The Union times. [volume] (Union, S.C.) 1894-1918, 1913-03-07

of our common life without weaken
ing or sentimentalizing it. There has
been something crude and heartless
and unfeeling in our haste to sue
ceed and be great. Our thought has
been Let ever man look out for him
self, let every generation look out for
ITSELF, while we reared giant ma
chinery which made it impossible that
any but those who stood at the levers
of control should have a chance to
look out for themselves. We had not
forgotten our morals. We remem-
bered well enough that we had set
up policy which was meant to serve
the humblest as well as the most
powerful, with an eye single to the
standards of justice and fair play,
and remembered it with pride. But we
were very needless and in hurry to
be great.
Time to Think.
"We have come now to the sober
second thought. The scales of heed
lessness have fallen from our eyes.
We have made up our minds to
square every process of our national
life again with the standards we so
proudly set up at the beginning and
have always carried at our hearts.
Our work is work Of restoration.
I'VE have itemized with some de-
gree of particularly the things that
ought to be altered and here are
some of the chief items: A tariff
which cuts us off from our proper
part in the commerce of the world,
violates the just principles of taxa
tion and makes the government ia
cile instrument in the hands of pri-
vate interests; banking and curren-
cy system based upon the necessity
of the government to sell it's bonds
30 years ago and perfectly adapted to
concentrating cash and restricting
creditsisa industrial system which,
take 'it>ton all its sides, financial as
well as administrative, holds capital
IN isAdhg strings, restricts the liber-
ties and limits the opportunities of
labor, and .exploits without renewing
or conserving the -natusal resources
OF the country; a body of agricultural
activities never yet given the efficien-
cy of great business undertakings or
served as it should be through the in
strumentality of science taken direct
ly to the farm or afforded the fa-
cilities of credit best suited to its
practical needs; water courses unde-
veloped, waste places unreclaimed,
forests INTENDED, fast disappearing
without plan or prospect of renewal,
unregarded waste heaps at every
mine. We have studied. as perhaps
no other nation has the most effective
means of production, but we have not
studied cost or economy as we should,
either as organizers of industry, as
statesmen, or as individuals.
Nor have we studied and perfect
ed the means by which government
may be put at the service of humani
ty, in safeguarding the health of the
nation, the health of it's men and its
women and it's children, as we'll as
their rights in the struggle for ex
istence. This is no sentimental duty.
The firm basis of government is Just.
ice, not pity. These are matters of
justice. There can be no equality or
opportunity, the first essential of
justice in the body polite, if men and
woman and children be not shielded in
their lives, their very vitality, from
the consequences of great Industrial
and social processes which they can
not alter, control, or singly cope with.
Society must see to it that it does
not itself crush or weaken or damage
its own constituent parts The first
duty of law is to keep sound the So
ciety it Serves. Sanitary laws, pure
food laws, and laws determining con-
ditions of labor which individuals are
powerless to determine for them
selves are intimate parts of the very
business of justice and legal efficien-
cy,
Things to be Done.
Ihese are some of the things we
ought to do, and not leave the others
undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-
be-neglected, fundamental safeguard
ing of property and of individual
right. This is the high enterprise of
the new day; to lift everything that
concerns our life as a nation to the
light that shines from the hearthfire
of every mans conscience and vision
of the right We should do this as
partisans; it is ineonceivable that we
should do it in ignorance of the facts
as they are or in blind haste. We