EDITORIALS
DEFEATED BUT NOT BEATEN In the defeat of Tom L. Johnson and of Francis J. Heney we find nothing disheartening. The struggle to wrest our government in city, state and nation, from the clutches of...
...Heney continues in office or not his service will be lasting...
...The speaker must have felt like an Alkali Ike who had left his gun behind...
...He has aroused the people to an understanding that clean government cannot be until the big corrupters, and not merely their agents or victims, are brought within the pale of the law...
...They indicated by so voting that they understand pretty clearly that the benefit of excessive "protection" is not passed on to Labor, is not conferred upon the Ultimate Consumer, but goes to swell the overflowing coffers of Big Business...
...They should never employ injunctions in the enforcement of a law of doubtful constitutionality and risk the punishment of men for acts that are in fact legal...
...They may, for one reason or another, turn Johnson himself down, but they will not permit the good things Johnson has done for them to be trampled upon...
...No, the friends of good government—and they are a mighty host—will not be dismayed...
...This news gave added impetus to the anti-tuberculosis campaigns in every state...
...Boston has abolished party designations...
...In the meanwhile he will, as a private citizen, stand watch over the things that have already been gained...
...And we are sure he has...
...It was more dramatic and spectacular, too...
...School superintendents and physicians are enlisted wherever possible...
...Sometimes they seem overwhelming...
...On election day they demonstrated this...
...But it is not necessarily a cause of discouragement...
...Heney had even a more desperate fight...
...that consumption is preventable...
...Why the word "erroneous...
...And so with Tom Johnson and Francis Heney...
...1" which the bosses and politicians wanted...
...Judge Sheppard in a dissenting opinion insisted that in this contention the labor leaders were right...
...Charitable and women's organizations are given an interest and the members often volunteer to call upon business and professional men to sell the stamps—usually in good-sized blocks...
...With your pennies you can enable the Association to teach the people that consumption is contagious...
...The debate on the steamer had been too warm...
...This is an indignity that will never be offered the utterances of Speaker Cannon or Senator Aldrich...
...The "mandatory telegram" which he received calling him back to that dear Danville, III., is clear proof of the doctrine of special providences...
...Help spread the knowledge that will in time wipe out this dread disease...
...This can have but one meaning...
...but it was not thought by the fathers as dangerous as a disarmed people...
...that consumption is curable...
...But the printing or publishing of anything whatsoever, no matter how damaging or malicious or obscene or blasphemous is a thing which the constitution gives all men the right to do...
...When they come he buckles on his armor more securely, looks to his weapons, reorganizes his forces, and faces the next encounter undismayed...
...One Sunday (in this case December 5) is selected as "Good Samaritan Sunday," on which day the ministers throughout the state are requested to discuss tuberculosis and ask their congregations to support the stamp campaign...
...Big Business in Massachusetts was especially favored by the new tariff law...
...Well, thought the framers of the constitution, not so dangerous as a gagged press and a silenced people...
...The people are apt to draw their own erroneous conclusions...
...That is a matter of nationwide regret...
...They will judge of the success of Johnson and of Heney not by their showing at the polls but by what they have done to forward the cause of pure government and fundamental democracy...
...There was no gavel on board, and the rules were very different...
...He found the state government organized against him, and he carried the fight into the politics of the state...
...There is stirring in the hearts of the American people a mighty unrest...
...These men have labored faithfully and unselfishly and well for the public good...
...but the corporations are so entrenched that the people must keep themselves nerved up to the struggle for year after year, and election after election, or the tide for a moment dammed back will reflow and sweep away the work already done...
...And whether Mr...
...The enormous gain of the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor is doubtless the minimum measure of the disaffection against the high tariff...
...When the speaker's memoirs appear, this episode will deserve narration under the caption, "From Autocrat to Doormat, or How I met Stubbs...
...And their displeasure nearly lost the state to the Republican party...
...2" provides for a centralized form of city government, embodying many of the essential features of the "commission plan" now springing so rapidly into popularity among the smaller cities, especially in the West...
...2," and rejecting "Plan No...
...And so it was in Tuesday's elections in Cleveland...
...With machinery such as this to ensure popular control, Boston's experiment should prove successful...
