THE ROLL CALL
THE ROLL CALL ON MEN AND MEASURES The Aldrich Control THERE is, to many people, something mysterious about the Aldrich control of the Senate. Why and how does Aldrich control? Those who see...
...This is the "System's" game and the "pickings" belong to it not to the Senators...
...But the immediate cohesive force, the sanction which sustains and effectuates the Aldrich control is the "cohesive force of public plunder...
...The distinguished senior Senator from Michigan told his hearers that, if they were disposed to accord him any Credit for the things he had "got" for Michigan, their gratitude was misplaced...
...Moreover, the "System" plunders always within the forms of the law—or at least within the forms of law according to the best advice of its Knoxes and Roots...
...The Aldrich control, to those who study it closely, is not-mysterious...
...Aldrich was in town and Burrows was showing him off to some of Michigan's leading citizens...
...Not only when the Aldrich leaders fall out does the public get a glimpse of the inside workings of the Aldrich control, but also when they embrace each other and grow fulsome and foolish in extolling each other's virtues and ability—to "deliver the goods" —is the public sometimes taken inside and given a look around...
...What devotion...
...Of course, the Aldrich bund do not go down to the treasury and fill their pockets with twenty-dollar gold pieces...
...He said he was informed that he might obtain consideration for the interests of his State if he "should just come under the yoke, be good, be obedient and servile and promise to report every morning at a certain place to which all roads in the Senate lead and there get instructions...
...Aldrich is a shrewd trader, that is, he is a shrewd trader as the white men, who exchanged a few baubles with the American aborigines for whole miles of rich fertile country, were shrewd traders...
...The Michigan Senator did not explain that in return for the little dribbles of pap and petty favors which Aldrich had conferred upon him for Michigan, he had, in the words of "Steve" Elkins, "come under the yoke" and had become "good, obedient and servile" and had traded to Aldrich Michigan's representation in the Senate of the United States...
...And the shrewd trades which Aldrich "framed up" would have fallen flat indeed had not Cannon "packed" the House conference committee—the other party to the trade—to sit in with aldrich and play his game his way...
...There is nothing exceptional about Aldrich, either in ability or in personal magnetism...
...Only those who get close enough to the Aldrich machine in the Senate to look inside of it and see the wheels go round can understand and appreciate the character and manner of operation of this control...
...Burrows did not tell his people that this consideration was a fidelity to the Aldrich control that ranks Senator Burrows well up with Smoot and Kean, and Flint and Sutherland and Lodge, and Penrose, and the other me-too, "System" Senators of the Aldrich machine...
...And Senator "Steve" did "come under the yoke," after a brief and fitful insurgency, and was "good, obedient and servile," and he got for his West Virginia coal and railroad interests what he wanted, or "something just as good," something as nearly what he wanted as anyone aside from the big "Boss" himself can fairly expect to get in the Senate...
...And his price is fidelity and subservience to the Aldrich control...
...This happened a few days ago at Detroit, Michigan...
...It was described by Senator Dolliver in the Senate in these words: "We have seen in this Congress a spectacle that has discouraged my heart, the spectacle of men being compelled to bargain with the authorities which control the Senate for the protection of the interests of their own people...
...He is a shrewd trader as the man who sticks the muzzle of a gun into your face on a dark night and demands "Your money, or your life," is a shrewd trader...
...But Burrows did not tell his people about the one-sided bargain by which he had secured for Michigan the kindly offices of Aldrich in behalf of "anything" that Burrows "wanted for Michigan...
...He is, in these respects at least, ordinary, very ordinary...
...The shrewdness of the Aldrich control was depicted in the tariff session...
...If these poor, deluded Michiganders had supposed that they had a Senator of their own to "get things" for Michigan, it was because they did not know the Aldrich control in the Senate...
...Of course, the great cementing force back of and sustaining the Aldrich control is the "System"—"Big Business" doing "Big Politics...
...That it belonged to the Senator from Rhode Island...
...It could as well be a Burrows control or a Smoot control or a Kean control with no more of ability or leadership or magnetism than any of those Senators possess if any of them were equally irresponsible to his constituency and were picked by the "System" for the job and were given by the "System" a solid support of me-too, rubber-stamp Senators ready to follow them through thick and thin without asking or knowing whither...
...And the "place to which all roads in the Senate lead," referred to by the West Virginia Senator, is the Finance Committee room—the seat of the Aldrich control...
...He ascertains what you want or prefer, and then he makes you pay his price for it, as he has in his power to do, like the man with the gun...
...When Senator "Steve" Elkins, at the beginning of the tariff session, thought New England was going to "do" the "System" coal and railroad interests of West Virginia by putting coal on the free list, "Steve" went "insurging" in open Senate...
...He did not tell them that Aldrich's service in getting these things for Burrows for Michigan were not given freely by Aldrich out of the goodness of his heart, but were based upon a consideration...
...He told what he was up against...
...It was "able leadership" and shrewd trading for Aldrich to put into the Senate tariff bill a number of increases and reductions, which he did not want and which the House would not stand for, to trade off against House provisions that the "System" and he did not want...
...The business of the Senators is to wear their honors and "deliver the goods...
...Also, it would put the "pickings" in the wrong pockets...
...He told how the Aldrich control worked...
...It was the Aldrich control asserting itself that warned Senators that if they opposed the passage of the Aldrich emergency currency bill of the last Congress, they would do so at the peril of having stricken from the public buildings appropriation bill certain provisions for needed public improvements in their home states...
...The "System" wouldn't even trust its Senators with the "pickings...
...But such schemes require favoring circumstances for their successful consummation...
...Those who see Aldrich from day to day and have abundant opportunity to note his limitations are especially mystified...
...Their work is not so coarse and, besides, that would be "small pickings...
...In extolling Aldrich to a gathering at the Cadillac Hotel, burrows said: "Whenever I have wanted anything for Michigan, I have always known where to go to get it, and he never failed me...
...It is when "insiders" fall out that the public gets a peep at the true characer of this Aldrich "leadership...
Vol. 1 • December 1909 • No. 51
