OUR AMERICAN LETTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3034, 8 May 1912, Page 7

OUR AMERICAN LETTER.

(Fbom Oub Own Correspondent.) NEW YORK, March 1. Perhaps the most astonishing development ot the gathering storms before tne year of a most important presidential election has been tne reappearance in political circles of Mr Koosevelt as a claimant for the Republican nomination. "My hat is in the ring," the former President told the reporters three days ago, and made his statement the more clear by adding: "If the nomination is tendered me I shall accept." Those who have been following the political situation closely say, however, that there is more to the Roosevelt statement than this. They claim, and surface indications would seem to substantiate their claims, that Mr Roosevelt has been steadily planning ever since he left the White House en March 4,1909, to regain the Presidency. At any rate there is no doubt now about the organisation of the movement to further Mr Roosevelt's candidature. It is adroit and remarkably complete in all of Ita ramifications; it is already engaged upon its nation-wide task of circulating a skilfully prepared literature and suave speakers to help ensure the nomination of the ex-President. The propaganda is nothing if not effective. Still, it will take a nation-wide campaign of a deal of strength to counteract the nation-wide impression that Mr Roosevelt is playing in bad faith, indeed. Mr Roosevelt on the evening of his re-election—in November, 1904—said with absolute distinctness that in no event would be accept either nomination or election for another term as President of the United States. This statement is now being reprinted in large type in many newspapers, and is causing the candidate some embarrassment. He has recently tried to explain that away by saying that if you offer a man a second cup of coffee at breakfast and he declines that is no indication that he will refuse a cup on any other day. To this naive argument the newspapers say "slops," and intimate that no one may turn a difficult corner more skilfully than a lawyer. It will be more difficult for Mr Roosevelt to explain away his relations to President Taft, who has set his heart upon renomination and re-election, an honour which our executives look forward to as a sort of recognition of their abilities throughout their first terms. Mr Taft, you will remember, was brought into the political arena by Mr Roosevelt. Mr Taft was not seeking for glory. He was a hard worker, a man of undoubted integritiy, a scholarly judge wbo had shown "remarkable executive ability in handling some difficult situations in the Philippines for Mr Roosevelt when President. Mr Roosevelt, who has never hesitated at assuming dictatorship, determined that Mr Taft should be his successor. The two men were intimate friends, and through that friendship -Mr Taft succeeded his former chief. The Taft administration has not been brilliant ; it has not always been successful; its blunders have been many. Yet Mr Taft is in his real personality a most lovable sort of man, and he has won for himself a deep-seated affection in the hearts of many Americans—some of whom are politically opposed to him. We have pretty definite ideas of justice and decency in this country, while our code of the ethics of friendship is fairly well defined. There is a distinct feeling across the land to-day that Mr Roosevelt, having created Mr Taft, should have stood by him. The Taft politics were largely the politics that Mr Roosevelt had created. " Indeed, it was only when the President began to think for himself, when he began to appoint to high Cabinet position men who did not bear the approval stamp of his predecessor and refused to consider men whom Mr Roosevelt suggested, that Mr Roosevelt began to turn his back upon him. The breach, once started, grew wider. For two years it has been noticed that the two men studiously avoided meeting one another at public gatherings of every sort. This situation in a measure precipitated the open break between the two men which was followed by M* Roosevelt's announcement this week that he would accept the Republican nomination if tendered him. To most Americans the Roosevelt prononnciente has a third and greater principle to combat than either of tho two just cited. It has been tradition, unwritten law, if you please, in this country that no President shall serve more than two terms. That seems a wiee custom, and so two terms were the extrcmo lengths of the administration of such I<eallv great Presidents as Washington,

Jefferson, and Lincoln. It was suggested to Washington that he accept a third term, and ho declined the honour, and 60 ■-•-t nrcredent. Some other Presidents. Grant most recent of all, have held hopes of •. tVrd term: they have invariably learned in one way or another that even a republic canhave'its customs and unwritten laws and stick rather closely by them. Most of our clear-thinking folk see in the continuance of one man as President the first stop toward dictatorship. The United States do not want a dictator, no matter how good he may be, and right there is th* very ereat objection to Mr Rosevelt's candidature expressed in concerte form. We have lived a little too close to Mexico to enjoy the idea of a oneman Presidency year after year.

