l\l^ Valley News yoti Coton a ViorKtn^ Totxfru Let*^ V^lt Together. J.J. MINER, Mgr. BREVARD, TRANSYLVANIA CO., N. C., FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11,1908. VOL. XIII. NO. 50. Washington, D. C.—The President’s Message vcaa read before both the Senate and the House, following the opening of Congress. It is, in part, as follows; To the Senate and House of Repre^ sentativesL The financial standing of the Na tion at the present time is excellent, and the financial management of the Nation’s interests by the Government during the last seven years has shown the most satisfactory results. But our currency system Is Imperfect, and it Is earnestly to be hoped that the Currency Commission will be able to propose a thoroughly good system which will do away with the existing defects. The President’s Message then states that during the past seven years and three months there has been a net surplus of nearly one hundred millions of receipts over expenditures, a reduction of the interest bearing debt by ninety millions, in spite of the extraordinary expense of the Pan ama Canal, and a saving of nearly nine millions on the annual interest charge. This is an exceedingly satis factory showing, especially In view of the fact that during this period the Nation has never hesitated to under take any expenditure that It regarded as necessary. There have been no new tates and no increases of taxes; on the contrary some taxes have been taken oft', there has been a reduction of taxation. As regards the great corporations engaged in interstate business, and especially the railroads, I can only repeat what I have already again and again said in my messages to the Con gress, I believe that under the inter state clause of the Constitution the United States has complete and para mount right to control all agencies cf interstate comniprce, and I believe that the National Governraent alone can exercise this right with wisdom and effectiveness so ps both to secure jiistice from, and to do justice to, the great corporations which are the most important factors in modern business, T believe that it is worse than folly to nttempt to prohibit all combina tions as is done by the Sherman anti trust law, because such a law can be enforced only imperfectly and nne- ciually. and its enforcement works al most as much hardship as good, 1 strongly advocate that instead of an ■unwise effort to prohibit all combina tions. there shall be substituted a law which shnll expressly permit combin ations which are in the interest of the public, but shall at the same time give to some agency of the National Government full power of control and Eunervision over them. One of the chief features of this control should be securin.a: entire publicity In all matters which the public has a right to know, snd furthermore, the power, not by .iudlcial but by executive ac tion, to prevent or put a stop to every form of improper favoritism or other wrongdoing. The railways of the country should be pat completely under the Inter state Commerce Commission and re moved from ^he domain of the anti trust law. The power of the Com mission should be made thorough going, so that it could exercise com- pleis supervision and control over the isFue of securities as Vv’ell as over the raising and lowering of rates. As re gards rates, at least, this power should be summary. The power to inv3stigf?te the financial operations and accotmts of the railv/ays has been one of the most valuable features in recent If'gislation. Power to make combinations and trafiic agreements should be explicitly conferred upon the railroads, the permission of the CoTnmissicn being first gained and the combination or agreement being published in all its details. In the interest of the public the representa tives of the public should have com plete pG"”er to see that the railroads do their diity by the public, and as a matter of course this pov/er should also be c~ercised so as to see that no Injustice is done to the railroads. The shareholders, the employes and the shl]ipers a.11 have interests that must be guarded. It is to the interest of all of them that no swindling stock SDeculation should be allowed, and that there should be no improper issi’.nnce o? securities. The guiding intelligences necessary for the ■suc cessful building and successful man agement of railroads should receive ample remuneration, but no man should be allowed to make money in connection with railroads out of frau- rulent over-capitalization and kin dred stock gambling performances; there must be no defrauding of in vestors, oppression of the farmers and business men wno ship freight, or callous disregard of the rights and needs of the employes. In addition to this the interests of the sharehold ers, of the employes, and of the ship- l)ers should all be guarded as against one another. To give any one of them undue and improper consideration is to do injustice to the others. R?tes mu.st be made as low as is compatible with giving proper returns to all the employes of the railroad, from the highest to the lowest, and proper re turns to the shareholders, but they must not, for instance, be reduced in such fashion as to necessitate cut in the v.'ages of the employes or the abo lition of the proper and legitimate profits of honest shareholders. Telegraph and telephone companies engaged in interstate business should be put under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is very earnestly to be wished that our people, through their rej>re- sentatives, should act in this matter. It is hard to say whether most dam age to the country at large would come from entire failure on the part cf the public to supervise and