State and Nation

"There is no Twilight Zone"

Read carefully the Democratic platform on "State and Nation." While the Republican platform is silent on this important question, the Democratic platform says:

"Believing with Jefferson, in "The support of the state governments in all their rights as the most competent administration for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwark against anti-republican tendencies; and in the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional rigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and the safety abroad,' we are opposed to the centralization implied in these suggestions, now frequently made, that the power of the general government should be extended by judicial construction. There is no twilight zone between the nation and the state by which exploiting interests can take refuge from both; and it is necessary the federal government shall exercise the powers delegated to it, that the state governments shall use the authority reserved to them, but we insist that federal remedies for the regulation of interstate commerce and for the prevention of private monopoly shall be added to, not substituted for, state remedies."

In a speech delivered in 1906, Secretary of State Root said: "What is to be the future of the states of the Union under our constitutional form of government? The conditions under which the clauses of the constitution distributing powers to the national and state governments are henceforth to be applied are widely different from the conditions which were, or could have been, within the contemplation of the framers of the constitution, and widely different from those which obtained during the earlier years of the Republic." And then he proceeded to point out the causes which have led

to new conditions and declared:

"It is plainly to be seen that the people of the country are coming to the conclusion that in certain important respects the local laws of the separate states which were adequate for a due and just relation and control of the business which was transacted and the activities which began and ended within the limits of the several states, are inadequate for just and due control of the business and activities which extend through all the states, and more power of regulation and control is gradually passing into the hands of the national government."

In his address before the Governors' Conference at the White House, Mr. Bryan said:

"I am a strict constructionist, if that means to believe that federal government is one of delegated powers and that constitutional limitations should be carefully observed. I am jealous of any encroachment upon the rights of the state, believing that the states are as indestructible as the Union is indissoluble. It is, however, entirely consistent with this theory to believe, as I do believe, that it is just as imperative that the general government shall discharge the duties delegated to it, as it is that the states shall exercise the powers reserved to them. There is no twilight zone between the nation and the state, in which exploiting interests can take refuge from both, and my observation is that most-not all, but most-of the contentions over the line between nation and state are traceable to predatory corporations which are trying to shield themselves from reserved punishment, or endeavoring to prevent needed restraining legislation."

THEN CAME THE COURT.

In his speech at Trenton, N. J., Secretary Taft deplored what he called "too great centralization of government," and attributed it to the failure of the State legislators to perform their proper functions. About the time Secretary Taft made this remarkable statement the Supreme Court of the United States was handing down a decision that in effect prevents a State legislature from performing its functions. Further than that, the decision actually goes to the length of saying that a State official may be enjoined by a Federal court from appearing in a State court to move for the enforcement of a State law.

DRAWING THE LINE.

Democrats draw a distinct line between Federal legislation which is supplemental to State legislation, and that form of Federal legislation which would substitute a National for a State remedy. No National charter should be granted to an insurance company

and no Federal supervision should interfere with the exercise of the power now vested in the States to supervise companies doing business in such States.

The Democrat would not take from the Federal Government any power necessary to the performance of its legitimate duties, but he recognizes that the consolidation of all government at Washington would be a menace to the safety of the Nation and would endanger the perpetuity of the Republic. He believes in the preservation of the power of both State and Federal Governments, recognizing in the constitutional division of those powers the strength of free government. The advocate of centralization is always optimistic when the dangers of centralization are pointed out. He is not afraid that any harm can come to the American people, and yet no enthusiastic advocate of centralization can talk long without betraying his distrust of the people. Instead of accepting the theory that the people should think for themselves and then select representatives to carry out those thoughts, he believes that representatives are selected to think for the people and he does not hesitate to build barriers between the Government and the voters. While the advocate of centralization is urging legislation which obliterates State lines and removes the Government from the control of the voters, the monopolist may, on the other hand, hide behind the Democratic theory of self-government and use this theory to prevent National legislation which may be necessary. The Democrat who believes in Democratic principles and who wants to preserve the dual character of our Government must be on his guard against both.

THE CONSTITUTION.

The following editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, a Republican newspaper:

Mr. Roosevelt makes so many speeches upon so many subjects that it is not always easy to separate from them the central thought. For some time the prominent idea has been the punishment of wealthy malefactors. In his present series of long addresses there appears to be embodied a demand for greater powers for the restraint and regulation of corporations, and especially of the railroads. This does not seem to contemplate legislation merely, for there has been a great deal of legislation in this direction lately, the most recent of which, enacted at the President's own insistence, has not yet been fully tested. His impatience appears to be directed against what are commonly regarded as constitutional restraints upon the federal power. The Supreme Court, and the other courts, have constantly interpreted the constitution in the spirit of the Tenth amendment,

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people."

