THE ROLL CALL
THE ROLL CALL ON MEN AND MEASURES A Senator Who is "Coming" WHEN you see a man moving in the distance it is often hard to tell whether he is going or coming. You look intently. If the object of...
...He said: "The seven most important committees, I think we will all agree, are the committees on Appropriations, Commerce, Finance, Foreign Relations, Interstate Commerce, Judiciary, and Rules...
...He voted for the Dolliver amendment to eliminate the absurdity of the "basket clause," of the metal schedule and for the Cummins amendment placing a duty on pig iron and iron rod...
...But upon the final passage of the bill, after it was slightly modified in conference, he voted in favor of it...
...At times he halted and at times he went back but in the main his tariff record was progressive...
...He declared : "I have observed in my short career as a member of this body, that when any new legislation is contemplated it is met first with a doubt and fear as to its constitutionality, and second with the criticism that it is visionary in its inception and socialistic in its tendency...
...To get the truth about Burkett you must get close...
...On 82 roll calls which presented squarely and clearly the issue between lower and higher duties, burkett voted 52 times against the higher duties and in favor of the lower duties and the increases and decreases involved in these 52 roll calls are vastly more important than those involved in the 31 roll calls upon which he voted for the higher or against the lower duties...
...He voted for the Beveridge amendment to take away the tariff graft of the cash register monopoly...
...Sixty-eight Senators hold 26 of those 89 places...
...In this protest, Burkett of Nebraska came again to the fore in the people's fight...
...The Republican party in its last national convention declared in unmistakable terms in favor of the enactment of a law for the establishment of a system of postal savings banks...
...You will open the Record again and see Burkett halt and lose his bearings and turn back to vote for the Aldrich Emergency Currency Bill...
...You will see that he forges HON...
...The Vice-President said it was...
...Now notice...
...He arose and without waiting to be recognized by the Chair, said: "Mr...
...His resolution provided that no senator "shall be appointed to membership on both the Finance and Appropriation committees, nor shall any Senator be appointed to more than two committees carrying appropriation bills, nor to more than two of the following committees: Appropriations, Commerce, Finance, Foreign Relations, Interstate Commerce, Judicialy, Pules...
...Burkett's warning was given in the Senate fully a month before "System" Senators made bold their intention of defeating the measure...
...Thirty states hold only 34 of those 89 places...
...But on the income and corporation tax issues ho voted with Aldrich, voted with Aldrich to defeat the income tax amendment to the tariff, and for the substitution of the corporation tax...
...Now notice...
...The exposition which Burkett presented of the Aldrich close corporation organization of the Senate and of its effect on legislation was a severe indictment of the Aldrich leadership...
...Out of 127 roll calls Burkett missed one and Aldrich missed one...
...For a hundred years the wise men of the past, statesmen and philosophers, respected more their vague and technical interpretation of the constitution and their worm-eaten and antiquated ideas of governmental functions than their own health and happiness...
...He prepared and introduced in the Senate a bill embodying what he believed to be the most desirable features of such a law...
...He voted consistently against all the Aldrich increases of the cotton schedule, the increases on yarns, cloths, the increases by reclassification, and the new duties on mercerized and finished cloths...
...In the woolen schedule he voted against the Aldrich increases on woolen wastes and shoddy and he voted against the Aldrich schedule as a whole...
...He voted for the continuance of the "Dutch Standard" graft of the Sugar Trust and against reduction of sugar duties...
...Senators can remember that it took almost a decade of time and almost a new generation of men to determine in this country that it was not unconstitutional for the American people to have pure food and pure drugs...
...Nine states have no representation on those committees...
...Kean of New Jersey rese to demand if the debate was proceeding by unanimous consent...
...The impression was for a time encouraged by the leaders of Congress...
...You must study his record...
...But he looked back upon the history of other popular measures and he began to see the working of the "System...
...On the duties on hides, leather, and leather products, bur-kett went back...
...And if you study closely Burkett and his record, you will know that Burkett is coming and not going...
...Naturally he thought that the only question remaining to be settled was that of getting the best kind of a postal savings bank law...
...Twenty-five Republicans have no recognition on these seven important committees...
...Six Senators held more than three places on these important committees...
