THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Carrying the People'* Messages BACK in 1878, the six little Carys of Milwaukee, were left orphans and homeless. "Billy," the oldeBt, was thirteen, a sturdy...
...System "leaders" were disappointed in Cary...
...They know better now...
...Cary came back to the Sixty-First Congress with a gratifying indorsement from the people and renewed determination to deliver their message and with more messages to deliver...
...Cannon receipted for the message by appointing Cary on the Committee on Ventilation and Accbustics, which never meets, and by giving him an obscure place at the foot of the House Committee on the District of Columbia, which has jurisdiction only of matters pertaining to the government of the District of Columbia...
...gary has a fight on his hands...
...They picked Cary...
...Cary's district was being misrepresented in Congress by a stagnant Stalwart, servitor of Cannonism...
...And he made it ring...
...His message for protection of the public interest in telegraph and telephone business was answered in the railroad legislation by a provision in the railroad bill, now a law, placing telegraph and telephone companies under the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission...
...They have learned that reformers sometimes smile and that behind the smile there can still be serious purpose and—to Interests that would control Government against the welfare of the people—even sinister purpose...
...No Interest put him there, and no Interest controlled him after he got there...
...In the last session, Cary is found on hand at every crisis,— hustling,—smiling,—making good...
...And he did more than ask...
...and they followed this by electing him with a good margin in a close district—to carry their messages to Congress...
...Meanwhile, the issue of Government by the System against...
...Defying a powerful System Interest, in an able speech he exposed the frauds practiced by the telegraph companies upon their patrons and the public in the sending by mail of messages which they were paid to send by wire and demanded that a law be passed requiring telegraph companies to place on their messages the time of filing and delivery, just as the government does on letters...
...As Sheriff, he distanced the crooks and the grafters by a better margin—a margin that never failed, When Cary "landed his man," the man stayed "landed.'.' And Caby continued to hustle and smile and make good...
...As an alderman in Milwaukee, Cary had learned something of municipal affairs and of the ways of public service corporations...
...He demanded an investigation of these practices that they might be made a matter of public record and the basis of legislation to prevent them in the future...
...They thought that it would be easy to "get" a "good fellow...
...At the end of his first term, the people sent him back with ,inf|f messages of the same kind...
...And he carried their messages and delivered them with despatch and in unmistakable terms to cannon and the System machine of the House...
...and to the party leaders and the party machine, if at all, afterwards...
...But in the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, there was no Cary and the bill failed...
...He rather likes them...
...He delivered the people's message in the tariff session for free lumber and free hides and free oil, and in a vote against the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill on final passage...
...Again he came back at the System with the message demanding government ownership of the telegraph and telephone companies...
...and he took it...
...Even here, Cary delivered the message of the people—a message of honest, decent government FOR THE disfranchised, corporation-ridden PEOPLE of THE DISTRICT of Columbia...
...In season and out of season the message rang true against measures to promote the graft of the public utilities and to favor measures to give the people of the District of Columbia reasonable service for a reasonable charge...
...he hustled around and found out and then he made good...
...And he made the message heard...
...They disliked the messages and, by the same token, they disliked the messenger —as much as anybody can dislike a messenger who smiley and hustles and makes good...
...Always his aim was service—the best service...
...The first use to which the people of the fourth district put this new power was the nomination of Cary on the Republican ticket over the Stalwart incumbent...
...Cary's message to the District Committee was unwelcome enough, but Gary was there to deliver it...
...He got himself liked and, naturally, he made good...
...In politics he was always a Republican and for Republicans...
...He delivered another message from the people for the reform of the House rules in voting against allowing Speaker Cannon to appoint the Bal-liNGER-Pinchot Investigating Committee and in favor of the election of that Committee by the House...
...He' delivered another message in a vote for the Clark resolution revising the House rules and another message in a vote against the Fitzgerald subterfuge for rule reform...
...In office he was alwayB a public servant and for public interests...
...He knew the people's messages were not being delivered in Washington...
...He went on into the tariff session delivering the people's message, voting against the Dalzell special order, the purpose of which was to prevent the House from revising the Tariff (except as to five schedules,) in accordance with the platform pledge of the Republican party...
...They know now that Cary is an Insurgent of the Wisconsin bred-in-the-bone type—the type that does not quit and cannot be "got...
...With Alderman Cary, it never was an argument for a bad measure that it was a Republican measure, nor against a good measure that it was a Democratic measure...
...To Cannon and the System...
...Caky said "It's a man's job...
...He will fight,—hustling, smiling,—and he should make good...
...For, "Billy" was still carrying messages—the people's messages...
