EDITORIALS
Public Welfare vs. Special Privilege FOR TEN YEARS and more a fight has been waged in this country to restore true representative government. It has been a hard struggle. Special Privilege, in...
...He recognized the right of his employer to decide whom the paper should support...
...He had been given to understand that as editor he should be free, an<i he had been free to write his own convictions till this campaign came on...
...Perkins...
...While an editor who surrenders himself deserves reproof, and an editor who stands erect deserves no especial praise, yet isn't this incident worth recording in a world of weak men and of easy evasions...
...Self-government had become a mere shadow...
...I believe in the doctrine of party majorities applied to all popular assemblies...
...One incident of that campaign is worth telling...
...the control of thesa great business combinations over government must end if we are to have the kind of government Lincoln called "of the people, by the people and for the people...
...To undertake to give life and substance to it meant grappling with the most powerful forces in American life, the Special Interests...
...At the present time the lines are drawn more closely than ever before...
...I do not propose that the remaining years of my life, whether they be in public affairs or in my private business, shall be given up to a dull consent to the success of all these conspiracies, "which do not hesitate before our very eyes to use the lawmaking power of the United States to multiply their own wealth and to fill the market places with evidences of their avarice and of their greed...
...It is our form of government...
...The people have been informed more completely than ever before...
...Then the ways parted and he took the only road on which he could travel with his own regard...
...f'The things that make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and these basic likenesses if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less essential differences of race, language, creed and tradition...
...Shall we have i epresentative government in fact or only in name...
...It has been a winning fight...
...But, with Charles Edward Russell's articles of the System control of the press in mind, isn't it good to get this evidence of the independence that is to be found among those who do the writing for the daily press...
...Livy S. Richards, although he is a Republican, could not support Aldridge...
...It is not necessary for men to swallow every tariff law that is set before them or in conscience abandon the party...
...Havens, Democrat—to the credit of the voters in the district...
...Democrat, or whatever names may be selected to prejudice me in a Republican community...
...or shall the People rule...
...Although he controlled the Republican mtchine in a strong Republican district, he was ignominiousiy defeated by Mr...
...Little by little Public Welfare has been gaining in this long contest with Special Privilege...
...We quote a few extracts from these speeches that we wish might be memorized by every citizen...
...The Rochester Evening Times is a Republican paper...
...It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican or a good Democrat...
...Nor did he seek notoriety or martyrdom by ostentatiously rising up in rebellion...
...W. Aldridge, a discredited Republican member of the New York legislature, after his resignation sought vindication as a candidate for Congress in the district ably represented by the late Mr...
...Now he asks whether it is honest and means what it says, whether it will promote the public interest, weaken special privilege, and help to give every man a fair chance...
...There are others like it that have never been chronicled...
...Although he is dependent on his pen for a living, he did not take a vacation for a few weeks nor content himself with writing about the fundamental virtues or about foreign affairs...
...In common with good citizens everywhere, I share the universal disgust which has arisen on seeing the greatest executive departments, those departments which touch the business of the nation mest intimately, made a headquarters for the awkward squad of politics, bucket-shops for dealing in political futures upon margins calculated daily from the record of the yeas and nays...
...I accept it everywhere...
...and is a man to be derided and despised because he interposes in behalf of the public when he has no interest in it at all, and says, 'this ought not to be done, and by my vote it shall not be done?' By what grotesque standard of morality is the group of men that made that infamous threat, which the President says caused both houses of Congress to execute a corrupt bargain, by what alchemy of diseased morality do they become the nucleus around which the solidarity of a great political party is to be organized for the future, while men who stood for public rights and fought for them, and voted as they fought, are to be kicked out of the Republican party as unworthy of its membership or its fellowship...
...It cannot be done by calling me names, like free trader...
...Said Senator Dolliver: "It has become more and more obvious that new terms of fellowship in the Republican party have been prescribed, and that hereafter members of Congress are to be given a very narrow choice in the exercise of their representative functions— the choice of becoming either understudies or Ishmaelites...
...Ws are fallen upon curious times...
...The field is nation-wide...
