THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Burke's Record—By Himself SOUTH DAKOTA is a new and not very populous state. But it is prosperous and growing. Also it is progressive, politically as well as...
...Nor does he mention his vote to table the Bristow report, on official wrongdoing in the Postoffice Department...
...Nor does Burke, in his appeal for reelection, call attention to his vote in the 59th Congress to preserve the "cinch" of the Steel Trust on the Treasury and the Navy Departments by defeating an appropriation in the naval appropriation bill to equip a foundry at the naval gun factory at Washington, to enable the Government to protect itself from the arbitrary charges and practices of the Trust in furnishing gun castings to the Department...
...Burke says that further tariff revision "ought not to be until after opportunity for the present law to be tested...
...But his votes are spread large on the pages of the Congressional Record...
...So he forestalls the issue...
...Burke has continued conspicuous as a member of the "Stalwart" or reactionary faction of the Republican party in South Dakota...
...His declaration means that if the Cannon machine can get the caucus endorsement of Cannon for Speaker, Burke will vote for him...
...Burke would profit by avoiding their example...
...that he voted against a motion to recommit the bill with instructions to place trust-controlled products on the free list...
...In Burke's record, diluted and expurgated by Burke, we find no reference to his loyalty, disclosed by the Congressional Record, to Cannon and Cannonism when he returned to Congress, after two years' absence, for the tariff session...
...that on eighteen roll calls out of twenty-four he voted with Payne, and that some of his six votes against Payne were for duties higher than Payne recommended...
...Nor does he direct attention to his record in the 59th Congress on the bill to promote the safety of employees and travelers upon railroads by limiting the hours of service of train operatives...
...authorized version by himself...
...He does not call attention to his votes for Cannon and for Cannonism in the election of the Speaker and the fight for revision of the rules...
...how well he pleased them during the tariff session...
...Can it be that Burke fears that a disclosure of his record on the tariff would be received with less approval by the voters in South Dakota than by the leaders of the Cannon-System machine in Washington...
...In evidence of his loyalty to the Roosevelt policies and of his adherence to the progressive sentiments of his constituency, Burke points to his support of the so-called Hepburn Rate Bill of the 59th Congress...
...When it passed the House again in the form of a conference report, only 4 out of the entire membership of the House voted against it...
...His best remembered services in this position were those of errand boy and go-between for the Kittredge machine, which represented then, as now, the System interests in the politics of the state...
...He does not need to...
...Burke's record by himself proceeds upon a tacit acknowledgment of the predominant progressive sentiment of his constituency...
...It is even true that he spoke in favor of the Townsend bill that preceded it, joining in the System clack that there is no complaint of excessive rates but only of railroad discrimination...
...It means, if it means anything, that Burke will vote for Cannon, as he has on every occasion that has offered while Burke has been a member of Congress...
...He knows he will have to meet his record in this campaign...
...One half of the representation in congress that belongs to South Dakota is appropriated by one Charles H. Burke to Cannonism and the System...
...This is as fair a statement of the noncommittal declaration in his appeal for votes as can be put in definite or tangible terms...
...He does not explain that he got no further from orthodox stand-patism in the tariff revision than to vote for Cannon's man Taw-ney's amendments to the lumber schedule...
...By piecing together half truths dealing with parts of his legislative record, burke makes up an account calculated to appeal favorably to that sentiment...
...After two years, Burke returned as a member of the present Congress...
...Moreover, those who have expressed themselves appear to be of the opinion that a decade or two will be required for a proper test of the lav...
...At best, South Dakota could have two Representatives in Congress...
...Charles H. Burke, his Record, duly pruned, expurgated, and diluted to suit (as he hopes) the tastes of a progressive electorate...
...Not if Aldrich, Cannon, Payne, and Dalzell, with the help of their Burkes, Tawneys, Hulls, Smiths, Kennedys and the rest can prevent it...
...Burke's record, by himself, does not tell that he voted for that motion, but the official Record of Congress does...
...He makes no appeal to the "Stalwarts," the reactionaries of the Kittredge-System machine...
...Also he is shrewd, in a small way...
...When the Hepburn bill passed the House Burke voted for it, as did also Cannon, Dalzell, Payne, et al Out of nearly 400 members of the House only 7 voted against it...
...Why, he even voted to maintain automobiles for Speaker Cannon and Vice-President Sherman at public expense...
