OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN worthy successor of Theodore Roosevelt. And do not forget this he knows the west. Truly it is difficult to choose between them, but perhaps the convention will do just the right thing on that point and give them both to us one as the leader, the other as his running mate. The third is Major General Leonard Wood, who appeals to westerners not only because of his elevated and forceful character but because he, too, knows the west and understands it. He has been tested in many trying situations, both as soldier and statesman, and never has failed to meet every test triumphantly. We have named three noble Americans. Keep them in mind. a V I hands of both employer and employe. And yet the defenders of the law had the hypocrisy to describe it as a peaceful means of attaining just objects in disputes between business men and their workers. The conservatives, who are a majority among the workers of the land, believe that all desirable reforms can be obtained through the ballot and not by direct action aimed at the destruction of the orderly processes of government. Consequently they cannot, as patriotic citizens, look upon picketing with favor. It is almost axiomatic that a just cause will triumph without picketing and that an unjust cause cannot triumph with picketing. GENERAL YOUNGS PLEA STOP SUGAR PROFITEERING intimations that some of the sugar interests of the planning to increase the price of sugar to a profiteering We trust that the sugar corporations will not make such a are THERE are U level. blunder. This year there will be no governmental control of sugar and the corporations will have it within their power to do the right thing by the public or to commit themselves to the irretrievable error of profiteering. Business judgment should dictate a most conscientious effort to be fair. That is the duty of all corporations in these times of unparalleled unrest. If they fulfill their duty they will rank as conservators of society; if they fail in their duty they cannot escape responsibility as aiders and abettors of dangerous forms of radicalism. No interests were more loyal to the government during the war than the sugar corporations. They pledged themselves to aid the government in every possible way and they kept their pledge. They perfected a splendid organization to assist government control and that without expense to the government. The organization, we hear, is still a going concern and can be employed as efficiently for the benefit of the public as it was employed during the conflict for the benefit of the country. The same patriotic motives should constrain the sugar interests to defer to the consumers, for the country has not passed the war crisis and is confronted by the additional crisis of industrial unrest and radical violence. The highest duty of corporations is to serve the public. The duty to make profit for stochkolders and interest for bondholders is, and should always be, subservient to the public good. Fortunately the issue is not one of profits, but of profiteering. The public is wholly willing that the sugar interests of this state should make substantial profits, but will not forgive them if they enter into the game of profiteering. Sugar should be sold to the consumer at a fair price based on beets. If profits are calculated on any other basis the sugar interests will bring down- upon themselves just criticism and, sooner or later, retribution. Enlightened self interest should persuade them to be fair with the public in this period of storm and stress when the very foundations of civil society and of government are at stake. , . ten-doll- ar - PICKETING BANNED TMIE legislature, repenting of its deplorable past, did itself credit X by eliminating the preposterous statute which legalized picketing aiid passed a statute which makes picketing a misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment. We are confident that the only element in our population that will be disappointed are the radicals. Conservative workmen have nothing to gain from violence or private warfare. A strike that cannot be won without boycott and blackmail is not worth winning. The action of the special session in this regard is in line with the determination among all good citizens to do away with the causes of hostility between capital and labor. Everybody is for an end of all kinds of wars, whether they be military, race or industrial conflicts. The picketing law which disgraced our statute books was a weapon of warfare. It was designed not to bring capital and labor together, but to keep them apart, disgruntled, angry and bent upon being antagonistic to the last ounce of energy and even the last drop of blood. It injected dynamite into the industrial situation and put fuses in the BRIGADIER GENERAL RICHARD W. YOUNG, speaking at saifl: I am sorry to hear people speak of England, France and Belgium as if they were rogues and not to be trusted. I believe they can be trusted in entering into a league to prevent war just as they have trusted us in the war. President Wilson, in his Salt Lake speech, said that the United States was the only nation that the other nations trusted. He did not call England and France rogues, but in a number of his speeches he threatened us with the enmity of these and other allied countries if we failed to ratify the treaty. He indicated that they would turn on us and try to rob us commercially unless we accepted the treaty. The other nations did not trust us on the eve of the war. The envoys of Great Britain and France came to this country their pockets bulging with secret treaties, as Senator Johnson expressed it, and they did not say a word about those treaties because they feared that if the American people were informed of them Congress would not declare war. Among those treaties was the compact to enslave Shantung and new compacts of a nefarious purport, which existed at that time, are still coming to light. Lately treaties between Great Britain and the Arabs and between Great Britain and France over the disposition of Syria have been publicly discussed because the treaties, so to speak, gave off such an offensive odor as to poison gas that they no longer could be kept secret. It appears that these treaties are in conflict and that the Arabs and the French desire to know why Great Britain promised the same territory to France and the Arabs at the same time. At Versailles our delegation acquiesced in these secret treaties and in the many wrongs they entailed and now the United States Senate is asked to ratify these wrongs and to trust the malefactors. If we speak of the offending countries as rogues it is because they speak of themselves as rogues in their secret compacts and in their league for war. Opponents of the treaty, however, should not permit denunciatory phrases to be put in their mouths. Great Britain and France, Italy and the other imperialistic nations of the league, are not rogues simply because they believe in their own imperialim, their ancient policy of holding conquered races in subjection, but Americans abandoned slavery more than half a century ago and they ought not to be trapped now into joining a military alliance whose scheme is to hold the world in thrall. ANTI-STRIK- E MEASURE seen one of the oldest governments in Europe imperiled strike and having sensed the danger to this country a few months ago when a national railway, strike was threatened, the public, we believe, has come to the conclusion that strikes should be forbidden on our transportation systems. The Cummins bill includes a provision banning strikes and lockouts and making arbitration compulsory. If two or more persons, the bill provides, enter into any combination or agreement with the intent substantially to hinder, restrain or prevent the movement of commodities or persons in interstate commerce, or enter into any combination or agreement which substantially hinders, restrains or prevents the movemnt of commodi- - HAVING |