EDITORIALS
Melancholy Days WE SOMETIMES find it profitable to read a little circular that is issued monthly by the National City Bank of New York, the head of Standard Oil's great and dominating- financial...
...Lincoln Steffens, and others, have described its manifestations...
...We now know what this disease is...
...Louis, bribery in San Francisco, bribery in Albany, bribery in Pittsburg;—now it is bribery in Illinois...
...Taft's O. K. placed on a fat contract with the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian tribes by which he becomes their special counsel at Washington...
...a * • Political Ague A"GETTING SICK" epidemic has seized the "regulars" in Congress...
...It has an unaccustomed, doleful tone—this May circular...
...No man In llf to g-overn erent societies who heattntea ahout dla-oblielns: the few who have acceaa to htm, for the sake of the many whom he will never see.'*—Lord Bfacanlar...
...Carrying out the Roosevelt Policies WHEN Mr...
...buy it...
...Legislation that the System wants passed, per program, is made the subject of consideration, scrutiny, and discussion in both Houses...
...And when it is made plain to the voters tha* commercialized politics means dishonest politics, then they will take government out of the hands of the business interests...
...He is to get $17,000 per annum...
...This unwonted mood is induced by the condition of affairs in Congress, The state of things at Washington is plainly unsatisfactory to the Standard Oil and the System...
...But for a young lawyer, the loss of all his accumulated experience and the benefit of his acquaintance will doubtless teach him that there is a God in Israel...
...The Senate is not running on its accustomed ALDRiCH-made schedule...
...control in both houses have been disrupted, so that it is no longer possible to reach agreements as to what shall and what shall not be drane, and to fix an approximate time for final adjournment...
...Insurgency is rife in both branches...
...His personal honor is involved, but more than this is involved the good name of a great commonwealth and the integrity of its legislature...
...The labors of this connection are not so arduous as to interfere with his law practice in New York...
...Does a trust want the tariff boosted skyward...
...It seems that the political atmosphere this spring is such as to give Cannonism and Aldrichism several varieties of fever and chills...
...What is the System to do, if this state of affairs is long protracted, for a "straight tip" on legislation...
...Such place will be high and enduring...
...That is, he was not permitted to resign...
...If the exposure of political corruption has any good purpose at all, it is that of making further corruption impossible...
...Not as warrior nor statesman, but as his land's greatest democrat of the time will be his distinction...
...He also opened a law office...
...He was neatly excised from the payroll, the place cauterized and purged of the bacillus of insubordination...
...Enough has been brought out thus far to show beyond question that the baleful shadow of the money power was cast over the Illinois legislature at the last session...
...What indeed...
...It is a picture of Mr...
...Whether or not Senator Lorimer owes his election to this influence, as the sworn confessions of legislators would indicate, is a matter to be determined by the further process of the law...
...The Roosevelt policy of the "square deal" is thus beautifully exemplified...
...In throwing light upon this, Senator Lorimer should be the first to lend his assistance to the grand jury...
...Then buy it from the men whom the people have entrusted with custody of public rights...
...And the House is likewise uncertain in its movements...
...Taft came into power, Mr...
...Money must be spent that more money may be earned...
...or one must believe, not precisely that the world is good, but that it is made to become good.—Jules Lemaitre...
...Within a week after the Chicago Tribune uncovered this mess in Illinois, three members of the legislature confessed to the grand jury that they received part of the bribe money said to have been used to buy Democratic votes to elect Lorimfk to the Senate...
...Chapter III is brief...
...Says the Standard Oil circular: "The old centers of...
...He is the person who is said to have represented Mr, Hitchcock in the effort to get the Oregon legislature to commit the perfidy of electing Fulton to the Senate instead of Chamberlain, which episode was adverted to in the second number of La Follette's under the heading "A Grave Aspersion...
...Chapter IV is still briefer...
