The Mena weekly star., 1921-07-28
AMERICA NEEDS THE SQUARE
 DEAL
From the Kansas city Star.

DEAL.
 From tine Kansas City Star.
 What the United States of America needs just now even more than 1t needs business revival is revival of its sense of old-fashoined honesty. Honesty in it's public business. Hon. esty in it's private business.
 The country needs two-tisted statesman like Theodore Roosevelt to bring it back to a realization of the importance of the square deal.
 Take the incident of the indictment of Governor Len Small of Illinois on the charge of embezzlement while he was state treasurer, in the four years prior to his election as governor as an example of what is happening in the country. The news of the in- dietments of the governor of great state like Illinois on such charge will shock the country, of course, but will it have any further effect upon the public conscience? Will the lesson of it end there?
 Something, some incident in the series of revelations of dishonesty in public and private business that fill the news pages daily, should jar the public conscience of America until it is awakened to the nations need of a spiritual revival. If the realization of the present situation in govern mental and industrial affairs does not come thru the knowledge of the truth as revealed in such incidents as the shipping board scandal at Washington, the state scandal in Illinois, and such local developments as have shocked the sensibilties of almost every state and community in the past two years, then we have reached most discour- aging level in public morals When Roosevelt, coming into a national situation twenty years ago which was characterized by graft in public affairs and organized greed in industrial matters, swung the big stick and brought it down on the heads of the captains of industry and the captains of labor organizations and the grating public officials of the time, he aroused the national con- science and brought 1t, upstanding, to a knowledge of the need of the square ucdi III tNtty hSidNlOb VI Vui national life.
 Are we not now, as a nation, in worse condition than we were then ? Have we not slipped back to state of moral lethargy in which we view dis honesty in public and private busi- ness with far more complaceflcy than we did even then? But who shall step into the national situation now to arouse us from that condition? The bald truth of the situation is--. and every intelligent American knows it--that from Washington down to the smallest subdivision, government is honeycombed with graft and hishon- esty. The shipping board, with it's 300 millions of squandered public funds, is only an incident in the wild riot of official plunder of the public treasury, and the people are taxed to pay it. Taxed blood white to pay, not for efficient government, but for criminal waste. Under the conditions our national taxes have become not only so burdensome as to stagnate business and stifle honest enterprise, but they have become in themselves national shame and a means of indi- rect robbery of the American people
 Not only is the above situation the real one, but the dishonest practices of government have become so bold, so hrazen and so common, they seem to reflect the influence for evil that just now dominates the private busi- ness and private life of the nation. Combinations of capital and combina- tions of labor, emboldened by the example of government, have grown to be organizations of banditry against each other, have formed in many places a perfect organization for gouging the public.
 The sum of the intricate details of the situation-from the government at Washington to the government of Illinois, to the petty, thieving con- tractors who have grown fat on public contracts unified, down to the most insignificant of unskilled labor that loafs on the job-the sum of it forms the whole of a public and business system that is lined and stuffed with graft aud with dishonesty, under l whatever name men may call it to give it responsibility. And the tragic thing about it all is that tho public, which suffers from it, views # with such tranquility as to indicate that America has fallen into a stupor of national immortality.
 Who will call us back to the old principle of the Golden Rule and the square deal?