As lately as this past summer, in which Senator Knox has referred to as "a great opinion," in the Kansas-Colorado case, the Supreme Court took occasion to reiterate the doctrine it has held from the first:

"It is still true that no independent and unmentioned power passes to the national government or can rightfully be exercised by congress.

It is against this fundamental construction that the President contends. Secretary Root, in a notable speech in 1906, formulated the idea of constitutional change through elastic interpretation, which the president has since dwelt upon with increasing insistence. This was the central thought in his speech at St. Louis. The constitution must remain as it is, but it must be "interpreted as the interests of the whole people demand," upon a theory that

"Allows to the nation-that is, to the people as a whole-when once it finds a subject within the national cognizance, the widest and freest choice of methods for national control, and sustains every exercise of national power which has any reasonable relation to national objects."

By what mental process Mr. Roosevelt associates the name of Marshall with this "theory" is not apparent, nor is it important. He goes on to say that if this theory shall prevail, "then an immense field of national power, now unused, will be developed, which will be adequate for dealing with many, if not all, of the economic problems which vex us.'

No one disputes that "the people as a whole" have retained their right to "alter or abolish" their form of government at their will. The question Mr. Roosevelt raises is between a written constitution, like that of the United States, ordained by the people and unchangeable except in the way they have expressly provided, or a "flexible" constitution, like that of Great Britain, formed by custom and precedent, by legislation and judicial interpretation, and changing with the changing exigencies of the time or the desires of the majority in power.

That the European idea of a constitution has practical advanages and opens "a wide field for national power" may easily be

maintained. It may be that we Americans have made a fetich of our written constitution, and that we would do well to abandon it as something we have outgrown. Or, we still have retained powers which we can confer upon the national government in the way provided, if that be resolved upon. But the theory of a constitution readily adjustable by new construction to every desired exercise of authority is plainly incompatible with the theory which has hitherto prevailed. The "development" which the President is urging, whether for good or ill, would be essentially a change in our form of government.

The opinions of Chief Justice Marshall are full of just such declarations as this:

"This government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle that it can exercise only the powers granted to it would seem too apparent to have required to be enforced by all those arguments which its enlightened friends while it was pending before the people found it necessary to urge. That principle is now universally admitted."

This was in an opinion relating to the judicial power, which the constitution had vested in the Supreme and other courts- "all the judicial power which the nation was capable of exercising"-and which could not be limited by legislative or executive interference, nor in any way except as expressed by the constitution. The President has no authority to determine how the judicial power shall be exercised, and the Supreme Court will have to reverse its whole view of the constitution before it can accept his present theory. It was, in fact, against this very theory of inherent powers, which was argued on behalf of the United States, that the Supreme Court directed its unanimous opinion in the Kansas-Colorado case:

"This amendment (the tenth), which was seemingly adopted with prescience of just such contention as the present, disclosed the widespread fear that the national government might, under the pressure of supposed general welfare, attempt to exercise powers which had not been granted. With equal determination the framers intended that no such assumption should ever find justification in the organic act, and that if in the future further powers seemed necessary they should be granted by the people in the manner they had provided for amending that act." Elsewhere in the same opinion it is said:

"The people who adopted the constitution knew that in the nature of things they could not foresee all the questions which might arise in the future, all the circumstances which might call for the exercise of further national powers than those granted to the United States, and after making provision for an amendment to the constitution by which any needed additional powers would be granted, they reserved to themselves all powers not so delegated."

This is so recent a deliverance, made since the President has been arguing for amendment by construction, that it presents very clearly the issue between him and the Supreme Court, or rather the issue between the two opposing views of constitutional interpretation. In a broad sense, some such difference of view has divided parties from the beginning, but it has never before reached so wide a difference as to the essential nature of our constitutional forms. amendment of the constitution has been frequently proposed. The President's idea is not to change the form, but to leave the form and change the meaning-a method more direct and certainly more farreaching in its consequences. But first it will be necessary to change the Supreme Court.

PLAIN CENTRALIZATION TALK

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The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Inter Ocean, a Republican newspaper:

In addressing the people of St. Louis on Tuesday President Roosevelt advocated the national control and regulation of interstate railways. He advocated also the national control and regulation of industrial corporations or stock companies which do an interstate busi

ness.

