Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1907 — THE PRESIDENT’S INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH. [ARTICLE]

THE PRESIDENT’S INDIANAPOLIS SPEECH.

It is hardly worth while to speculate about what President Roosevelt will say in his Indianapolis speech on May 30 That he intends to talk about the railroads seems to bo settled, but whether he will add to or subtract from what he has said on former pcoasions is not so certain. The newspaper correspondents at Washington say, however, that Mr. Roosevelt will not deolare for government ownership of the railroads. All he wants, as the correspondents understand it, is that a government bureau shall be created with power to control the finances of the roade. With the Interstate Commerce Commission controlling the rates and another government agency controlling the stocks and bonds, with power to grant or withold licenses to operate, the private owners of the railroads will have nothing to bother them save the running of the trains, making necessary repairs and building new tracks and Buoh like.

This is a great scheme. Under it the government will be practioally the owners of the railroads without going to the expense of buying them or being liable for the cost of operating them. Of course we do not know that this is precisely what President Roosevelt is driving at. No one ever knows precisely what he is driving at, but he is usually driving at something or somebody. At any rate the Washington correspondentsare positive from the “inklings that creep out of the White House,*' that Mr. Roosevelt is gqing to disagree with Mr. Bryan. On this point a dispatch says: “Bryan has often said that his ideas as to the ultimate solution of

of the railroad problem are identical with those of Roosevelt. The president will try to show that there is a wide gulf between them; that what he is aiming at is a mild remedy compared to the radicalism which Bryan stands for, and that the country should aocept the safe and practical solution which he offers as an . alternative to the confiscation of railroad properties and government ownership, with its long train of evils.” No ‘'confiscation” for Theodore. He stands for “benevolent assimilation,” perhaps. He means to take the railroads and yet make the real owners run them and take are of their own “long train of evils.” Mr. Bryan and most other persons are not particular who operates the railroads,! hough they prefer regulated private ownership. But what Mr. Bryan and most other persons want is to see that whole “train of evils” abolished and made impossible in the future.