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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 29, 1911)
The Commoner. .' . L r: p i 'l H ' :i a:- r lantern" methods. It will be impossible for a democratic candidate to go through a national campaign representing both sldos of tho contrb vorsy between plutocracy and democracy. It is folly to attempt to straddle the Issue. If the men who claim that Governor Harmon is a progressive really want a progressive, thoy ought' to take up somebody else. If thoy do not want a .progressive, they ought to make their literature fit their wishes. ATTENTION, MR. PRESIDENT " ' President Taft's attention is directed .to an editorial that appeared in the Chicago Daily News of October 31, 1911. This editorial -is entitled "Reforming Illegal Combinations," and is as follows: 4 "Of course we must have combinations,' said President Taft in his speech at the First regi ment armory on Friday evening, 'but they need not be In unlawful restraint of trade.' That they may be in restraint of trade and still bo inoffensive under the law is Indicated by the president's words as well as by the decisions of the United States supreme court in the Stand ard Oil and Tobacco trust caseB. The line of reasonable restraint divides the lawless from the lawful trusts. "Where is this line? Mr. Taft thinks its precise position is as clear as day. 'No business man,' he says, 'can telJ, me it Is a question for a jury. A jury would settle it in two minutes.' 'Perhaps so. Leading corporation lawyers of the country, however, assert that they do not know whore to draw the line that under existing conditions nobody knows where to draw the line. If Mr. Taft and his attorney-general know where to draw it they ought speedily to establish a school of instruction for repentant and long faced corporation "managers who are pleading for the Information -that will enable them to make their business legal, provided it is now illegal. When the steel trust was struck by Jersey lightning in the shape of the Trenton suit it was engaged in trying, by terminating an important ore lease and otherwise, to make its operations square with the law. ""Tire"""merr who 'formeci the "Steel 'tnrst'pfbb ably would not suffer financially or otherwise by its destruction. If they have performed the wicked acts laid at their doors by the govern ment they ought to be subjected to criminal prosecution. The government prefers to prose cute the stockholders of the steel trust. Out of- that prosecution may come heavy losses from uncertainty and stagnation of business, but they will not be the losses of trust barons. For while the public loses by confusion in the channels of trade the country's financial dictators gain through their vast and far reaching brokerage systems. "The government should spread the light of lawful trust raanagenaent and should punish by criminal prosecution the men who as corporation magnates have broken the anti-trust law, or who decline to cease breaking it when their law lessness is made clear to them. If they 'are held responsible as individuals the trust evil presently will be cured as if by magic." The News gives one sentence that ought to be burned into the understanding of all men charged with the enforcement of law: "If the trust magnates are held responsible as indi viduals the trust evil presently will be cured as if by magic.' RECALL IN ARIZONA A Tucson, Ariz., dispatch, carried by the Associated Press, says: "When the legislature convenes in Phoenix in February, it will be asked to adopt the Swiss system of recall and let the Oregon system which was voted out of the constitution Decemher 12, an ultimatum of President Taft, go by the board. The essential difference between the Swiss system arid the Oregon plan is that under the former the on.ly thing voted on in a recall election is the recall of the officials and in the event of his elimina tion the governor appoints his successor. A. A. Worsley, a state senator, will propose the new recall system. He is now at work on the measure and will defend it on the ground that under the organization system an official under fire Is handicapped by a double fight, a struggle not only to retain his position and refute charges against him, but a struggle also against an opposing candidate. Worsloy's bill will provide that after the recall is resub mitted to the people for the Incorporation in the. constitution, the Oregon and Swiss plans shall be placed on the ballot . so voters may chpose between them. HARMON'S RECORD TIIE SHORT HOUR DAY Apparently two grades of campaign literaturo are being issued by the men who are conducting ' the' Harmon literary bufeau. One pamphlet, of over 100 pages contains, among other things, a list of bills which it introduces with this declaration: "During a five months' session, the democratic general assembly, In 1911, established a now record for platform redemp tions in Ohio by enacting hito laws all but one of the measures promised by the Ohio democ racy. The exception was a law of minor impor tance." This gives the credit where it belongs, to the democrats of the assembly, and is an accurate list of the bills passed by it. In another pamphlet, which must be intended for circulation outside of Ohio, the same list of bills in fact, the same type is utilized is given as "bills that were enacted into law by the democratic general assembly, and were indorsed and approved by Governor Harmon." This is not an accurate statement. As was shown in last week's Commoner the most impor tant piece of progressive legislation which Ohio has enacted in years, a law giving the most complete control, supervision and regulation of public utilities ever enacted, by any state, was allowed to become a law by Governor Harmon by lapse of time and failure to sign. He dodged. Another law which this ipamphlet includes in those that its avers were indorsed and approved by tho governor, is thus described: "Shorter day for employed women. A bill limiting the working hours of women employed to 54 hours a week, with not more than ten hours in any one day." The record shows that GOVERNOR HARMON DID NOT SIGN THIS BILL, and that it became a law purely by reason of the fact that he did not sign or return it to the house in