The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1914-02-26
THE NEW FREEDOM.

THE NEW FREEDOM. f"
It has long been the boast OF the
American people that this is 1.-THE land
of the brave and the home of the free !;
but if present conditions and tendencies
continue we shall soon have less freedom
than the subjects of an absolute mon
archy, if indeed we have not ALREADY
reached that stage. Of the three CO.
ordinate branches of the national gov
ernment-the executive. legislative ana
iudicial-the two first are in the absolute
control of one man for the first time IN
the history of this country. President
Wilson has both branches of Congress
Under his thumb and compe's them to DO
his bidding. With no practical expert
ence in financial or commercial affairs he
assumes to know more than the collective
wisdom of the country in all lines OF trade
and industry. His tariff bill has in few
months closed factories all over the
country and thrown hundreds OF thou
sands of people out of employment,
while there has been no reduction in the
high cost of living. The placing of sugar
on the free list entsils loss in revenue
of S54, OOO, 900, adds millions to the profits
of the refiners, destroys the beet and
cane sugar industries Of this country
and is of little or no benefit to the con-
sumer. Manufacturers and business men
who went to Washington to give their
testimony as to the probable result OF
pending legislation were in some cases
refused even hearing and were stlg-
matized as lobbyists, while the President
himself was using the power and patron
age pertaining to his high office to lobby
through the measures he had framed and
forced upon Congress, which. under the
Constitution, is the law-making body.
February 18th President Wilson mott
fed Congress that he would veto the
immigration bill if it was sent to him
with the literacy provision, and many
Congressman confessed that they were
bewildered, as they had been led to be-
lieve he would sign the measure. The
dav before he had served notice on Con-
gress that they must pass the antitrust
bills bv June 18th, and he refused to
grant the request of the United States
Chamber of Commerce that he recon-
m end postponement of action on the
pending legislation until the Chamber
has had an opportunity to hold refer
endum on the antitrust program. Judg-
ing from what has taken place Congress
will do his bidding in both cases.
That this indictment of President Will
son as dictator is warranted, witness
the following statement from member
of his own party. In a recent address at
Chicago former United States Senator
Joseph Bailey said: 1.-The two men who
are most prominent at present In our
notifies are the two who have denounced
the bosses most unsparingly, and yet
they have acted the boss. One of them
at the head of a party not now in power
(Roosevelt) imposed his will on his asso-
ciates with an imperiousness which finds
no parallel in our history. The head of
the party to which belong controls the
Senate and the House of Representa-
tives today as if they were subordinate
branch of the government.
During the presidency of Gen. Grant
the cry of Imperialism was raised; in
the reign of Roosevelt we heard much of
the ''big stick, but under neither Grant
nor Roosevelt was there the cause for
alarm that exists under the dictatorship
of President Wilson. What has been
the result of his war on the trusts and
the railroads? The profits of the steel
trust, and the subsidiary companies, have
been increased, and the dissolution of the
Standard Oil Company has demonstrated
that some forms of trust regulation can
work no possible injury to the corpora
tlons involved. The New York, Hart
ford and New Haven and the Boston &
Maine railroads have ceased paying divi-
dends. and the latter road has been driven
to the verge of bankruptcy and its plans
for developing this section, and Maine in
particular, as a summer resort, arrested.
| The milloniares are not the sufferers by
this war upon the railroads, but the hun
dreds of thousands of small stockhold-
ers-men and women in moderate cir
cumstances, whose income, wholly or in
part, was derived from that source.
Edward Montgomery Cullen, until re-
Gently Chief Judge of the New York
Court of Appeals, delivered the annual
address for 1914 to the Bar Association
of that State. His subject was 1.-The
Decline of Personal Liberty in America, !"
and the New York World in an editorial
on his address said that when man SO
eminent asserts that personal liberty
in this country is in danger, there is at
least an invitation to reflection" The
World mentions the following as only a
few of the invasions of personal liberty
which are in all places notorious: cir