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The Commoner.
WILLIAM J. BRYAN, EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR
Vol. 5, No. 28
Lincoln, Nebraska, July 28, 1905
Whole Number 236
CONTENTS
Root's Selection Unfortunate
Trial By Jury
"Tins Death or the Flowers"
The Pass a Bribe
Not the Road to Anarchy
A Common Mistake
"Apostles of Sweetness and Light"
WnAT Does It Signify?
"A Square Deal"
Railroads Misrepresenting Opinion
Comment on Current Topics
The Primary Pledge
News of the Week
LAWSON ON MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP
Mr. Lawson has made his trip west the occa
sion for hurling a few thunderholts at municipal
ownership. In Kansas he congratulated the peo
ple on the decision of the supreme court nullify
ing the state refinery law, and at Chicago ho
called municipal ownership a "will o' the Wisp"
and declared that if tried the puhlic ownership
of public utilities "is hound to prove a disappoint
ment and a failure."
The reason given both in Kansas and in
Chicago was that "the system" could corrupt the
lawmakers and public service employees. Mr.
Lawson has shown himself familiar with the
methods employed by "the system" in dealing
with the public through irivate corporations, but
he betrays both lack of knowledge and lack of
faith in the people when he argues that the peo
ple can not administer a public monopoly in
their own interest. He betrays lack of knowl
edge because the thing which he says can not
be done is being done in increasing measure hero
and elsewhere. Nearly all the cities own their
own water works and many of them own their
lighting plants. Philadelphia is the only city of
any size that has gone back to private ownership
and the attempt to extend the lease there woke
the sleepy old city up as nothing else1 had done.
It is a great deal easier for a city government to
avoid corruption when it owns uud operates its
public utilities than when it turn, these utilities
over to private corporations. Mr. Lawson lacks
faith in the people. There is a grow
ing conviction that "a private monopoly is in
defensible and intolerable," and Mr. Lawson"s
disclosures have contributed to that conviction.
The remedy is not to turn over public utilities
to the Rockefellers and Rogerses, but to re
store competition where competition is possible
and to give the public the fruits of the monopoly
where a monopoly is unavoidable.
The people will find ways of doing whatever
it is necessary for them to do. The postofflce
department is better run than the express compa
nies, and atxless expense to the public. The public
utilities are conducted better and at less cost to
the people where the public controls them than
where they are controlled by private companies
and the service will be still further improved as
the cities enlarge the scope of their work.
Mr. Lawson is doing good when he attacks the
Wall street speculators, but he does himself in
justice when he attacks municipal ownership
"LEAF BY LEAF THE ROSES FALL"
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The Death of the Plotters
(With Proper Apologies to the Memory of Wil
liam Cullen Bryant.)
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of
them all,
Of frenzied finance, exposed graft, and schemes
foredoomed to fall.
Heaped on the curbs of Wall and Broad, where
once the lambs did play,
The forms of "captains of finance" lie in grand
disarray.
The "suckers" from these haunts have flown, and
gone the "easy jay."
And Trinity's deep, booming chimes sound
through the gloomy day.
Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers,
that once did here abide
Schwab, Alexander and Depew and eke the sporty
Hyde?
Alas! all wilted now they He, a bunch of faded
flowers
That have been plucked and thrown aside, the
prey of vaster powers.
The slush is dirty where they He, and gone their
fragrant bloom,
And none is left to shed a tear above their slushy
tomb.
The steel-flower and the peach's bloom, they per
ished long ago;
The cereus, night-blooming Hyde, has lost its
waxen glow;
And on the curb the others He, exposed to sneers
and jeers,
While not a withered petal is refreshed by falling
toirfl
As fell the frost from the cold clear sky, so fell
the wrath of man,
And they who were once great and strong are
now the "also ran."
And when I gaze upon them now don't think I wail
and screech
For Alexander, Schwab or Hyde, or eke for
"Chaunce the Peach."
We'll lay them In the warm, moist earth for all
of future time,
And o'er their mounds we'll thickly strew deodor
izing Hmo.
'Tis not unmeet that they should fade they never
should have bloomed
And not a. tear will drop above the "flowers" thus
entombed.
WILL M. MATJPIN.
ROOTS SELECTION UNFORTUNATE
The Commoner has taken pleasure in com
mending the president wherever ho has shown a
disposition to take the people's side in any con
troversy, but it will be as free to point out his
errors as to praise his good deeds.
President Roosevelt made a lamentable mis
take when he took Paul Morton into his cabinet
and he aggravated the mistake when he covered
the secretary's retreat with a glowing eulogy.
Now, he raises former Secretary of War Root to
the position of premier in his cabinet and in so
doing makes this distinguished corporation at
torney eligible to the presidency In case of Mr.
Roosevelt's death. Mr. Root is an exceedingly
able man one of the ablest in the country, but
his brains have been for hire to any corporation
that could offer to nay the price demanded.
When the president recently scored the law
yers who accepted employment from those who
plot against the public he might with propriety
have named Mr. Root as a conspicuous illustra
tion. The new secretary was an attorney for the
railroads in the Merger case and he was on the
pay roll of the Equitable He is about as far
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