THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES A "Practical" Congressman AT ABOUT the time that the Naval Appropriation Bill of the Second Session of the last Congress was coming up for discussion in the...
...The bargain was not a hard one for him, and, consciously or otherwise, he made it...
...From the first, every naval appropriation bill found him, in committee and on the floor of the Hoirse, demanding more money, bigger appropriations,—not for the public interest, not for the national defense, but for the navy yards, especially Boston...
...That our naval establishment on land is in its deplorable condition and that appropriations for naval shore plants represent millions of annual waste are due to the mania of each Congressman or Senator who has a naval establishment in his State or district or locality to divert in each appropriation bill the last possible dollar from the Federal Treasury to "My navy yard," for the dividends that it may return in local political support...
...Boston Navy Yard, so called, is located within the shadow of Bunker Hill monument, on the water-front of the old city of Charleston, now a part of Boston...
...After having got, by his work in the Committee on Appropriations, all that he could for his navy yard, he sought on the floor of the House to slip into the bill two appropriations aggregating $460,000 for "improvements" in the Boston yard...
...The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES A "Practical" Congressman AT ABOUT the time that the Naval Appropriation Bill of the Second Session of the last Congress was coming up for discussion in the Senate, Mr...
...Turner's contention was vigorously denied in the Senate...
...the people paid the bills...
...President Taft's idea about all of his party pulling at the ours will not find general support, because a good pari of the party is busy at other kinds of pull.—Charleston Po$t...
...While voting for free hide?, he voted five times against free lumber, voted for the Payne bill, and for the Payne-Aldrich conference report—the final tariff bill...
...Roberts was a practical man...
...One of the "Faithful" AT the opening of his Congressional career, Roberts began work for his navy yard by introducing a bill appropriating $200,000 for a metal-working shop for the Boston yard...
...As a result of the policy of scattering navy yards and naval stations about our coast line, in response to political pull, not only was there enormous misappropriation of public moneys, contended Mr...
...He found that the organization favored those who favored it...
...He voted for the Dalzell gag rule on the tariff to prevent tariff revision in fulfillment of the Republican platform, to put the tariff bill through, except as to five items, as agreed upon by the CANNON-appointed, System-controlled House Committee on Ways and Means...
...In the Fifty-ninth Congress, he helped the steel trust out again in a vote to incorporate the Lake Erie and Ohio River Ship Canal Company to construct and operate a ship canal from Lake Erie to Pittsburg, with extravagant franchise rights and rights of way, but without any honest protection of the public interests involved...
...And in the second session of this Congress, he is again found voting for ocean mail subsidies for the shipping combine...
...In Chelsea lives Congressman Ernest W. Roberts...
...Turner, but we were, from the military point of view, in a ridiculous position, as compared with the leading naval powers,—without a single naval base capable of taking care of a fleet or any considerable portion of a fleet in time of war...
...From the first, the navy yards, especially the Boston yard, engrossed his attention, and appropriations for work to be done in navy yards were his chief concern...
...Roberts wanted things—for navy yards...
...In the session of Coagress just closed, he voted consistently to support the Cannon machine, to put through the System program...
...The title of Mr...
...Turner's article was "Our Navy on Land," and his thesis was that of our annual naval appropriation of one hundred and thirty million dollars, approximately one-third is spent in the maintenance and operation of the shore plant,—navy yards, naval stations, dry docks and the like,—and that in the maintenance and operation of this shore plant millions annually are wasted—wasted because of the duplication of facilities and the political debauchery of the System, resulting from the pulling and hauling of "Navy Yard" Senators and Congressmen, (proceeding not upon the policy of upbuilding the national defense, but on that openly avowed by one of them when he declared on the floor of the Senate, "I want my share...
...Western Senators who sought to inquire into the charges made, were rebuked by "Navy Yard Senators" and twitted with having received benefits from the Federal Government for their States, and told that they were not in a position to criticize the conduct of "Navy Yard Senators...
...He "paired" against the passage of the bill to prevent the sale of oleomargarine, made of packing house grease, to the people for butter...
...In line with the policy of his votes on the McMillan bill and the oleo bill of the previous congress, he voted, this congress, to double the Pennsylvania's union station "swag," including giving the railroad the final disputed million, against which even the doughty Cannon protested, and against the bill providing for the inspection and regulation of the places wherein rancid and adulterated butter is "renovated" that it may be sold as an article of food for the poor man's table...