control the actions of the great corp^aUojis, or from the exercise of the necessary governmental power In a way which would do injustice and wrong to the corporations. Both the preachers ”6f an unrestricted individualism and the preachers of an oppression which would deny to able men of business the just reward of their initiative and business sagacity, are advocating pol icies that would be fraught with t'le gravest harm to the whole country. It is to the interest of all of us that there should be a premium put upon individual initiative and individual capacity, and an ample rev/ard for the great directing intelligences alone competent to manage the great busi ness operations of to-day. It is well to keep In mind that exactly as the anarchist is the worst enemy of lib erty and the reactionary the worst enemy of order, so the men who de fend the rights of property have most to fear from the wrongdoers of great wealth, and the men who are cham pioning popular rights have most to fear from the damagogues who in the name of popular rights would do wrong to oppress honest business men, honest men of wealth; for the success of either type of wrongdoer necessarily Invites a violent reaction against the cause the wrongdoer nom inally upholds. In point of danger to the Nation there is nothing to choose between on the one hand the corrup tionist, the bribe-giver, the bribe-tak er, the man who employs his great talent to swindle his fellow-citizens on a large scale, and, on the other hand, the preacher of class hatred, the man who, whether from ignor ance or from w’illingness to sacrifice his country to his ambition, persuades well meaning but wrong-headed men to try to destroy the instruments upon which our prosperity mainly rests. Let each group of men beware of and guard against the shortcom ings to which that group is itself most liable. The opposition to Government con trol of these great corporations makes its most effective effort in the shape of an appeal to the old doctrine of States’ rights. Of course there are many sincere men who now believe In unresTricted individualism In busi ness, just as there were formerly many sincere men who believed in slavery—that is, in the unrestricted right of an individual to own another individual. These men do not by themselves have great weight, how ever, The effective fight against ade quate Government control and super vision of individual, and especially of corporate, wealth engaged In inter state business is chiefly done under cover, and esnecially under cover of an appeal to States' rights. It Is not at all infrequent to read in. the same speech a denunciation of predatory wealth fostered by special privilege and defiant of both the public welfare and law of the land, and a denuncia tion of centralization In the Central Government of the power to deal with this centralized and organized wealth. Of course the policy set forth In such twin denunciations amounts to abso lutely nothing, for the first half Is nullified by the second half. The chief reason, among the many sound and compelling reasons, that led to the formation of the National Govern raent. w'as the absolute need that Ihe Union, and not the several State?, should deal with interstate and for eign commerce; and the power to deal with interstate commerce was granted absolutely and plenarily to the Cen tral Government, and was exercised completely as regards the only in struments of interstate commerce known in those days—the waterways, the highroads, as well as the partner ships of individuals who then con ducted all of what business there was. Interstate commerce is now chiefly conducted by railroads, and the great corporation has supplanted the mass of small partnerships or individuals. The proposal to m*ake the National Government supreme over, and there fore to give it, complete control over, the railroads and other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry out to the letter one of the prime purposes, if not the prime purpose, for which the Consti tution was founded. We do not object to .the concentra tion of wealth and administration; but we do believe in the distribution of the wealth in profits to the real owners, and in securing to the public the full benefit of the concentrated administration. We believe that with concentration in administration there can come both the advantage of a larger ownership and of a more equit able distribution of profits, and at the same time a better service to the commonwealth. Many laws are needed. There should be regulation by the National Government of the great interstate corporations, including a simple method of account keeping, publicity, supervision of the issue of securities, abolition of rebates and of special privileges. There should be short time franchises for all corporations engaged in public business; includ ing the corporations which get power from water rights. There should be National as well as State guardian ship of mines and forests. There are many matters affecting labor and the status of the wage worker to which I should like to draw your attention, but an exhaustive dis cussion of the problem in all its as pects is not now necessary. This administration is nearing its end; and, moreover, under our form of government the solution of the prob lem depends upon the action of the States as much as upon the action of the Nation. Nevertheless, there are certain considerations which I wish to set before you, because I hope that our people will more and more keep them in mind. A blind and ig norant resistance to every effort for the reform of abuses and for the^ read justment of society to modern indus trial conditions represents ncft true