responsibility. Those who have studied the problems of municipal administration are practically unanimous with reference to the importance of this policy. It is equally important in connection with State administration. In this way only can proper correctives be supplied for administrative abuses.

This is the more important as the activities of the State increase. If we are to protect our administrative wards and departments from improper influences, if we are to secure administration for the benefit of the people without favoritism, we must see to it that administrative offices are not created which are practically immune from accountability, and that the people, through officers of their choice, are able to express their will.

In this country, with its constitutional safeguards, the interests of property will not be endangered. This is the people's country; they have established constitutional limits within which administrative powers must be exercised. They are entitled to have these powers exercised in a responsible manner. And they will run no serious risk if the powers essential to secure faithful performance of administrative duty are centred in the Chief Executive of their choice.

I may say a word in regard to another matter affecting the pending legislation. It has been pretended by some that it interferes with the freedom of employees to work or not to work as they choose. Such a contention is absurd. No commission, under this law or any other law, would have the right to compel men to work against their will. This is a free country, and, under our Constitution, slavery and involuntary servitude are impossible. A law which undertook to compel men to work for a corporation who did not wish to work for that corporation would not be worth the paper that it was written on, and no one can find any such intention within the four corners of the proposed law.

It has also been said that the bill legalizes mergers which have already taken place. It does nothing of the sort. Past transactions are either lawful or unlawful. If they were lawful, it is important that the new legislation should not be construed as intended to affect

any right which is safeguarded by the Constitution. If they were unlawful, the proposed bill does not legalize them. The provision of the bill simply is that it shall not affect what has been lawfully done, and every right which exists, with every reference to any illegal

transaction in the past, will continue to exist without impairment by anything in the proposed law.

Something has also been said regarding the penalties provided for by the law, but it will be noticed that the penalties stated are merely maximum penalties. There is no provision in the bill, for example, that a corporation violating the act shall be mulcted in a penalty of $5000 for every day that the violation continues. The penalty is a sum not to exceed $5000 for each offence or for each day's continuance. The penalty is not required to be a particular sum, but within the limit stated will be fixed at such sum as the court may find just in view of all the circumstances of the case. If the company ought to pay $5000 a day, it will have to pay that sum. If this would be unjust and result in the extreme penalties described by the opponents of the bill, a sum will be fixed that is both adequate and just. The court has the necessary latitude so that proper punishment may be meted out. Nor is any one in danger of a penalty unless he violates the law. And of course there will be no penalty at all unless the order is valid and should be obeyed.

As I have said before, the law in its operation

should not be unfair or oppressive, but it should be effectual.

Property rights are not threatened, freedom of management consistent with just recognition of public obligations is not interfered with. I need not repeat what I have recently said in regard to the proper function of the courts and the importance of avoiding dilatory proceedings to secure a court review of matters which are purely administrative.

Let me say in conclusion that I believe there is general recognition of the importance of providing for suitable State supervision of public-service corporations as is now proposed; that I believe the people of this State indorse the effort to place an adequate measure of relief upon the statute books; and I believe that a majority of the members of the Legislature are alive to the importance of the question presented and will be found to be in accord with the public sentiment upon this question.

IV.

Speech at the Banquet of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce, April 18, 1907.

We have met to-night to commemorate commercial enterprise and industrial achievement. You unroll the record of the successes of fifty years to find inspiration and promise for the future. And in the building you have set apart to-day for your Chamber of Commerce you have at once a monument and a prophecy. The half century that has passed since your organization has witnessed the development, of the national consciousness which has rendered the Union secure against dismemberment, and has prepared the way for the realization, upon the largest scale the world has ever known, of the ideals of democracy and of the blessings which through equality of opportunity under a free government may come to a united and industrious people.

For government—and free government—is not an end but a means. And its object is to