THE PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 138, 10 December 1908, Page 7

THE PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE. NOT SENSATIONAL. OLD-AGE PENSIONS. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. NEW YORK, 9th December. President Roosevelt's Message to Congress has been delivered, but it does not contain anything of a sensational nature. One of the items which is recommended for consideration is the reform of the currency. The President advocates the adoption of some law which, avoiding any unwise attempt to prohibit all combinations, will expressly permit those which interest the public, while giving some agency of the National Government full executive control over them. Railways, he said, should be removed from the domain of the Anti-Trust Law, and put under the control of the InterState Commerce Commission. The same should be done in connection with the telegraph and telephone companies engaged in inter-State business. The watering of stock, says the President, should be prohibited, and gambling in stock, as far as possible, discouraged. A progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes is recommended, and the strengthening of old-age pensions established by private initiative. The President recommends the passing of a strict employers' liability law, covering Government and inter-State business, and the provision of a careful safeguard in connection wilh the power of granting temporary injunctions in labour disputes. He describes the extreme demands of the Labour leaders in regard to this matter as class legislation of the most brutal form, seeking to legalise blacklisting and.- boycotting. Mr. Roosevelt warmly acknowledges tha hospitality everywhere extended to the United States fleet of battleships •which recently visited various countries in the Pacific, and dwells upon the increased experience and efficiency of the fleet. As a corollary to the voyage of the fleet, the President recommends the establishment, before the Panama Canal is opened, of satisfactory ocean lines of steamships to South America, Asia, the Philippines, and Australasia. The Message announces that the occupation of Cuba by the United States will cease two months hence. In the United States Senate early in the year Senator Gallinger, during discussion on the Shipping Bill, remarked : "Last March there were fifteen American steamships plying across the Pacific Ocean. Now only eight are left. Since the shipping bill of the last Congress was defeated almost one-half of our feeble American Pacific naval reserve has disappeared, and when Admiral Evans steers up through the Golden Gate from the' Straits of Magellan we shall have ihe > grotesque disproportion in the Pacific! of two battleships to every commorcial vessel engaged in foreign trade — a sight which has never yet been seen beneath the sun." TJie Inter-State Commerce Commission has power over "common carriers" engaged in the transportation of passengers by railroad or water, and to prohibit any carrier or carriers from engaging in inter-State transportation if there is failure to file and publish all rates and charges. The policy of better control of the railroads (and, incidentally, shipping) is one which Mr. Roosevelt has kept to the front for a long time, and Mr. Taft is evidently in agreement with it. In August last Mr. Taft said that the Hepburn Railway Rates Act of 1906 did not go far enough. The Interstate Commerce Commissioners, he said, should have power to prescribe rules for the I uniform classification of freight by all 1 railways, and to prevent over-capital-isation. In face of revelations as 10 rebates to railroad and other carrying companies, there is a feeling in many other quarters that the powers of the Commissioners are not too extended.