The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-03
l TROUBLE LIES | WITH PEOPLE
Marshall Insists The, United States Government Is
 All Right

l Tell me what. in your oponion, i. the greatest weakness in the present operation of our government"
 Y cannot answer that directly" re piled Thomas R. Marshall. former vic, president, but 1 will answer it in thi, way. Our form of government is al right I don't say it is the best in thu world. Mexico has just as good a con stitution as ours but not so good a gov ernment. I sometimes think Englant has a better constitution because sht has no written constitution, but Eng land had no better government. In fact I think the late war proved that WI have as good a government as has eve1 existed, because the government wa: able to get the people to do a grea many things that were hard to do which they were not obliged to do, ant solely because they respected the gov ernment. If the government. were no good, they wouldn't respect it, writes Richard Barry, in the New York Times.
 Thus indirectly I am answerin, your question. The greatest weak ness we have as a people is not in the government. It lies in the people, foi they are drifting into ways that Are bound to makela bad government in time if they do not mend them. They are bringing us to a condition where we are obliged to live under government by discretion. instead of under govern ment by law
 What do you mean by government by discretion"
 T mean the tendency in the Ameri- can people to want the benefits of a democracy and yet demand the works of an autocracy. Nearly everybody wants the government to let him alone personally, but at the same time he wants the government to make the other fellow do what he thinks the other fellow ought to do and he wants it done, as the Spanish say, 'pronto'
 Effective In War
 We saw that work out in some satisfaction in the war, when it was more or less justified and necessary. The war served an i'll turn in showing us how to get things done quickly, through autocracy. Nobody wants now to have things done slowly through the legal and logical processes of democ- racy. Most people want them done quickly, by czarism, unless their own toes are pinched, and then they cry Oppression 7 'Confiscation and Holy murderw
 II had plenty of chance to observe this growing tendency in the Ameri- can people while serving as a member of the coal commission. You have no idea of the number of letters, tele- grams, telephone messages and other appeals that reached us from all kinds of people who demanded we settle the coal strike. Some wanted us to take a club and finish the miners. Others told us the operators were very bad men and wanted us to put them in their places. None of them seemed to realize that we had no authority to do either. We were fact-finding commission, appointed by the President. with tile authority of Congress, to learnx xwhat the facts were and to state them-no more.
 But we couldn't get one man in a hundred to appreciate the fact, which not only was true of our commission. but which is a basic fact in our form of government. Except in rare cases of riot or war, the government has no business to step in and tell men for what they shall work or other men what they shall pay or how they shall run their business. Yet that is what the American people seem to want done, although they never seem to realize