EDITORIALS
The Primary Did It CALIFORNIA has long been a boss-ridden state. Its affairs have been securely under the control of the Southern Pacific railroad. Its politics have been machine politics. Its...
...The Labor Party includes in its program for the new constitution the initiative, the referendum and the recall...
...Has it occurred to you that if the recall were in operation the people of these Georgia districts would not have had to wait seventeen months to turn out their unfaithful representatives...
...Unlike most people in that state, he is a standpatter...
...Or are they imbued with the spirit of popular government...
...We do not refer here to the corruption of courts by railroads or to the demoralizing effect of alliances between judges and political ringsters...
...But the primaries on August 16 told another story...
...Certain it is that something happened to Humphrey during this time...
...Student" from Mobile, Ala., wants to know the correct pronunciation of La Follette, Aldrich and Cortelyou...
...He is one of "the faithful" in the Cannon machine...
...Have they a clear and sympathetic insight into the social and industrial conditions of the present day, and do they interpret the laws in the light of these conditions...
...Cannon to be a candidate for speaker of the Sixty-second Congress, and if he was that I should not support him...
...at any rate he was on August 3. We have his own testimony as to that...
...So long as he made no announcement I felt I should make no statement in regard to the matter...
...If the public servant knew he could be discharged immediately for betraying his trust, there would be less trifling with the people's will...
...that is, that I did not think it to the best interests of the Republican party for Mr...
...Among them were livingSTON and Howard of Georgia...
...There is nothing to indicate that he had in mind the perversion of justice that frequently results from a friendly attitude on the part of courts toward the corporation interests...
...Private Tariff Making TO READERS of La Follette's who want interesting information about the Payne-Aldrich tariff law, we recommend the articles by Samuel M. Evans now running in the World's Work...
...Let us pass over Humphrey's magnanimity in thus taking his constituents into his confidence...
...Will Arizona Begin Right...
...Our courts are vested with great powers and it means much to democracy how they use these powers...
...Humphrey's constituents may be pardoned for inferring from Humphrey's remarks that there existed no hard feeling between Cannon and himself...
...WHEN something happens to a member of the House of Representatives, the nation is interested...
...government by enacted law...
...absolute freedom of speech, press and peaceable assemblage...
...And it is right that they should...
...The older states must go through the throes of amending their constitutions before it can come to them...
...We suggest you keep these things in mind when you read Mr...
...under whose leadership during the last eight years Congress has passed more important legislation than was passed in all the thirty years prior to that time...
...We have the evidence from his own lips...
...Let us not indulge in superfluous remarks concerning the awful designs upon his friend and patron, Cannon, that he hid in his heart—and the hearts of his "closest political friends"—for a whole year...
...People are asking these questions...
...It may not be irrelevant to suggest that Mark Twain had a similar idea about frogs...
...Do our courts accept the Aldrich doctrine of the divine right of the Dollar to rule...
...And states like...
...Its government a special interest government...
...The people of California are the same at heart as the people of Kansas and Iowa and Wisconsin and other states in the Middle West...
...It is evident, however, that something far more important than the mere form of procedure is wrong...
...Humphrey is a representative from the state of Washington...
...In the August number appeared an interesting account of the cotton schedule...
...On August 22 he unbosomed himself to his constituents as follows: "While I have had no official information upon the subject, press dispatches in the past few days have announced that Mr...
...ON SEPTEMBER 12 the voters of the new state of Arizona will elect delegates to the convention that must frame a state constitution...
...Will Arizona begin right...
...And by interpreting the law in this spirit, the court went far toward administering justice...
...Popular government—the real thing—is practicable...
...He was referring to those indefensible practices, for instance, by which the wealthy litigant may wear out his poor opponent...
...All they needed was an instrument for registering their will in government...
...And little bosses all over the country may take their cue from the big bosses, and desert their erstwhile czar and master...
...In Aldrich the first syllable is accented...
...Congress makes the laws for the whole country...
...Do they believe that the Many should be governed by the Few...
...Others, who are not citizens of Washington, may be pardoned for inferring the same thing...
...It is another of these cases that serve to direct public attention to our courts and to raise the question, "Are our courts administering justice...
...designs that he cherished in secret while he gave vent to fulsome eulogies in public...
...Cannon, which I regret very much, makes me feel that it is my duty to state publicly what my closest political friends have known for more than a year...
...The primary is doing the business...
...employers' liability law, direct primary...
...Only recently we have seen how the higher courts may assist in a popular cause...
...this new state will avoid future struggles by infusing the spirit of true democracy into its constitution at the outset...
