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THREE CAPITAL BLUNDERS IN LESS 



THAN NINE MONTHS. 

 If a blunder is really worse than a felony, 

 and a first-class blunder more culpable than 

 an offense deserving capital punishment, what 

 shall be said of the criminality of record 

 achieved by Mr. Roosevelt since October 1, 

 1906? Consider the series: 



(1) The Roosevelt doctrine of sovereign 

 power inherent in the congress to deal with 

 all subjects of national concern not expressly 

 prohibited or reserved to the states. This 

 doctrine was announced by Mr. Roosevelt in 

 his Harrisburg speech of October 4 of last 

 year. He found it very convenient for the 

 promotion of the Roosevelt policies. He 

 thought he was adopting this doctrine from 

 one of the early luminaries of American juris- 

 prudence. "I cannot do better," said Mr. 

 Roosevelt at Harrisburg, "than base my theory 

 of governmental action upon the words and 

 deeds of one of Pennsylvania's greatest sons, 

 Justice James Wilson." We do not know who 

 misled Mr. Roosevelt, but a grosser error, a 

 more grotesque misapprehension regarding a 

 matter of constitutional law has rarely been 

 committed in public by any statesman. It 

 would take a column's space to explain with 

 particularity the breadth and depth of Mr. 

 Roosevelt's mistake. We may say in a gen- 

 eral way that the president totally misunder- 

 stood both the words of one of Pennsylvania's 

 greatest sons and the logical course and con 

 sequence of the reasoning which gave so much 

 satisfaction to Mr. Roosevelt as a federal ex- 

 pander. Remarks of Justice Wilson on the 

 powers of the Continental congress, before 

 the constitution was adopted, seem to have 

 been taken by Mr. Roosevelt to apply to 

 that very different thing, tne power of the 

 congress of the United States after its estab- 

 lishment and limitation by the Constitution. 

 Justice Wilson's clear perception of the fact 

 that national powers, inherent but unenumer- 

 ated and undelegated, are vested in the people, 

 was misinterpreted by Mr. Roosevelt's desir- 

 ous zeal into support for the idea that these 

 unexpressed national powers are vested not 

 merely in the people, but also in the congress 

 a very different thing again, as was so im- 

 pressively pointed out some months later in 

 Mr. Justice Brewer's opinion in the case of 

 Kansas vs. Colorado. Such, however, was the 

 blunder of misapprehension and misconception 

 upon which Mr. Roosevelt based his "theory 

 of governmental action" a theory now dis- 

 posed of forever by the unanimous voice ol 

 the supreme court. 



(2) The Roosevelt doctrine of federal power 

 to enter within state lines and regulate and 

 manage private business of all sorts under 

 the post roads clause. The president an- 

 nounced this theory of governmental action 

 in his speech at Indianapolis on Decoration 

 Day. He then declared as his "opinion" a 

 theory of federal power which, if practically 

 applied and sustained bv the courts, would 

 enable Mr. Roosevelt's administration to regu- 

 late to the smallest details the business of 

 any state chartered common carrier, within 



the state, by the simple expedient of establish- 

 ing the line of its operations as a post road. 

 This theory of federal control over the cor- 

 poration within state lines, extending to mat- 

 ters of its organization, its operation, its 

 finances, its police, its personnel, its relations 

 with the local public, with its own officers 

 and its own employes, opened before Mr. 

 Roosevelt's eager eyes two months ago a 

 boundless prospect of benevolent activity along 

 untrodden pathways. We fortunately know 

 whence he derived this tremendous idea. He 

 swallowed it, hook and all, when it was wick- 

 edly dangled before his eyes, at the end of 

 a line of seductive reasoning, by Judge Edgar 

 H. Farrar, of New Orleans. Mr. Farrar is 

 mainly to blame for the second of the presi- 

 dent's colossal legal blunders of the last nine 

 months. There will probably be no need of a 

 decision of the supreme court to demolish 

 this second theory of governmental action. 

 The president seems to have dropped the post 

 road theory with an indifference as cheerful 

 as was the irresponsibility of its taking up. 



(3) The Roosevelt theory of governmental 

 action through extra-legal, not to say illegal 

 receiverships, to be established by a complais- 

 ant judiciary to enable the administration itself 

 to run the bad trusts. There is not much 

 doubt about the paternity of this idea, which 

 seems to have been adopted by the president 

 with all the eagerness he usually displays at 

 first sight of a novel and extraordinary legal 

 proposition. Atorney-General Bonaparte is 

 reported as assigning the responsibility for 

 the" stupendous conception to "the subordi- 

 nates" of his department. Public report, 

 rightly or wrongly, has bestowed the undivided 

 credit upon Mr. Milton D. Purdy, the assistant 

 to the attorney-general, who, it may be re- 

 membered, was last conspicuously useful to the 

 president in the matter of Brownsville. 



All three within nine months! It is cer- 

 tainly in no spirit of intolerance of the errors 

 of genius, much less in mere mirthful con- 

 templation of cocksure folly, that the jurists, 

 the lawyers, the constitutionalists, besides 

 other citizens of intelligence, are now study- 

 ing this unparalleled record and wondering 

 what will come next in the fantastic proces- 

 sion. New York Sun. 



THE APOSTLES OF DISORDER. 



(From the Michigan Investor.) 



