The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-03-09

congressman to better thelr conul- tion, take any active part whatever in the government, of the country or be active in any way in the politics of the nation, every head is a poll. tician, obtaining his office by reason of the fact that he was politician with pull with some other politician with bigger pull.
 Such a system of organization is in direct conflict with every concep. tion of human liberty. And 1t justi- fies every criticism that every oppc- ,nent of government ownership has ever said against 1t,
 Quite a number of socialists have an idea that government ownership is socialism. Certainly 1t has come to that, that what Is called state socialism passes muster as an indus trial democracy when 1t Is strictly now and always will be political bureaucracy.
 The post office is so governed from the top. and as specimen ot bad government it could be hardly excelled.
 The tendency moreover of such bureaucrats as may be politically in control to operate their departments for the political betJerment of their own economic class is vividly illus strated by the tendency to suppress publications which they regard with disfavor from a passage through the mails.
 i That the government of the people , should have turned over such an ex- ercise of power to the bureaucrats in control of the post office can only | be explained by the craving for power that these political bureau crats lay claim to.
 The right to disbnr any paper from circulation by denying It a right to pass through the malls, un- occasionally interferes with the liberty of the press. Although the courts may not see in this an inter- ference with that constitutional right, no man in his senses can help observing 1t and admitting 1t. i That it is being abused admits of no doubt We see cases time and time again where publications at the instance of politically strons bodies are denied passage or are prosecuted for sending matter ob- i jectionable to such bodies, lest an unhampered passage interfere with the political well being of the bu- reaucrats.
 l And that is what government ownership amounts to. It ends in a political bureaucracy in which demo- cracy has no part, in which the peo- pie exercise no direct control and wherein liberty of action invariably suffers curtailment.
 No sane man but realizes that social organization and cooperation is necessary to the well being or society. and no person will very seriously question, unless a doctrl- naire pure and simple, that such an organization entails a certain amount of discipline.
 But any time that discipline inter- feres with the natural demands of individual liberty, with individual initiative. with individual happiness and suppresses the natural aims ana impulses of the individual, that discipline and such an organization becomes in itself Russian tyranny
 It is impossible to regard society, an applomeration of living units. as a machine where every man has a place to remain, and every human cog must maintain its function with endless routine
 That government ownership will extend is almost a certainty. l In the first placo 1t will take away from corporations the responsibility of handling labor demands for bet ter conditions and more and more of their product. In the Post Office a demand for higher pay with con < certcd action on the part of any number of employees would be fol lowed by their dismissal and if they persisted probably conspiracy charge. would be levelled against them and penitentiary sentences lmetcd 2 out to cool on their ardor-