...It took fifteen years of patient and persistent endeavor to make some men believe that it would neither wreck the republic nor ruin the railroads for Uncle Sam to take a hand in the legitimate control of our great transportation companies...
...ELMER G. BURKETT ahead, rapidly sometimes, slowly sometimes, and sometimes he detours and apparently mistakes his direction and goes back...
...On the roll calls where the issue was clearly presented between lower and higher duties, Burkett's record is decidedly progressive...
...Those 89 places belong to 46 states...
...And he showed why...
...He voted for the McCumber amendment to reduce the Finance Committee's rates on coal...
...Again we find Burkett forging to the front with strong and unfaltering step in defense of a public cause...
...Fifty-three Senators hold them all...
...For example, I find in looking through the directory that one Senator has as committee assignments this magnificent list of appointments: Expenditures in the War Department, Coast Defenses, Investigation of Trespasses on Indian Lands, Manufactures, Military Affairs, Public Health and National Quarantine, Transportation and Sale of Meat Products...
...Senator Burkett of Nebraska is a Republican and he is the kind of Republican who takes seriously and at their face value the platform declarations of his party...
...If you follow the record and look close, you will find a month later that, when the bill was in the Senate to charter the Lake Erie and Ohio River Ship Canal, an amendment was offered proposing the same measure of physical valuation for the regulation of tolls and charges upon the proposed canal...
...We find him on the eve of the holiday adjournment taking the floor of the Senate to expose the insidious tactics by which the "System" leaders "postponed" to death the people's measures...
...You will look to the Record for an explanation...
...He voted against the Curtiss and Penrose amendments...
...Sixteen states hold 55 of these 89 places...
...That is not the most...
...He voted for higher duties on chromate and bichromate of potash, sugar, barley, gloves, umbrella frames, hides and leather and their products, wire nails, and against general reductions in the metal schedule...
...You will find him again voting consistently, roll-call after roll-call, while "System" senators were "ducking" into the cloak rooms to avoid the vote, to put to passage in the Senate the bill to promote the safety of the travelling public and the employees of railways by fixing a reasonable limitation on the hours of railroad employees engaged in the operation of trains...
...You will follow the record into another session and you will find Burkett retrieving this lost ground in his championship of the measure to mitigate by the erection of a naval gun foundry at the government's Washington navy yard the wrongs against the public treasury and the national defense perpetrated in the steel trust "cinch" on naval gun castings...
...The Senater from New Jersey suggested that it had better suspend, but Penro e of Pennsylvania, was impatient...
...and yet one objection after another has melted away...
...He voted against the Aldrich amendment placing a duty on iron ore...
...He has only one committee that ever has a meeting...
...Burkett declared that "the country has not been well satisfied with the work of the Senate...
...You will find him forging to the front in defense of the public interest and against the jobbery of the system of railway mail pay...
...I realize, of course, that any legislation which undertakes to have the Government do anything for the people is both visionary and revolutionary in the minds of some people...
...On the remaining roll calls Burkett voted 55 times against Aldrich and 70 times with Aldrich...
...Again he bearded the "System" in its den...
...until today everybody wonders who it was that objected...
...Accordingly when his party had thus unequivocally declared in favor of this popular institution, Burkett conceived that as a matter of course the Republican congress would proceed speeedily to the enactment of legislation in redemption of that pledge...
...On the passage of the tariff bill in the Senate, he voted against Aldrich—against the bill...
...The record will show him advancing in support of the bill regulating child labor in the District of Columbia...
...You will wonder at it...
...that a postal savings bank bill would in due time and before the end of that Congress be enacted, but, from time to time throughout the session, the bill was passed over upon one pretext or another until the time was getting short and the friends of the measure began to be apprehensive for its passage...
...But platform promises and timely warnings count little in the Senate againt the drilled majority of the Aldrich machine...
...He introduced a resolution to upset the hoary tradition of the Senate which makes seniority of service and "senatorial courtesy" rather than fitness for the work in hand the requisites for Senate committee appointments...
...You will find him springing forward to the support of an amendment to protect the railway employees and to fix a just liability upon the railroads for their injuries incurred in this hazardous service...
...He voted for the McCumber amendments reducing the duties of the lumber schedule and against the Aldrich tariff on lumber...