...Least of all can it be done by taking from about my neck the millstone of political patronage through which even Presidents of the United States have more than once been drowned in the midst of the sea...
...Shall the Special Interests rule...
...This public opinion has forced upon the statute books of many cities, i-.iany states, and even the nation, laws to curtail the power of Business in Politics...
...Richards was able to escape...
...I fight for the Republican party and propose, with millions of other people, to do what I can to make it more than ever the servant of the great community which it has represented for so many years...
...Is a man who holds Congress up by a threat and wins Congress' vote on a bluff a patriot because he represents his own interests...
...The opposing forces are represented in Congress by the Regulars, on the one hand, and the Progressives on the other...
...For reasons upon which we have not facts enough to pass judgment, the owner of the Evening Times supported Aldridge...
...Comment on our part would be superfluous...
...For one I reject the terms, and while I hold a seat, however humble it may be, on this floor, I shall hold the purpose to contend for the absolute independence of those two great popular assemblies representing the legislative power of the American people...
...I have always supposed it to be my duty, when the city in which I live was boss ridden, to enter the arena and fight for the overthrow of a bad party leadership instead of acquiescing in it and afterward overthrow the party of which it was the only tangible expression...
...Both Senator Doixiver and Gifford Pinchot—the one on the floor of the Senate, the other before the Roosevelt Club of St...
...It is a great deliverance...
...Yet is the like of it very common...
...Differences of purpose and belief between political parties today are vastly less than the differences within the parties...
...It is going to be a very difficult thing to get me out of the old Republican party...
...Richards' case happens to have been given publicity...
...The vital separation is between the partisans of government by money for profit and the believers in government by men for human welfare...
...There never was a more faithful friend of the doctrine of majorities than I am...
...If those who were unable to vote to make the Republican support of the tariff act of 1909 unanimous have made any mistake, it is that we have remained silent too long, while an organized defamation of our political characters has been set on foot, proceeding from the highest public officers of the government, executive and legislative, and from a so-called 'campaign committee,' presided over by a multi-millionaire promoter of street car franchises, with a treasury rilled with rotten money, out of which is flowing a steady stream of campaign literature, vest pocket literature, much of it bearing the mark of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and a dull muddy stream of parasitic eloquence...
...The man in the street no longer asks about a measure or a policy merely whether it is good Republican or good Democratic doctrine...
...I have never advised anybody to vote against the party ticket simply because he did not like the boss...
...An Editor to Honor WE REPRINT the following from the World's Work for June...
...To quote in full the World's Work account of this incident: "G...
...The principle at stake is the same now as ten years ago...
...Direct nominations have come into use, lobbying has been shorn of its most vicious features, commission regulation is giving the people a fighting chance with the public service corporations, local machines have been broken and thrown on the scrr.p heap...
...And there are still others who are bound by circumstances to the thrall-dom that Mr...
...The great gulf of division which strikes across our whole people pays little heed to fading party lines, or to any distinction in name only...
...The President is in error...
...The editor, Mr...
...but he kept his self-respect by giving up his job...
...It cannot be done by lying about me, as those have done who said that I held a brief for foreign importers...
...Special Privilege, in politics for profits, had become firmly entrenched...
...This is not chronicled as an exceptional act...
...It is this: the country is now ruled by the Special Interests...
...Into the present conflict have come two champions of representative government with courageous and inspiring appeals to patriotism...
...Jane Addams in the American Magazine...
...Pinchot said: "The black shadow of party regularity as the supreme test in public affairs has passed away from the public mind...
...Through alniost a generation of undisturbed aggression, Big Business had secured complete control of the agencies of government...
...If it will not, it is bad, no matter who defends it...
...Out of this information, an intelligent, aggressive, earnest public opinion has arisen...
...If it will, it is good, no matter who proposed it...
...I am aware that it is sought to constrain independent expressions of opinion in these days by an appeal to the principle of majority government, a principle in accordance with which it is thought proper for individuals to surrender their own views and accept the views of a majority...
...When it is said that I betray my party, that I fight against the Republican party, I deny it...
...Paul—have given the same message to the country...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 25
