WHAT INSURGENCY HAS DONE
What Insurgency Has Done New York Post gives Credit to Progressives for Awakening Senate and House ON APRIL 28 the New York Evening Post printed the following article, written by its Washington...
...The whole has had a salutary effect on the House itself...
...This move has acquainted the country with the weaknesses of proposed legislation, and has forced senators hitherto disposed to follow their leader blindly to come out of their position of irresponsibility and demonstrate their fitness to hold their jobs...
...Leslie M. Shaw says that the people of the South know nothing about political conditions...
...In that case the people of the South ought to be reasonably happy.—Chicago Record Herald...
...The House is showing signs of making of itself a really popular, representative, legislative body...
...They have gone further, and told the House, the Senate and the country why the legislation proposed by these leaders was not in harmony with the advanced thought of the day, and they have made their case so strong that outcroppings of insurgency in politics have already come to the surface in such states as Maine, Massachusetts and New York...
...No one will say, when this accounting is held, that the price of insurgency has not been a real boon to the country and the Senate...
...A probable definite accomplishment of the near future will be the passage by Congress of the appropriation of % million dollars for the tariff board, with power to use it for the purpose of laying the groundwork for a genuine, scientific revision of the tariff the next time that law is considered by Congress...
...This1 effectually clipped a goodly portion of the power of the speaker...
...The above list of actual accomplishments is a refutation of any such assertion...
...The removal of the Speaker of the House from the House rules committee, increasing the membership thereof to ten, and causing the election of its members by the House itself...
...If this idea is correct, separate schedules hereafter will be treated piecemeal, as the occasion demands, and those who believe in this system predict that this method of revision will enable tfas country to proceed without business disturbance and with its full measure of prosperity while the process of revision is in operation...
...Insurgency ai.d insurgents have had to withstand attack in that body in every particular comparable to that administered to Speaker Cannon...
...The most important accomplishments of the insurgents in Congress to date have been: "The forcing of the House 'organization' to adopt the Fitz-gerald rule for a calendar Wednesday...
...Over on the Senate side those senators who in the past have attached themselves to the Aldrich and Hale coat-tails are awakening to the fact that their individual responsibility for legislation is looming up on the horizon, and, like Halley's comet, is of great interest to their constituents...
...This possible accomplishment of insurgency is worth as much, if not more, than all other accomplishments put together, when realized...
...fllf the fate of Secretary Carpenter can be taken as a criterion, President Taft will not oust Secretary Ballinger, but instead will appoint him to be minister to Zanzibar.—Kansas City Star...
...Under the guise of senatorial dignity there has been a lot of loafing in the Senate in the past...
...While there has been complaint that the legislation desired by the administration has not been advanced as rapidly as it might have been, the fact remains that Congress has not been wholly wasting its time...
...The senatorial habit of sitting still and looking wise, and then following the leader, who does all the thinking, seems to the hopeful about to become a thing of the past...
...House and Senate More Effective IT IS a mistake to regard the achievements of insurgency in Congress, as some of the stand-pat leaders would have it, as wholly futile...
...The Right of Free Speech THE MOST positive accomplishment of the Senate insur-gents has been the establishment of the right of free critical speech on pending legislation, regardless of the wishes of the Senate leaders for silence...
...The fittest will survive, unless the states which send the dead timber to the Senate are so far behind the times as not to desire to keep pace with progress...
...They have done this by making it impossible for those they deemed bad leaders to lead...
...flThe railroads having conceded that the public has some rights in its own country and government, it is not impossible that the political Bosses may some day come to take nearly as liberal a view of what may be granted to the people.—New York Press...
...It is to be hoped that the political issues raised by the insurgency which will be considered in the coming campaign, will be presented to the electorate in so clear and concise a form that their full import may be understood and appreciated...
...No More Revision for the Interests "ASA RESULT of the insurgent fight against the last Tariff Bill, it is generally understood in Washington that this country has seen its last general revision of the tariff in the interest of the protected beneficiaries...
...The House and Senate have enacted more legislation this winter than at any previous session of Congress...
...Another positive accomplishment of the Senate insurgents has been the voluntary retirement of Senator Aldrich and Senator Hale, who foresaw that their leadership had become a thing of the past...
...The House and the Senate today are more effective legislative bodies as a result of the insurgent propaganda than they were on December 6, last, when this session of Congress began its work...
...Not Without a Struggle P ROGRESS of the House toward legislative salvation has not been without its vicissitude^, as the country well knows...
...The insurgents of both houses have encouraged individual knowledge among members where ignorance previously existed, and knowledge has, as history repeatedly shows, brought about an independence of action for the general good of all concerned...
...The outcome of the fall campaign will decide in a large measure the wish of the country in this respect...
...Its members are more alert and are better informed...
...That accomplishment alone would be worth the fight of the insurgents...
...A long step forward has been taken, but there remains yet to clinch what has been accomplished...
...What Insurgency Has Done New York Post gives Credit to Progressives for Awakening Senate and House ON APRIL 28 the New York Evening Post printed the following article, written by its Washington correspondent: "When Republican insurgents in the House and Senate come up for reelection next fall, and are asked what they have done for the cause of good government, they can truthfully reply that they have advanced individual responsibility for legislation in both branches of Congress...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 25
