THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Progressive Candidate—System Congressman IF PROOF were required of the righteousness of the progressive cause or of its strength among the people, no better...
...This assertion has reference to his opposition to a Senate Amendment to provide more frequent mail weighings...
...Stafford joined in the report of the Committee for the reduction of the duties...
...Stafford was made a member of the House Committee on postoffices in his first term in Congress...
...But it may also transpire that the voters of the Fifth District will learn before election that the bill reported by this Committee of which Stafford was a member was not the bill that Congress passed...
...Secured for Milwaukee, a light ship for harbor, $75,000...
...The only other occasion on which Stafford is on record on the question of Postal Savings Banks is found in the Record of the 58th Congress, Third Session, when Hitchcock of Nebraska was advocating Postal Savings Banks in a speeech in the House...
...During all the intervening time, the Record does not show that he ever initiated a protest in the House against the excessive pay to the railroads for carrying the mail on land, or to the shipping combines for carrying it on sea, that he ever protested in the House, except by a vote when the roll-call was forced by Congressmen alive to the public interest, against the indefensible "special facilities" subsidy...
...Led opposition that defeated ship subsidies, saving the Government $4,000,000 annually...
...and for Waukesha, a new post office site, $25,000...
...In the last session of Congress, was presented to Stafford the opportunity of his public career, an opportunity to prove his assumed title " Supporter of Progressive Legislation...
...Nor does the Record show Stafford joining in the protests against the practice of padding mailweights with empty mail bags...
...Having voted to tie his hands and the hands of the membership of the house so that they could not revise the tariff except as to five commodities, Stafford will now appeal to his constituents upon his efforts in tariff revision on the five excepted articles...
...The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Progressive Candidate—System Congressman IF PROOF were required of the righteousness of the progressive cause or of its strength among the people, no better proof could fee furnished than the vigor with which System-serving Congressmen in their campaigns for reelection are protesting their leyalty to progressive measures and progressive principles...
...In Wisconsin, the Congressman of Cannonism must carry the game of deception somewhat further than the campaign rostrum...
...La Follette's has told in detail the history of this legislation...
...Voted for co-employee Liability Bill...
...In the foregoing allegations, we are referred in five instances to the Congressional Record for verification...
...Tariff revision, real tariff revision, in the House depended upon giving to the membership of the House the opportunity to work its will upon the tariff schedules...
...At this point, Stafford's faith in the results of the "investigation" failed...
...He failed to record a vote against the South Dakota "enlarged homestead" land grabbing bill of the same Congress...
...The Conference Committee made it $3.75...
...Stafford announced boldly that he had saved the Government $3,000,000 annually by preventing the increase in mail pay to railroads...
...In the second session of the 59th Congress he voted against the people and for the Steel Trust, voted with Cannon, and Payne and Dalzell and their kind to defeat and did defeat an appropriation for the naval gun foundry at Washington to render the Government in some small measure independent of the extortions of the Steel Trust...
...Stafford's record there is one of clear and malignant opposition to the measure, a record made to please the System and to please the cannon-made Committee of which he was a newly-appointed member and which had smothered Postal Savings Bank legislation for a genera-tion of time...
...In all this time, Stafford had cast three votes against shipping subsidies and, although a member of the Postoffice Committee, year after year, he allowed the "special facilities" subsidy of the railway mail pay section of the Postoffice Bill to go unchallenged until a roll call was forced in the House and he was obliged to go on record against an indefensible graft...
...Though Stafford does not say and the Record does net show, up to that time that he did accomplish anything in the interests of tariff revision, nor the character of tariff revision, whether upward or downward, for which he labored...
...Possibly, too, the voters of the Fifth District may learn before the Primary to discriminate between Postal Savings Banks for the people and Postal Savings Banks for Wall Street...
...In the last session of Congress, the Progressives of the House made history in their fight on the Cannon rules...
...He failed even to record a vote against the infamous shipping bill of the 58th Congress, which proposed to give to the shipping combine a monopoly of the Government's ocean freights, in effect a subsidy of $10,000,000 a year...
...It may be that Stafford will be able to convince some people that he is entitled to their votes in the coming election because Cannon appointed him on the Committee oh Interstate Commerce which reported a Commerce Court Bill that gave little to the people and much to the railroads and to Wall Street...
