The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-09-03
PEOPLE IN SADDLE
NOW, BURKE STATES
Maryland Judge Tells Bar AS
ISOLATION of Rise and Fall
of the Trusts.
(NationaI News Associauon)

(NationaI News Associauon)
MONTREAL, Sept. 3-Facing many
of the men who have been blamed for
the control of the trusts" over poll
tics, and evasion of the law by cor
porations, Judge n. Charles Burke, of
the court of appeals of Maryland, ad-
DRESSING the American Bar associa-
ton here today, sketched the rise sand
fall of the corporation in political
power during the past decade, and
wound up with the statement that the
people are now pretty well free
they have in a very large measure
recovered their political power"
beginning in the early seventies
said Judge Burke, "the public service
and industrial corporations went into
politics. 1t resulted in building up a
great industrialism in which the rights
of man were in a large measure sac
rificed to the rights, not of the state,
but to the rights of property-to the
interests of privileged class.
Many Evils Corrected.
Many of the evils to which I have
referred have been corrected, and 9TH
ers will be redressed in due course
The people are now pretty we'll free
they have in a very large measure re-
covered their political power. They
are not bent upon revolution or de-
struction, but upon national recupera-
ton by reasonable social and political
reform The state and national gov
ernments have full control of the sit
uation, and full power to deal with
and correct the wrongs of which the
people complain.
whether the corporations went
into politics in defense of legitimate
business-for we had demagogues in
those days as we have them now and
the corporation batting craze was pre-
valent then as it is now-or whether
it was actuated by deliberate pur-
pose to acquire the power to lay un-
fair and burdensome exactions upon
the general public, and thereby enorm-
ously increase the wealth of the few
at the expense of the many, it is not
necessary now to inquire.
Suffice it to say that it's unrestrain-
ed and uncontrolled activity of the
politics and business of the country
had precisely that effect, accomplished
by an unrighteous alliance in practi-
cally every state of the union between
political machines and the corpora
tions-a partnership in which the cor
porations furnished the money and
the machine delivered the power by
which the corporations controlled the
government in all matters in which it
was interested.
How the "Few" Controlled.
In this way it was able to seize and
retain the representative principle of
the government and establish an i'm
perium in imperio-a government of
the many by the few and for the few
"a government in which business and
the interests of business counted for
practically everything, and the rights
of men for little. 1t seized the taxing
power of the government and prosti-
tuted it to personal and private uses;
it exacted excessive rates in transpor-
'tation; it inaugurated a system of re-
bates to build up private fortunes or
to crush competing business; it
:fleeced the confiding public by over
capitalization and the fraudulent is
sue of securities, and in numerous
other ways, disclosed by the adjudged
cases, great wrongs were inflicted up
ION the public.
ITO accomplish these things our
,politics was demoralized and corrupt
ed by the lavish use of money. Its
publication, in the language of one of
the cleanest and ablest men then in
public life, w" ., an iridescent dream
Things becaENo@so bad in the late
,nineties that Mr.. Bryan was led to
say that one of the chief functions of
government was to put rings in hogs
"Since then the sleeping giant-the
American democracy-has awakened,
and has broken the shackles placed
upon him by an indefensible selfish
ness, and is moving towards the Dec
laration of Independence and the re-
assertion of the rights of men Sc
cured by the Constitution. Nothing
can stop this movement, and deep
down in our hearts we know it is
right. The duty of wise leadership is
to set the metes and bounds of this
movement and to direct it into right
channels lest it initiate the base Jul
dean who threw away a pearl richer
than all his tribe"