EDITORIALS
BALLINGER'S DUTY TO THE PUBLIC SECRETARY BALLINGER cannot lightly brush away the article in Collier's by L. R. Glavis. He cannot dispel the evidence against himself in this article by calling it "a...
...Glavis has made a strong case against Secretary Ballinger...
...Four hundred men riddled their own souls with bullets, and cut their own hearts out and divided them into souvenirs of that awful night...
...The city of Cairo was lynched with dreadful atrocities...
...And nine years of insidious abuse and inuendo finally told...
...Upon it the poor and unfortunate, the tuberculosis and infirmary patients have been homed in comfortable and healthful surroundings...
...Public music, three public baths and all sorts of recreation for the people has been furnished...
...That course could be supported only by the prospect of a speculative return...
...He cannot dispel the evidence against himself in this article by calling it "a tissue of falsehood...
...Did you not, Mr...
...He has made it strong because he has simply marshalled the facts in an orderly array, brought them before the jury of the reading public, and let them tell the story...
...And it is fairly safe to say that the banks which went into this association did not all do so fully understanding the character of the combination that they were entering...
...It could not own the railways nor turn them over to someone who would run them «n terms deemed fair to the community...
...No mere shreds of suspicions...
...A score of playgrounds have been opened...
...In so doing his opponents said he had deserted his class...
...The great importance of this conference justifies a reminder at this time...
...The courts lent themselves to over fifty injunction suits levelled at the city...
...They were also demanding other land worth millions of dollars more for depot purposes...
...Your duty, Mr...
...Let every one lend his interest and his cooperation to bring this about...
...but the assassination of the people of Cairo is the real horror...
...The inspection of slaughter houses, of meat, food and milk was perfected long before the disclosures of the federal government at Chicago brought these questions to public notice...
...For nine years there has been no suspicion of graft in the administration of the city of Cleveland, a unique record among American cities...
...Tom Johnson dared to use his business experience and powerful talents for the people...
...Ballinger, a few days before retiring as Commissioner of the General Land Office, urge Congress to pass a bill that would make valid certain Alaska claims that were really fraudulent—claims which you, yourself, admitted were in "technical violation" of the law...
...that the seriousness of a breakdown of the confidence of the people in the impartiality and efficiency of their courts is coming to be recognized, and there is a growing disposition among thoughtful men to heed these criticisms and to weigh the remedies proposed...
...It would seem that Aldrich—if, as President Taft said in his Boston speech, he is "one of the ablest statesmen in financial matters in either house" of Congress—would easily have foreseen and averted some of these many defects and impossibilities of his "emergency" scheme...
...A city farm-school known as "Boyville" has been opened for street urchins, while the administration of the police department, the suppression of vice and disorder, are recognized as in advance of that of any other American city...
...A municipal garbage plant and electric lighting plant have been opened...
...They wanted peace, just as they did in Chicago some years ago...
...Of course, it is conceivable, in the course of "System" statesmanship, that they would become at once, upon the promulgation of this scheme, safe securities for banks to carry and a most ideal basis of our national currency...
...No opinions...
...The Cleveland struggle shows in miniature how the machinery of government, ostensibly intended for the people's use, is geared up against the people...
...Parsons it will be remembered, was the only New York Republican to vote against Cannon on the rules fight...
...The facts are that bankers will not take the chances of "going it together" under the combination scheme proposed in the law...
...The rights of half a million people were suberdinated to the alleged rights of a handful of men who had acquired franchises worth tens of millions of dollars by corruption and fraud and who repaid the generosity of the city which had enriched them, by using all of the wealth with which they had been endowed, to club the community into submission to its will...
...The foundations of Cleveland have been completed on a most comprehensive scale...
...it shows how unworkable it is in the hands of the many but how easy it is in the hands of the few...
...The Cleveland Election and Tom L. Johnson LA FOLLETTE'S is in receipt of a letter from one of its readers, protesting against an article which recently appeared on Mayor Johnson of Cleveland...