Two pieces of news, singularly alike in char- 

 acter, and emanating from two widely separated 

 localities, appeared in the daily papers of Detroit 

 on Thursday. The telegraphic columns of the 

 daily press carried reports of Clarence Darrow's 

 speech on the trial of Haywood at Boise City 

 for the murder of Gov. Steunenberg. That speech 

 was a glorification of disorder, a denunciation of 

 all who have attained and held the possession of 

 property, a diatribe against religion and every 

 moral force, a complete declaration of war 

 against any and every influence and form of dis- 

 cipline that would intervene to curb the worst 

 passions of men. Darrow, a lawyer by training, 

 an officer of the court, submitting his client's 

 case to the law, proceeds to plead to a jury that 

 the law is all wrong, that all law is wrong, that 

 religion and virture have all expended their 

 forces in bringirg about a condition under which 

 might makes right, and which justifies revolt 

 against the law. A sorry spectacle, indeed, is 

 that of a lawyer whose case is so bad that he 

 must plead it outside the law in the hope of 

 winning it. 



The other correlative piece of news came from 

 Detroit itself. , A judge of the United States 

 court, to whom was submitted the question of the 

 reasonableness of a regulation for a street rail- 

 way company adopted by the city of Detroit, de- 

 cided that the regulation was an unreasonable 

 one, and should not, therefore, be enforced. 

 Forthwith the mayor of the city declared : 



"If I said everything; I feel about the court T 

 would probably be called noon to answer a con- 

 tempt charge, but it certainly is a shame to think 

 that matters of such grave interest to the peoole 

 can be tied up in this way. It is certain that 



when any new franchises are granted that there 

 is going to be a provision in there that the com- 

 pany can't appeal to the United States courts. 

 There is such a provision in the Oklahoma con- 

 stitution and in Ohio they have a law that any 

 insurance company that goes into the United 

 States court loses its charter. I am going to in- 

 sist on a provision of this kind in any new fran- 

 chises." 



To another newspaper the mayor, who is a man 

 absolutely unlettered in the law, declared that 

 the opinion of Judge Swan was "inconsistent" 

 and "double-headed, ' that the judge "swallowed 

 the whole bait and hook of the D. U. R. attor- 

 neys," and indulged in a choice line of further 

 criticism of the court, including this, that "it is 

 coming to a pass that the United States court 

 can enjoin a citizen from voting," which Mr. 

 I hompson knows to be equally as untrue and in- 

 flammatory as Mr. Darrow knew his remraks 

 about law and religion to be. 



A leading newspaper, commenting upon the de- 

 cision, indulges in a sneering criticism of the ac- 

 tion of a federal judge, measuring his wisdom 

 as to the legal reasonableness of a proposition 

 against that of the common council with preju- 

 dice to the judge, apparently upon the theory that 

 a municipal legislature, from very force of num- 

 bers is more likely to be right upon the law 

 than an experienced judge. 



We do not see any difference, except in de- 

 gree, between these criticisms of the action of 

 a federal judge interpreting the law and the 

 vapid mouthings of the Chicago socialistic lawyer 

 at Boise City. We see no difference so far as 

 the results of their speeches are concerned, be- 

 tween the assaults of Mayor Thompson upon 

 those who administer the law and the assaults of 

 Clarence Darrow upon the law and the founda- 

 tions of society itself. We see no difference be- 

 tween the teachings of the one man who has no 

 patience with those who will not tolerate con- 

 fiscation and the other man who has no patience 

 with those who cannot excuse murder. The prin- 

 ciple, or the lack of it, is the same in both cases. 

 Both are appeals to the lowest, motives for hu- 

 man action, and intended to be incendiary and 

 actually are incendiary. 



There are in Michigan today something like 

 30,000 men and women who have been trained 

 at our superior schools of learning, where they 

 were taught the principles underlying our sys- 

 tem of government and the existing social order. 

 Will that army of trained intelligences never re- 

 volt against the vapid and incendiary mouthings 

 of the untrained and ignorant incendiarists? 



TELEGRAPH IN DESERT. 



The French have completed plans for con- 

 structing a telegraph line across the Sahara. The 

 enterprise in some respects is a novel one. 



It would not dp to string the wires so low 

 that they would interfere with camel caravans 

 in the desert. There must be no fence in that 

 great waste to obstruct travel in any direction. 

 So the hollow telegraph poles that are being made 

 of steel are so long that they may be firmly plant- 

 ed in the earth and the wire fastened to their 

 tops will be fifteen feet above the ground. 



The only way to carry these poles hundreds of 

 miles out into the desert is by means of- camels, 

 and the problem was how the poles might be car- 

 ried, for bundles eighteen feet in length are not 

 adapted to camel transportation. The solution 

 was reached by making the poles telescopic so 

 that each can be reduced to a length of about 

 five feet. When the pole is erected the sections 

 arc pulled out and locked and become a stable 

 and lasting support for the wires. 



The constructed part of the line now extends 

 through Algeria to Beni-Abbes, at the southeast 

 corner of Morocco's part of the desert. Thus the 

 first 150 miles of the desert part of the line is 

 now in operation. From Beni-Abbes the wire will 

 follow the route surveyed for it two years ago 

 to Adrar, in the very heart of the desert, 800 

 miles south of the Mediterranean. 



At this point the line will turn to the south- 

 west and make for Burem on the Niger, this 

 stretch being about eight hundred and sixty miles 

 long. 



The post." will communicate with one another 