...Burke's record, by himself, does not tell the people of South Dakota that he voted for these measures...
...That is, he supported it as the Cannon-System machine of the House supported it...
...that he voted for the Payne Bill when it passed the House, and for the worse Payne-Aldrich conference bill on final passage...
...Craftily also he omits reference to his record during his first term in Congress on the Ridgeley Labor Bill...
...After serving in Congress four terms, Burke was defeated by a progressive Republican, Philo Hall, who voted for the people in Congress...
...This bill passed the House by a vote of 241 to 17...
...Also, his influence and support have been always available to the Kittredge-System machine in its fight to prevent progressive legislation and to protect entrenched Privilege in South Dakota, just as they have been always at the command of the Cannon-System machine to promote legislation to exploit the people for the Interests at Washington...
...Burke's record, by himself, keeps in the background his vote, so conspicuous in the official Congressional Record, in the 58th Congress, to give the American shipping interests, over the protests of the Secretary of War and at a cost of millions to the people, a monopoly of all ocean transportation of government supplies, and in the 59th Congress, on roll call after roll call, to give millions of the people's money in direct subsidies to the shipping interests...
...Perhaps it was lawful for Congress to vote itself a "rake-off" of $190,000 in the name of mileage, though they could as justly have called it clerk-hire or stationery allowance or anything else...
...Burke's record, by himself, is likewise silent on his vote in the 57th Congress to perpetuate the graft of the asphalt crowd in the asphalt and gilsonite lands of the Uintah Indian reservation...
...He voted to retain to the Speaker the power to "pack" the Ballinger-Pinchot investigating committee, but Burke's record by Burke ignores this vote...
...It means, if it means anything, that Burke, if reelected, will continue in the future as in the past a "me too" System Congressman, supporting in every way within his power the efforts of the House machine to preserve intact the Cannon rules of the House...
...But Burke's record, by himself, is more diplomatic because of its entire omission of some chapters of his real record than because of the "slick" fashion in which the chapters referred to are set forth to appeal to a progressive electorate...
...The Republican electors of South Dakota, in common with the gTeat majority of Republican electors everywhere, repudiate the Payne-Cannon-Adrich upward tariff revision...
...In the same light, Burke seeks to make political capital out of his support of the Pure Food legislation...
...He does not, however, call attention to the fact that the distinctive feature of the Elkins' "Anti-Rebate law," so called, was that it abrogated the imprisonment penalty for rbbaters and that afterwards, when it was learned that this legislation instead of prohibiting, made rebating easy and comparatively safe, the Senate in the Hepburn bill restored the imprisonment penalty...
...All the members of the Cannon-System machine, including Burke, voted for it, excepting Cannon himself, who is recorded as not voting...
...Nor does Burke proclaim to the people of South Dakota that by the opening of the 58th Congress he had so far ingratiated himself with the Cannon machine that he was elevated to a position on the important Committee on Interstate Commerce...
...Burke dwells at length on his support of railroad safety appliance, liability and similar legislation, which support was, in most cases at least, of about the same character...
...The bib to create the Department of Commerce and Labor, to which he refers in his appeal lor votes, had a similar history and Burke's support of that measure was of the same character...
...Burke does not proclaim to the people of South Dakota his votes on this measure against their interests and in favor of the railroads and express companies...
...But he recognizes the progressive sentiment of South Dakota in favor of a tariff commission, by saying that the new tariff law "contains a provision for a board or tariff commission to collect detailed information that will be of great value in enacting tariff legislation...
...But the Congressional Record does tell...
...But in that long and eventful struggle of the present session in which progressive amendments to the House rules were forced upon the House machine, and in which Cannon himself was all but deposed from the House Czarship, BURKE STOOD FAITHFULLY BY, DAY AND NIGHT, AND, IN THAT DESPERATE CRISIS OF CANNON AND CANNONISM, RECORDED HIMSELF ON EVERY ONE OF FIFTEEN ROLL CALLS ALWAYS AND WITH UNSWERVING FIDELITY FOR CANNON, CANNONISM AND THE SYSTEM...
...He seeks, too, to make political capital out of his support of the Elkins' "Anti-Rebate law," and of the resolution to have the Interstate Commerce Commission investigate discriminations by the rail* roads in the upbuilding of monopolies in coal and oil...
