The National Association for Constitutional Government was formed for the purpose of preserving the representative institutions established by the founders of the Republic and of maintaining the guarantees embodied in the Constitution of the United States. The specific objects of the Association are: 1. To oppose the tendency towards class legislation, the unnecessary extension of public functions, the costly and dangerous multiplication of public offices, the exploitation of private wealth by political agencies, and its distribution for class or sectional advantage. 2. To condemn the oppression of business enterprise, the vitalizing energy without which national prosperity is impossible; the introduction into our legal system of ideas which past experience has tested and repudiated, such as the Initiative, the Compulsory Referendum, and the Recall, in place of the constitutional system; the frequent and radical alteration of the fundamental law, especially by mere majorities; and schemes of governmental change in general subversive of our republican form of political organization. 3. To assist in the dissemination of knowledge regarding theories of government and their practical effects; in extending a comprehension of the distinctive principles upon which our political institutions are founded; and in creating a higher type of American patriotism through loyalty to those principles. 4. To study the defects in the administration of law and the means by which social justice and efficiency may be more promptly and certainly realized in harmony with the distinctive principles upon which our government is based. 5. To preserve the integrity and authority of our courts; respect for and obedience. to the law,. as the only security for life, liberty, and property; and above all, the permanence of the principle that this Republic is "a government of laws and not of men." The Peril in the Labor Situation and the Way Ou Way Out The Peril in the Labor Situation and the Way Out By George Bedell Vosburgh (In a letter accompanying the following article, the author thus explains his thesis and his own attitude towards it: "I come to the study of all problems from the standpoint of the Constitution of the United States and the Scriptures. I have carefully studied at first hand the closed-shop problem both in the United States and in Europe. To me it is the most un-American institution upon our shores, and as such it is a real menace. The peril is that, in the mind of the average uninformed citizen, the labor union and the closed shop are one and the same thing. That is of course absurd. Labor unions, when properly conducted, are all right; but the closed shop is all wrong. If the more thoughtful people will take pains to make this clear, and to point out how un-American the closed shop is, it will be for the highest welfare of both labor and capital." EDITOR.) The history of mankind has beer a story of extremes. In the great temples of Buddhism one will see Buddha seated with folded arms quietly dreaming himself away into Nirvana, while not far off the followers of another faith will be torturing themselves on beds of spikes hoping by this means to reach the desired haven. In one epoch women will be wearing trailing dresses which send a cloud of dust heavenward as they pass, and in the next they make disclosures unknown in a 3 preceding period. The same is true in politics, in industrialism, in social manners and customs and with capitai and labor. It seems to have been difficult for men to "strike the happy medium." Here in the United States we are a land of extremes, rapidly shifting from one side to the other. This tendency to radicalism in the affairs of men carries with it attendant perils against which the cautious and conservative have had to guard. Unless restraints had been put upon the red radicalism which has moved with more or less defiant sweep through the centuries, civilization itself would have been swept away. Even in spite of these checks it has collapsed in places, as, for example, in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, followed by the Dark Ages, out of which through centuries of time men toiled and struggled and suffered, climbing upward gradually again into the light of a better day. This upward climb was not like the upward slope of a pyramid, but, on the contrary, was attended by many collapses, such as the Spanish Inquisition, the Thirty Years' War and the revolutions that have swept over most lands. The world has oscillated between ignorance and learning, tolerance and intolerance, famine and plenty, the wrath of war and the benediction of peace and the end is not yet. As I speak, vast sections of the globe are wallowing in physical, finan |