...that grim old fighter that never asks quarter nor never gives it—the 'Iron Duke' of American politics—Speaker Joseph G. Cannon...
...a state guarantee banking law...
...I admire Mr...
...Iowa and California may enter a vehement protest against Cannonism...
...Let us not yield to any of these obvious temptations to moralize...
...And rightly so...
...It is well within the power of the courts to help forward the progressive movement, or to retard it...
...These Democrats were led by Fitzgerald, a Tammany representative...
...La Follette is pronounced La-Fol-et, accenting the second syllable...
...Let us rather seek an answer to a question...
...Here it is: "I believe in the obstinate integrity of that grand old man who for thirty-six years has held as with hoops of steel the confidence and esteem of his constituents and his colleagues...
...Think This Over On MARCH is, 1909, the Cannon machine was saved from defeat only by the help of its Democratic allies in the House...
...When it was placed in their hands they turned it against the bosses and put a dent in the Southern Pacific machine...
...That was on August 3. Mr...
...I do not believe that he will be, however, I have waited several days for an authoritative denial from him, but he has not seen fit to make one...
...But many things may happen in the course of nineteen days...
...And the big party bosses may hasten to sacrifice a man like Speaker Cannon in the interest of "party success...
...Smiley says all a frog wants is education and he can do 'most anything', and I believe him," remarks 4he Calaveras County humorist,—the verb "to do" including of course the verb "to swallow...
...equal suffrage...
...It is a momentous occasion, for upon the character of the constitution thus to be created depends the measure of political freedom to be enjoyed by Arizona's people for generations to come...
...who for years has borne his own sins and the sins of every infernal coward in Congress...
...election of United States Senators by popular vote...
...I have never attempted to conceal my attitude upon any public question from the people of my district, and I shall not do so upon this matter...
...Last week these two Georgia representatives were repudiated by their constituents...
...Education PRESIDENT TAFT is reported to have made the statement recently that all that the people needed with regard to the Payne-Aldricb Tariff is education...
...It is this: What happened to Congressman Humphrey...
...He is an ardent admirer of Cannon...
...Cannon personally, but...
...In the September issue is the story of the tariff on rubber, which tells "how Senator Aldrich, entrusted with the duty of making a tariff for the nation, wrote the rubber schedules by which he and his friends profit...
...What Happened to Humphrey...
...who knows more about the wants and needs of this nation than any other man in the republic...
...Instead of pointing out that a similar case had been decided adversely ten or twenty years before, it said, "what we as men know, we cannot as judges profess to ignore...
...That was a year and a half ago...
...The Judicial Point of View WHEN President Taft said "the administration of justice in this country is a disgrace to our civilization," he was laying stress upon the delays made possible by our inefficient and cumbersome legal machinery...
...The machine politicians, if they control the convention, will fight for the kind of a constitution that finds most favor with the corporation interests, namely, one that takes the government as far as possible out of the people's hands...
...who for more than a generation has stood between wild extravagance and the national treasury...
...Progressive citizens everywhere are looking to Arizona to adopt a model constitution...
...Oregon, for instance, has demonstrated that...
...Cannon would be a candidate for the speakership of the next House of Representatives...
...All these things may happen between the third of the month and the twenty-second of the month...
...It is bound to come sooner or later in all the states...
...Arrayed against these predatory interests are the friends of popular government, notably the Labor Party, an organization which declares it is not mixing in "partisan politics...
...Evans tells some plain facts...
...We refer to the judicial point of view...
...A great deal depends upon the judicial point of view...
...This action on the part of Mr...
...At this moment the eyes of the people must be turned upon Congressman William E. Humphrey...
...What a nice, easy way of dropping a man from the seventh story...
...Thus: Al-drich, Cortelyou is accented on the first syllable—Cort ']-you...
...who has saved this nation more money than any other man that ever lived beneath our flag...
...For instance, a state like Kansas may leave Speaker Cannon a little the worse for wear, after a face to face encounter...
...The impression prevailed that the people of the state, if not content with Southern Pacific dictation, were at least indifferent to it...
...He shows how the schedules—many of them—were put tats the bill at the behest of big manufacturers whose dividends were increased by an increase in the duty, and he names the men who had a hand in this outrage...
...Okton tells how a court gave a decision in favor of a powerful street railway company and against the people of a great city—and by what kind of reasoning it reached this decision...
...Let us not pause here to reflect upon the frailty of human devotion...
...Orton's article in this number...
...In Oregon and in Illinois, in the Ten-hour Law for women workers, the supreme court gave greater weight to existing conditions than it did to legal precedents...
...Something happened to him—quite recently...
...Direct nomination is such an instrument...
Vol. 2 • September 1910 • No. 36