...In the Progressive fight that was precipitated by the Norris resolution, in March, Stafford set his face against progress and cast his vote, roll call after roll call, throughout the long battle, for cannon, cannonism, and the system...
...This form of political fraud instead of "fooling the people," ought to defeat and will defeat for reelection many of these Congressmen who are Progressives for offices and Reactionaries in office...
...Possibly, they may learn that the bill reported from Stafford's Committee was the bill which was used to defeat a better bill for the people, the adoption of which was forced by Progressives in the Senate...
...Record, May 23, '08...
...It was only after the Cannon-Aldrich machine had discovered that a Postal Bank could be made to serve the interests of Wall Street and the System, by paving the way for the Central Bank, and after Aldrich and Cannon and the machine leaders in the House had concluded to be for a Postal Bank that Stafford became an advocate for this reform...
...In this session, Stafford had the distinction of being the only member of the Wisconsin delegation in the House to record his vote against the creation of a national forest reserve in the Southern Appalachian and White Mountains,—the key-stone measure of the Roosevelt program of progressive conservation legislation...
...Record, May 23, '08...
...Stafford never was for Postal Savings Banks until Cannon and the System were for Postal Savings Banks, And he never was for postal banks except the kind that Cannon and the Sytem were for...
...The Record shows that Stafford failed to protest against this procedure, and that on the roll call, he voted for the adoption of the Dalzell resolution...
...He must fix his record...
...These instances of Stafford championship of the people's cause take on an added significance when connected with the fact that within a week, on the 29th of May, to be exact, Congress adjourned and Stafford returned to his district to campaign for reelection...
...Supported Anti-Injunction legislation in conference of House of Representatives Republicans...
...In the same Congress, he voted again with Dalzell and Payne and Tawney and their kind for the steel trust scheme to incorporate a Ship Canal Company with a contemplated capitalization of $180,000,-000 without any adequate protection to the public interests involved...
...Through its Cannon organization in the House it designed to prevent the House from revising the tariff in the public interest...
...Four of these references are to May 22 and 23, 1908...
...During the five years in which Stafford should have been making a record on which to appeal for hi;.- reelection two years ago, he failed to champion the public interest or even to cast a vote on many measures which were before the House, and which he should have opposed to entitle him to lay claim to the title, "Supporter of Progressive Legislation...
...Dalzell reported from the Committee on Rules a resolution which confined tariff revision by the House of Representatives to just five out of thousands of commodities in the tariff schedules...
...Devious indeed are the ways of a me-too System Congressman who must seek his re-election by a progressive constituency...
...On those other things of which the people know less, but of which the Special Interests know more, Stafford has gone on record time and again against the public interest and in favor of those interests which maintain lobbies in Washington to look sharply after their welfare...
...While Chairman Mann of the Pulp and Paper Committee departed from the organization on the conference report, Stafford departed from Mann, and stood by the organization...
...But he fixed it a little and in the campaign made the most of that little...
...Tariff revision in the public interest depended upon the House...
...Constant advocate of tariff revision...
...Record, May 22, '08...
...Wisconsin has passed through a period of political warfare which has taught the people to look to the records of public officials for a test of their faithfulness to the public interests...
...But the System had other plans...
...Through all those years, Stafford's services for economy ran mainly to defending the inadequate pay of rural mail carriers, letter carriers, postoffice clerks, and to keeping down the salaries of underpaid school teachers in the District of Columbia...
...Last year, Congress met in special session to revise the tariff...
...Stafford was never heard in the House championing an honest computation of mail weights in place of the dishonest computation by which the Government was paying $6,000,000 a year more to the railroads than they earned...
...Record, April 6, '08...
...The House made the duty on print paper $2.00...
...He issued literature in which he announced that he had: "Saved the Government $3,000,000 annually in preventing increase in mail pay to railroads...
...To be sure, there is suggestion in Stafford's-announcement that he had given of his two terms and a half, covering a period of five years, more than the two Br three days specifically referred to in the service of the people...
...The adoption ef that resolution Fettled the fat...
...The Senate under its Aldrich organization is the citadel of protected Special Interests...
