NEWS WORTH REMEMBERING
News Worth Remembering INSURGENCY appears to be growing apace. Ray Stannard Baker, in the American Magazine for February, reported that it was nourishing in the Middle West, and in the March number...
...Strauss was one of Roosevelt's cabinet...
...Minnesota and New York are working on the problem as well...
...Martin says he fails to see the essential difference between the holding of the 400,-000 acres by the church and their possession by the trust...
...Employees, under the system, give up their right to recover damages other than those provided by the proposed law, unless at the time of hiring they make a contract to the contrary...
...The Republican defeat *is made even more severe by the fact that Senator Lodge had taken part in the campaign, defending the tariff law...
...To the question, "Is Cannon your choice for Speaker...
...Plan for Working-men's Compensation The committee of the Wisconsin legislature appointed to investigate the subject of workmen's compensation for injuries received in the course of their work has drafted bills to be submitted at the next session of the legislature...
...590 Republican editors failed to reply, 670 voted "No," and only 151 endorsed the present Speaker...
...The New Jersey indictments are causing the packers much anxiety, however...
...Foss had waged his campaign on the tariff issue and had attributed the high cost of living to the passage of the Payne-Aldrich law...
...Of the Independent editors, 199 expressed their disapproval of the act, while only 16 ventured to approve it...
...Most of the men who have coo* fessed and have been indicted are, or: were, members of the common council of that city and were guilty of selling their votes...
...This was conclusively shown, to be the case in the West by the Chicago Tribune'3 poll of Republican editors some weeks ago...
...No Publicity of Corporations On March 24 the publicity clause of the corporation tax was effectually nullified by the action of the Senate, which refused to appropriate $50,000 for the purpose of making corporation returns open to public inspection...
...This poll, considered together with the poll in the West, and with the discomfiture of Cannon in the House fight, is striking evidence that Cannonism has fallen into widespread popular disrepute, and that the kind of tariff law fathered by Cannonism will not be accepted...
...Standpat Congressmen, who have to go before their constituents for re-election this summer, are worrying...
...New Rules Committee Chosen After the fight on Cannon of twjj Weeks ago, peace apparently settled down over the House...
...The Democratic members now are Champ Clark, Missouri, Oscar W. Underwood, Alabama, Lincoln Dixon, Indiana, and John J. Fitzgerald, of New York...
...Even the President's Winona speech, assuring westerners that it is "the best tariff law we have ever had," seemed insufficient to set at rest Republican doubters...
...It is probable that a general strike affecting the 60,000 miners of Ohio will be called...
...Sugar Trust Gets Valuable Lands At the time that the United States took over the lands in the Philippines belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, on the assumption that large church holdings were not in the best interests of the islands, it was provided by law that not more than 2,500 acres of public lands should be sold to any one corporation...
...The Democrats of the House, meeting on March 24, elected the minority representation of the committee on rules with the same absence of discord which characterized the Republican caucus...
...The state can lease the land to companies or individuals provided it sees that the rates charged the public are fixed at least once in ten years by the state or by some board or commission authorized by the state, and guards against monopoly...
...Representative Martin of Colorado is leading the fight for a congressional investigation of the sale...
...Under the bills returned in that state, prison sentences may be imposed upon the packers, who are now fighting extradition to New Jersey...
...An indictment was returned against the National Packing Company and ten of its subsidiary corporations, charging conspiracy in viola-tion of the Sherman anti-trust law...
...Under this indictment fines may be imposed if the companies are found guilty...
...The bill favored by President Taft and Secretary Ballinger gave the federal government authority to regulate the use of water powers on public lands when the lands were leased, but the bill decided upon by the Senate sub-committee takes note of the constitutional objection which has been advanced that the government has no authority over water except when it is used for purposes of navigation...
...Rockefeller has given financial aid to the study of the disease, which is said to be an important cause of the backward condition of the population of some parts of the South...
...The result of this election jolted Republican political leaders of standpat proclivities...
...Other speakers at the banquet pleaded for the maintenance of peace bjj arbitration but insisted that strong military forces were necessary...
...The packers...
...Meanwhile, the efforts of the federal commissioners to avert a great railroad strike have been successful and the dispute between the firemen and enginemen and the western railroads will be settled by arbitration...
...Fitzgerald is the Democratic member who last spring led twenty other members of his party to the aid of the Speaker and helped to save Cannon from defeat...
...Representatives Smith and Dalzell, were members of the last rules committee, and like the other Republicans on the new committee, are standpatters...
...News Notes The legislature of Rhode Island has passed a new child labor law, which provides among other things that no child under sixteen years of age shall work after 8 P. M. The Italian cabinet has resigned because its proposal for a ship subsidy measure seemed certain of defeat by the chamber of deputies...
