THE ROLL CALL
THE ROLL CALL ON MEN AND MEASURES Senator Clapp — a Real Republican CLAPP of Minnesota is a big man—and deals with big things in a big way. Some men in studying a problem analyze and dissect it...
...Throughout the tariff fight he was found voting for free lumber, fighting for the public interest, testing with his philosophy and exploding the theories and claims of the advocates of the Dingley lumber rates...
...After serving three terms as Attorney-General he practiced law in St...
...He grew up at Hudson, near the Minnesota line...
...He hewed to the line of conscience, let the chips of political consequence fall where they might...
...He applied to it the test of his philosophy—this philosophy: "As a Republican, it has been my belief that one basic principle in the autonomy of Republicanism from the hour of its birth, when it left its destinies to that great patron saint of the Republican party, Abraham Lincoln, was that it was a party that came together from the people...
...It is not for any Senator, or for any number of Senators, to say what is the doctrine of Republicanism...
...He said: "If profit is to be the idol before which Congress must kneel in the future, then we want no information concerning the difference in the cost of production here and abroad...
...And he is...
...They have decried his adherence to the protective principle...
...He has said in the Senate that a Senator may properly follow the committee in charge of legislation when he is so engrossed with the duties of his own committee that he has not the opportunity to study and inform himself as to the merits of proposed legislation...
...But when the tariff is made in a special session, when the Committee on Indian Affairs is not occupied with its usual labors, the Chairman of that Committee has the opportunity, and it is his right and his duty, to study the legislation for himself...
...He showed how protection had been thrown to the winds to profit the sugar trust...
...When he has made mistakes—and, like others, he has made mistakes—it has been in following a Republican leader and a Republican President...
...He showed how the provisions in the bill providing for a sort of tariff commission to ascertain facts upon which protective principles could be applied had been wiped out in order that tariffs should be made hereafter in accordance with the demands of special interests for profits—"in order to keep information away in the interests, not of protection, but of profit...
...Clapp voted against the Interests and against the committee...
...The law does not regard trifles...
...Clapp has found the people of Minnesota are capable of forming ideas on public questions without being told what to think...
...In the Senate, Clapp's principal job is being Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs...
...Northern Minnesota has some of the largest and most valuable ore interests in the world...
...Moses E. Clapp was born in Indiana...
...Here the reward for conscientious hard work is more work and a clear conscience...
...He declared that the bill was a bill for profits, not a bill for protection...
...But the Dingley duties on lumber are not protection...
...While the bill was in the Senate he worked and voted to better it...
...He was elected Attorney General of the State of Minnesota in 1886, one of his principal opponents for the nomination being Mr...
...He threw his challenge in the faces of the bosses of the Senate, and voted against Aldrich's increases in the cotton schedule...
...He said: "The fact that protection was not a factor in the motives of the forces that framed the bill is found in this: That the bill was not fairly framed to develop American industries nor extend the foreign markets for American products...
...Big Business" is big politics in Minnesota as elsewhere...
...That is my creed...
...One of the "Big Business" interests of Minnesota backed by millions of capital, east and west, is iron ore...
...Some men in studying a problem analyze and dissect it and take out the works to see how it runs...
...And his conclusion was that this bill was even further from a redemption of his party's tariff pledges than the Payne bill...
...It deals with great questions of right and wrong...
...for the people, for free ore...
...The lumber interests and the lumber trust demanded a retention of the Dingley duties on lumber...
...Throughout the session when the question of a duty on hides was raised, a duty which benefits only the beef trust, which adds to the burden of the masses, and which does not answer a single requirement of the fundamental principles of a protective tariff, we find Clapp working and voting against it...
...Theoretically it is only a committee of a co-ordinate branch of the legislative department of the government...
...Clapp views a proposition and surveys it, and then he thinks, and thinks, and concludes...
...In this service well done there are none of the usual rewards of political office...
...In my humble judgment, while the conferees have grudgingly granted some light concessions, they have added to the evils of the bill to an extent that is so infinitely worse that I can not in justice to a sense of duty vote for the conference report...
