WHAT THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICAN LEAGUE IS DOING
What the National Progressive Republican League is Doing NATIONAL Republican League principles received an unexpected envorsement recently when the Judiciary Committees of the two houses of the...
...The absolute necessity for some legislation that will put the people in possession and control of their government and drive the interests and political bosses out of politics and the official life of the nation is too evident to admit of question...
...No such a muddle was ever created by the initiative...
...The theory that legislatures are superior to the people in the enactment of laws is getting some rude shocks these days...
...Read the following from the Portland, (Oregon) Journal: "Nor was the Oregon legislature the only body that left road legislation in a muddle...
...The situation there is ss mixed that state officials are scarcely able to distinguish between a road bill and a telephone directory...
...For the present, a dispatch says, the state departments have thrown up their hands and confessed that they are unable to straighten out the highway muddle...
...The people never passed through the initiative, as did the Oregon Legislature, a law requiring in one clause that a judicial commission should be composed entirely of lawyers and in another section that it might be composed partly of laymen...
...The most that was anticipated was a free discussion...
...Pressure of public sentiment was strong and the proposed amendment, following closely the Oregon form, received more support than was thought possible...
...They also say 'Oregon is the fool of the family...
...It is not expected that the Legislature will adopt the resolution, though favorable action may be secured in the House...
...The demand is universal and is supported by the best citizens in the country without regard to party...
...A 16 hours' deadlock in the Washington legislature brought on adjournment with the road bills in the air...
...No legislative situation so bewildering is ever likely to be produced by the initiative...
...How awfully sad...
...Works broke into the fight on April 10, when this Congress was but a week old, and delivered an address in support of a resolution for the admission of Arizona as a state...
...He said among other things: "Congress need not delude itself with the belief that this demand for direct legislation comes from fanatics and radical reformers only...
...The opposition will try to delay action and prevent a roll call...
...Yet we have gentlemen running about the country and crying as if their hearts would break about the pestiferous initiative and referendum...
...Senator Works, of California, who was elected to the United States Senate over the opposition of the old machine, is one of the militant members of the National Progressive Republican League...
...Like many other progressives, he is a non-conformist when it comes to observance of the old unwritten rule that a new Senator must be silent through his first session of Congress...
...But the Grange, led by State Master W. T. Creasy and by Nevins Detrich, publisher of the Grange News, put up an aggressive fight The National Progressive Republican League sent speakers and circulated literature...
...The fight now will be to get the resolutions on the calendars and force a vote...
...When the resolutions were introduced by Representative Kelly in the House and Senator Powell in the Senate, friends of the movement had no hope of securing even a favorable committee report...
...What the National Progressive Republican League is Doing NATIONAL Republican League principles received an unexpected envorsement recently when the Judiciary Committees of the two houses of the Pennsylvania Legislature reported favorably on resolutions for the submission of the initiative and referendum amendment to a vote of the people...
...I say to my Republican brethren that the party must get in closer touch with the people and respond to the awakened public sentiment of the land, or encounter defeat and disaster...
Vol. 3 • May 1911 • No. 20