...The private illuminating company was being undermined by the city plant...
...The water supply has been purified, the sewer system completed,—the streets paved and shaded with city-planted trees...
...Did you not, Mr...
...Tom Johnson insisted that he held his retainer from the people...
...No bank could afford to put out its notes unless tempted by profits higher than are often enjoyed in the legitimate field of commercial banking...
...The purpose of the Conference is to consider what foundation, if any, exists for the criticisms directed against the administration of our punitive justice, and to discuss what improvement, if any, may be made in the existing system...
...Just a plain, matter-of-fact history of the activity of Ballinger in the Cunningham coal land case...
...What was done to the negro and white man destroyed that night was unspeakable...
...No accusations...
...Aldrich, himself, had said in the Senate, a couple years before he conceived this delightful "emergency currency" scheme, that this class of securities are very unstable, that they "fluctuate widely...
...The city, like Congress, is bound like Gulliver with a thousand thongs, when it seeks to achieve deliverance from privilege...
...Such a program and such a purpose give to the work of this conference a significance that is not confined within the boundaries of a single state...
...Why then was Tom Johnson defeated...
...They will render their own judgment upon these facts...
...Five hundred misguided and maddened women strangled their own womanhood with a rope which they themselves pulled...
...He was their attorney...
...The people grew tired of the agitation...
...Ballinger, very soon after resigning your position as head of the land office become attorney for the interests represented by Cunningham and others and endeavor to secure patents to their claims from the government...
...what with the insurgency of the Waterways Congress, the condemnation of the Payne-Aldrich-Cannon bill in the Massachusetts election, and the loss of Tammany to Herbert Parsons in New York City, the cards fell badly for Messrs...
...The problem is national...
...It has been possible to form only one national currency association in the whole country...
...but better than all that, it has had a humane and progressive administration as well...
...An Important Conference SOME weeks ago we called the attention of our readers to the Wisconsin Conference on Criminal Law and Criminology to be held in Madison, November 26 and 27, 1909...
...It made use of the courts to hamstring the administration in its efforts...
...the price of illumination from a private company reduced...
...One difficulty which the Journal did not mention is that encountered by the Treasury Department in undertaking to prepare a list of acceptable securities upon which any considerable circulation could be issued in such an "emergency...
...Will they receive an answer, a frank answer, a full answer, an answer supported by facts and evidence as convincing as that upon which Mr...
...Did you not, Mr...
...Among the defects and impracticabilities of the Aldrich-Vree-land law, pointed out by the Journal is the prohibitive expensive-ness of currency issued under it...
...Ballinger, is plain...
...The Aldrich end of it provides for the issue of emergency currency by individual banks to be secured upon a deposit of state or municipal bonds in a manner similar to the present issues of currency secured upon government bonds...
...So privilege used the millions acquired under previous administrations, to subsidize the press, to spread suspicion, to indulge in vituperation and abuse, to villify all who opposed its demands...
...He cannot invoke the name of the President of the United States to clear away the damaging testimony of the land office records and of his own admissions...
...Of course, it may be that he had Congress pass his law merely "by way of an experiment" to determine to what length of "System" absurdities Congress could be made to go in the service of Wall Street...
...These are among the reasons which lead the Journal to conclude that, "Unless by way of an experiment, therefore, it does not seem likely that the conditions of the immediate future will lead any of the banks to avail themselves of the emergency circulation authorized by the Aldrich-Vreeland law...
...The Journal says that the Vreeland end of the law is "practically nugatory...
...Glavis' statement will raise some questions that Secretary Ballinger is in duty bound to answer...
...Cleveland is said to be the best built city and the most far-sighted of cities in its planning...
...Aldrich and Cannon on election week...
...Did you not, Mr...
...This mongrel measure was passed by Congress to meet the "emergencies" of Wall Street money panics such as that of October two years ago...