...A Jolt to the Standpatter...
...Sympathetic Strike Ends On March 27 the sympathetic strike in Philadelphia, which has been in force for several weeks, was declared off and the workmen still remaining out returned to their labor...
...In Illinois plans are nearly complete for the teaching of agriculture in the common schools of the state...
...It is said that as a result of the present system of compensation, by means of law suits, the employee receives only 40 per cent, of the amount that is awarded to him by the courts, when he does get a favorable decision, and that half of this usually goes to an attorney as a fee and to pay the cost of legal procedure...
...One provides that the employer shall bear the entire cost, and the other that the state shall reimburse him with 20 per cent, of the premiums...
...To this 590 Republicans answered "No" and 181 said "Yes," whife 654 made no response...
...While their "explanation" that many factors other than the tariff contributed to the Republican defeat is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, still the portent of Foss's election is clear to them...
...On March 21 leather makers all over the country except in the East went on a strike following the refusal of employers to grant an eight hour day and a fifteen per cent, increase in wages...
...The maximum compensation allowed in case of death is $3,000...
...The recent sale of 55,000 acres of Friar lands to the Sugar Trust has stirred up a hornet's nest in Congress, and Attorney General Wickersham, who approved the sale on the ground that the law did not apply to Friar lands, is under fire...
...He commended thajj movement for the establishment of i| court of arbitration for the settlement of all international quarrels by P6...
...A dispatch from Washington states that it is possible that the insurgents and Democrats may back a resolution placing the choice of all committees in the hands of the House itself...
...Conditions in Gary, Indiana, are set forth, and it is stated that the steel company has a monopoly of all the public utilities and supplies of the town, that it maintains a twelve hour day seven days a week, that wages paid by it are far below those paid in other industries, that workmen when injured are in many cases through misrepresentation and other means made to sign away their right to recover damages...
...Other abuses are charged and cases are cited to show how the corporation has secured a monopoly in its field and the ways in which its labor has been mistreated...
...A New "Pittsburg Survey" Twenty men have confessed, thirty-' seven have been indicted but have not...
...The "men higher up" are* trembling...
...A U. S. public health report issued on March 25 gives the results of an inquiry into the hookworm disease in the South...
...The result of the election in the fourteenth Congressional district of Massachusetts was even a harder blow to the hopes of these who have been seeking to appease public indignation over the tariff fiasco...
...He further says that the lands were not purchased until after the passage of the tariff bill allowing free entry of sugar from the Philippines...
...Taft Defends Tariff Lew President Taft returned to Washington on March 23, after another "whirl around the circle...
...Mayor Gaynor of New York has ordered the police commissioner to discontinue the practice of "mugging" or photographing prisoners before they are found guilty of any offense...
...He charges that the attorney general was formerly employed by the Sugar Trust, that the lands sold to the trust at $6.50 an acre were bought by the government at an average price of $18 and that the limitation of sales was observed in all cases until the Havemeyers made their purchase...
...An employee will receive 65 per cent, of his regular wages while temporarily disabled or the full amount if seriously injured...
...Population Grows Fast Estimates made by the bureau of statistics from reports of the census bureau and of the department of agriculture, show that during the last ten years the population of the United States has increased 12,000,000 while the number of available food animals has decreased about 6,000,000...
...They are thorough believers in the kind of "party regularity" advocated by Speaker Cannon...
...able methods but said that a strong navy and army were the best guaranties of peace...
...Miners May Strike Miners and operators have been unable to agree and a general strike is a possibility...
...It was generally known in advance who would be elected to the committee, a slate having been prepared by the "regulars...
...The need for training of this kind has long been urged by educators, and is given first place, in the opinion of many political economists, as a means of keeping boys on the farms...
...Walter I. Smith of Iowa, John Dalzell, Pennsylvania, Sylvester C. Smith, California, George P. Laurence, Massachusetts, J. Sloat Fassett, New York, and Henry S. Boutell, of Illinois are the Republican members of the first committee on rules of the House of Representatives to be chosen by the House itself...
...Roosevelt in Cairo...
...Ray Stannard Baker, in the American Magazine for February, reported that it was nourishing in the Middle West, and in the March number of the same periodical surprised many of his western readers by writing that insurgency was getting a secure foothold in the "conservative" East...
...At Providence, on the 21st, President Taft repeated his defense of the Aldrichl tariff law, and at New York before tkffi Peace and Arbitration League spoke on, international peace...
...It was expected that trouble would be precipitated if Mr...
...In fact, the packers are reported to be very well satisfied with the result of the investigation in Chicago, believin that it opens a way by which the varioua smaller members of the National Packing Company may be swallowed by the three larger firms, thus limiting competition even more effectively than at present...
...Beef Trust Indicted The Chicago grand jury which has been investigating the "beef trust" reported on March 22...