conservatism but an incitement to the in hand, one bent on progress, the other bent on seeing that no change is made unless in the right, direction. I believe in a steady effort, or per haps it would be more accurate to say in steady efforts in many different directions, to bring about a condition of affairs under which the men who work with hand or brain, the labor ers, the superintendents, the men who produce for the market and the men who find a market for the arti cles produced, shall own a far great er share than at present of the wealth they produce, and be enabled to in vest it in the tools and instruments by which all work is carried on. As far as possible I hope to see a frank recognition of the advantages con ferred by machinery, organization, and division of labor, accompanied by an effort to bring about a larger share in the ownership by wage-work er of railway, mill, and factory. In farming, this simply means that we wish to see the farmer own his own land; we do not wish to see the farms so large that they become the prop erty of absentee landlords who farm them by tenants, nor yet so small that the farmer liecomes like a Eu ropean peasant. Again, the deposit ors in our savings banks now number over one-tenth of our entire popula tion, These are all capitalists, who carry on a business was explicitly taken out from under that protection which the law throws over property. The demand was made that there should be trial by jury in contempt cases, thereby most seriously impair ing the authority of the courts. All this represented a course of policy which, if carried out, would mean the enthronement of class privilege in its crudest and most brutal form, and the destruction of one of the most essen tial function of the judiciary in ail civilized lands. The wageworkers, the workingmen, the laboring men of the country by the way in which they repudiated the effort to get them to cast their votes in response to an appeal to claf^s ha tred, have emphasized their sound pa'criotism and Americanism. Tire whole country has cause to feel pride in this attitude of sturdy independ ence, in this uncompromising insist ence upon acting simply as good citi zens, as good Americans, without re gard to fancied—and improper—class interests. Such an attitude is an ob ject lesson in good citizenship to the entire nation. " But the extreme reactionaries, the persons who blind themselves to the wrongs now and then committed by the courts on laboring men, should The chief breakdown Is in dealing i from the atmosphere of political ae* with the new relations that arise tivity and the ground cleared for from the mutualism, the interdepen- larger constructive work to prepare dence of our time. Every new social the Indians for responsible citizen- relation begets a new type of wrong- ship. doing of sin, to use an old-fash- President regrets that an ioned word—and many years always I incorporated in the elapse before society is ^^1® to turn measure providing for the Secret Sar- thift sm into pJ'l®® which can be ef- forbidding details and transfers fectiyely punished at law. During ^jjerefrom. He declares it Is of ben« the lifeUme of the older men Jiow 1 only to the criminal classes. He alive the social relations have ) jjjg recommendations for pos* changed far more rapidly than in the preceding two centuries. The im mense growth of corporations, of tal savings banks and urges an exten- tion of the parcel post on the rural routes. He declares that the nnfor- through the savings banks loan their | portends. The ! monov tn iha wnrtrf^rs that IS. in I . . . , ^ , ! money to the v.^orkers—that is, in many cases to themselves—to carry on their various industries. The more we increase their number, the more we introduce the principles of co-op eration into our industry. Every in crease in the number of small stock holders in corporations is a good thing, for the same reasons; and where the employes are the stockhol ders the result is particularly good. Very much of this movement must be outside of anything that can be accomplished by legislation; but leg islation can do a good deal. Postal savings banks will make it easy for the poorest to keep their savings in absolute safety. The regulation of the national highways must be such that they shall serve all people with equal justice. Corporate finances must be supervised so as to make it far safer than at present for the man of small means to invest his money in stocks. There must be prohibition of child labor, diminution of woman labor, shortening of hours of all me chanical labor; stock watering should be prohibited, and stock gambling so far as possible discouraged. There should be a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes. Industrial ed ucation should be encouraged. As far as possible we should Jlghten the burden of taxation on the small man. We should put a premium upon thrift, hard work and business energy, but these qualities cease to be the main factors in accumulating a fortune long before that fortune reaches a point where It would be seriously af fected by any inheritance tax such as I propose. It is eminently right that the Nation should fix the terms upon which the great fortunes are inherit ed. They rarely do good and they of ten do harm to those who Inherit them in their entirety. The President then devotes a chap ter to “protection for wagework ers,” He says there should be no pal tering with the question of taking care of those who become crippled or worn out in our industrial system. He urges proper employers” liability laws. He also calls attention to th® steps toward providing old-age pen sions that have been taken by niany private industries. He urges Con