PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8545, 27 March 1908, Page 7

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

The special message sent by President Roosevelt to the United States Congress on January 31st last was an impassioned defence of his Government's policy in prosecuting law-breaking trusts The President expressed the opinion that it was desirable that measures should be taken to prevent the grosser forms of gambling in securities and commodities, such as making large sales of what the sellers do not possess and cornering a market. " There is no moral difference," ho decLired, " between gambling at cards, in lotteries, and on the race-track, and gambling on the stock market. One method is just as pernicious to the body politic as ihe other. In kind and in degree the evil worked by stock gambling is far greater. Just as the blackmailer and bribe-giver stand on the same evil eminence of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting Legislatures and municipalities and fleecing stockholders and the public stands on tho same moral level with the creature who fattens on the blood-money of the gambling-house saloon. Tho rebatetaker, the franchise-traflicker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and protector of vice, the blackmailing ward boss, the ballot-box stuffer, tho Jemagogue mob leader, the hired buily and the mankiller all alike work at the same web of corruption, and all alike .should bo abhorred by honest men. The methods whereby the Standard Oil people and those engaged in other combinations of which I have spoken have achieved great fortunes can only be justified by the advocacy of a system of morality which would also justify every form of criminality on the part of a labour union, and every form of violence, corruption, and fraud, from murder to bribery and ballotbox stuffing in politics." President Roosevelt concluded by asking- for further legislation on the subject, but he did not indicate clearly what precise form he desired the legislation to take. It is evident that he finds it easier to detect the evil than to devise the remedy. ■ and the recent cablegrams show that, the machinery for dealing with trusts is still very defective.

The attacks on President Roosevelt have become astonishingly savage since the panic. " Theodore Roosevelt—Destroyer," in large type, is the heading of an advertisement, displayed all over America, drawing attention to a series of magazine articles in which the President is violently attacked as an irresponsible iconoclast. The American public is told that the President's politics "threaten to paralyse every line of legitimate business—they threaten your salary, your savings, your job," that hi 3 actions, utterances, and writings "breathe , only the thought of destruction—des- j truction of animal life, of human life, j and of the liberty, the property, and j the reputations of men." " Should j your child," it asks, "be robbed of its bread because of the misdeed.of a trust or a railroad?" In the maga- ; ziiie the editors deride Mr Roosevelt's claim to be an apostle of the " square deal." "It it the Square Deal when a President of the United States incites the public into a clamour that winds up in panic? Is it the Square Deal when a President takes cases out of the courts and tries theirn from the rear platform of hb train?" Is it the Square Deal when a President swings and smashes his big stick and tears down industries that took years of patient work to build up? Is it the Square Deal when a President uses his high position for personal vituperation and vilification?" A Washington correspondent draws an alarming picture of Mr Roosevelt exercising an autocratic control of the whole American Press, and declares that American editors are ready "to reflect the-glory of their master or refrain from dipping their pens into anything but honey. "Theodore Roosevelt,, the Greatest Living Press Agent," is the heading of another article. The New York Sun asserts that "a more conscienceless or more reckless demagogue never afflicted this country," and sneers at his recent 35 : 000-word message as "the lucubrations of a mind unhinged." The last phrase is perhaps an indication of the value of these violent attacks. "If Mr Roosevelt's mind is 1 unhinged," comments a supporting journalist, " Cromwell was a chattering imbecile and Napoleon died froin the effects of paresis."