EAST ALARMED OVER WEST'S POWER
East Alarmed Over West's Power From Portland Oregonian Efforts of the insurgents to secure a place on the senate finance committee for Senator La Follette II move the Boston Transcript to deplore...
...The young guard, drawn mainly from the west but well reinforced by the middle west, rejects the sectional view and takes the broad national view...
...It Joins both him and the Insurgents In opposing general and very liberal revision for the benefit of all industries...
...The west is said to be firmly in the saddle and the impending addition to western strength by filling vacancies will, says the Transcript, make "the east even more impotent than it is today, if such is possible...
...As the west became settled, it was regarded as a field for investment and quick profits, then as a breeding ground for political heresies, then as the prey of the land thieves and the field for conservation...
...The west...
...East Alarmed Over West's Power From Portland Oregonian Efforts of the insurgents to secure a place on the senate finance committee for Senator La Follette II move the Boston Transcript to deplore the fact that the west is In the saddle with chairmen of twenty-three out of the thirty committees...
...The country west of the Mississippi river has sent fourteen regular, thirteen Insurgent, Republicans to the senate, which, indicates that at the worst the west Is only half Insurgent...
...The lines of division In the party into three elements on the tariff bill indicate the basic rrason...
...This is the latest phase of a conflict of sectional interests between east and west, which began when the east hac" all the senators nnd when the west was regarded as a wild country thinly populated by Indians, trappers, cowboys, miners, bad men and vigilantes...
...But control of committees rests with the western Republicans, not solely with the Insurgents of the west, though the latter have captured several Important chairmanships...
...The west has won its commanding position 1n the senate by electing the same senators to continuous service—a habit which it has learned from the east— thus profiting by the seniority rule, which was established before (here were any senator* from the west, as li, la now defined...
...The east may profit more by that study than it can by lamenting western domination...
...The insurgents fought to give agriculture all it asked, the manufacturer little or nothing, and by coalition with the democrats usually won their point...
...That situation shows the east as trying to grab all it can for itself, while giving little to the west, the Insurgents are trying to grab all Ihry can for the west, assuming the west to be agriculture, and in Rive Hide, to the east, and the young guard, supporting the president, ao striving to sati.ify the reasonable needs of both...
...The east by its indifference to western needs so antagonized much of the west as to provoke lr.surgcncy...
...Reasons for the frequent clash between east and west are more worthy of consideration by the east than are the evidences of its lost, power...
...n.< to which all wisdom reposes in the cast...
...The old guard framed the bill to give the industrial east all it asked while giving much to the agricultural west...
...Further, the insurgent-democratic coalition has a majority over regular Republicans on many important committees, therefore is In a position to decide which bills shall come before the senate for action and to steer their course through debate...
...That rule has worked In favor of the Insurgents, but It promises also to work against La Follette's ambition to sit on the finance committee, for It is as sacred In the eyes of Democrats as of Republicans and their coalition with the insurgenls does not hold against that rule...
...Is held to be a land taking provincial views of national affairs...
...The young guard is about as liberal to the farmer as are the Insurgents, but it joins President Hoover in the effort to give needed relief to a limited number of distressed industries...
...The public domain still is regarded as the vast estate of u.icle Sam, which the west yearns to dev.nil and steal...
Vol. 1 • February 1930 • No. 10
