THE ROLL CALL

...What has happened here is but a reflex of what is bound to occur in other states, what already has taken place in Iowa and Kansas...

...Nye removed from Wisconsin to Minneapolis, and set up in the practice of law...

...We jump on it...

...But when Nye had waded in as far as the Golden Rule, the waters of expediency stopped his mouth and he did not pursue the subject of the President's application of the Golden Rule to the solution of concrete, present-day problems through measures of practical legislation...

...The prosp ity of the business man is the piosperity of the working man...

...We are not...

...The next day the Insurgents, having found their strength, forced the fighting by the introduction of the Nobris resolution for rule reform, and on all the votes that day Nye is recorded as "Not voting.*' Throughout the following night and two days the battle raged, and Nye returned to the House, voting on eveey roll call foe Cannon, Cannonism and the System...

...Chairman, I shall undertake to offer a few general observations on law and lawbreakers...

...But Mr...

...Nye came to Congress from a progressive constituency...

...Hayes, an insurgent, indorsed, and Smith given a bad scare, the leaders at Washington can get small satisfaction contemplating the California primary...

...In Washington Nye looked around and located the party organization...

...flnsurgency—the deep, true insurgency that is sweeping the land today—is at bottom the immortal longing and will of man to be free.—Farm, Stock and Home...

...Money is worth what it earns...

...and after the House had finished with those five items, he voted to pass the bill...

...Hurrah for the Republican party!—Oh, yes, and for Roosevelt...

...And Nye voted for the bill to consolidate coal entries in Alaska, allowing a single entryman to take as many as 2,560 acres of incalculable value at $10 per acre...

...And he voted for the eight million dollar ocean mail subsidy for the Shipping Interests...

...Nye was appointed by Cannon to membership on the Committees on the District of Columbia and on Coinage, Weight* and Measures...

...Thank uod Roosevelt is the leader of the Republican Partj ! Roosevelt's record will pull the Republican party through in 1908...

...A resolution was being pressed in the House, calling for reports from interstate corporations...

...Nye was not to be "numbered among the transgressors...

...for the reclamation of the barren lands within our great domain...

...And he demanded, "I ask you leaders of this House if you are willing to flinch fiorr...

...and (or is it superfluous to mention it...

...Stocks are worth what they earn," said Nye...

...When this motion was defeated by the Insurgents and the vote recurred on the Speaker's decision against Calendar Wednesday, Nye stood by Cannon and his machine and voted to sustain the Speaker...

...Are we willing to flinch from the doctrines of Roosevelt...

...We undertake to guess, without knowing anything about the speech, that it was a nice speech, and free from the faintest suggestion of the nature of the program, of which it was a part, to turn over to the System, for six years, half of the representation in the upper House of Congress to which the people of a great state were entitled...

...So Nye got in line with his vote, and helped the "leaders" jump on it, and they stamped it to death...

...Again Nye asked the 'leaders," "Do we flinch...

...He began his legislative career by voting for Cannon for Speaker and for the re-adoption of the old Cannon rules...

...The advance of nations toward a purer civilization must depend almost wholly upon their fidelity to high and worthy ideals...

...And then he rested two weeks more, at the end of which he arose in his place on the floor of the House and delivered a speech, a nice speech, which began in this wise: "Mr...

...Like most of the Minnesota delegation in Congress, nye lived, in his earlier years, in Wisconsin...

...Let us not forget that from the morning of creation the men who were willing to die for truth, and have died for it, were numbered among the transgressors...

...He would not be a disturber...

...create the Appalachian and White Mountain forest reserve, one of the greatest of Roosevelt's conservation policies...

...In the tariff session the real test vote, the vote which settled the fate of tariff, revision in the House of Representatives, was upon the motion of Dalzell for the adoption of a special order to put the tariff bill as reported from the Cannon-made Committee on Ways and Means upon passage and to foreclose the House from modifying a single duty throughout its hundreds of paragraphs upon countless items and commodities, save and except only five commodities named in the rule...

...We may as well face it now as any time...

...A few changes may place it where all men will admit that it is an improvement along the line of what the people want in this country...

...Thus far, excepting for a few general remarks wholly inconsistent with his votes, Nye's tariff record is one of unqualified support and endorsement of the Payne-Aldrich-Cannon program and of the work of the System "leaders...

...Truth does not change...

...On the final vote on the resolution to declare the Speakership vacant Nye got into the record with a speech for Cannon and the rules and later he made another speech in eulogy ef Cannon...