gress to pass a comprehensive em ployers’ liability law for the District of Columbia. The President devotes much npace to the subject of the courts. First he urges increased pay for our judges and then says: It is earnestly to be desired that some method should be devised for doing away with the long delays which now obtain in the administra tion of justice, and which operate with peculiar severity against persons of small means, and favor only the very criminals whom It is most desir able to punish. These long delays in the final decisions of cases make ?n the aggregate a crying evil, and a. remedy should be devised. Much of this intolerable delay is due to im proper regard paid to technicalities which are a mere hindrance to jus tice. In some noted recent cases this over-regard for technicalities has re sulted in a striking denial of justice, and flagrant wrong to the body poli tic. At the last election certain leaders of organized labor made a violent and sweeping attack upon the entire judi ciary of the country, an attack couched in such terms as to Include the most upright, honest and broad minded judges, no less than those of narrower mind and more restricted outlook. It was the kind of attack admirably fitted to prevent any suc cessful attempt to reform abuses of the judiciary, because it gave the champions of the unjust judge their eagerly desired opportunity to shift their ground into a championship of just judges who were unjustly as sailed. Last year, before the House Committee on the Judiciary, these same labor leaders formulated their demands, specifying the bill that con tained them, refusing all compromise, stating they wished the principle of that bill or nothing. They insisted on a provision that in a labor dispute no injunction should issue except to protect a property right, and specific cally provided that the right to carry on business should not be construed as a property right, and in a second^ provision their bill made legal In a la bor dispute any act or agreement by or between two or more persons that would not have been unlawful if done by a single person. In other words, this bill legalized blacklisting and boycotting in every form, legalizing, for Instance, those forms of the sec ondary boycott which the anthracite coal strike commission so unreserv- takings, finally becomes an instru- of our people, so that the dweller in «^ent so complex as to contain a the tenement houses, the man who 1 f eater number of eementstha^ practices a dangerous trade, the inaii * vaiious judicial decisions, lend businei:s done by associations, and the ^.y^ate state of affairs as regards the extreme strain and pressure of mod- National educational office be reme- ern life, have produced conditions ^ j^ppj.opriations. He which render the public confused as g^rongiy urges that the superrlsora to who its really d^gerous foes are, j enumerators for the approaching and amoiig the public servants who ^^j^g^g appointed under the have not only shared this confusion, Qjyjj Service law, but that appoint- but by some of their apts ments to the force be done under that crsascd It, ar© C6rtain judgBS. MEriieQ | geographical requireni6nts inefficiency has been shown In dealing I waived The President main* with corporations and in re-settling should be intelligent the proper attitude to be taken by the action on the question of preserving public not only toward corpor^ions, health of the country and sug- but toward labor, and toward the so- ^ redistribution of the healtK clal questions arising out of the fac- gyreaus He recommends the plao tory system, and the enormous ^ Government Printing Office growth of our great cities. I u^der the Department of Commerce The huge wealth that has been ac- and Labor and the various SoldieraT cumulated by a few individuals of re- j Homes under the War Department! aun Tyi'ink *?Prio‘nsl'v 'as^ tfT whar*such cent years, in what has amounted to He advocates the immediate admls- aiso tninK seriousiy as to wiraL suca , ^ industrial revolution, has gion of New Mexico and Arizona ae been as regards some of these indl- separate States, Mr. Roosevelt then viduals made possible only by the im- j writes of the Interstate fisheries prob- proper use of the modern corporation, lena, saying that those matters which A certain type of modern corpora- no particular State can control Con« tion, with its officers and agents, its gress ought to control. The statute many issues of securities, and its con- regarding game should include flsh» stant consolidation with allied under- | and the fur-seal service should be judges who have shown them.seUes able and willing effectively to check the dishonest activity of the very rich man who works iniquity by the mis management of corporations, who have shown themselves alert to do justice to the wageworker, and sym pathetic with the needs of the mass vested in the Bureau of Fisheries. In regard to our foreign policy he announces that it is based on the theory that right must prevail be- wildest radicalism; for wise ^^-^^cal-i the ri£ht to l>adly. ism and wise conservatism go hand edlj condemned, while tne who is crushed by excessive hours of labor, feel that their needs are under stood by the courts—these judges are the real bulwark of the courts; these judges, the 'judges of the stamp of the President-elect, who have been fearless in opposing labor when it has gone wrong, but fearless also in hold ing to strict account corporations that work iniquity, and far sighted iu see ing that the w'orkin gman gets his rights, are the men of all others to whom we owe it that the appeal for such violent and mistaken legislation has fallen on deaf ears, that the agitation for