...It may be gathered, however, from the Record that other members of Congress were opposed to this scheme and there is just the barest possibility that it never would have passed the House even if Stafford had not suffered this sudden attack of economy in the matter of railway mail pay...
...The Record does show Stafford championing on the floor of the House an outrageous proposition for the renting of cancelling machines which the Government should own but which it rents for the benefit of a private monopoly...
...On this question, Stafford stood by Cannon and against the Progressives...
...Championed President Roosevelt's return to China of Indemnity Fund of $13,000,000...
...The support of the House Bill by Stafford is further evidence that this bill was not a bill for a Postal Savings Bank for the people...
...If Stafford's assertion is true, then the House organization, of which he is such a faithful disciple, would have approved this indefensible scheme had Stafford not turned the tide against it...
...As a "constant advocate of tariff revision" he might have done much and devoted much time...
...In the first session of the 60th Congress, Stafford joined hands with Cannon and Vreeland in the House, and Aldrich in the Senate to put through the so-called Emergency Currency Bill for Wall Street...
...Record, May 23, '08...
...Two years ago, Stafford was a bit tardy in his realization of the importance of fixing his record...
...of tariff revision so far as the House of Representatives was concerned, and settled it for Special Interests...
...Stafford announced himself as a "constant advocate of tariff revision...
...A few days ago, Stafford returned to his District and gave out an interview in which he expressed his gratification at the work of the session of Congress just closed, particularly congratulating himself on having been a member of the Committees which reported the Commerce Bill and the Postal Savings Bank Bill...
...that the bill which Congress passed is entitled to public approbation about in proportion as the Progressives in the Senate succeeded in eliminating from that bill and from the Senate bill their bad features...
...The Record does show Stafford championing in the House the interests of another monopoly in the Postoffice Bill, the monopoly that furnishes the pneumatic tube facilities for the distribution of mail in large cities, a service for which the government pays the monopoly the neat little sum of $17,000 for each mile of tube operated each year...
...The first successful assault on Cannonism was the taking from the Speaker of the power to appoint the Pinchot-Ballinger Investigating Committee...
...He must be a bit foresighted...
...and new life saving station, $25,000...
...No one realizes better these peculiarities of a trying situation than does Honorable William H. Stafford, who goes from the Fifth Congressional District of Wisconsin to represent Big Business and serve the Cannon machine in Congress...
...with whom loyalty to the public interests is the essence of advanced political propaganda during the campaigning, but with whom the same pronouncements become demagogism after the elections...
...Stafford was a member of the famous Mann Committee appointed to "investigate" the tariff on Wood Pulp and Print Paper, that is, the Committee was appointed to prevent any action affecting the tariff on Pulp and Paper until the general tariff revision...
...Always keen in defense of the report of the postoffice committee, when that Committee in the second session of the 59th Congress finally reported substantial reductions in railroad mail pay, Stafford contented himself with a weak defense of part only of the reductions recommended by the Committee and, when insurgent Bristol, of Kiiomhm, anil Standpatter AIdrich of The lntercontinental Rubber Co, finally before the bill was passed, the more important part of the reduction was compromised away, stafford acquiesced in the compromise...
...He failed to vote for a thorough investigation by a Board of Inquiry of the armor plate combine from which the Government is obliged to buy armor plate for battleships...
...Likewise the Record fails to disclose up to that time and since, that he accomplished anything as a supporter of progressive legislation...
...Supporter of Progressive legislation...
...Supported bill for publicity of campaign fund contributions...
...He failed to record a vote on the motion for "previous question" on the passage of the Aldrich Bank Deposits Bill of the 59th Congress, a motion made to cut off an amendment to require the favored National Banks to pay interest on deposits of Government money...
...He failed to record a vote on the amendment of the street railroad bill of the 59th Congress, providing for three-cent fares in the District of Columbia...
...new Appraiser's warehouse site, $50,000...
...It remained for the last week of the session, when Stafford was about to return to his District to campaign for reelection, for him to make a fight against an increase of railway mail pay—a fight for the people—a fight against a thing of straw...
...The- Senate made it $4.00...
Vol. 2 • August 1910 • No. 31