...In the announcement of the Conference it was stated "that the multiplying instances of delay or seeming miscarriage of justice are responsible for a wide-spread feeling that American Criminal Law and Administration are ineffective...
...Hence, if Uncle Joe is a Republican, Parsons is not...
...But actions speak louder than promises and a man's record is the best possible proof of his sincerity...
...Reform in the administration of justice is imperative...
...No man can judge anothers man's motives...
...Under his administration the most comprehensive program in the world has been worked out for the care of the unfortunate classes...
...Prior to his election, the council was controlled by a syndi-cate of thirteen "gray wolves," whose dishonesty was exposed in the public courts...
...He stood for the ownership of the streets by the people and refused to renew a street railway franchise except on terms which fully protected every public right...
...Mr...
...What really happened was this...
...What is done by the Wisconsin conference should, and, we devoutly trust, will set in motion the forces of public sentiment and popular demand in the nation that will shortly result in a wise solution of the problem...
...They are being raised by the people—the same people whose interests are involved in these valuable Alaskan coal lands that seem so perilously near passing into the possession of powerful individuals—and they require an answer...
...The Ablest Statesman" THE Wall Street Journal, in its editorial of the 28th of October, devoted considerable space to explaining the prospective uselessness of the so-called Aldrich-Vree-land emergency currency law to relieve a prospective money stringency...
...The steam railroads were being ousted from their illegal occupancy of the lake front...
...Ballinger, know of the existence of a statute of the United States which expressly prohibits an officer or employee ef the government becoming, within two years after leaving the service, a private attorney in any case which arose in the department with which he was connected during his term of office...
...These questions (and many others of similar import) are oc-curing with every tick of the clock and with every day of the week...
...Privilege said it was time for a change...
...that defective organization of courts, cumbersome and costly procedure, and excessive emphasis on technicalities afford an undue advantage to the law breaker of means, and deepen the erroneous popular impression that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor...
...He raised his voice against special privilege...
...The Real Calamity to Cairo THE dispatches reverse the occurrences at Cairo...
...The Vreeland end of the law provides for the organization of "national currency associations" composed of national banks, with authority to issue circulating bank notes on any old "security" that the banks might happen to have...
...But in the mind of every reader Mr...
...Here they produce their own keep, on a farm...
...Glavis' statement rests...
...The tax rate has been cut down...
...Here are some of the achievements of Mayor Johnson during his nine year's mayoralty...
...The people demand the facts in this controversy...
...Even the charter of the city was taken away by a hostile partisan court...
...it has had a business man's administration...
...The parks have been popularized...
...The city could not enter the electric lighting business as it willed...
...The Journal shows also that the restrictions imposed by the Aldrich provisions of the law quite preclude many, if not most, banks from issuing circulation under them...
...that lax enforcement of laws and too frequent abortive attempts to punish wrongdoers breed a growing contempt for law and order...
...During that time he lost one-half his fortune, which was estimated in the millions, by reason of his engrossment in public work and the neglect of his personal affairs...
...They will not permit their judgment to be handed out to them, made to order out of the mere assertions of the Secretary of the Interior...
...A two-thousand acre farm was acquired...
...Ballinger, order the Cunningham claims patented in the face of repeated reports from your investigators in the field that they bore all the ear marks of fraud...
...If you cannot make reply to these very pertinent questions in a way that is satisfactory to the people of the United States (and only one kind of reply will be satisfactory), then you should give way to one who is more sensitive to the sacred duty of a public servant to protect the people's property against the spoliation of a privileged few...
...In it, the writer says that Cleveland people say he is a "past master in the art of politics," that he is insincere...
...All classes agree that Cleveland has had an honest administration...
...Privilege said Tom Johnson was ambitious, that he was insincere, that he was a demagogue...
...They laid down in the harness...
...And so it is, and worse...
...It could not settle the street railway question as it wished...
...No prejudices...
Vol. 1 • September 1909 • No. 46
