The Washington times., 1912-12-11

over q oecaoe ago approved II, muS giving TIC pun
the effect Of law.
A PROBLEM FOR CRAFTSMANSHIP.
Colonel Roosevelt directed attention to the in
herent weakness Of dependence on the Sherman law
as an inhibitory and corrective measure when he
said in the Progressive meeting at Chicago yesterday
that our great, modern industrial organizations
needed as much supervision as our interstate rail-
roads and national banks
The apprehension by civil or criminal process
Of men who form combinations in restraint Of trade
may be we'll enough for the abuses with which they
seek to deal but they cover only one general phase
of modern ndustralis, and society is faced now by
others which only q Commission Of the kind sug-
gested by Colonel Roosevelt can handle efficiently.
We do not leave our national banks to the penal
laws against fraud and embezzlement. " do not
leave our interstate railroads to statute prohibiting
secret rebates and to the laws of the States for the
compensation Of injured passengers.
We recognize that both our national banks and
our interstate railroads have certain well.de6ned
functions Of economic and social service concerning
which statutes Of merely penal retributive char
acter cannot take adequate cognizance, and we pro-
vide for those services by special laws and by definite
supervision and by commission which experience
has shown to be necessary.
But Of the larger aspects of modern industrial.
ism, the National Government, so tar has taken no
notice.
We have permitted the economic and financial
results of steam-power and automatic machinery to
move far ahead Of their legislative recognition.
We pay no attention. from governmental stand
point to the fact that those inventions have revou-
tionized the commercial intercourse and almost the
personal relations Of our life.
Our mental attitude-or the attitude of our lee.
islation-to all those varied things is what it was
in the days when men made shoes by hand and
crossed the desert in prairie schooners.
When cloth and linen were woven at home on
cottage looms and men were master craftsmen, the
business Of making, and buying, and selling was
simple affair Of the haggling of the merchants and
the barter Of the market place.
But the factory has replaced the cottage industry;
the workman who owned his loom has been succeed.
ed by the hand" who has no property in the ma.
chine he tends and the widespread, profound change
which that difference connotes has not been recog
'@~~ ." ~'J"''"e A"S ~~"'PAS''~"9''S way W oui
Government
A century ago finance was in the custody of in
dividual bankers and individual merchants; to day
finance is international.
When this Republic was established the States
composing it could take of the industrial func
tons arising within their borders.
Today the character Of our important industries
is essentially national; there is scarcely system of
manufacture or distribution that is not as much an
indispensable public utility service as a railroad,
street car line, telephone plant, or gas and
electric supply.
Through the Interstate Commerce Commission
we are working now to regulate the general con.
duct of the railroads in the interests Of organized
society," For the same purpose we are creating Pub.
lie Utilities Commissions to supervise our street car
and electric companies.
We have done that in limited way for finance
in the legislative cognzance Of our national banks
But we have left the complex and searching in.
uences and activities of all our modern industrial
ism to the penal and dssolutonary sections of the
Sherman law and the immediate imprisonment of ev.
cry trust magnate" in the country would bring US
no closer to the actual economic problems of that
industriasm than we are today.
1t is because Of the practical genius which COL
onel Roosevelt has for ascertaining and riveting
public attention upon questions of this kind that he
in some part, established his reputation and secured
the confidence of the people, and the emphasis and
clearness with which he dealt with them yesterday
! should do great deal to accelerate their solution