Poor Mexico! Since the forced abdication of her one-man President—Porfio Diaz—she has been having strenuous times of it. I am just back myself from the Mexican frontier. 2500 miles distant from New York, and I have s«en how vital a situation mav become when you are actually standing before it. Take El Paso—the queer little American city at the great rail gateway of Mexico from the United States —Mexican troubles have been something more than mere newspaper despatches to her citizens. The important Mexican citv of Ciudad Juarez is just across the Rio Grande—the boundary river —from her, and Juarez is always falling into the hands of one fighting faction or' another. Only the day before yesterday the rebels took it away again from the Government troops, and to-day they are receiving the Customhouse earnings—the chief reason for taking the town. Once or twice in the engagements at Ciudad Juarez the modern rifles of the soldiers and the insurgents have proved better than the marksmanship of the men who hold them, ar.d bullets have gone flying into the United States —with the tragic result in El Paso one day last spring of a perfectly innocent American citizen being shot dead while standing m front of his place of business. That thing of itself nearly created an affaire internatonale, and was a prime factor in bringing tho United States army into a hurried concentration camp at San Antonio. Texas, about 300 miles back from the boundary. When the Mexican riflemen use enough common 6ense to turn their rifles away from the U.S.A. El Paso rather enjoys the novelty of having a real battle fought within two miles of its City Hall. The town quits business, and goes upon the house-tops to see what can be seen. The next day it organises automobile and trolley-car excursions to the battlefield. But when the Mexicans show their traditionally careless marksmanship and bullets begin to zip on the north side of the Rio Grande El Paso get 6 hot, and wires for help up to Washington. It begins to look to impartial observers as if the United States would be forced, after nearly 70 years, to again intervene in Mexico. There seems to be little doubt but that the new President of that republic—General Madero—is an honest and an earnest man. It also seems that there are to-day so many parties of revolutionists, insurgents, and brigands seeking his post as to have transformed the country from peace to almost constant fighting— i and not all of it desultory by any means. There are a good many American citizens in Mexico. The rare opportunities of that undeveloped country in addition to its proximity have made it an inviting ! field for investors and men with their j families by the tens of thousands have j gone down to the old Snanish territory j to share in the prosperity' that must come to it within the next few years. As j matters stand the life and "property of j these American citizens are almost "constantly endangered, and the pressure being brought upon President Taft to "do something " is both constant and increasing. On the other hand the Mexicans have no particular desire to have our intern- I vention extended awny into their proud j capital city. They have made no secret of their feelings in the matter. "I ven- j ture to say that if the United States intervene in Mexico's affairs that country will have taken one of the most momen tous steps in its history." said Jnan Sanchez Ancona, private secretary to President Madero. only yesterday. ." Every American citizen in the republic of Mexico will be in danger. Every American in Mexico would probably be slaughtered at the first news that the American flag had crossed the border." With such blood-thirsty spirits to the south of ue. do you wonder that we have acquired j a habit of turning to our neighbours—the clean-handed, clean hearted Canadians—with a feeling of something more than • akin to relief at nothing that on one

