SHALL THE SPECIAL INTERESTS RULE?
Kittle, William
Shall the Special Interests Rule? By WILLIAM KITTLE ii. THE JOKE'S ON YOU. By Samuel Hopkins Adams in The American Macazinc for Mav. 1910. (ft r HAT IS A JOKER? It is the light-fingered art in...
...If the government were to guarantee such bonds by making them the foundation of its currency, it certainly was reasonable to investigate the value of the railroad property back of such bonds...
...But it was agreed that the bond feature should be dropped for the time and this of course would dispose of La Follette's amendment which had put such a sudden cramp in the Aldrich joker...
...It was defeated by the narrow margin of 35 votes to 31...
...When Senator Aldrich brought forward his Emergency Currency Bill with a joker clause making railroad bonds available as a basis for issuing currency and thus adding at once millions of dollars to the value of such bonds, Senator La Follette offered an amendment providing for the physical valuation of such railroads...
...That vote shows what the 31 Senators really wanted...
...The bill was then passed in the Senate without the bond feature and went to a conference with the House...
...Kittle will have more to tell about these "jokers" in legislation—-or "snakes...
...It is the light-fingered art in law-making...
...La Follette's amendment took all the laugh out of the Aldrich joker...
...The jokers came thick and fast...
...16" in the Payne-Aldrich tariff is such a joker...
...They did not dare openly to oppose such a reasonable amendment...
...This is the type of legislator who deals in jokers...
...He gets aboard the band wagon with a pious smirk when all underhanded and secret means to defeat it have failed...
...Goethals, Chairman and Chief Engineer of the Canal Commission, later testified before Congress that the Canal Commission had not recommended the purchase of those ships and further that the purchase price had been charged to the canal construction without any benefit to the canal...
...The conference committee solemnly agreed to disagree and reported a changling bill with the Aldrich bond joker restored...
...The Aldrich Senators rallied against this bill...
...Senator La Follette's "Hours of Labor" bill provided, as Mr...
...Almost invariably, when a joker is put through, the joke's on you...
...as they are now called at the national capital...
...Consternation in the Senate...
...Third...
...It is a little game which lightens the labor of the legislator by injecting amusement, glee and even hilarious laughter into the comedy of lawmaking...
...But whether they fail or succeed, so long as there remains in your halls eJ' legislation or on the high seats of your courts a single one of these dire humorists,—the Cannons, the Aldriehes, the Gallingers, the Vreelands, seeking in devious way of amendment and parliamentary byplay, to thwart your will and serve your enemies, just so LONG the joke's on you...
...the joker may be a scheme, game or trick where its complexity will prevent a clear explanation to the public...
...Organizations of railroad employes endorsed it...
...If you want to know the secret of t he power of this great trust, which has recently been caught red-handed in steal im from I'ncle Sam, don't miss this resume of Mr...
...Adams states, "that no railroad employee engaged in the operation of traffic, should work more than sixteen consecutive hours (with certain exceptions) or should resume duty after a trip of ten hours or more, without having had eight hours for rest...
...the joker may be concealed in the entire body of an amendment to a bill which has been strongly demanded by the public...
...Adams writes: "So goes the great game...
...Obviously it was to the interest and safety of the traveling public...
...the joker may be in one MJ word, as where a skillful legislator inserted a clause providing for the saJe of certain public property to the lowest bidder...
...A conference report cannot be amended...
...But the joker was placed in the law by this trick of legislative procedure and the railroad Senators were not obliged to go on record against the public interests by one of La Follette's roll calls...
...The joker is the trick by which the representative defeats the wishes of those who elected him...
...KD1TOU'S NOTE...
...These two were the property of Mr...
...That "Scholar in Politics," Henry Cabot Lodge, offered in the Senate the following amendment to the Sundry Civil Bill: "To enable the Secretary of War (Wm...
...Adams states, "The enjoyment of the mirth, how-ever, doesn't accrue to you, the public, but to your mis-representatives who have frustrated your will...
...Examples of the Joker THIRST...
...Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire brought forward the star joker amendment providing that the hours of labor should be limited, "except by unavoidable accident or act of God, or resulting from a cause not known to the carrier or its agent...
...During the last hours of the session, the bill was jammed through, although Senator La Follette heroically tried to defeat it in a nine teen-hour speech...
...H. Taft) to purchase for the Panama Railroad Company two steamships of American register, each to be of not less than 9,000 gross registered tonnage, and at a cost not to exceed $1,550,000...
...In this case, the joker amendment apparently perfects the bill and in reality emasculates or eviscerates it...
...The amendment was deliberately and skillfully designed by an avowed enemy of the bill to render it inoperative...
...He will describe the operations of the Sujjar Trust as told by Judson C. Welliver in three articles in !. iimpum's...
...Fifth...
...Fourth...
...This joker has been laid bare by several magazine articles which will be reviewed next week...
...In its simplest form, it con-WW sists in a word or clause, which introduced into t t proposed legislation, filches away from the public its power to establish such laws as it desires, either by emasculating an enactment or by perverting the essence and purpose of it...
...the joker may be a kind of sleight-of-hand performance in legislative procedure...
...This bill came from the conference committee to the Senate...
...Dutch Standard No...
...But the bill passed by a vote of 70 to 1. Mr...
...Adams aptly states: "There is a certain type of Senator who will not come out openly against a bill which has a strong backing of public sentiment...
...The railroad Senators rushed to its support...
...In the next issue of Ln Follette's, Mr...
...Welliver's notable articles...
...What the public wants—busy, careless, half-tolerant, half-cynical, three-fourths asleep public—must, if it be a matter of serious import to any one d a hundred powerful interests, run a formidable gauntlet of jokers...
...Lodge's friends and supporters, The Boston Steamship Company's 'Shawmut' and 'Tremont.'" $1,157,000 was the price paid for these two ships...
...Adams states: "In all the seas of all the world there were but two such ships available...
...It gives to the Sugar Trust a monopoly of the American market and costs the consumers at least $50,000,000 a year...
...The present New York State Public Service Commission was almost joked out of its rate-making power by a trick amendment limitf ing its authority to railroads whose annual income is more than ten per cent, on the capital annually expended...
...The 'safe and sane' Solons got together in hurried caucus upon the floor of the Senate, then and there...
...It may be in a comma, as where in a tariff clause providing for the free importation of fruit-plants, the dash was changed to a comma, "thereby admitting millions of oranges and lemons into the country, duty free, and costing the Treasury hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss of imposts...
...Second...
...the joker may be a skillfully drawn amendment to loot the Treasury...
...This bill was the subject of a long, strategic contest on the floor of the Senate and was twice narrowly saved from defeat...
...Senator Foraker of Ohio offered one which was promptly punctured...
...Fortunately, Governor Hughes detected the legerdemain and vetoed the bill...
...As Mr...
...There isn't a railroad in New York State which would not be exempt under this clause...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 23