...Two plans are proposed for the payment of the cost of the system...
...The Federation claims that intimidations are used to prevent labor union organizers from securing a foothold...
...An amendment providing that the returns shall be made public only upon the order of the President or Congress when they deem it for the public interest was adopted...
...Ambassador Strauss met Mr...
...Stiles of the public health service found that 55.9 per cent, of the children in eight schools of southern Florida, were open to suspicion of infection...
...Union men are hopeful and declare the company is unable to operate its cars on a normal schedule...
...Fitzgerald were given a place on the committee...
...They charge that he is a corporation lawyer...
...The Ohio Federation of Labor, representing two hundred thousand union men, has protested against the proposed appointment of Alexander L. Smith of Toledo as federal judge for the northern district of Ohio...
...Mr Wickersham has denied that he was ever attorney for the sugar trust, although he says that he was associated with Henry W. Taft in a legal firm...
...This district, which never before has elected a Democrat to Congress, and which in 1908 had a Republican majority of over 14,000, on March 22 elected Eugene N. Foss, a Democrat, to Congress by a plurality of 5,640...
...Water Power Bill Framed A sub-committee of the Senate has decided upon a water power bill...
...Thus the regulation of water power use is placed almost entirely in the hands of the state, the federal government having no immediate control over the terms governing water power development under the terms of the bill...
...East Al«o Insurgent And now, the East, the stronghold of the great interests which were chiefly instrumental in securing the passage of the Aldrich tariff law, has refused to accept the measure as a fulfillment of the pledge of the Republican Party...
...Action has been taken by the men looking toward the formation of a new party—a labor party...
...were made in New York State, and at;| Albany the President had a conference with a Canadian commissioner in the hope of settling tariff differences...
...confessed as yet, and sixteen have been implicated but not indicted—such is the result of another graft exposure in Pittsburg...
...Roosevelt cabled Pinchot to meet him in Europe...
...The Illinois State railroad and warehouse commission is holding hearings -on complaints of shippers against excessive and unfair express rates...
...The Tribune's second poll was taken before the defeat of Cannon, and the results were published on the 24th...
...Secretary Knox was enabled to slate on the 26th that there was no longer danger of a tariff war between the two countries, whose trade with each other is overg $300,000,000 yearly...
...The question asked of all Republican and Independent editors was: "Do you indorse the Aldrich Tariff Law...
...No details of the terms of settlement were given out but a proclamation by the President will be made on March 30...
...It is reported that Mr...
...The price of grain with which to feed the animals has meanwhile increased from 56 to 75 per cent., according to the estimates...
...The government, through the Secretary of the Interior, then grants to the state a patent to the land, reserving the right to cancel it if the state does not enforce the stipulations for the control of the water power generated thereon...
...themselves were not indicted and are therefore in no danger of being sent to prison...
...This is one of the most serious of police abuses, and Mayor Gaynor has persistently fought it...
...Several speeches...
...Taft acted as counsel for the American Sugar Refining Company, two years ago...
...The other bill charges the same wrongful conspiracy in the fixing of the price of meats and live stock and asks for the dissolution of the National Packing Com-pany and its subsidiaries...
...The caucus tu name the Republican members of the rules committee was held on March 23, and the six men chosen to represent the majority were selected with little opposition...
...The ex-President will in a few days leave Africa, where he has been received enthusiastically by American travellers and natives alike, and will visit Germany and the Kaiser, delivering lectures in Paris and at other places on the continent...
...The committee bill makes it necessary for the persons desiring to use water power located on the public domain to apply to the state, which in turn asks the government for the land desired...
...Pinchot to Meet Roosevelt On March 18, Gifford Pinchot, former Chief Forester, sailed for Europe...
...Partly as a result of that conference, andiu partly through previous negotiations...
...In spite of the strenuous efforts of the framers and defenders of the Payne-Aldrieh tariff law to convince the people that it is a good measure and a fulfillment of party pledges, there appears to be a general disposition to reject all these assurances...
...While the operators of Indiana and Pennsylvania have come to an agreement with employees, Ohio operators refuse to make concessions...
...However, he was elected without material opposition...
...Steel Trust Attacked The American Federation of Labor, in a document submitted to Attorney General Wickersham on March 22, charge) that the United States Steel Corporation is operating in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law and is a monopoly, and asks the government to bring suit for its dissolution...
...The street car strike is still in effect, however, and seems no nearer settlement than at first...
...They are modeled after those in force in Germany and other European countries and provide for the payment of a certain fixed sum by employers- for injuries sustained by workmen...
...Chamberlain, South Dakota, on March 21 was added to the long list of cities governed by commission...
...In this way, lawsuits will be avoided...
Vol. 2 • April 1910 • No. 13
