EDITORIALS
Taft's Explanation Does not Explain PRESIDENT TAFT has not changed his conservation policy. It is the same "reign of law" inaugurated by Ballinger and repudiated by the public. Ballinger is now...
...It merely throws his policy into more striking contrast to the Roosevelt policy...
...MR...
...GAZETTE, accepting for truth the inspired press stories that insurgent Senators are speaking to an empty chamber, has this comment to make: "It must be exceptionally amusing to the casual visitor to our national legislative halls to see a celebrity like Cummins or La Follette speaking to a senate room full of empty seats belonging to members who may be off fishing or watching a ball game...
...The act itself is very important as showing how insecure are our valuable natural possessions under the Taft POLICY...
...Taft, at the request of Ryan, took them out of the reserve for the very purpose of letting them go to private individuals and corporations...
...TITHE WORLD'S BIG steel men are planning to prevent competition in the steel trade for the benefit of the consumer, of course.—Louisville Post...
...WICKERSHAM is determined not to permit the magazine trust to grind the faces of the poor...
...He defends this act on the ground that "the thing which Alaska needs is development...
...President Taft says he had "every assurance" that Ryan was not a representative of the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate...
...His defense does not defend...
...The President does not discuss this at all...
...Why can't it be reasonable, like the sugar and beef and steel and money trusts?—Philadelphia North American...
...On the record it is made to appear that they were begun on November 1, four days after the order was issued...
...It is a poor way of saving one's country...
...The Pinchot-Roosevelt conservation policy, so contemptuously discarded at the beginning of the present Administration, is still distasteful to the President...
...In view of the very recent history of the operations of this great Syndicate in Alaska, is it not to be wondered at that the President did not refuse Ryan's request until he had been given proof positive...
...What, fishing...
...but Ballingerism remains...
...Yet it is one of the most significant facts in the case...
...The manner in which Taft let Ryan get a foothold on this strategic point is important only as it illuminates the Taft METHOD...
...Roosevelt put these terminal lands out of the reach of individuals and syndicates, by locking them up in the Chugach forest reserve...
...Ryan himself said so...
...Taft admits the essential facts upon which the conservationists are basing their criticism...
...Why was this not explained...
...Ryan's surveys were made before the order was signed...
...Meanwhile, on the facts now known, Taft's explanation does not explain...
...Ryan's New York financial backers, also gave such assurance...
...Ryan was acting in the interests of the Copper River Railroad (the Morgan-Guggenheim line), although I did not believe it...
...He let the land go...
...Do not lose sight of that fact...
...What it was that induced him to let it go in this unusual manner and to these particular capitalists may be disclosed during the investigation now under way...
...But the President is not so "utterly" positive about this as he is about the "fictitious" character of the "Dick to Dick" letter...
...ALMOST ANY OBJECTION to the Recall that you meet with if simmered down to its substance, will be found to spring out of the old notion of lawyers and judges that public office is private property.—The Public...
...It would be well if he were...
...These lands skirting the shore of Controller Bay, should never have been thrown open to private individuals...
...But everyone must know that the resources of Alaska can never become available either to the people of Alaska or to the public of the United States unless REASONABLE opportunity is granted to those who would invest their money to secure a return proportionate to the risk run in the investment and REASONABLE under all the circumstances...
...That is the important thing...
...Reasonable" PRESIDENT TAFT says: "I am in full sympathy with the concern of REASONABLE and patriotic men that the valuable resources of Alaska should not be turned over to be exploited for the profits of greedy, absorbing, and monopolistic corporations or syndicates...
...Has the President, profiting by the Standard Oil decision, written the word "reasonable" into the conservation policy of our government...
...IF ANY TRUST can find a knothole in the Sherman law, the lumber trust should be able to.—Boston Journal...
...There is evidence that Ryan knew all about this order of Taft's before it was issued, and hence, of course, before the public knew it...
...This is the meaning of Taft's statement in the Controller Bay case...
...There they were safe from exploitation by the money power...
...It is the essential fact in this controversy...
...Ballinger is now gone, crowned with presidential laurels...
...It was possible," asserts President Taft, "that Mr...
...THE CHAMPAIGN (ILL...
...Yet here is what Gifford Pinchot says about that: "No legitimate development of the harbor front on Controller Bay has been and can be proposed that could not proceed as well and as rapidly under suitable lease on government land as on private land...
Vol. 3 • August 1911 • No. 31