...Public opinion in Minnesota is for equality of opportunity and against Privilege...

...The most important point that I have in mind today is this, that we should be a little more careful how we throw stones at anybody...

...The 61st Congress was called in special session in March, 1909...

...and also, though perhaps less obviously, in the person of Frank M. Nye in the Minneapolis District...

...When the System machine came to count noses and found it lacked a majority, Nye voted with the "Regulars" to postpone action until the next day and save the Speaker's face...

...After sitting in the House about two months he made his first speech—a speeAJMa^ladta^riaMlHMflBttfe-i in which he praised President Roosevelt and declared that at the heart of his message was the Golden Rule, to which he accorded a full endorsement...

...In the Minneapolis District, the people are offered, far the Republican nomination, a choice between Albert H. Hall, with a platform of progressive principles, and Congressman Nye, with a System record pleasingly adorned with platitudes of moral philosophy...

...In the first district, a young Norwegian lawyer named Anderson, an Insurgent Republican, is making a clean, hard fight for the Republican nomination, and is making no end of rough travelling for Cannonism and Tawney...

...But when it came to the voting, Nye voted not to "remedy it," but to put the bill through the way the System "leaders" had made it, except only as to five items...

...Quoth hit, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do even so unto them...

...It was Nye, who, when the railroads and allied System Interests of Wisconsin decided to send Spooner to the Senate, made the speech nominating Spooner in the Republican legislative caucus...

...The prosperity of one is the prosperity of all...

...The supreme, fundamental law of this Republic is the golden rule...

...We do not," thundered the "leaders...

...The prosperity of one is the prosperity of all...

...Applause...

...Nye said, in his speech on the tariff bill, "I represent a people who feel disappointed at this bill...

...It is the easy way, the natural way for one seeking System preferment in Congress...

...In the railway legislation of the recent session he supported the amendments to facilitate railway consolidation...

...He voted for the Dalzell "gag rule" which resulted in a postal bank bill for Wall Street...

...To pursue a little further this thought of the lawbreakers, in the first place, to determine who the real lawbreakers are, everything depends upon our conception of the law itself...

...What is the real law...

...At the opening of this Congress the Insurgents made a determined effort to liberalize the House rules, to the end that legislation might reflect the representative judgment of the House rather than the will of the System-serving machine...

...In his maiden speech Nye had declared, "Mr...

...The prosperity of the Morganheims is the prosperity of all...

...Returning to the regular session, just closed, Nye resumed his services for Cannonism by voting to allow Cannon to pack the Ballinger-Pinchot Committee to investigate coal land grabbing in Alaska, and against the appointment of the committee by the House...

...For Nye always makes a nice speech, a speech that glories in the things that are,—our beautiful world, our glorious country, and our grand old party...

...Bonds are worth what they earn...

...that for a day he "flinched" in his fealty to the Cannon machine, in his party solidarity, and voted against the bill on its final passage, leaving alone and ur.envied in System eminence Cannon's man Tawney, the only member of the Minnesota delegation supporting to the finish the Payne-Cannon-Aldrich upward tariff revision...

...For two score years or more time has gradually and beautifully blended the blue and the gray in a vast arch of brotherhood as broad and as ample as the Republic which it spans...

...Speaker Cannon saw his grief and took pity upon him, and, at the close of the tariff session, promoted him from the ornamental committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures to the committee on Judiciary, one of the most important in the House...

...And Cannonism in the person of James A. Tawney is now running for Congress m the First District of Minnesota...

...Wiih McLachlan and McKinlay, two thick-and-thin supporters of Cannon and Cannonism, signally defeated...

...The Easy Way for him...

...And Bede was right about it...

...But in his second session Nye was called upon to vote on the bill 'u...

...Possibly he thought stocks and bonds would earn more if incorporated into the currency of the country, so he voted for the Veeeland Currency Bill...

...He introduced thirty-six private bills, mostly pension bills...

...After this vote it is beside the mark to say that Nye voted for free hides and free oil and free lumber...

...J. Adam Bede, servitor of Cannonism and premier joke-smith of the & O. P., was elected to stay at home...

...We can remedy it...

...It was not until after the tariff bill had been some weeks in conference, after Congressmen had "heard from home," and when the tariff bill was returned to the House, improved in a few items as a concession to the President, that Nye saw for a brief moment the light of Insurgency...

...Verily, in this great fight on Cannonism Nye was to be no "breaker of the law" of party regularity...

