Life — December 19, 1907 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Life there's Hope * VOL.L. DECEMBER 19, 1907 No, 1312 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY Lt, Prest, A. Miuter, Sec'y and Treas. HE, strongest imp! sion that one gets from inspecting the President’s message is that Dr. Roose- velt has begun to wear out A his welcome to the Ameri- can mind. What he says, whether it good or bad, be- gins to excite im- patience because it is he that says it, and because he says it at in- ordinate — length and has said it so often before. ‘ There are words, phrases and ideas that he out by repetition, so that offered again, they no longer induce any action in the intellectuals. The readers of Presidential deliverances feel about him and his dis- courses as novel readers do about a stery- writer who publishes three novels in a year, oras folks complain of feeling about Mr. Benson, who has unloosed within a year or two such a profusion of essay books. It is not so much that the matter is not interesting as that we have had as much of the product of a single mind as, for the time being, we can stand. Quail isa good bird, but a quail a day for thirty days is a sore trial to the strongest diges- tion. Mr. Roosevelt’s thoughts for six years in large and frequent portions have ast begun to overwhelm a popular ap- petite of prodigious persistence; the ex- isting feeling of satiety being emphasized by the country’s recent attack of acute pecuniary indigestion. Mr. Roosevelt would have done wisely to minimize and condense his message this year, but being interested in what he had to communicate he threw his blue pencil away and poured out in loose pro- fusion the contents of his mind and scrap- EAGLE * book, The chief immediate, practical re- sult must be relief of the pressure on his own understanding, forno single Congress could more than nibble around the edges of the President’s recommendations. ‘There are years of legislative deliberation in them. Nevertheless, the message will be a convenient treasury out of which the s of the next Republican platform may pick such planks as they may think HERE is timber enough in the mes- sage to make extensive alterations in our social edifice. Some of this timber will have to be used some time; or other timber better suited to the purpose. The problem of control of corporations has probably got to be worked out in some fashion; the currency lem should be bettered just as soon as satisfactory bet- terment can be fitted to it; the work of forest preservation should go on; the pay of the Army and Navy should be raised, and much else done that is pressing. But whether we are to have federal control of all corporations, and how far it is to go; whether we must have federal income and inheritance taxes, federal inspection of railroads, federal child-labor laws, federal funds for campaign expenses and the like, are matters that are likely to be extensively pondered before deci- sive action is taken on them. The time for radical improvement while-you-wait seems for the moment to have passed, and there will still be something to do, administration T REMAINS to be seen whether there is enough instructed talent in the country to devise a currency system which will meet the needs of the country. Everybody recogni that the present system has serious defects; that money is habitually scarce in the fall when the crops have to be moved, and super- abundantly plentiful at other times whet the demand for it is less. The problem is to devise a more elastic currency, which can be safely increased when there is legitimate need of it, and rapidly con- tracted again when the need passes. We want a system which shall be automatic and under which folks can get at all times, at reasonable cost, such money as their credit warrants without the arbitrary intervention of the Secretary of the Treas- ury or any other officer of the govern- ment. At present, as happened so re- cently, the Secretary has to use his best judgment as to when and how to give re- lief. No matter how good his judgment , it is important that the intervention of it should be minimized. There is no lack of people in the coun- try who are confident that they can im- prove our present fiscal system, but there is great scarcity of persons whom the country would trust to d Even among the recognized experts there are many conflicts of opinion, so that we are told that the eighteen members of Mr. Fow- ler’s Currency and Banking Committee of the House of Representatives cightcen different currency plans. That the average member of Congress knows nothing about currency systems is one reason why the defects in ours have gone so long unremedied. When the voters have no idea what they want, and Con- gress doesn’t know what to give them, there is apt to be postponement. Nevertheless, though the country does. not know what it wants, it knows that it wants something, and that it is the busi- ness of the currency committees of the Senate and the House to furnish it. HE only Democrat in sight is still Mr. Bryan, but he is far from being an inspiring spectacle to Democratic voters. Itwould be easy enough to nominate him, but very, very hard to elect him. So the South thinks, and would rather try a new experiment, that would be more interest- ing, without being any less likely to succeed. Is the Democratic party to continue to be devoted exclusively to local concerns and cease to have an effectual voice in national matters? It looks mightily like it. Think of its extraordinary appear- ance in New York State with “Fingy” Conners as its authorized leader, and its chief asset an attorney-general with pow- er to quarter faithful Democrats as receivers upon embarrassed banks! comicbooks.com