POLITICAL EMOTIONALISTS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 77, 30 March 1912, Page 12

POLITICAL EMOTIONALISTS

DENOUNCED BY PRESIDENT TAFT. In hie' speech at the Lincoln banquet, in New York, President Taft made a strong attack on the Progressives of the Republican party. He declared that the time had come when the denunciation of the Progressives must cease and when the nation would demand factfl. The President's speech came' as a butprise to many of his audience, as it was of a fighting character, and indicates the line he proposes to take during the coming campaign. He made it clear that he had grown impatient with the attacks that had been made on his administration during the past two years, and declared that the Progressives were political emotional* ists, and that their actions tended to disrupt the party. " Let us have a square hearing," eaid the President, "and a equare deal, and if they can beat us on the truth -we will take our beating. We cannot have a heaven on earth, but we are progressing step by setp. We are improving by reasonable methods and by statutes and laws directed at evils, but we cannot change human nature overnight." The President also condemned the Democrats of the House of Representa.tivea for cutting down the Navy Bill, and for the sake of saving £8,000,000 at the expense of Federal structures and warships. " When we consider the responsibilities of this country in various parts of the world this saving it doubtless » mistake," said the President. " A halt in making additions to our fleet ought not to be contemplated, certainly until the Panama Canal nae been completed." THE OLD-TIME COAL-MINER The coal-miner, so strenuous in his demands just now, was among the last of the toilers to discover that he had a soul of his own. There was the Scotch miner, for instance, whose woes are summarised by Mr. Hackwood in his "Good Old Times" : "From about the year 1445 until 1775 the miners of Scotland were bought and sold with the soil. It is stated in old chronicles that bloodhounds were kept to trace them if they left their employment,' and to aid in bringing them back. By statute law miners were bound to work all days in the year except Paschal and Yule, and if they did not work they were to be 'whipped in the bodies for the glory of .Goa arid for the good of their masters.' Not until 1775 was the first law passed in an attempt to better this state of things, but it was 1799 ere the law gave the working miner of Scotland his complete freedom."