NEWS WORTH REMEMBERING
News Worth Remembering PRESIDENT TAFT sent to Congress last week two messages, one dealing with the trust problem, the other with foreign relations. It is the President's p an this session to make...
...As a result of a conference now on in Wu Chang, consisting of representatives from eight provinces, it seems likely that a provisional government and constitution will be adopted...
...The $30,000,000 foreign loan, upon the success of which it was felt the future character of the government depended, has not materialized...
...Wisconsin for La Follette's Nomination A meeting of the Progressive Repub-cans of Wisconsin was held last week Milwaukee...
...An important passage of the message is that dealing with the mobilization of the troops on the Mexican border...
...At this meeting, Senator bert M. La Follette was declared to be Wisconsin's choice for President, and the cal leader of the progressive movement in the nation...
...They stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and include California, Oregon, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and New Jersey...
...Men do not do such a thing without having it clearly in mind...
...A bill for this purpose was ced in the Senate by Senator La at the close of the last session...
...Governor Francis E. McGovern said: "This is a government of men as well as of laws: or rather the man behind the law in any department of government is as important as the law itself...
...There are arrogant capitalists whose intemperate and insane invective against trade unionism is responsible for much of the bitterness among unionists...
...The United States battleship Maine, which sank in Havana Harbor, as the result of an explosion, was blown up from the outside...
...These men who advocate a new order declare they are not seeking industrial peace at the expense of principle, but for righteous peace which can come only by granting to labor the justice that has been so long deferred...
...It will be better to change generals in June than submit to defeat in November...
...Referring to the oft-repeated criticism that no punishment has been meted out to corporation magnates for violating the Sherman law, the President says, "Criminal prosecutions have been brought and a number are pending, but juries have felt adverse to convicting for jail sentences and judges have been most reluctant to impose such sentences on men of respectable standing in society, whose offense has been regarded as merely statutory...
...I venture to say that not in the history of American law has a decree more effective for such a purpose been entered by a conrt than that against the Tobacco Trust...
...President Taft says the outcome has served further to cement the friendliness between the Mexican people as a whole and the people of the United States...
...He said, "In capacity for constructive statesmanship, ability to see clearly and concisely state a principle, the marshaling of facts, logical reasoning and experience in the practical business of government, no man in our time is superior to Senator Robert M. La Follette...
...Let me call your attention to one significant situation...
...Armistice in China Active fighting in China has ceased for the present...
...The Supreme Court last week held that the general coal land clause of the United States which forbade persons or associations making more than one entry applied to the unsurveyed coal regions of Alaska...
...At the present time, moreover, there is an insistent call, coming from within the ranks of the Republican party everywhere, for leadership that enjoys public confidence and can be trusted...
...The McNamara confessions prove that there are criminals in the labor organizations—traitors to their fellow workmen and the cause of industrial justice...
...and because it knows that a dozen years of political warfare has developed such a man within its own borders it offers as a candidate for this high honor its senior United States Senator Robert M. La Follette...
...Representative Sulzer of New York introduced in Congress last week a joint resolution providing for the termination of the treaty, owing to the discrimination practiced by Russia in refusing passports to Jewish Americans...
...Our party cannot afford next year to nominate for President anyone who is not genuinely progressive...
...In one place the President says: "These decisions suggest the need of additional or supplemental legislation to make it easier for the entire business community square with the rule of action and gality thus finally established...
...preme Court must continue to be the line of distinction for legitimate business...
...The armistice now in force may extend late into December and it is probable that proposed changes in the government will be agreed upon in the meantime...
...Good Will With Other Nations President Taft, in his second message, reviewed the relations of the United States with foreign countries during the past year...
...Indianapolis will be the scene of the government's activity...
...NEWS NOTES — Uncle Sam now has a clean sweep at those who attempt to secure Alaskan coal lands through fraud...
...If the Los Angeles manufacturers who have sat down with labor leaders to wrestle with the problem in that spirit prove their sincerity, we shall have an experiment that merits the sober-minded consideration of the whole country...
...The President defends the "rule of reason" laid down by the Supreme Court and declares that the enforcement of the law will bring about a state of competition in the industries that have been brought under the control of great combinations of capital...
...When Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, proprietors of the Triangle Waist Company of New York, which burned out last spring at a frightful loss of life, appeared in court on trial for manslaughter, a mob of women relatives and friends of the dead shirtwaist girls stormed the corridors and shrieked curses at the two men...
...Still, as the offense becomes better understood and the committing of it partakes more of studied and deliberate defiance of the law, we can be confident that juries will convict individuals and that jail sentences will be imposed...
...It must be enforced unless, we are to banish individualism from all business and reduce it to one common system of regulation or control of prices like that which now prevails with respect to public utilities and which, when applied to all business, would be a long step toward state socialism...
...It is not the purpose of the statute to confiscate the property and capital of the offending trusts...
...The members of the Ways and Means Committee of the American Federation of Labor, which has had charge of the defense fund for the McNamaras, issued a statement last week, a summary of which appears on another page of this magazine...
...It is the President's p an this session to make his report and recommendations to Congress in a series of messages...
...The way is now opened for the trial of these men on this charge...
...The presidential preference law was strongly urged at the meeting as a means of breaking the hold of the organization on national politics and securing a genuine expression of popular will...
...Whether it is possible to bring this about is, of course, a problem, but reports from Los Angeles indicate that the problem has been attacked by earnest men who have hopes of success...