...The Progressive movement in Wisconsin had given the people a system of direct primaries which included the power to nominate by direct ballot their candidates for Congress...
...Always his method was Hustle, Smile, MAKE GOOD...
...At eighteen, he became a telegraph operator...
...taejj were for most part unwelcome messages...
...I will take it...
...He learned to hustle...
...Cary was one of those who saw and understood...
...Unable to "convert" the district, unable to "fix" the messenger, the System plans to waylay him...
...He had had his best efforts to give the public good service as a telegraph manager defeated by the fraudulent and sometimes unlawful practices of the companies in the conduct of business...
...When the resolution was before the House to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to forfeit the California-Oregon Railroad land grant, the railroad having violated the terms of the grant, Cary supported the recommendation of President Roosevelt against the insistence of the System henchmen of the House and voted against the Fordney Amendment, which sought to protect as "innocent purchasers," timber syndicates to whom the railroad had transferred the disputed lands...
...One important bill for better and cheaper gas in the District of Columbia was forced through the House as the result of Cary's fight in the Committee...
...And he has kept on making good in this same way ever since...
...In the election, Cary distanced the ticket by some three thousand votes...
...He began by voting against the re-adoption of the Cannon rules...
...Other bills to facilitate public plunder by the District utilities encountered Cary and his message in the House Committee...
...In those days there was plenty of grafting in the conduct of the public business of Milwaukee County...
...He backed this vote up in a speech in which he declared that the bill "is a deliberate evasion of Republican pledges that tariff duties should be materially decreased...
...The people had more messages and they needed a messenger they could trust...
...But Cary had delivered unwelcome messages before, and he was not daunted...
...With the support of one vigorous, independent newspaper in the District of Columbia, he made it heard...
...It became important to have a Sheriff who recognized responsibility to the public interest first...
...He went on in the same old way, hustling, smiling, making good—for tile people...
...In his experience with the telegraph company, he had learned that telegraph and telephone companies exert improper influence over public offcials by giving them franks for the sending of free messages and he introduced a bill to prohibit this...
...At nineteen he was father and mother and home-maker for all of the little Carys...
...Later the people of his ward elected "Billy" to the city council...
...They know, too, that Cary's district will send more messages distasteful to perverters of honest Government...
...He asked, is the measure good or is it bad—for the people...
...He introduced a bill for government ownership of telegraphs...
...In the epoch-marking struggle of last March to make the House government representative of public will, Cary was on hand at every Roll Call delivering the message of the people—that legislation in the House of Representatives should be controlled by the people's representatives in the public interest, voting for the NORRIS resolution and to oust Cannon from the Speakership, In the fight on the railroad bill, Cary was there with his message, supporting progressive amendments to strengthen the bill and opposing the railroad jokers and schemes under cover of progressive legislation to authorize railroad consolidation and monopoly and the watering of railroad capital...
...Government by the People was being made definite in the public mind in Wisconsin...
...There was no loitering by the way either in winning the office for the people or in serving the people when the office was won...
...He delivered a second message in a vote against Cannon for Speaker...
...Billy" got a job carrying message* for the telegraph company and when he carried messages, his feet did not drag...
...And Cary fought until his message was heard and the bills could not be passed...
...The Cannon machine made a mistake when it sought to "shelve" Cary in an obscure place on the Committee on the District of Columbia...
...Billy," the oldeBt, was thirteen, a sturdy little fellow, independent, determined and ever-smiling...
...He had seen enough of the telegraph business to lead him to believe that it ought not to be in the hands of private monopoly...
...He delivered again the message of the people in joining in the Insurgent resolution of the 60th Congress, for rule reform in the House...
...For two years, he hustled and smiled and made good...
...Cary delivered his first message from the people of the Fourth Wisconsin District to Cannon and the House machine on the opening of the Sixty-first Congress by refusing to vote for Dalzell's motion for the adoption of .the old rules...
...He went on delivering the people's messages, some of them in the form of bills...
...But he has had them before...
...In time he became manager of the telegraph office...
...In the District of Columbia, he found that the gas, lighting and street railroad companies, small but highly favored System Interests, abetted by Congress were piling up millions of profit through the medium of excessive charges for poor public service...
...He found that the Steel Trust was outrageously imposing upon the government in the furnishing of gun castings for the naval" gun foundry at Washington, He introduced a bill and made a speech demanding an appropriation for the establishment of a government gun foundry at the Washington navy yard...
...They were advised that Cary was a "good fellow...
...When the organization brought forward in the House in the Sixtieth Congress the bill for Ocean Mail Subsidies, Cary was on hand and delivered his message from the people against the bill...
Vol. 2 • August 1910 • No. 32
