The Daily News. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18. A NEW SPIRIT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 318, 18 February 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18. A NEW SPIRIT.

One cannot read the American papers to-day without realising that a new spirit is rising in the United States with regard to its public life. It is, in brief, a protest against the exploitation of the natural resources of the country, and a plea for honest government and industry. "In the opinion of the most intelligent and disinterested class of .public life," says Collier's Weekly, -no achievement in President Roosevelt s administration compared in importance with the successful turning of the tide against the robber barons, and in tavor of the people, in that immensely valuable arena known as our natural resources. Can the people prevent the present Administration from chloroform- j in<» the movement, and bringing us back, to" the grand ola days of McKinley's j first Administration, when everything was smooth and orderly, and RoUin Hood was in the saddle?' In the same tone the World's Work (New York), which, with Collier's Weekly, is doing splendid work m the direction of national righteousness, says •.-•The most striking political fact of our time is' the rise of the people to a more earnest interest in public affairs. There is -especially throughout the Middle West -a very direct and strong expression of the feeling that the public business to be public business, andjiot trie business of private or special interests. This sort of revolt takes many forms. In city government it expresses itseli in a greater directness of inethod-as in the commission form of government —and more concentrated responsibility. It takes the form also of the beatification of cities. In s'onie States, as in Wisconsin, this feeling leads to the regulaton of water-power, as well as ot other public utilities, and of an enormous broadening of public educational acTivities for the whole people. It is this re-rising of the people for more direct influence on government that somewhat blindly feels its way to the practical abolition of the election of United States Senators by the Legislatures, and to experiment with the referendum and similar political devices "In another form," continues the World's WorE "it has become the insistent demand for tariff revision-even {or mrther reductions now when the Administration had hoped ftiat the subject was closed. The 'lnsurgent' representatives! ana senators are the true spokesmen of the population that they represent. The popular strength of the Conservation idea is a part of the same philosopny-the welfare of the whole peopie and no more merely private exploitation. All these and many similar popular demands are parts of the same movement. It is Steady, cumulative, insistent. DisTegarded, it would become dangerous to many vested interests. Propeiiy fed, it will prove itself both a triumphant and a righteous impulse. All these events give one useful and wholesome reminder—that the Government (and through the Government the people) are supreme. Corporations are the'" creatures of government. In the iritersts of the people, they require regulation and restraint. And there was a time, yet easy to recall, when this doctrine was laughed at, a time when it was hoped and feared that the great trusts were in-the last analysis superior to the law. This law surely was a dead letter. The problem of orderly Government is to make laws' effective. If they are crude laws, then they must lie improved. But the first thing is to make it clear that no power nor aggregation of power, whether it be used with or without criminal intent, can be long used unlawfully. This is a great lesson in the fundamental morals ot free government; and we owe it to Theodore Roosevelt. Fortunately, his successor is in- accord with him. And now that we have proved that the Sherman Law can be enforced, and have won the contention that governmental regulation of 'Trusts' is both desirable and possible, this and sweeping law should be so amended as to permit the prosecution only of real offenders against legitimate competition. As it stands, it is a first rough dragnet effort. The English have a better plan than ours to get the public will definitely expressed. They elect their Legislature on a tolerably clear issue, whenever an issue arises, and the newly-elected body assembles immediately with a mandate to do a particular thing. In America we elect Congressmen at stated intcrf vals, after campaigns Tn which everything possible has been done to confuse and obscure issues, and after the election the old Congress goes right on legislating for another session, as if fliere had been no election. The system might have been invented expressly to thwart the people's will, and to ensure popular' misrepresentation by representatives. It requires some boldness to assert that the people's will does triumph under such a system, and it can only be said that it triumphs in spite of it. On the whole, "it does; ultimately it always does'. It is profoundly true that ours is a government of public, opinion, that the extra-legal, informal, spontaneous voice of the people is more powerful than their former-ly-uttered will. Yet we should gain time if we cquld.take public opinion on definite subjects. The World's Work then gives Instances of the prosecution of trusts and goes on to say':—"'lt is little wonder, indeed, that many men of large business interests 'wear a worried look. Thev are harassed not s'ojuuch by the Government as they , are" "hounded by public opinion. ,So" long immune from the interference of law. many of the lesser and the greater trusts have undoubtedly fallen into ways of loose living. Suddenly, and perhaps without a, 'chance for internal reform, some of them are haled into Court, their evil deeds are paraded in the Press, obloquy is heaped upon tliem, and their managers go forth with the brand of conviction upon them. It is an unlovely spectacle, and some of the first genera- j tion of trust-builder's who forgot that their newly-found power did not make them omnipotent and did not release them from the old, old laws of fair conduet, may be justly driven from the business Wrld;"and the business world

must see to it that their successors come soberly to tiieTr great responsibilities. It woifUl be wholly unfair to ;n----fer from the crimes of the Ice Trust and the Sugar Trust- that crime is inherent in the very nature of a trust, as there is danger that a part of the publie may infer. Yet the very great power that the trust gives makes such crimes easier and justifies rigid laws of regulation. The ultimate conclusion is that no corporation,, however great, no 'trust,' however strong, should ever be allowed under its corporate Torm or its extensive organisation to shift responsibilities for its actions from individual shoulders. And enforceable law.s must keep this responsibility visible. We move, by all these events, toward greater orderliness and stricter responsibility. That much is clear. And we have definitely gained this: Governmental regulation is now conceded to be necessary. The remaining task is to devise regulation ftiat is at once effective and fair."