The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-11-11

lance and self confidence add also
self-control. caOE permanently embark
ON the difficult course Of moldtng
their own destinies.
achieved this high quality Of citizen
ship. as the people Of my own country
have achieved it. But you and we
alike must remember that we can new
er afford to forget the need Of pos
sessing this quauIy. II we surrender
passions and folly and ignorance. then
surely in the end, from without the
country OF from within the country. a
master will arise to dominate us.
The people must not surrender to
the judiciary. any more than to the
executive or legislative branches Of the
government, the final decision as to
what laws they are to be permitted to
have. In my own country 1t often
happens that vitality necessary and inn
portant laws, demanded in the inter-
ests of the people. are declared uncon-
stitutional by a reactionary court. In
such q case what really happens To
that one agent Of the people. the leg
islature, passes the law. and another
agent Of the people. the court. declares
The remedy In such case Is obvious.
When two agents differ the principal
must decide between them. The peo-
pie are masters Of all their govern
mental agents, If there is any sincerity
in our belief in democracy. Where
their servants. their agents. disagree.
the people themselves should have the
right to step in and say which of their
two servants, the court or the leg1s-
lature. represents their deliberate and
ell-thought-out conviction.
IF the supreme court of the United
States has the power to annul acts OF
congress, it is itself not merely ju-
dicial but a law-maklng power of the
first consequence. for 1t is the final,
the sovereign authority. This Is q
tremendous authority. The right to
annul the law or to change it--as by
judicial decision the fourteenth
amendment to the United States con-
stitution has been vitality AMI, as
hold, lamentably changed-is the right
to govern. The authority that Is able
to say by what laws the people shall
be governed, is the sovereign author
ity in the state.
For sixty years the greatest presi-
dents, Jefferson, Jackson and Abra-
ham Lincoln, opposed this doctrine as
laid down by the supreme court. 1t
seems to me. however. that they never
any Of them. not even Lincoln, formu- :
lated the right theory of opposition to
the doctrine. Each of them fought
against 1t on behalf of another branch
of the government, either the execu-
tive or the legislative. Their proper
not that the court usurped power be-
longing to the executive or the legis-
lative, but that it usurped power be-
longing to the people.
my personal Judgment Is that Mar
shall rendered a great service at the
time of his decision, because up to
that time there had not been any real.
ly sovereign power. 1t was necessary
that there should be somewhere es-
tablished such sovereign power. 1t
Hnrn
the final say than that any other
branch of government should have it.
or that it should not exist anywhere.
Moreover, at first the power was ex-
ercised with greatest caution, and this
continued for half century. But az
unquestioned. and then into an
unquestioned, right, the judges began
to assert 1t more and more frequently.
For third of a century it has now
been exercised with what am forced
to say, speaking gravely and deliberate
1y, has been tnexchsable and reckless
wantonness on behalf of privilege and
against the interests Of the very people
for whom it is most needful that the
power of the government should be IN
voked.
ut is the business of the state to Sc
cure a measurable equality of oppor-
tunity so that each man shall have the
chance to show the stuff there is in
him. Each man should have what he
earns and should not have what any
one else earns. There is wide ineQuali-
ty Of reward. because the reward should
bear some proportion to the service
rendered;
I'VE OF the great demOcracfes must
make them industrial no less than po-
litical democracies. So far as may be
we must make the tool user the tool
| owner. This can only be done by a
wide extension Of the principle Of CO.
operation: and the principle of cooper
alton can never be successful unless it
includes the hearty and generous ac-
knowedgment of leadership; and there
| can be no such recognition unless we
provide that the special service which
| springs from special ability and char
acter has a special reward.
I'm our own country, in dealing with
the army and the navy. we have work
ed out in rough fashion what I may
call the democratic idea of trying
roughly to proportion service and re-
ward and yet refusing to recognize in
tolerable inequality of reward. An ad-
miral or general, Farragut or Sher-
man or Sheridan enjoys a material re-
| ward perhaps ten times or twenty times
greater than that of the enlisted man
under hin who has reached the highest
/ place to which while he remains ar
enlisted man he can rise. This Unequal
ity represents not injustice. but JUS
tice; and the enlisted man worth his
salt would be the first to say so; for
exactly as the success Of the admiral
or lieutenant depends upon the charac-
ter of the enlisted men under him, &C
their success depends upon the ability
OF the leader at the head of them
There is no unjust disproportion of re-
ward in such a case.
But at present in the world of in
dustry the difference in the reward OF
the man at the top and Of the man
i lower down ia offen Uell-nieh infinite