THE ROLL CALL

...It was no mere denunciation in general terms...

...The administration encouraged this effort by causing it to become known that any careful and honest consideration of the provisions of the bill in committee or on the floor of Congress, with a view of changing any of its clauses, would be regarded as little short of treason to the Republican party...

...Mr...

...He did not consult the attorneys who had been collecting evidence for the government...

...The consideration of the railroad bill was fixed for the following Monday, and he made little effort to conceal the fact that he was speaking with particular reference to that bill...

...It would be as if the Pennsylvania Railroad had come forward and openly admitted that it had obtained control of the Reading and the Baltimore and Ohio, all steamship lines entering this port and all trolley lines entering this city...

...The test of party loyalty is not mute submission to aldrich, Wall street and Wickersham...

...La Follette showed that Wickersham did this after consultation with the attorneys of the railroads only...

...Nothing, on the other hand, has shown more clearly for what the militant and courageous progressives stand...

...But it remained for Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin, in the most notable speech made during the present session of Congress, to give full and fitting answer to Mr...

...Nothing could better evidence the power of La Follette's attack than the pitiable effort to reply by the New England senators who are credited with feelings of friendship for the Morgan-Rockefeller railroad interests...

...Wickersham on the floor of the,Senate...

...Attorney General Wickersham last Saturday night, in Chicago, speaking in behalf of the administration, declared : "Is it not time that all those who call themselves Republicans should stop coquetting with the Democratic party...

...Thus," declared Senator La Follette, "the attorney general, the highest law officer of the federal government, sworn to preserve, protect and defend the constitution and enforce the laws of Congress, gives his official approval of this legislative compact between the New Haven company and the Massachusetts Legislature to nullify the law of Congress, and declares that it expressly authorizes what Congress has expressly forbidden...

...And the poor best that Lodge and Gal-linger could do was to declare their belief that Mr...

...Nothing that yet has occurred shows so clearly to what the advisers of Taft's administration have committed him...

...as if, when the offenders were being cornered, they had sent for Penrose to have his gang-controlled Legislature pass a bill essaying to legalize the crime against the government, and finally as if the attorney general of the United States had used that gang statute as an excuse to dismiss all prosecution...

...He assailed all Republicans who would attempt to alter administration measures as "traitors," and asserted that the bills represented "the determined policy of the government to attack all special privileges and undue preferences, whether obtained by illegal combinations, * * * by special advantages in transportation or by any other method...

...should sink their individual preferences about the details of legislation and join with the Republican workers in carrying to fruition under our great, patient, candid, wise, Republican President the work of clinching the reforms of the last eight years on the lines so carefully and so wisely laid down in the platform of 1908...

...With the beginning of the Taft administration Wickersham became attorney general, and immediately there were conferences with the attorneys of the law-breaking railroad corporation...

...Nor will they be intimidated by him or his kind in their efforts to bring the Republican party in Congress and in convention, as it still is among the people, back to the Republicanism of Lincoln—to the service of public interests and of public interests alone...

...By irresistible reasoning he went on to show that in the light of the history of the New Haven merger suit the dangers that lurk in the attempt of the Wickersham railroad bill to increase the discretionary power already vested in the attorney general's office in the matter of enforcing railroad regulation...

...wickersham is a great and good man, and to plead foolishly and pettishly that New England should be allowed to settle its own affairs without outside criticism—a somewhat peculiar position to assume in view of the fact that throughout the extra session the little clique of New England representatives of privilege and criminal combinations assumed, and in the main successfully, to settle the affairs of the entire United States...

...The wisest, such as Crane, kept silent...

...It required the full exposure of the New Haven merger to furnish the clear indication that the railroad bill drafted by Wickersham will strengthen and supplement iniquities already consummated and make possible more of the same kind...

...We think the well-informed and honest members of the Republican party throughout the nation pretty generally placed the right estimate upon the Wickersham speech...

...And it was in many ways the most scathing arraignment of a cabinet officer ever delivered in Congress...

...and if that merger, criminal under a federal act, had been attacked by Roosevelt and a vigorous prosecution conducted for eleven months...

...But those in charge of the government's suit in New England kept right on with their work, and the record showed an application by the United States district attorney to have the case set for trial at an early date, just one day before Wickersham ordered that the suit be discontinued...

...To be a Republican it is not essential to give blind obedience to Guggenheim and Ballinger...

...President, men who have grown gray fighting the battles of the Republican party are not obliged to have their Republicanism certified by an attorney general who, until recently, was known to the public chiefly as attorney far the big business and financial interests of New York...

...It had required many weeks of investigation and study...

...No speeches by any cabinet officer or any President can alter the standard of party loyalty from the one which Senator La Follette thus describes: "Yes, Mr...

...It was a speech that stung and burned...

...FOE MANY weeks the cabinet and congressional representatives of Privilege have sought to make support of the railroad bill drawn by Attorney General Wickersham the final test of Republicanism...

...He showed from the court's record how the action was pushed with energy and obvious sincerity, and how the government had won every point upon which the court had been called to rule...

...He showed how the railroads were resisting and fighting right up to the moment of Roosevelt's retirement...

...It was a reply to Wickersham's Chicago oration only by a coincidence...

...It held in angry attention even the Wall street senators whose conception of senatorial courtesy is to attempt to insult La Follette by leaving the chamber when he rises to speak...

...Wise legislation, embodying no sudden impulse, but matured views expressed in party council, is pressed for enactment...

...After detailing the history of the New York, New Haven and Hartford's absorption of all the transportation lines in New England, an absorption effected by the agents of Morgan and Rockefeller, Senator La Follette described the action of the Government to force a dissolution, begun at the direction of President Roosevelt...

...President, if we pause to inquire, if we are not ready, convinced beforehand, to vote for and pass this legislation without investigation of the conditions with which it deals, without any knowledge of its effect in application, without even being informed of the reasons which controlled in framing it, we are accused of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" denounced by the attorney general as traitors to the Republican party, and threatened with the displeasure of the administration...

...He took no trouble to ascertain whether the law was being violated, but dismissed the case upon reasons so flimsy that they could not appear sufficient to any man not seeking to perform service for the railroads...

...He did not attempt to verify the assertions of the railroad attorneys, which he afterward quoted in defense of his action...

...For failure to give blind, unquestioning adherence to such a treacherous measure, unbettered and unaltered, this administration avows its willingness to drive from it the able and honest Republicans who are most sincerely eager to advance legislation really embodying the plans of the President...

...Its power lay in the speaker's marvelously thorough research and grasp of facts and mastery of details, which he marshaled with cumulative weight and damning logic...

...And .his was not because of its impressive phrasing or the force of its rhetoric...

...Republicanism means more than the will and profit of morgan and Rockefeller...

...But it was a crushing reply in that it was a merciless exposure of Wickersham's official conduct since he has been a member of the Taft administration...

...And this handiwork of Wickersham is the thing which President Taft would exalt into an article of party faith...