EDITORIALS
SUPPRESSED DEBATE IN THE SENATE "THE Senate has got to adopt a cloture rule. The debate I on the tariff has made trouble." It was the Honorable Joseph G. Cannon, Speaker of the House of...
...he lets the facts themselves do it...
...that may not...
...this may be used for docks...
...It says: "Come, we have a place for you where you will do us good and not evil, all the days of your life...
...When reasons and facts were demanded the Chairman of the Finance Committee took refuge in silence behind a majority representing combined interests and voted the advanced rates into the bill...
...They bear all the ear marks of a ruse to hoodwink the public into thinking that the "empire builder" had nothing to conceal, and was not only willing but exceedingly anxious to help the grand jury uncover any evil deeds that might have been committed by his subordinates...
...The fact that this way was one of darkness and evil did not deter M. J. Gordon, local attorney for the railroad and formerly Chief Justice of the State, from choosing it...
...His promise was accepted in good faith...
...Under the Clapp amendment, it would be taxed as a part of the "net" income of the railway—the theory being, probably, that "the privilege of doing business" as a holding company is quite as valuable as that of being a subsidiary corporation...
...This mission over, he left the state, and shortly afterwards came the announcement that the Board of Directors of the Great Northern railroad had met and repudiated Mr...
...The bill was a veritable nest of legislative "snakes...
...For it reveals an enemy that is striking at the very vitals of our country...
...J. J. Hill was on the program for a speech at the opening of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at Seattle...
...There is a little concern called the Northwestern Improvement Company, which cost the Hill railways about $13,000,000 and which is "held" by them as a mining company...
...Hoodwinking the Public WHEN the committee of the Washington State Bar Association began its investigation of the charges of corruption growing out of the filing of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Harris vs...
...The country was informed at last...
...To illustrate the nerve of Senator Clapp, it need only be mentioned that Mr...
...This is to be next to a bit of woodland owned and preserved in its natural beauty by the city, and is to be interspersed with open spaces and playfields...
...This decision, written by Judge Milo A. Root, became the final law of the state...
...Hence Cannon demands that cloture be adopted in the Senate, and the bothersome debate suppressed...
...But in the Senate it is still possible to propose amendments and debate them...
...Senator Clapp and the Hill System THE Northern Securities Company was a "holding company...
...Having thus protected itself, it is offering great inducements to trade...
...What are these facts...
...The failure of these men to keep their promises is of itself sufficient ground for serious doubts that the records of the company are free from taint...
...Allowing no time for its examination, he counted on its being rushed through without opportunity for Senators to become acquainted with its provisions sufficiently to discuss it...
...Connolly does not try to make a case...
...He prepared another opinion, changing the law to suit his powerful client, and submitted it to W. R. Begg, chief counsel for Mr...
...He later deliberately violated that promise...
...Destroy the integrity of the Tribunals of Justice and democracy becomes a myth...
...It teaches that towns may "encourage trade without allowing trade to disfigure them...
...Increases in rates were concealed by changes from ad valorem to specific duties, and from specific back to ad valorem,—by changes in phraseology and classification and the use of technical terms...
...There was one way in which this decision could be changed in favor of the railroad...
...The bill passed the House under a special rule of cloture which suppressed debate on amendments...
...It was the Honorable Joseph G. Cannon, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who is reported to have made this declaration, after the Senate had concluded its work upon the Tariff Bill and returned it to the House...
...The Roosevelt administration prosecuted it, the courts found it guilty, and it was dissolved...
...The bare recital of these facts must come with a shock to all decent, honest-minded, law-abiding citizens...
...They brought reports of a deep and ominous resentment against the sort of revision that Cannonism and Aldrichism are striving to inflict upon the consumer...
...When the tariff bill reached the Senate— a bill of over three hundred pages—Aldrich forced its immediate consideration...
...It established the precedent which all judges in that state would have to follow in similar damage suits...
...Line by line they probed and questioned and protested and debated until the truth—at least in part—was uncovered...
...The fifty girls of Gotham who vow not to marry men who will not promise to work for suffrage may be inaugurating the universal strike of women...
...It should arouse every patriotic impulse...
...And the country is making trouble...
...The reason why Frankfort can do this is because it has been quietly buying up land for many years and owns and controls two-thirds of the territory on which it is built...
...It is a calm, dispassionate, but startlingly graphic account of one instance of such control that has come to light...
...He made his speech, per schedule, and his words were flashed all over the country...
...Under the Taft-Aldrich plan, this $17,000,000 would pay two per cent, in the hands of the Northwestern Improvement Company, but would not be counted as a part of the "net" income of the railway company...
...He took pains not to go through the State of Washington, where he would be within reach of a summons...
...Cannon is indignant...
...It paid to the "holding company" an annual dividend of $17,000,000 the other day...
...Think of that in comparison with some of our "unplanned" factory towns...