...Whether this speech was made in explanation of Nye's vote to lay on the table President Roosevelt's message, asking Congress to allow him the use of the secret service for the detection of land frauds, we are unable to conclude...

...Then came the Insurgent battle of last March, beginning with the attempt of the Cannon machine to break down the Calendar Wednesday rule, the little crumb of rule reform forced by the Insurgents at the opening of the previous session, by displacing the calendar with the Crumpacker Census resolution as a matter of privilege under the Constitution...

...After the smoke of battle drifted away, Bede said he thought he should send his election bills to Joe Cannon, for it seemed that Cannon, and not he, ran for Congress in the Eighth Minnesota...

...Nye returned to the second session of the 60th Congress and introduced a grist of pension bills...

...He did not explain this vote, but, on a later occasion, when there was no chance to vote for supervision or publicity of corporations, he announced to an expectant country: "I believe that if combinations and trusts were just and wise and humane, and if they shall be properly controlled and regulated by wise legislation, they may prove, and I believe will ultimately, beneficial to the great American people...

...But trusts and monopolies prosper better in secrecy, and Nye voted against the resolution...

...The people can not be deceived...

...Whereupon he rested until after the holidays...

...It means that the country has had its fill of Cannon, that it demands an honest revision of the tariff, and that it has marked fcr political slaughter all those standpatters seeking re-election who have bean perniciously active at the national capital.—The Graphic, Los Angeles, Cal...

...the doctrine of this message Cl the President of die United States...

...And Nye sat down amidst a thunder of applause...

...Now who are the lawbreakers...

...The m-ofligacy of the financial anj business world" was very bad, but Nye was "not a business man...

...From 1893 to 1897 he was prosecuting attorney of Hennepin County, which office he held for four years...

...What laws do they break...

...In this fight on Cannonism, Nye took sides from the beginning for Cannon and the System, voting for Cannon for Speaker, voting for the Dalzell motion for the adoption of the rules, voting against the Clark resolution for rule reform, and voting for the Fitzgerald subterfuge by which revision of the rules was defeated...

...for the permanent improvement of our great waterways...

...To be sure, the President in his message suggested that Congress was moved to deny him the use of the secret service for the investigation of land thievery by the fear that some of Nye's colleagues might be "numbered among the transgressors...

...that he stood up to be counted "among the transgressors...

...The bill is disappointing to these people...

...When the bill was returned to the House with its System duties raised still higher, Nye voted for the Payne motion to commit the bill for fip-al shaping, ivitkout instructions, to the hands of a conference committee to be named by Cannon in the House and Aldrich in the Senate...

...Roosevelt stands for the conservation of our great national resources from the spoliation and plunder of avaricious and unscrupulous men...

...This dark hour of political aberration must have been one of sore trial for Nye...

...On this crucial roll call Nye stood with Cannon and Dalzell and Payne and Tawney and the System, and voted to commit himself and the House irrevocably, for all purposes of legislation, to the bill which they had made to suit the Interests which they represent...

...a bill for the erection of a public building in Minneapolis...

...The most important legislation of Nye's first session was the currency bills...

...Nye did not tell his waiting listeners who it was that had broken the Golden Rule...

...Two years ago, the people defeated McClery, standpatter and Systemite, though they had to do it by electing a Democrat...

...In 1906 he was elected to Congress, and took his seat in the first session of the 60th Congress in December, 1907...

...I am not...

...And even in those earlier years, Nye was in office, first as District Attorney of Polk County, and later as member of the State Legislature...

...In this vote on the Dalzell rule Nye voted for the iron and steel schedule as made by the iron and steel Interests, for the cotton schedule as made by the cotton Interests, for the woolen schedule as made by the woolen Interests and for the sugar schedule as made by the sugar Interests...

...The Roll CaO ON MEN AND MEASURES The Easy Way THERE is ever/ reason to believe that public opinion in Minnesota is about the same as public opinion in Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and other progressive states...

...He came equipped with sufficient appreciation of the principles of right and justice to make speeches smacking of moral philosophy but his principle and his philosophy got no further than his speeches and finally were crowded out of them...

...Perhaps if Wall Street can be made more prosperous, some of its surplus of prosperity will trickle down upon the rest of us, and Nye voted for the Aldrich-Vreeland Bill to clinch Wall Street's prosperity by tightening its grip upon the finances and money supply of the country...

...Reform is change, and change is "disturbance of existing conditions...

...For Nye would give no offense...

...for honest representation in government, and against Cannonism...