...The smal er towns are covered by the local manager in the cities nearest them...
...The recent report of the chief statistician in the bureau of vital statistics at Washington contains the information that the outposts of the Great White Enemy have been taken...
...The rank and file of the Republican party in Massachusetts are in open rebellion against the manner in which party pledges were repudiated by the Aldrich-Cannon machine in Congress...
...It is to be hoped that the Supreme Court of the United States will take appellate jurisdiction of the case of Mitchell, Morrison and Gompers, and will confirm the dissenting opinion of Judge Sheppard...
...He has beaten his enemies time after time...
...They did so by casting their votes for "Plan No...
...Each ballot so cast registered a rebuke to those leaders in Congress who forced through a high-tariff measure in the face of party promises for downward revision...
...Chief of these was the tariff...
...It is a national cause, and those enlisted in it are now fighting with the consciousness that it is a winning cause...
...This time...
...Massachusetts Protests Against the Tariff THE people of Massachusetts showed unmistakably on election day that they are not pleased with the Payne-Can-non-Aldrich tariff law...
...The money received from the sale of these little stamps—at one penny each—is spent in a noble cause...
...She has made the mayor subject to recall...
...The veto of the eight-hour law, however, was not so important a factor in the decline of the G. O. P., since the Massachusetts labor vote is normally overwhelmingly Democratic...
...2" they have made their own hold on the government more secure...
...One feature of the Wisconsin campaign is deserving of more than passing comment...
...It developed that the companions of his voyage were all insurgents...
...This change was made because it was considered advisable to keep all the proceeds from the sale for waging the fight on the White Plague within the state...
...And Johnson feels this, and the feeling prompted him to announce his candidacy for mayor two years hence...
...Boston is the first great city to break away from the thrall-dom of the old party-machine system of government...
...Speaker Cannon, after a trip on the Mississippi with the western governors was unable to appear at the Waterways Congress as scheduled...
...and for a time they may breathe freely again...
...the other was Governor Draper's veto of an eight-hour bill favored by Labor...
...And there will come a day when the people will rise in righteous revolt against these enemies of the nation and drive them from the high places they have taken by stealth and treachery...
...And note this...
...And they know that, out of office as well as in, these leaders will ever be found on the firing line in the warfare waged by the people against Entrenched Greed...
...There is no question that the power has been and is often greatly abused by the courts and made to serve exactly the opposite purpose from the intent of the Constitution...
...The labor leaders declared that the injunction was issued in violation of the Constitution of the United States which provides that freedom of speech and of the press shall not be taken away...
...There is a curious, not to say sinister, resemblance between the Roger Sullivan-Lorimer alliance in Chicago and the Cannon-Tammany rapprochement in New York...
...There are more good things yet to be done for the people of Cleveland, if they will give him a chance...
...but the majority held that the alleged culprits had no right to decide when and to what extent they would obey the mandates of the court The constitution permits all persons to speak or print whatever they please, without any restrictions whatever...
...A press agent was engaged to supply the newspapers of the state regularly with news about the campaign...
...The Speaker seems to have adumbrated a great truth when he said that if the Progressives are Republicans he is not...
...and the endeavors of Heney to make a clean San Francisco, bringing to justice the rich, powerful, "respectable" corrupters of the city government, have quickened the pulse of democracy now beating so strongly and so surely in the nation...
...Boston's New Government IN BOSTON the people rule...
...If Francis Heney has brought nearer this day his work has been crowned with success...
...That is the sale of "Xmas Stamps...
...The forces that have been opposing Johnson's program for the people got enough votes to put their man in...
...The power of injunction invested in the courts by the Constitution is despotic and judges should be slow to exercise it...
...He found the city organized against him, and he beat the local gang...
...Its arbitrary use should be safe-guarded so that it will not operate to deprive men of rights guaranteed by the Constitution...
...But to the leader whose heart is in the Cause, who fights with his eye fixed steadfastly on the ultimate goal, who has no thought of personal glory or personal gain, one defeat, or two defeats, or a series of them all along the line are but incidents...
...Popular Conclusions RAYMOND, in the Chicago Tribune, in discussing the popular demand for a postal savings bank and the general disposition on the part of the people to look for no satisfactory law from those now in control in Congress, says: "It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the elements chiefly responsible for the tariff fiasco are now openly lined up against the postal bank...
