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The Commoner
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Plain Centralization Talk By Big Republican Editor
The following editorial appeared In Hie
Chicago Inter Ocean, a republican ..newspaper:
In addressing the people of St. Louis on
Tuesday President Roosevelt advocated the na
tional control and regulation of interstate rail
ways. He advocated also the national control
and regulation of industrial corporations or
stock companies which do an interstate business.
As an illustration and precedent of these
policies, ho pointed to the government's control
and regulation of the national banks.
Never before, within our recollection, has
such a sweeping declaration como from a. presi
dent of the United States in times of peace.
Never has a graver issuo been presented by an
American president oven in times of war. .
Itegulato and control all the interstate rail
roads! Regulate and "control all the industrial
stock companies doing an interstate business!
Regulate and control each and both classes,
after the manner in which the national banks -aro
regulated -and controlled by the federal gov
ernment today! What does this mean?
In Illinois alone, some 25,000 stock com
panies aro doing business today. In the whole
United States, the number of such companies
hardly falls below a million. How many of
theso do an interstate business, and, therefore,
come under the president's plan of control and
regulation from Washington?
According to the president's idea, the num
ber must be at least three-fourths of the total,
yor, as was set forth in, the Roosevelt-Beveridge '
ohild labor bill, and was expounded at length
In the. senate by the senator from Indiana, all
factories producing articles which are exported
beyond state lines are to be regarded as sub
ject to federal control and regulation under
theJnterstato commerce clause of the constitu
tion. Think of it! Seven hundred, and fifty thou
sand stock companies, transacting practically
three-fourths of the business of the United
States to be licensed, regulated and controlled,
even toxa listing of their stock, by a department
at Washington! j
, Seven hundred and fifty thousand stock
companies to be examined by federal examiners,
to be inspected by federal inspectors, to be
picked and chosen for reprobation, dictation, or
extermination by federal officials, and to be su
pervised or administered after the manner of a
national bank in case of insolvency!
Think of it! There are only 6,500 national
banks in the "United States! There are 760,000
stock companies subject to the operation of this
gigantic plan! An army of inspectors, examiners
and receivers, as large as the standing army of
the United States? A bureau in Washington
as large as the pension office and the army and
navy departments combined! Tens of thou
sands of men and tens of millions of money and
8uch a vast and intricate machinery as no coun
try on earth has even ventured to approach for
its every purpose or all purposes combined!
Yet how trivial these causes as compared
with their effect! By means of this vast ma
chinery, this standing army of inspectors, this
plenitude of governmental power in Washing
ton, any president in the White House would
be able to reach his hand to the uttermost part
of the United States, place his index, finger upon
any crossroads stock company that" might exist
in the smallest hamlet, and decree, as tho comp
troller of the currency today decrees, whether
this American citizen or that American citizen
.should continue in business or should be
'""plunged into bankruptcy and ruin.
"But the courts," some one may .say. The
reply is too apparent. To a business man whose
going concern has been crushed before his eyes
b'ii government order, a court offers nothing
but justice only justice and nothing more, for
no suit for damages can lie against tho govern
ment of the United States. He may walk from
a federal court with his vindication in his hand,
but will still bear on his brow the stamp of
financial ruin.
Is this fancy? Is this a far-sought ex
ftmplo? Alas, no. We have only to turn back
to the experience of the packers of Chicago to
realize that tho concentration of such stupend
ous power in the hands of the central govern
, ment, that the possibility, yes, the probability
' of its being exertod in the manner in question,
has been not only contemplated, but has been
specifically intended by the president on tho
lines laid down in his St. Louis speech.
Any man. who will look back to the historv
Lof the meat inspection bill will recall that the
conflict which raged around that measure, be
tweon the president of the United States and
the house of representatives, did not turn on
the question of a closer federal inspection or
tho payment of the cost of that inspection. It
turned on the issue whether or not there should
be vested by law in the hands of the president's
appointee, namely, the secretary of agriculture,
the power to close the packing houses of Chicago
on his mere say-so, and to keep them closed
until the owners could secure a decision by the
due and laborious process of tho courts.
In the face of the president's public declar
ations that he would, or would if he could, put
the Chicago packers in the penitentiary, their
struggle to protect themselves from arbitrary
executive orders was regarded and regarded
rightly, as a struggle of lifo and death.
And when one thinks of the vast resources
and material power in the hands of the Chicago
packers, when one contemplates the apprehen
sion and desperation with which they viewed
a struggle with a department of agriculture
armed with despotic power, it is easy to realize
what chance one ordinary stoclc company of
the 750,000 would have before the upraised
hand of executive power in Washington, if ever
the president's era of universal executive con
trol and regulation should overwhelm us..
Why does the president seek to make the
president of the United States the absolute lord
over industrial life and death?. Why does he
deem it wise to give one American citizen the
ability to reach into every nook and cranny of
this country's commerce and finance, to com
pel homage or support from every man of power
between the Atlantic and Pacific, to smite all "
opponents back into impotence and beggary, to
raise all friends into wealth and power, and
thus to constitute, if he have but the will, a
self-perpetuating regime which all the parties
and party organizations that the country has
ever seen would not be powerful enough to
overthrow which would, in fact, realize here
in the United States, a despotism of which a
Russian czar never dreamed for the simple rea
son that he did not have In his dominion any
such machine as that which the federal control
and regulation of 750,000 corporations would
place absolutely and irrevocably in the hands of
the chief executive?