...He was not allowed to make a living that way in Washington, D. C. It is said that the presidential ire was hot, and the presidential language Cannonian as the matter was so ordered...
...In a sense, it is an official reflector of System sentiment—especially Standard Oil sentiment...
...With this parallel between these two offenders and their downward road to ruin, endeth Chapter II...
...Judge Lindsey in his book, "The Beast," diagnoses this national ailment...
...Melancholy Days WE SOMETIMES find it profitable to read a little circular that is issued monthly by the National City Bank of New York, the head of Standard Oil's great and dominating- financial system...
...The May number of this circular is just received...
...As a rash appearing upon the skin indicates an unhealthy condition within...
...Washington dispatches of May 1 state that Mr...
...He knew the Department ropes, and he thought he could make a living by practicing before the land office...
...He was mixed up in the Glavis matter...
...So does William Allen White in "A Certain Rich Man...
...At this writing more confessions are officially predicted...
...Its remedy is democracy—more democracy—real democracy...
...flTo be good, one must believe at least a little in the good...
...McHarg was appointed Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor...
...It is his duty to himself, to the United States Senate and to the people of Illinois to insist upon a thorough-going investigation...
...To err is human, to forgive divine...
...He was a friend of Richard Achilles Ballinger...
...Ormsby McHarg has had Mr...
...This ends Chapter I. Chapter II deals with the insurrection and insubordination of Albert C. Shaw, during the Roosevelt regime one of the legal advisers of the Forest Service...
...He went to New York and opened a law office...
...Scarcely had the news been given out that Senators Aldrich and Hale would retire, than another report appeared in the press that th« Pennsylvania standpat Congressmen, Cooper, Hupp and Palmes, have "all discovered unfavorable symptoms" and decided not to run again...
...Mr...
...Shaw still skulking from the presidential wrath in the tall grass...
...He boiled over at the first mutterings of the Pinchot-Ballinger tempest, and walked into the limelight foaming at the mouth with denunciation of the Roosevelt conservation policy...
...We have no Siberia for political offenders...
...Shaw is said to have fled to the wilds of Spokane or Portland or some other place far from the White House, where, in the obscurity that befits his crime, he will try to live it down...
...If anything is needed for Business—men, coal, railroads, franchises, laws, what not...
...There is no man now, in either senate or house, who can predict safely the form in which any given bill will be passed, or the time at which it will go through...
...Lorimer's Duty BRIBERY in St...
...Bjornson never held public office nor received any titles...
...so these disclosures of civic corruption bespeak the disease that infests the body politic...
...Thus does the disease manifest itself...
...It appears when government is contaminated with the virus of Big Business...
...It is an enviable immortality...
...Measures of legislation, of which the commerce court bill is "First, both in point of urgency and importance"—says Standard Oil—are in the very doldrums of stagnation and disquieting uncertainty...
...Ormsby Mc-Harg came also...
...Then send its man Friday to Congress to vote with the men Fridays of the other, trusts,—pave his way to the Capitol with gold...
...Sometimes, as in the case of the postal savings bank bill, it is the only source of light upon the real System purposes that are hidden in the forms of Congressional legislation...
...The people of Illinois should not lose sight of this...
...But he found the way to a livelihood there barred by the President...
...He refused both to be free, yet though he wielded no temporal power his achievement gave vital exemplification to the dream attained by so few, "Let me make a nation's songs and I care not who makes its laws...
...He assisted Glavis in making the record against Ballinger...
...Does a street railway want an unlimited franchise...
...That is, he was permitted to resign promptly, and the President accepted his resignation...
...He was fired...
...Doctors of political science call it Special Privilege...
...These are doleful days...
...Bjornson's Enviable Fame HIS long and illustrious life ended, history will now give its final place to Bjornstjerne Bjornson...
...He, like Ormsby McHarg, was fired...
...There is a tone of finality and authoritativeness about this little circular...
...And that is the first step toward democracy...
Vol. 2 • May 1910 • No. 19
