain and unsteady COM
pared with the business of other a
tions. American business men are the
best and bravest in the world, and
yet II business conditions hamper
their energies and chill their courage.
I'VE mean to remedy these condi-
tions. We mean not only to make
prosperity steady. but to give to the
many who carr it a just share of that
prosperity instead of helping the few
who do not earn 1t TO take an unjust
share. The Progressive motto is:
Pass prosperity around.
End Business Abuses.
What. then. must we do to make
American business better? We must
do what poorer nations have done.
We must end the abuses of business
by striking down those abuses instead
of striking down business itself. We
must try to make little business big
and all business honest instead of
striving to make big business little
and yet letting it remain dishonest.
with the growth of big business
came business evils just as great.
1t is these evils of big business that
hurt the people and injure all other
business. One of these wrongs is
overcapitalization which taxes the
peoples very living. Another is the
manipulation of prices to the I'M
settlement of all normal business and
to the peoples damage. Another IS
interference in the making of the peo-
pies laws and the running of the
peoples government in the unjust in
terest of evil business. Getting laws
that enable particular interests to rob
the people and even to gather Grim
inal riches from human health and
life is still another.
An example of such laws is the
Infamous tobacco legislation of 1902.
which authorized tie Tobacco Trust
to continue to collect from the peo-
pie the Spanish War tax, amounting
to a score of millions Of dollars, but
to keep that tax instead of turning
it over TO the government, as ii had
been doing. Another example is the
shameful meat legislation, by which
the Beef Trust had the meat it sent
abroad inspected by the government
so that foreign countries would take
its product and yet was permitted to
sell diseased meat to our own people.
1t is Incredible tina laws like these
could ever get on the nations statute
books. The invisible government put
them there; and only the universal
wrath of an enraged people corrected
them when, after years, the people
discovered the outrages.
What. then, shall we Americans
do? Common sense and the expert
ence of the world says hat we ought
to keep the good big business does
for us and stop the wrongs that big
business does to us. Yet we have
done just the other thing. We have
struck at big business itself and have
not ever aimed to strike at the evils
of big business.
sherman Law Uncertain.
Under the shifting Interpretation
of the Sherman law uncertainty ana
fear is chilling the energies of the
great body of honest American busi
ness men. AS the Sherman law now
stands no two business men IAN ar
range their mutual affairs and be
sure that they are not law-breakers.
This is the main hindrance 10 the
immediate and permanent revival of
American business.
Even this IS not M, By The de-
crees of u courts. under the Sher-
man law, the two mightiest trusts on
earth hA te aefaaIlx hopp tcnuaa1 IN