...Railroad Control of the Courts MR...
...Aldrich would carefully protect it from "an excise tax on the privilege of doing business," by exempting from taxation any "net income" it might receive from its subsidiary corporations, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, the Burlington, and all the rest...
...But the debate proceeded...
...Their promises were empty words...
...He has heard from the country...
...Town Planning does not Injure Trade IT IS EVIDENT that short-sighted Englishmen fear the effect of town-planning upon business interests, as much as short-sighted Americans do, for the English Nation, of June 19, contains a long defense of the new art under the title "Trade Under Town-Planning...
...He could not avoid process if he came into the state...
...Then Gordon got Judge Root to substitute this opinion secretly for the one which Root himself had handed down as the opinion of the court...
...It was approved...
...The supreme court decided in favor of Harris...
...If this had been successful, the country would have had no means of becoming informed as to the kind of revision to which it was being treated...
...It must be apparent to any one who reads this that James J. Hill and his son had not the slightest intention of throwing open the records of the Company to the grand jury...
...The grand jury was in session at that time...
...Hill's promise...
...Duessel-dorf, "a clean and well-ordered town with spacious tree-planted streets, rings of carefully planned suburbs and a river front well-nigh equal to the Thames Embankment," offered a site worth $500,000 to the German Steel Trust as an inducement to build its central offices there...
...But the lesson which Frankfort teaches is even more important...
...So he went before the grand jury of his own free will and graciously promised to produce all the documents and other information in the possession of the road that had a bearing on the case...
...In this city, great new docks are being built...
...But, alas, there were Bristow and Bev-eridge and Brown, Clapp and Cummins, Dolliver and Nelson and other senators who labored day and night on the bill...
...It is their stock method of lulling the public conscience into forgetfulness...
...Briefly:—A year ago a man named Harris brought a damage suit against the Great Northern Railroad company...
...And the people of Minnesota should remember this when the railways go out after Senator Clapp's scalp...
...Taft and Mr...
...But as between Clapp and the Hill system, the latter would be "out" $340,000 a year more in taxes than under the Taft-Aldrich law on every $17,000,000 dividend of the N. I. Co., and the government that much "in...
...Such instances of bad faith with the public are not at all uncommon among corporation officials who are menaced by grand juries or investigating committees...
...and their base deeds are treason...
...But railroad attorneys are resourceful—and often unscrupulous...
...Not only that, but he subsequently went to the Pacific Coast while the Spokane grand jury was in session, and carefully avoided going over his own railroad...
...This of course means a large addition to the population, and consequently the city is spending $15,000,000 in laying out an industrial annex...
...In fact, it may be even more valuable...
...It "held" the Hill system of railways into one merger...
...Pugh, the prosecuting attorney, thereupon anounced that he would keep the grand jury in session until he caught some Great Northern official within the state confines...
...If they would all agree not to marry or remain married until equal suffrage were placed on the statute-books, forty-odd legislatures would meet in extra session by special trains, and emergency-clause acts would inaugurate the reform everywhere, save in states where constitutional amendments are required...
...But no factory is allowed to locate on the south or southwest side of the city because the prevailing winds are from that direction and Duesseldorf is never clouded with smoke although as a result of its offer it now harbors an industry with an annual "turnover," as the English say, of $55,000,000...
...Hill's railroad, for approval...
...Now when it sells it sells on condition: this may be used for factories...
...But the people do not forget so easily, and in the end will demand full measure of retribution from the men who thus tamper with their confidence...
...Louis W. Hill, son of James J. Hill, and an officer of the railroad, promised the committee that he would do all in his power to furnish letters and information that would throw light on the transactions between his attorneys and the supreme court judge...
...The men who would do so are traitors...
...The railroad paid the damages...
...that may not...
...James J. Hill is his most powerful constituent, and that the Hill penchant for holding companies did not cease with the dissolution of Northern Securities...
...Senator Clapp of Minnesota forced Aldrich to adopt an amendment striking out this provision favoring the "holding company," and making all net incomes pay,—even those passed up from corporation to corporation in the case of the mergers...
...The opinion prepared by the railroad attorneys thus became the law of the state...
...The Great Northern Railway Company, Mr...
...The lesson which the correspondent to the Nation would have the English people learn from Germany is one which Americans might profitably learn also...
...Finally as the true character of the bill became apparent rates were boldly advanced...
...If it were now in existence, the corporation tax bill as drawn by Mr...
...Cannon is worried...
...Ordinarily the case would have ended there...
...Members of the House have returned from their homes, where they had been while the Tariff Bill was under consideration in the Senate...
...C. P. CONNOLLY'S article, which appears elsewhere in this magazine, is a terrific indictment of the corrupt control of courts by large corporate interests...
...Aldrichism has not yet openly adopted a rule for suppressing debate...
Vol. 1 • July 1909 • No. 29