which it originated within the time provided by the constitution. Under the Ohio constitu tion,. a governor does nob-approve or veto a ' bill duly .passed and presented, to him within, the period of ten days, it becomes a law anyway.' This provision makes it possible for a governor who desires to sidestep to do so. On pages 488 and 489 of the book contain ing the laws passed by the last Ohio legislature will be found this law. It is signed by the speaker of the house and the president of the senate, and to it is appended a statement by John W. Devannoy, veto clerk, that the bill was presented to the governor on June 3, 1911, and as he did not sign it or return it to the house wherein it originated within ten days after being so presented, it was filed in the office of tho secretary of state, and became a law notwithstanding the lack of. the governor's signature. This bill is nowhere mentioned .in any of the governor's messages or speeches! But he is given credit by his pamphleteers for its being enacted. A mere reading of the title of the bill does not give any indication of its importance, as viewed by women workers and their employers. So important a reform is this and so far-reaching in its effects is it, however, that a similar measure by the Illinois legislature was fought in the courts at great expense for several years, and the litigation was not ended until the federal supreme court at Washington upheld tho law. This bill provides among other things: That every person or corporation employing . women in factories, workshops, business offices, telephone or telegraph offices, restaurant, bak ery, millinery or dressmaking establishment, mercantile or other establishments, shall pro vide seats for them while not necessarily, em ployed in their active duties. Employers are also required to furnish lunchrooms wherever practicable; ample time must be allowed for meals; sanitary toilet rooms must be furnished, and other steps taken to preserve the health of the women employes. The law limits the hours of labor to fifty-four in a week and ten hours in a day, Suitable fines and penalties are appended. , - C. Q. D.' "NAMING" A CASE President Taft asks his critics to name a case covered by the anti-trust law as formerly con strued which would not be covered by a re cent construction placed upon It. The president, of course, knows that no one can tell what this VOLUME 11,. NUMBER 51 ' ' . - u& . court will do in any particular case after it .has reversed the former decision, on the trust ques--tion. He also knowa that it would be impos sible to find out by trial before the next presi dential' election. If one can judge anything, therefore, from the arguments employed in. the Standard Oil and Tobacco cases it is safe to say that the court as now constituted would acqnit the corporations found guilty in the few trials where the question of reasonableness was -involved. The Merger case,,for instance, would surely be. reversed, by the present court, and. that would be a tremendous advantage-to thefinan ciers who are seeking to control the industries" of the country, and a tremendqus disadvantage to the public. President Taft in one of his speeches says "that the court is trying to reach the law .as it should be." Does the president mean by that that it is the business of the courts to change the law? Is it not the duty of the court to decide what tho law is rather than what it should be? ' Is it not the business of congress to decide what should be in the-way of law? SHALL DEPOSITORS BE PROTECTED? Shall depositors be protected? The demo cratic national platform of 1912 demanded greater security for depositors. What is the democratic congress going to do about It? The establishment of the postal savings bank is a confession that depositors are insecure, but that law does not go far enough. Will the democratic party take the side of the deposi tors or will it allow the bankers to frighten it away from its duty? If the democrats in the house do not like the guaranty laws of Okla homa, Nebraska, Kansas and Texas 'it must be remembered that the supreme court has declared them legally sound let them devise some better plan. Security is the thing desired if that is secured the bankers can be left free to propose a system satisfactory to them, but they should no longer be permitted to invite depositors and then leave depositors to run all the risks. This plank, like other planks of the democratic plat form, ought to be carried out. - GOOD FOR SULZER . Representative William Sulzer of New York is receiving many well merited compliments not only for his good work in pushing the fight for the abrogation of the Russian . treaty but also for the graceful way in which he' yielded his own honors and urged the house to accept the senate resolution rather than his own so that the president's hands might be upheld by. the legislative end of the government- in dealing with Russia , "" Mr. Sulzer-has ever'beeiTa brave andfaithful public servant, reflecting credit upon' the demo cratic party. OPPORTUNITY! The following poem by-Judge Walter Malone, one of the great poets of the south, ought .to be pasted up in every young man's room..' There is inspiration in it. , OPPORTUNITY They. do me wrong who say I come no more ' When once I knock and fail to find you in; : For every day. I stand without your door, And bid you work, and rise to fight and win. . - Wail not for precious chances passed away, Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day '' At sunrise every soul Is born again! Laugh like a boy at splendors that have fled To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come. - - Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; I lend my arm to all who say "I can" No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep ;" But he might rise and be again a man! "'." .:' Dost thou behold thy lost outh all aghast?."' . . Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow?' Then turn from blotted archives of the past, And find tho future's pages white as snow, r Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy Bpell; Art thou a sinner? Sins may "be forgiven: Each morning gives thee wings to flee from: hell, Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven. ffi&A n