side of use at least we have a folk ot our own tongue and motherhood? All of these Latin-American nations to the south of the United States are more or less constant irritations and problems to us. The Secretary of State (Mr Knox) convoyed on a battleship, lias just started to make a course of respectful visits to the South American nations. His first message after leaving Washington was one to the effect that he had better stay away from the United States of Colombia. _lt seems that Colombia is engaged in settling some claims in relation to the establishment of the Bepublic of Panama and the Canal Zone which are a little more than irritating to her. Yet Mr Knox, on the first stop of his long trip, at the Canal Zone which is to-day the focus of every American eye, will almost brush into Colombian territory. The Pauama Canal—perhaps the greatest engineering feat ever attempted in th« world —is to-day 70 per cent, complete. The water will be turned into the ditch thi3 autumn, and within 20 months, although the formal opening of the canal is to be delayed until 1915 so as to have it coincident with the great exposition in its celebration which San Francisco ie preparing to hold in the summer of that year. Already the vexed questions of its operation are matters of public discussion here, and there and everywhere. Will the canal charge tolls to the merchant ships that use it? _ Cannot a way be found by which the ships of the United States can be exempted from the tolls that must be charged vessels of alien nations ? These two are two of the most vital questions that have already arisen in connection with the great new ditch, and no man is bold enough as yet to predict their ultimate solution. The canal is bound to make important changes in the interstate commerce situation of the country, although it is 3000 miles south of the southernmost tips of the United States.. Yc-t by it the emigrants from Europe can bo brought] to San Francisco and other Californian ports for 18dol. lees than half the present transportation charge, and so, with cheap labour at last at her doors, California looks forward to an era of tremendous industrial development, the thing which 6he has lacked up to the present time. And that is but one of the ways in which the digging of our new waterway may change the entire complexion of our country. The great railroad heads of the land are already studying its rKiss'hilities with the keenest care. One of those great railroad heads is already gone—perhaps the last of his kind. With the death of Edwin Hawley there passed away almost the last of the overlords of our American railroads. Mr Hawlev was, in some respects, a mmia- ! ture Harriman. He had the Harriman ; genius of railroad assimilation, although it must be confessed that he lacked the masterful will and the constructive force of the man who made Union Pacific a power in the land. He did give ample evidence of his ability to recast, if not reconstruct. tnttbetring .Railroad proper- I ties and to convert them into profit pro \ ducers. Yet. he was almost the last of hits sort. To-day it has become impossible in the United States for one man to re- j gard a vast railroad system as his per- j sonal property. The Federal and State , Governments, with their great powers of regulating the operations of these arteries ! of traffic, have helped to bring this \ changed condition about; they have been j futher aided by the constant division of increasing wealth throughout the so-called " middle class " of Americans, and their investment of this wealth in railroad securities. Thu 3 we have the Pennsylvania railroad to-day with some 70,000 shareholders, and perhaps the best organised and best managed system in Ihe country | to-day. Other roads are coming to the j same sort of tiling. The personal railroad, personally owned, personally man- < aged by some sort of financial au'-ftTat or I overlord, is fast passing from !i e msip of tho land. j The spring of the year generally brings : labour unrest throughout 'the States, and | that this spring is to be no exception to | that rule has already been shown. Labour ! circles are already more than ordin- I arily disturbed by the M'Namara case, ! and th« astonishing revelations that have : accompanied it. The Federal Government has worked steadily and ir.dustriou.sly 1 until it has brought under indictment j more than 50 of the head officers of the various bridge ar.d steel structural workers' unions across tho country. Even i the attorney who defended the M'Namaras, as well as one of his trusted aides, are I under indictment charged with such J serious offences as perjury and bribing juries. . . . The result of this more | than disturbing case has been to create ! tome confusion in organised labour circles.

A more indirect result has been the threatenings already of great strikes. England is just on the threshold of hfcr great coal strike, and is already sending ships to this country for anthracite. But the three-year agreement between the mone-owners and the workers of the coal mines of this country expire on March 31, and from the preparations that are being made or. both sides it does not now look as if it would be renewed without a struggle. In addition to this, the various organisations of stcaim railroad employees are growing restive. The cost Of living has steadily increased throughout the present winter, and the workers in almost every trade have felt the pinch of something that looked dangerously like hard times.

! A great textile strike is now under way at Lawrence, Ma»s., and that has been a ' I pitiable exposition of the meagre wages ! paid to the wctollen workers, as well as | a fairly good showing of their spirit in fighting with almost no resources behind them. It has been real fighting, too. For almost eight weeks the State of Maasa- | chussetts has been enforced to maintain a ' small army of its Militia in tho grounds of the great mttls of the American Wool- ! len Company in that city, and the clashes ! between the striking employees and the J soldiery havo been frequent. The manage- j ment of the mills has refused to treat ! with its employees as a unit, and a bit- j tei-ness that will last a long time has j sprung up in the mill city It came I almost to a head this week when the : Lawrence police stopped the exportation ' from the city of a squad of little chil- ! dren —the children of the striking mill hands. For some weeks past detaclxments j of these children have been shipped out ! from Lawrence in order that homes might ' be found for them across the land until I the strike was settled One way or the ' other. The mill-owners complained that this practice was hurting the good name of the City of Lawrence, and they prevailed upon tho city officers to stop it. The city officers went too far in that instance. It seems that a man or a woman, or even a little child has a constitutional right to come and go from any place during times of peace, and that constitutional right has been invoked in the Lawrence strike, with the direct result that the Department of Justice of the Federal Government has quickly intervened. The Washington authorities are most anxious in this case. For one thing they are anxious to show organised labour that when the right rests upon its side the Government will move for it just as quickly as it moved against organised labour in the M'Namara case. The introduction of national interference into the situation at Lawrence will probably prolong the strike and assure the ultimate victory of the strikers. A serious local problem of the City of ! New York which bobs up now and again [ ! is the regulation of automobiles in the pub- . ' lie highways. Within the past 25 months ' J 263 people have been killed and 1663 injured by motor vehicles in the streets of the city—an astounding total. Each < year the laws regulating the driving of autornobiles are made more strict, but ; the fact remains that many chauffeurs 1 have little sense of responsibility or use ■ little judgment in an emergency. The ! local authorities are knitting their brows ' just now in trying to find a real solution for the problem. The situation as it now J ' exists is all but intolerable. |