As an illustration and precedent of these policies, he pointed to the government's control and regulation of the national banks.

Never before, within our recollection, has such a sweeping declaration come from a President of the United States in times of peace. Never has a graver issue been presented by an American President even in times of war.

Regulate and control all the interstate railroads! Regulate and control all the industrial stock companies doing an interstate business! Regulate and control each and both classes, after the manner in which the national banks are regulated and controlled by the federal government today! What does this mean?

In Illinois alone, some 25,000 stock companies are doing business today. In the whole United States, the number of such companies hardly falls below a million. How many of these do an interstate business, and, therefore, come under the President's plan of control and regulation from Washington?

According to the President's idea, the number must be at least three-fourths of the total. For, as was set forth in the RooseveltBeveridge child labor bill, and was expounded at length in the Senate by the Senator from Indiana, all factories producing articles which are

exported beyond state lines are to be regarded as subject to federal control and regulation under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution.

Think of it! Seven hundred and fifty thousand stock companies, transacting practically three-fourths of the business of the United States to be licensed, regulated and controlled, even to a listing of their stock, by a department at Washington!

Seven hundred and fifty thousand stock companies to be examined by federal examiners, to be inspected by federal inspectors, to be picked and chosen for reprobation, dictation, or extermination by federal officials, and to be supervised or administered after the manner of a national bank in case of insolvency!

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Think of it! There are only 6,500 national banks in the United States! There are 750,000 stock companies subject to the operation of this gigantic plan! An army of inspectors, examiners and receivers, as large as the standing army of the United States? bureau in Washington as large as the pension office and the army and navy departments combined! Tens of thousands of men and tens of millions of money and such a vast and intricate machinery as no country on earth has even ventured to approach for its every purpose or all purposes combined!

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Yet how trivial these causes as compared with their effect! means of this vast machinery, this standing army of inspectors, this plentitude of governmental power in Washington, any president in the White House would be able to reach his hand to the uttermost part of the United States, place his index finger upon any crossroads stock company that might exist in the smallest hamlet, and decree, as the comptroller of the currency today decrees, whether this American citizen or that American citizen should continue in business or should be plunged into bankruptcy and ruin.

"But the courts," some one may say. The reply is too apparent. To a business man whose going concern has been crushed before his eyes by a government order, a court offers nothing but justice-only justice and nothing more, for no suit for damages can lie against the government of the United States. He may walk from a federal court with his vindication in his hand, but will still bear on his brow the stamp of financial ruin.

Is this fancy? Is this a far-sought example? Alas, no. We have only to turn back to the experience of the packers of Chicago to realize that the concentration of such stupendous power in the hands of the central government, that the possibility, yes, the probability of its being exerted in the manner in question, has been not only contemplated, but has been specifically intended by the President on the lines laid down in his St. Louis speech.

Any man who will look back to the history of the meat inspection bill will recall that the conflict which raged around that measure, between the President of the United States and the House of Representatives, did not turn on the question of a closer federal inspection or the payment of the cost of that inspection. It turned on the issue whether or not there should be vested by law in the hands of the President's appointee, namely, the Secretary of Agriculture, power to close the packing houses of Chicago on his mere say-so, and to keep them closed until the owners could secure a decision by the due and laborious process of the courts.

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In the face of the President's public declarations that he would, or would if he could, put the Chicago packers in the penitentiary, their struggle to protect themselves from arbitrary executive orders was regarded, and regarded rightly, as a struggle of life and death.

And when one thinks of the vast resources and material power in the hands of the Chicago packers, when one contemplates the apprehension and desperation with which they viewed a struggle with a department of agriculture armed with despotic power, it is easy to realize what chance one ordinary stock company of the 750,000 would have before the upraised hand of executive power in Washington, if ever the President's era of universal executive control and regulation should overwhelm us.

Why does the President seek to make the President of the United States the absolute lord over industrial life and death? Why does he deem it wise to give one American citizen the ability to reach into every nook and cranny of this country's commerce and finance, to compel homage or support from every man of power between the Atlantic and Pacific, to smite all opponents back into impotence and beggary, to raise all friends into wealth and power, and thus to constitute, if he have but the will, a self-perpetuating regime which all the parties and party organizations that the country has ever seen would not be powerful enough to overthrow-which would. in fact, realize here in the United States, a despotism of which a Russian czar never dreamed for the simple reason that he did not have in his dominion any such machine as that which the federal control and regulation of 750,000 corporations would place absolutely and irrevocably in the hands of the chief executive?