...Nor does he tell that he voted against a substitute measure to relieve the people of South Dakota and of the other States of seventy million dollars annual taxation on necessaries and to provide for an income tax...
...Yes, Burke supported the railroad bill...
...He is now a candidate for reelection, which, when you consider that Burke stands for about everything in government and legislation that the gTeat body of the Republicans of South Dakota are against, seems effrontery enough...
...He saves them that trouble...
...Burke, for some reason, omits to tell his constituents how well he "stands in" with Cannon and the House "leaders...
...But the Record shows that he voted with the Cannon machine to destroy this bill by so amending it that it would be incapable of enforcement...
...Burke was transferred to a seat in Congress in 1899, and his influence and importance were ihereby enhanced...
...that he voted even for the final additional million for the railroads, against which even Cannon protested...
...If it does, Burke should point out that provision...
...He issues it to them—Hon...
...No, dear reader, the tariff will not be revised until "after opportunity for the present law to be tested...
...At present, which is not at best, it has not...
...It is true that Burke supported the rate bill...
...Now, the small shrewdness of Burke's game lies in the fact that Burke's record by himself will reach and be accepted by many progressive Republicans of South Dakota, who have no means of investigating it from official sources and to whom its superficial hypocricy may never be exposed...
...For Burks does not invite his constituency to investigate his record through official sources...
...They know where Burke stands, and they are for him...
...So say the stand-patters all...
...It is true also that the cannon-System machine of the House, forced by Roosevelt, supported by an insistent public sentiment, conceded so much of railroad reform and railroad regulation as the Hepburn bill embodied...
...Also it is progressive, politically as well as industrially...
...Burke began his legislative career in South Dakota, where he served in the State legislature from 1894 to 1898...
...He neglects to mention that, although he had been absent for two years, in the brief tariff session he so well satisfied them that he was the same "reliable" Burke, who had served the System machine faithfully in the past, that at the close of the session, when the time came to "reward the faithful," he was appointed to the Chairmanship of the important Committee on Indian Affairs, which had become vacant by the transfer of Sherman to the Vice-Presidency...
...In his appeal to these electors Burke avoids the tariff revision proper...
...Burke, in his record by himself, calls no attention to his...
...Other Cannon Congressmen have made the political mistake of bragging to progressive voters of their preferment by Cannon—and have been defeated for reelection...
...On the issue of Cannonism and Cannon, Burke willl misrepresent his constituency in the future, if reelected, as in the past...
...Not Burke...
...In Burke's record, by himself, no reference is made to the Payne War Revenue legislation of the same session...
...As the desperate game of a politician this has its points...
...Burke's record, by himself, does not mention the House Rules or Cannon...
...Nor does Burke's record, by himself, unlike the Record of Congress, disclose how well he has striven since to deserve his Cannon favors...
...Burke's record, by himself, is silent, too, upon his part in voting for the great Union Station grab of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Washington,—the McMillan Bill of the 56th Congress, giving the railroads nearly three million dollars in public lands, and the Union Station Bill of the following Congress, giving the railroads $3,256,778 in land, approaches and a plaza to the Union Station to cost $1,770,000, to be built and maintained by the Government for all time, the benefit of an expenditure for a bridge across the Potomac River, to cost a million dollars, and in money, first, two million and, afterwards, three million dollars...
...But was it honest...
...vote in the 58th Congress, as recorded in the official Record, to perpetuate the "special facilities" graft of $170,000 a year for the railroads in the postoffice appropriation bill—an appropriation which the Postoffice Department had consistently refused to recommend or endorse...
...He appeals to South Dakota on his record...
...Craftily Burke appeals to the organized railroad employees of South Dakota on his votes in favor of safety appliance and employers' liability legislation...
...He does not tell how Littlefield eviscerated that bill, and how a motion was made in the House to suspend the rules and shove the bill through without opportunity for amendment, in a form designed to defeat the wishes and interests of labor...
...The silence of Burke's record, by Burke, upon the Congressional "mileage grab" of the 68th Congress gives added significance to the roll call in the official Record, wherein Burke is shown voting for a scheme put through the House on the night of March 1, 1905, to allow members of Congress to "dip into the Treasury" for mileage not traveled from Washington to their homes and return, at the rate of 20 cents a mile both ways...
Vol. 2 • May 1910 • No. 18