...There is but one tribunal before which to try that question, so far as I am concerned, and that is the rank and file of my party...
...Cushman K. Davis...
...Naturally, the Interests do not like Clapp...
...This right Senator Clapp exerted and this duty he assumed...
...The bill went to conference...
...Clapp began two years ago a fight for free lumber...
...He defied Aldrich and Wall Street and voted for the Income Tax...
...and that another basic principle was that those who might be in a position to be called 'leaders' should reflect the will of the people, rather than seek to dominate them...
...It is the headquarters of the Weyerhauser lumber syndicate...
...If his constituents want their interests protected in the future they will now support Clapp...
...When the bill was concluded he looked it over and thought, and concluded and voted against it...
...He engaged in the practice of law in his home town until 1881 when he moved to Minnesota...
...As to the tariff, being a Republican, and representing a Minnesota constituency, Clapp is a dyed-in-the-wool protectionist...
...And when Aldrich and his associates on the Finance Committee reported the bill to the Senate, he studied that, and thought, and concluded...
...When he was a small boy his parents brought him to Wisconsin...
...There is nothing of the spectacular, no publicity, and the red man does not vote...
...He declared that the bill was not framed on protective principles, that the policy of protection bore no relation to its schedules of tariff duties...
...that the broad principle of protection has been thrown to the wind and ruthlessly trampled under foot whenever it served a particular purpose to do so...
...Already they have begun their campaign to elect a "System" Senator in his stead...
...The "System" will have other things for him to do...
...He began the study of law in the office of John C. Spooner, and graduated from the Law School of the University of Wisconsin in 1873...
...Not so Clapp...
...Frank B. Kellogg, then law partner of Senator Davis of Minnesota...
...This big committee is one of the busiest in the Senate...
...He has also observed that these ideas are fairly rational and worthy of consideration...
...to profit the tobacco trust...
...All we need heed is the demand of those who want to dominate the American market...
...His name being Moses, we expect him to be a leader of men...
...Aldrich and his associates recommended a duty, but the public interest required that ore should be free...
...Clapp has stood by his principles and he has stood by the interests of his constituents...
...They stand for monopoly and extortion...
...The Interests wanted a duty on ore...
...He has a right to assume that the committee will frame legislation in accordance with the principles of his party and the demands of public interest...
...He thought, and thought hard, and concluded...
...The people liked his administration and re-elected him in 1888 and again in 1890...
...His conclusion was that this conference bill was the worst bill yet...
...The "System's" Senator cannot and will not represent them...
...His conclusion was that the Payne bill did not represent the revision tnat was demanded by his constituency in Minnesota...
...Minnesota at the last census was the greatest lumber state of the Union...
...The property interests affected by its actions amount to untold millions...
...Out of his philosophy Senator Clapp has deduced a few simple fundamental propositions that guide him in his determination of the problems with which he has to deal...
...Aldrich and his associates recommended the re-enactment of the Dutch Standard provision of the sugar schedule, which gives the trust a practical monopoly of the refined sugar market of this country, and Clapp fought this and voted against it...
...In Minnesota he knew that tariff revision meant tariff revision downward, and when the tariff bill was in the House he studied it, and thought, and concluded...
...Already they have attacked his Republicanism...
...He has learned that they expect their representatives to represent them, which means standing for and promoting their ideas, all of which, because of his accord with them, he finds an easy and agreeable task...
...Clapp is a Republican of the old-fashioned ready-to-die-for-principle variety...
...But in his philosophy, to lead means also to follow...
...He tested the bill by his philosophy and by the demands of his constituents...
...Paul until in 1901 he was elected to the Senate to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Hon...
...Clapp is a lawyer...
...When it was being considered in the Senate, he said: "When the bill passed the Senate I voted against it...
...When the conference report came back the "System" press of the country heralded it as "an achievement in downward tariff revision"—"a redemption of the Chicago platform," but Clapp looked it over...
...Practically it is the most important agency in the attempt of one nation to govern another...
Vol. 1 • August 1909 • No. 33