The President answers this question. It is to arrest or anticipate or prevent "industrial chaos."

"Industrial chaos!" Ominous phrase-not because the evils of industrial life today are really due to industrial chaos-far from it. Where they exist they are due rather to over-organization and it needs but a statement of the fact for the truth to be recognized. But "industrial chaos" is a phrase which, from the mouth of a President of the United States, must strike a chill to the heart of every man who knows the origin, growth and maturity .of modern social

ism.

"Industrial_chaos" was brought into the world of political agitation by Marx, Lassalle, Engels and Rodbertus, the socialists who, half a century ago, founded and fathered the millitant socialism of the Europe of today. The phrase has come down from one generation of socialists to another, always the shibboleth of those who would turn the constitutional liberty of modern times into the compact slavery of the socialistic state.

And the same words today roll from the lips of a President of the United States, and for the same purpose, namely, to justify the transformation of industrial liberty into industrial servitude, and the sacrifice of all the ideals of constitutional freedom on the altar of an industrial despotism.

"Industrial chaos!" The phrase has been bandied about by every socialist agitator in Europe from Engels to Liebknecht, from Marx to Bebel, from Lassalle to Jaures-bandied about as an excuse for disrupting the whole present order of society. as a pretext for upsetting the whole financial and commercial system of today. And now it comes with authority from the lips of the President of the United States as his justification of a plan which would abolish the Republic within twenty-five years, bow the necks of 100,000,000 Americans before the face of one autocrat in Washington and turn the United States of North America into a civilized wilderness-no nation at all, but only a wreck of a socialist's dream.

After contemplating such a monstrous proposition, it is difficult to realize why this nation was once aroused by the Granger movement, by the greenback campaign, or by the free silver agitation of William Jennings Bryan. How trivial, by comparison, today seems a proposal to give the nation a fifty cent dollar or printing press money!

How infantile the proportions of such a proposition which would merely throw the country into hard times, when compared with a proposition which, if realized, would abolish the republic, personal liberty, individual initiative, personal success and personal ambition, and leave us, the people of the United States, with nothing but two wreck-strewn shores, and ruin-complete industrial ruin-stretching out between.

A HINT AS TO CENTRALIZATION.

If Mr. Roosevelt should conclude to submit his centralization proposition to the American people rather than trust it to what he calls "the spirit of broad interpretation"—which means that the courts would interpret the very life out of our system of government-he will find the issue well stated-so far as his opponents are concerned in the memorial address to Congress by the Attorneys General in session at St. Louis. That memorial follows:

Whereas, The efficient administration as well as the preservation of our dual system of government requires that each sovereignty be permitted to exercise its function as defined by the federal constitution unhampered by the other, therefore be it

Resolved, By the convention of attorneys general of the several states here assembled, that we earnestly recommend to the favorable consideration of the President and the Congress of the United States the enactment of a federal law providing that no circuit court of the United States or any judge exercising powers of such circuit courts shall have jurisdiction in any case brought to restrain any officers of a state or any administrative board or a state from instituting in a state court any suit or other appropriate proceeding to enforce the laws of such state or to enforce any order, made by such administrative board, but allowing any person or corporation asserting in any such action in a state court any right arising under the constitution or any laws of the United States to have the decision for the highest court of such state reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States as now provided by law.

We also recommend that suits in federal circuit courts by persons interested in corporations to restrain such corporations from obeying the laws of states in which they are doing business be prohibited.

The position taken by Mr. Roosevelt and the railroad trust magnates who, on this proposition, are his ardent supporters might be stated in paraphrase as follows:

To the American People:

Whereas there are "insuperable difficulties arising from our dual form of government" and "resort must be had to the power amendment," and

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Whereas, "the chief economic question of the day in this country is to provide a sovereign for the great corporations engaged in interstate business; that is for the railroads and the interstate industrial corporations,'

Resolved, That we earnestly recommend to the American people an amendment to the constitution whereby the various states of the union surrender control over the railroads and interstate industrial corporations, such control to be vested exclusively in the federal government, and

Resolved, That no judge of any state court shall have jurisdiction in any case brought against any railroad or interstate industrial corporation or officer thereof, and

or

Resolved, That the legislature of each of the states be and it is hereby debarred from making any laws to which the railroad interstate industrial corporation must conform in doing business