...Congress Asked to End Treaty At a large mass-meeting in New York, on December 6, abrogation of the treaty of friendly relations between the United States and Russia made in 1832 was urged in speeches delivered by a dozen or more men of national prominence and in resolutions which read as follows: "Resolved, That this meeting, called by representatives from every part of the union and reflecting every shade of public opinion, urgently requests the the Congress of the United States at its present session to adopt the resolutions now pending in the Senate and House of Representatives looking to the abrogation of the treaty of 1832 between the United States and Russia by giving one year's notice of its termination, pursuant to its expressed provision, to the end that our country at least shall no longer behold with equanimity a classification of its citizens which if ripened into a precedent would eventually undermine that political system which has made it the greatest moral power of the earth...
...It is hoped that this terrible case may mark the end of violence on both sides in labor disputes...
...The President presents no carefully worked out recommendations for constructive legislation to deal with this great problem...
...The President assured President Diaz that the mobilization of the troops "had no significance which should cause concern to his government...
...He suggests in general terms the end to be attained by trust regulation and renews his recommendation for a Federal Corporation Commission in the Department of Commerce and Labor, with publicity as a feature of trust regulation and federal incorporation of interstate businesses, and "that the federal charters thus to be granted shall be voluntary, at least until the experience justifies mandatory provisions...
...It is in the nature of a brief, unholding the action of the Circuit Court in effecting the dissolution of the Tobacco Trust, which eminent lawyers, like Louis D. Brandeis and Samuel .Untemeyer, have declared to be a sham...
...Primarily for the good of the country, but equally for the sake of Republican success, Wisconsin demands the nomination of a man who can be elected and who when elected will not disappoint the reasonable expectations of those who voted for him...
...Then the question will be squarely presented to them: can a President who has conceded his own failure, merely with the assistance of the postmasters of the South renominate himself...
...The plans now under consideration provide that a president be elected by provincial delegates, vesting in him the powers exercised by the president of a republic, and that he shall call a convention of the people within six months to confirm the constitution...
...Meanwhile, union men everywhere are demanding with grim determination that their unions be purged of men of the McNamara stripe...
...With both sides freed from these elements, it is believed that a new era in labor history will begin...
...Good will without exception has been manifested between this country and its world neighbors...
...Meanwhile the efforts of Los Angeles business men and labor leaders to bring about mutual understanding and better relations between employers and employees are being continued...
...Union men, with reason, accuse unscrupulous capitalists of instigating violence in an effort to injure unionism...
...or shall the will of the people be the law of the land...
...His message on the control of trusts is mainly a defense of the Sherman Anti-trust law as recently applied by the Supreme Court in the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trust cases...
...New Legislation Desirable The President opposes the repeal of the Sherman law but concedes the desirability of supplemental legislation to afford a guide to business men that will lift them out of the chaos into which the "rule of reason" has plunged them...
...McNamaras in Prison With the McNamara dynamiters in prison, new efforts were begun last week to ferret out every person who may have been an accomplice in their crimes...
...Old political methods have already sufficiently changed to permit if not to require presidential primaries in at least six states...
...When the people of these states, representing as they do every geographical section except the South and all phases of industrial life have spoken in favor of Wisconsin's candidate—and no one seriously doubts that they will—what will the party managers elsewhere say...
...The President says he sent the troops to Texas as a means of safeguarding American life and investments in Mexico from destruction by insurrectos...
...Charles E. Merriam of Chicago, said, "The party that adopts a progressive platform and nominates a progressive leader is likely to play an important part in the federal government for some time...
...An edict was issued by the empress dowager on the 6th announcing the resignation of Prinee Chun, the regent, and it inferred that the court will not object to surrendering the power now vested in the throne...
...Judges have been most reluctant to impose such (jail) sentences on men of respectable standing in society...
...Even the second term tradition or convention has at all times recognized the condition that the first term shall be reasonably satisfactory...
...George L. Record, Progressive Republican leader of New Jersey, aroused great enthusiasm by declaring that Senator La Follette's name would be presented to the Republican National Convention "and with a reasonable hope of success...
...To attain the highest success or even to secure tangible results in the national field, the progressive movement must become the recognized policy of the administration...
...Along with this, demands are being made, with increasing insistence, that manufacturers' associations be delivered out of the hands of capitalists of the type of the Kirbys and Posts and Otis's, whose activities, if continued, must stand always as a barrier to just settlement of industrial differences...
...And ain he says, "I see no objection, and eed I can see decided advantage in enactment of a law which shall de-be and denounce methods of competi-which are unfair and are badges he unlawful purpose denounced in Anti-trust law * * * to serve the ose of pointing out more in detail to business community what must be ed...
...In conclusion President Taft says, "This statute, as construed by the SuTAFT ON THE TRUSTS "Mere size Is no sin against the law...
...This decision reverses the action of the Circuit Court for western Washington in quashing indictments against Charles F. Munday and Archie W. Shields on charges of conspiring to defraud the Government out of Alaskan coal lands valued at $10,000,000...
...When men attempt to amass such stupendous capital ns will enable them to suppress competition, control prices and establish a monopoly, they know the purpose of their acts...
...That is the report made by the Naval Board, which has been examining the wreck...
...He declared that the coming campaign was to be one of the most important the country had ever known as it marked the parting of the ways...
Vol. 3 • December 1911 • No. 50
