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Show OUR MORAL AWAKENING. Whatever course our nation may take in matters mat-ters political or sociological, there is sure to be divided opinions as to the justice and merits of its action. As the motives of individuals are impugned, im-pugned, so are those of the nation. The people of America have undergone a great moral awakening during the past few years; they have read in the papers and magazines that nearly everybody was imposing on everybody else, but that a few had the imposition reduced to a system, while the many were struggling to learn that system. The moral awakening consists largely of finding out that a few have been shrewder than the rest, the struggling mass looking up as in a mirror and seeing a satirical reflection from high places of their own boasted virtues. The federal government has seen fit to place restrictions on trade between the states, as this seemed a simple way of extending federal authority author-ity over what are essentially state questions. Interstate In-terstate commerce in foods and drugs is limited by the pure food law, and no one, seemingly, has raised a protest against it or cried out at the "federal "fed-eral usurpation of state rights." It is generally recognized that the enactment of the food and drug law will result in benefits which it would be difficult to derive if action by each state were awaited. . ' But if this principle should be extended to manufactures man-ufactures and products not included in the pure food law, no doubt a vigorous protest would follow fol-low against the usurpation of the vested rights of the states, and the question might once more furnish fur-nish a plank in the platform of at least one of the great political parties. It is viewed now as the manifest destiny of the federal government to exercise ex-ercise such authority as has been exercised. The people were being buncoed too openly, so it was a moral necessity more than a political expediency that called the law into being. The opposition to the law comprised only the few manufacturers whose goods were deceptive, and they evidently had not learned to take the high moral grounds that it was usurpation of state rights and thus to have the law declared unconstitutional. Then the interference by the national government govern-ment in railroad, trust and rebate matters is another an-other question which stirred up the moral sense of the people, though those most thoroughly stirred may be and very likely are practicing in a smaller, way the very things which they so eloquently elo-quently condemn in others. For instance, we will assume that a business man may charge whatever he pleases for his wares; there is no law against it. He may sell on a 10 per cent or a 500 per cent profit basis, and do it legally. But if a stove is marked $42 and the customer demures, does not the business man give a rebate if he finally sells the stove for $3S? And. isn't the same moral question involved in this hypothetical case as that in the famous suit against Standard Oil for which it was recently fined $29,000,000? And wouldn't it seem preposterous that both the customer and the business man should denounce de-nounce rebates when somebody else was involved in the transaction? The trouble with our moral awakening seems to be that we do not recognize the intimate relation rela-tion existing between ourselves and our ' fellows and that sustained between large corporations and the people. What is illegitimate in a corporation rebate is essentially not a moral function of busi- ness. Combinations in restraint of competition exist in nearly every line of trade. Retail merchants mer-chants in nearly every line are organized and the labor unions exist for no reason save to protect their members from the more powerful fellow. Economic questions are a result of our unnatural unnat-ural attitude toward each other. In the first place we all have to live, or think we do. Our instinct tells us that if we can get away from some one else what he possesses, our living will be more safely assured. Whereas our living comes from the gTound, instead of working it, the attention of the people is directed to working everybody and everything else. Our moral awakening must get a little nearer home than a Xew Jersey corporation corpora-tion before any real and lasting benefit will come to us. When the nation wakes up to this fact, there will really be no need for laws against dishonesty dis-honesty or hardly anything else, but we fear that day is quite a way in the future. |