The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-03-04

ness 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 a
work of restoration.
Things That Ought to Be Altered.
We have itemized with some degree
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 COM
merce of the world, violates the just
principles of taxation, and makes the
governments a facile inStrum ent in the
hands of private interests; a banking
and currency system based upon the
necessity of the governm ent to sell its
bonds fifty years ago and perfectly
adapted to concentrating cash and re-
Stricting credits; an industrial system
which, take 1t on all its sides, imam
cial as well as administrative, holds
capital in leading strings, restricts the
liberties and limits the opportunities
of labor, and exploits without renew
ing or conserving the natural resources
of the country; a body of agricultural
activities never yet given the efficiency
of great business underta kings or
served as it should be through the in
Strumentality of science taken direct
ly to the farm, or afforded the facili-
ties of credit best suited to its practical
needs; watercOurses undeveloped,
waste places unreclaimed, forests I'M
tended, 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 pro-
duction, but we have not studied cost
of economy as we should either as or
ganiZerS of industry, as statesmen, or
as individuals.
Nor have we studied and perfected
the means by which government may
be put at the service of humanity. in
safeguarding the health of the nation,
the health of its men and its women
and it's children, as ell as their rights
in the struggle for existence. This is
no sentimental duty. The firm basis
of government is justice, 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 women and chill
dren be not shielded in their lives,
their very vitality, from the conse-
quences of great industrial and social
process which they cannot 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 society it
serves Sanitary laws, pure food laws,
and laws determining conditions of Ia
Dor which individuals are powerless to
determine for themselves are intimate
parts of the very business of justice
and legal efficiency.
Things we Ought to Do.
These are some of tn things we
ought TO do, and not leave the others
undone, the old-faShioned, never-to-be-
neglected, fundamental safeguarding 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 con-
science and vision of the right. 1t is
inconceivable that we should do this
as partisans; it is inconceivable we
should do it in ignorance of the facts
they are or in blind haste. We shall