...Accordingly he gave his time and his thought to the study of this subject...
...In the tariff session Burkett continued to progress...
...President, I object to further consideration of the resolution and I call for the regular order...
...Of the roll calls on which he voted for the higher duties, the balance were upon amendments offered by Democratic senators and upon which there was reason for an honest difference of opinion upon the sufficiency of the protection which they would afford American industries...
...This exposition the Senator followed with a detail of the committee lists of other Senators who have appointments such as these...
...Thirty-nine Senators have no place on those committees...
...Thirty-seven states hold them all...
...Twenty-eight Senators hold 63 of those 89 places...
...Burkett was watching the tactics of the "Senate leaders" and gradually it dawned upon him that, this being the last session of that Congress, the session with the close of which all unfinished business is consigned to the legislative waste basket, it was their game to "postpone" the bill to death...
...But he voted for the Lodge amendment increasing the dutY on cotton gloves...
...If the object of your vision forges ahead with an even, strong, steady gait you soon make up your mind as to the direction of his movement...
...Then Burkett stumbled and lost his way and went back and voted against that amendment...
...Fifty-five of those 89 places are held by Republicans...
...Protest against this condition took the form of an "insurgent" movement, on the part of "progressive Republican" Senators...
...The motion and the resolution went over and Burkett was taken from the floor in the midst of his speech...
...When you do this you will see that he is a progressive senator, progressing...
...You will find him going forward in behalf of the public interest for the conservation of forests...
...of course, it was a direct reproach to Aldrich, who appoints the Senate committees...
...To some people he appears to be coming and to some, going...
...He voted for the progressive amendment offered by Dolliver and La Follette to create a permanent, non-partisan, expert tariff commission...
...You will find that during the railroad rate legislation of 1906 he took strong strides in the people's cause...
...The Senator from Nebraska was not allowed to conclude his remarks...
...But when it came to the sugar schedule he went back...
...It was at this session of Congress that attention was fo-cussed upon the character of legislative control through committee organizations of the Senate by the Aldrich management...
...You will hope that Burkett will explain...
...You will find him afterwards, charging the ramparts of the "System" in behalf of the railroad co-employee liability bill...
...To most people Senator Elmer G. Burkett, of Nebraska, is a figure moving in the distance...
...Thirty-five Republicans hold them all...
...proposing duties on petroleum...
...But he repudiated the Aldrich leadership and voted against the Aldrich court of custom appeals for the increase of tariff duties by judicial construction...
...On these committees there are 89 committee assignments or 89 places...
...He voted for all of the Dolliver amendments reducing duties of the woolen schedule on wool tops, cloths, yarns, women's and children's dress goods, webbings and gorings...
...But if he hesitates sometimes or stops or goes back a little, you are confused and uncertain...
...He voted for the Dolliver amendments to assess the duties upon the wool contents of the cloths, and to equalize the duties on wool according to the shrinkage of the wool and he voted for the LaFollette amendments for the reconstruction of the woolen schedule along similar lines...
...He showed how the control of legislation was gathered in the hands, and the labor of legislation imposed upon the shoulders, of a few Senators from a few states...
...Of course the introduction of such a resolution was treason in the eyes of the Aldrich management...
...You will not find it...
...He voted for the Aldrich program and against the amendments of Stone of Missouri and Bristow of Kansas for free hides, free leather and leather products...
...As to the geographical distribution of these important committees, 23 piaces are held in all states west of the Mississippi River and 66 of the places are held in all the states east of the Mississippi River...
...You will find him forging ahead with the merest handful of Republican Senators in support of the amendment to provide for the physical valuation of railroad property as a basis for the regulation of railroad rates,—an amendment that was anathema to the "System" leaders of the Senate...
...At first he was indisposed to credit this suspicion...
...And Lodge of Massachusetts arose promptly to move that the Burkett resolution be referred for pigeonholing to the Committee on Rules, of which Lodge was a member...
...But you will see that again he charges forward and retrieves the ground he has lost and gains new ground...
...Again it shows him standing firm against the attack of the "System" in voting against the Foraker resolution to suspend the commodity clause of the Interstate Commerce Act...
...they belong to 92 Senators...
Vol. 1 • November 1909 • No. 45