its passage proved to be without substantial basis The courts are jeoparded primarily by the action of these Federal and State judges who show inability or unwillingness to put a stop to the wrongdoing or very rich men under riiodern industrial conditions, and inability or unwilling ness to give relief to men of small means or wageworkers who are crushed down by these modern indus trial conditions; who, in other words, fail to understand and apply the needed remedies for the new wrongs produced by the new and highly com plex social and industrial civilization which has grown up in the last half century. There are certain decisions by va rious courts which hs^ve been exceed ingly detrimental to the rights of wageworkers. This is true of all the decisions that decide that men and women are, by the Constitution, “guaranteed their liberty,” to con tract to enter a dangerous occupation, or to work an undesirable or impro per number of hours, or to work in unhealthy surroundings, and there fore can-not recover damages when maimed Jn that occupation, and can not be forbidden to work what the Legislature decides is an excessive number of hours, or to carry on the work under conditions which the Legislature decides to be unhealthy. There is also, I think, ground for the belief that substantial injustice is often suffered by employes in conse quence of the custom of courts issu ing temporary injunctions without notice to them, and punishing them for contempt of court in instances where, as a matter of fact, they have no knowledge of any proceedings. Outside of organized labor there is a widespread feeling that this system often works great injustice to wage workers when their efforts to better their working condition results In in dustrial disputes. A temporary in junction procured ex parte may as a matter of fact have all the eitect of a permanent injunction in causing dis aster to the wageworkers’ side in such a dispute. Organized labor Is chafing under the unjust restraint which comes from repeated resort to this plan of procedure. Its discontent has been unwisely expressed, and of ten improperly expressed, but there is a sound basis for it, and the orderly and law abiding people of a commu nity would be in a far stronger posi tion for upholding the courts if the undoubtedly existing abuses could be provided against. The power of injunction is a great equitable remedy, which should on no account be destroyed* But safeguards should be erected against its abuse. For many of the shortcomings of Justice in our country our people as a whole are themselves to blame, and the judges and juries merely bear their share together with the public as a whole. It is discreditable to us as a people that there should be diffi culty in convicting murderers, or in bringing to justice men who as pub lic servants have been guilty of cor ruption, or who have profited by the corruption of public servants. The result is equally unfortunate, whether due to hair-splitting technicalities in the interpretation of law by judges, to sentimentality and class conscious ness on the part of juries, or to hys teria and sensationalism in the daily press. For much of this failure of justice no responsibility whatever lies on rich men as such. We who make up the mass of the people can not shift the responsibility from our own shoulders. But there is an important part of the failure which has specially to do with inability to hold to proper account men of wealth who behave themselves to fraud and oppression nations as between Individuals than any device yet evolved in the hu- urges the special claims of man brain. Corporations are neces- Latin-Amerlcan Republics to our at- sary instruments of modern business. Mention The Message states that the They have been permitted to become Canal is being dug with a menace largely because the govern- and efficiency and then recom- mental representatives of the people mends the extension of ocean mail have worked._slowly in providing for South America, Asia, the adequate control over them. Philippines and Australasia. Atten- The chief offender in any given jg called to the admirable condl- case may be an executive, a Legislat- Hawaii, where coolie labor ure or a judge. Every executive head ] practically ceased and Pearl Har- who advises violent, instead of grad ual, action, or who advocates Ill-con sidered and sweeping measures of re form (especially if they are tainted bor is being made a naval base with the necessary military fortficatlons. Real progress, the President contin ues, toward self-government is being with vindictiveness, and disregard for Philippines, buc it would the rights of the minority) is particu- I worse than folly to prophesy the larly blameworthy. The several leg- g^act date when it will be wise to islatures are responsible for the fact consider independence as a fixed and that our laws are often prepa»ed with ^ggnj^-g policy. It is recommended that slovenly haste and,lack of considera- ^.merican citizenship be conferred tion. Moreover, they are often pre- ^p^^^ ^j^g people of Porto Rico and pared, and still more frequently announcement is made that our occtt- ac'ended during passage, at the sug- ^an^y of Cuba will end in about two gestion of the very parties against months’ time. The Cubans are whom they are afterward enforced, earned that they must govern then^- Our great clusters of corporations, geives within in order to avoid gof- huge trusts and fabulously wealthy gmment from without. The Preal- multlmillionaires, employ the very hopes Americans will do what best lawyers they can obtain to pick jg possible to make the Japanese B»- fiaws in these statutes after their position of 1917 a