The president answers this question. It is
to arrest or anticipate or' prevent "industrial
chaos." - -
"Industrial chaos!" Ominous phrase not
because the evils of industrial life today are
rjjally due to industrial chaos far from It.
Where they exist they are due rather to over
organization and it needs, but a statement of the
fact for the truth to be recognized. But "in
dustrial chaos" is a phrase which, from the
mouth of a president of, the United States, must
strike a chill to the heart of every man who
knows the origin, growth, and maturity of mod
ern socialism.
"Industrial chaos" was brought into the
world of political agitation by Marx, Lassalle,
Engels and Rodbertus, the socialists who, half
a century ago, founded and fathered the mili
tant socialism of the Europe of today. The
phrase has come down from one generation of
socialists to another, always the shibboleth of
those who would turn the constitutional liberty
of modern times into the compact slavery of the
socialistic state.
And the same words today roll from the
lips of a president of the United States, and
for the same purpose, namely, to justify the
transformation of industrial . liberty into indus
trial servitude, and the sacrifice of all the ideals
of constitutional freedom on the altar of an
industrial despotism.
"Industrial chaos!" The phrase has been
bandied about by every socialist agitator in
Europe from Engels to Liebknecht, from Marx
to Bebel, from Lassalle to Jaures bandied
about as an excuse for disrupting the whole
present order of society, as a pretext for upset
ting the whole financial and commercial system
of today. And now it comes with authority
from the lips of the president of the United
States as his justification of a plan which would
abolish the republic within twenty-five years
bow. the necks Tof 100,000,Q00 Americans hefore
the face of one autocrat in Washington and turn
the United States of North America into a civ
ilized wilderness no nation at all, but only a
wreck of a socialist's dream.
' 'After ... contemplating such - a monstrous
proposition,,' it is. difficult to realize 'why.' this
nation was once aroused by the Granger move
ment, by the greenback campaign, or by the fro
silver agitation of William Jennings Bryan. How
trivial, by comparison, today seems a proposal
to give the nation a fifty cent dollar or printing
press money!
How infantile the proportions of such a
proposition which woufd merely tlirow the coun
try Into hard times, when compared with a
proposition which, if realized, would abolish the
republic, personal liberty, individual initiative,
personal success and personal ambition, and
leave us, the people of the United States, with
nothing but two wreck-strewn shores, and ruin
complete Industrial ruin stretching out be
Washington Letter
Washington, D. C, October 14. It is re
ported in Washington that .Mr. Roosevelt has
kindly agreed to allow New Mexico to come in
as an independent state. The territorial gov
ernor of New Mexico makes this announcement
and declares that a bill to that effect will bo
introduced Into the Sixtieth congress and that
the president will approve it. This determina
tion on the part of the administration merits
all commendation. Everything that could bo
done from the White House to keep Oklahoma
and the Indian Territory out of the sisterhood
of' states was done. All that was done proved a
failure. Probably the object lesson given by the
voters of those two territories sufficed to con
vince the president and his advisers that it was
useless to try to keep New Mexico, as a separate
commonwealth, out of the union. It is always
possible that the president may be misquoted,
or. that he may change his mind. But the pres
ent indications are, that the lesson read to the
administration by Oklahoma has been heeded,
and that the next state of the union will be New
Mexico. "That it will be a democratic state .
goes without saying, provided the democratic
party is true to the ideals which it set for
Itself almost twelve years ago, and which today
it is not likely to abandon.
A point raised by a St. Louis newspaper
concerning the deep waterway to the Gulf is
worth giving wider currency. This newspaper
points out that all the waterways commission
asks for the Mississippi river is $40,000,000.
This is a good round sum, of course, but when
our St. Louis contemporary goes on to point
out that in the peaceful year of 1906 the war
expenditures of the United States amounted to
more than $63-,000,000 aboVe the last
Cleveland year, which of course does
not include pensions, it seems to have scored a
point. A deep waterway from the lakes to the
sea, or from the lakes to the gulf, or both, would
be, of Incalculably more advantage to the people
of '.the agricultural states of this union than the
Panama canal or an enormous navy.
Nobody has ever accused Mr. Roosevelt
of a tendency to silence. On all subjects from
spelling reform to international peace, he has
spoken much, loudly and sometimes well.
Within the last ten days he has delivered nearly
a score of addresses to tens of thousands of peo
ple, six of his speeches having been carefully
prepared in advance and filling each about a
page of an average newspaper.
But amidst all this flow of oratory hot one
word slipped out touching upon either the tariff
or the third, term.
Is not the tariff question a present day
issue? Most people think so. ..The question of
mere protection to infant industries is not now
involved; that principle is not even attacked.
But the tariff wall has ceased to be a protection
to the weak, but has become a means whereby
they aro robbed by the strong. The law making
power which once protected the young and strug
gling manufactures of the nation, needs now
to be invoked to protect tho people against these
same Industries grown great, arrogant and weld
ed into trusts. Mr. Taft has taken cognizance
of the .demand for revision, but wants action
postponed until the Sixty-first congress. Secre
tary Strauss spoke at length upon It in his
Memphis speech. But the man whosits at the
head of the cabinet table is silent on this issue,
though her entered public life as a -moderate
tariff reformer. His silence encourages the
standpatters. The. veteran General Grosvenor,
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