...And Heney has helped to bring about this unrest...
...But the people of Cleveland will never go back to the conditions that existed before Johnson did his work...
...Foss, who had been a Republican, changed his party to run on the Democratic ticket, on the sole issue of the Payne-Cannon-Aldrich tariff law...
...Yet the workingmen voted their protest against the law...
...She has forged ahead...
...The Association has organized the state for selling the Xmas stamps along the following lines: 185 cities with a population of 1,000 and over were selected, and a local campaign manager appointed in each, with the assistance of the local newspapers...
...Every teacher in the public schools is furnished with a pamphlet on tuberculosis, written especially for them and giving facts that can be explained to the pupils...
...Here is a campaign that merits generous support...
...The main features of this plan are given elsewhere in this number...
...The struggle to wrest our government in city, state and nation, from the clutches of Special Privilege has been marked by many setbacks...
...The right to bear arms is no doubt a dangerous right...
...The efforts of Johnson to make a free Cleveland, owning its public utilities in the interests of the public good...
...It was different from Johnson's but it was just as truly the people's fight...
...THE REPUBLICAN PLURALITY IN 1907 WAS 112,000 THE REPUBLICAN PLURALITY IN 1908 WAS 60,000 The Republican plurality in 1909 was 8,000 These Democratic gains were made on two issues...
...That a preliminary injunction should not issue except on notice and a hearing is a very reasonable limitation...
...We wonder which metropolis will be the first to follow her...
...In trying to bring "the man higher up" to justice, to visit upon the rich and powerful lawbreakers the same punishment that is meted out to the poor and obscure law-breaker, Heney has incurred the wrath of all the mighty interests that prey upon society...
...But not for long...
...It is not in the books that the leaders of the people's cause should win every engagement...
...Cleveland and San Francisco have turned them down...
...He found the courts, from the city tribunals up to the Supreme court, organized against him, and one victory after another was snatched from him by injunctions, "ripper" bills, and the like...
...If they print or speak things criminal, the laws will punish them for abusing their right...
...A Despotic Power THE decision handed down by the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia in the case of Mitchell, Morrison and Gompers seems another step toward placing these noted labor leaders in jail for publishing in a labor paper that a certain manufacturer was in their opinion unfair to union labor, and advising union labor not to patronize such manufacturer...
...It is a long struggle, a big struggle...
...To such a man, defeat never means surrender...
...But note this particularly...
...The Ultimate Consumer (whom Senator Lodge said was a "myth") voted an even more emphatic protest against it...
...But the right is in all citizens, inviolate and inviolable...
...The cotton and the woolen schedules bear witness to that fact...
...We said, when the Schmidt franchise met defeat: Johnson has never had a fair chance to win...
...And now they have got him...
...He has pointed out the fountain head of political pollution...
...A dangerous right...
...The influence of his work will go on...
...In both cases the abuse of the right is punishable...
...The speeeches of Lloyd-George, Chancellor of the British Exchequer have beeen excluded from Russia by the Czar as tending to endanger Czarism...
...The publication is adjudged to have been made in violation of an injunction...
...And by adopting "Plan No...
...Defeats must be met...
...If they print or publish anything which damages any individual, the law will give a verdict for such damages...
...At one time every city charter in Ohio was invalidated by the litigation waged to keep Johnson from winning the streets of Cleveland for the people of Cleveland...
...This unrest is the quickening of a nation's conscience, pricked by the shameless outrages of plundering corporation and privileged interests against justice and right and decency...
...She has done away with caucus and convention and placed nominations in the hands of the voters themselves...
...They have accomplished great things—far greater than the tangible results that may be set down on the credit side of their ledgers...
...Last year the familiar Red Cross stamp was sold in Wisconsin, but this year the State Anti-tuberculosis Association has gotten up a stamp of its own...
...Plan No...
...He reduced the Republican plurality for Lieutenant Governor to 12,000— a plurality that is normally as great as that of the rest of the ticket...
...Xmas Stamps and the White Plague THE crusade against tuberculosis is progressing...
Vol. 1 • November 1909 • No. 45