success and then passage, but they also employ a class thanks Japan, Australia, New Zealand of secret agents who seek, under the ^j^g states of South America for advice of experts, to render hostfle their hospitality to the battle fleet, legislation innocuous by making it Roosevelt urges the passage of unconstitutional, often through the ^he bill to promote army officers at insertion of what appear on their face reasonable ages through a process of to be drastic and sweeping provisions selection and declares the cavalry arm against the interests of the parties g^ould be reorganized upon modern inspiring them; while the unes. We have not enough Infantiry gogues, the corrupt creatures who in- artillery and attention should be troduce blackmailing schemes to centred on the machine gun. A gen- “strike” corporations, and all who de- gj.g^j service corps should be estab* mand extreme, and undesirably radi- lig^ed. It behooves the Government cal, measures, show themselves to be pekect the efficiency of the Ne»» the worst enemies of the very public tional Guard as a part of the National whose loud mouthed champions they forces and Congressional aid should profess to be. ^g extended to those who are pro- Real damage has been done by the motlng rifle practice—teaching out manifold and conflicting interpreta- men to shoot. tions of the interstate commerce law. regards to the navy, the Presl- Control over the great corporations ^g^^ recommends the increase sug- doing interstate business can be ef- ggsted by the General Board and fective only if it is vested with full thinks the General Board should b« power in an administrative depart- turned into a General Staff. He urgei ment, a branch of the Federal execu- that two hosnital ships be provided tive, carrying out a Federal law; it can never be effective if a divided re sponsibility is left in both the States and the Nation; it can never be ef fective if left in the hands of the courts to be decided by lawsuits. In no other nation in the world do the courts wield such vast and far- reaching power as in the United States. All that is necessary is that the courts as a whole should exercise this power with the far sighted wis dom already shown by those judges who scan the future while they act in the present. Let them exercise this great power not only honestly and bravely, but with wise insight into the needs and fixed purposes of the people, so that they may do justice, and work equity, so that they^ may protect all persons in their rights, and yet break down the barriers of privilege, which is the foe of right. The President devotes a long chap ter to the subject of forests, declaring that if there is one duty which more than another we owe to our children and our children’s children, it is to save the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most im portant element in the conservation of our natural resources. The Message then turns to inland waterways and maintains that action for their improvement should begin forthwith. It is also urged that all our National parks adjacent to Na tional forests be placed under the con trol of the forest service of the Agri cultural Department. I am happy to say, continues Mr. Roosevelt, that I have been able to set aside in various parts of the country small, well- chosen tracts of ground to serve as sanctuaries and nurseries for wild creatures. The Message announces that the use in the arts and industries of de natured alcohol is making fair progress and the law making it pos sible is entitled to further support from the Congress. According to the President, the pure food legislation has already worked a benefit difficult to overestimate. In the paragraph on the Indian service the Message tells how it has been compl^ly removed and. then concludes his Message ai follows: Nothing better for the Navy from every standpoint has ever occurred than the cruise of the battle flee! around the world. The improvemeni of the ships in every way has been extraordinary, and they have gained far more experience in battle tacti<» than they would have gained if thej had stayed in the Atlantic waterSi The American people have cause foi profound gratification, both in vle^ of the excellent condition of the fleet as shown by this cruise, and in view of the improvement the cruise haa worked in this already high condi tion. I do not believe that there 1| any other service in the world In which the average of character and efficiency in the enlisted men is at high as is now the case in our own. I believe that the same statement can be made as to our officers, taken as a whole; but there must be a reserva tion made in regard to those in th< highest ranks—as to which I have already spoken—and in regard to those who have just entered the ser vice; because we do not now get full benefit from our excellent naval school at Annapolis. It is absurd not to graduate the midshipmen as en signs; to keep them for two years ia such an anomalous position as M present the law requires is det^ mental to them and to the service. le the academy itself, every first class* man should be required in turn te serve as petty officer and officer, hM ability to discharge his duties as such should be a prerequisite to his going into the line, and his success in coi^ manding should largely determine Im standing at graduation. The of Visitors should be appointed is January, and each member should b« required to give at least six da^^ service, only from one to three dayir to be performed during June weelt* which is the least desirable tinie the board to be at Annapolis so far aa benefiting the navy by their observ»i* tions Is concerned. i THEODORE ROOSEVELT. ^ The White House, ^ -1