...These and other services rendered to System interests classed him among the "faithful," and on his return to the Fifty-seventh Congress, he was rewarded by an appointment on the Committee on Naval Affairs, the ambition of all navy yard Congressmen and Senators...
...And he followed System leader Dalzell in voting against an investigation of the steel trust's "cinch," through which the government had been robbed of millions in the purchase of armor plate for battleships...
...As one of these Senators frankly put it, "It comes with bad grace from men on that side, who have been getting their share of chicks and eggs from the National Government, to get up and captiously criticize the rest of us, who are only doing the same thing...
...A few minutes walk across the bridge over Mystic River is the city of Chelsea...
...George K. Turner, a special writer for McClure's Magazine, wrote an article for that publication which attracted wide notice and compelled extended consideration upon the floor of the Senate...
...Voting for the System AT THE opening of the Sixtieth Congress, he took a stand against Progressive Republicanism in voting for Cannon for Speaker, for the re-adoption of the Cannon rules, against revision of the rules, and for the Tammany-Cannon-Fitzgerald resolution...
...He also voted for the Merchant Marine Commission scheme of the ship subsidy lobby...
...In the Sixtieth Congress, Roberts "paired" some more for the interests in favor of shipping subsidies, in favor of the bill to facilitate land grabbing by the doubling of homesteads, and to promote the operations of the Morganheims in monopolizing the coal lands of Alaska...
...In the Fifty-eighth Congress, he joined the System forces twice in voting for the indefensible "special facilities" subsidy for the railroad, and in voting to let the shipping combine into the Federal Treasury on their own terms by giving them a monopoly, worth millions, of ocean transportation of government freights...
...He pleased the System by voting against a proposition to authorize the President to suspend tariff duties on commodities found to be controlled by trusts, and won the favor of the System machine and the Pennsylvania Railroad by voting for the McMillan bill which was the beginning of the railroad company's union station grab at Washington...
...And when the Cannon organization finally concluded to pass a postal bank law, Roberts was found "in line" supporting the Dalzell gag rule, by means of which the bill was passed in the form desired by Wall Street and the Interests...
...Aside from the frank admission of the Senator, and aside from the evidence of Mr...
...These votes he followed by a further protestation of his loyalty to Privilege by voting, on several roll calls, to pay millions from the Federal Treasury in ocean mail subsidy to the shipping interests, and loaned himself to the schemes of Wall Street by "pairing" in favor of the Aldrjch bill to add the millions of customs revenues to the free deposits of government money in System banks...
...The System could give the things that Roberts wanted,—easily...
...In the important legislation to amend the interstate commerce act, although he contributed nothing to the debate, Roberts voted to put through the bill preferred by the railroads...
...And so it came about that Roberts has had things that he wanted for navy yards, and the organization has had Roberts for the System...
...The organization wanted things—for the System...
...He found in Congress an organization in control...
...Chelsea is a suburb of Boston and of the navy yard...
...Government "Chicks and Eggs" OF COURSE, Mr...
...Roberts had nothing against the System...
...Roberts, from the time he first became a member of the House in the 56th Congress, and perhaps before, was a devotee of the "I-want-my-share" policy of naval expenditure...
...In this Congress, too, by his vote for the Congressional salary increase, he announced his adherence to the System slogan, "There's enough to go 'round...
...Vice-President Sherman's Missouri boomlet for President will require very careful packing to stand the trip home.—New York World...
...In the battle of the Progressive Republicans in March to amend the rules of the House to provide for an enlarged, elective committee on Rules, and exclude the Speaker from membership on the Committee, Roberts supported Cannon and Cannonism on every roll call...
...Turner, there was other evidence furnished, including an article by an officer of the Navy on the mis-management of navy yards and the extravagant cost of navyyard output, due to the taint of politics in naval administration and relations between Congress and the Navy altogether too familiar...
...On the Payne war revenue reduction bill he voted to exempt the transportation companies from the payment of their share of war taxes...
...The candidacy of Ernest W. Roberts for the Republican nomination from the Seventh District of Massachusetts is a candidacy in which the game of navy yard politics, played at the public expense, is the means, and the service of Cannonism and the System is the end, * * * ¶The gentleman who once remarked that he could move the world, if he only had a lever, conservatively refrained from boasting about what he could do with Secretary Ballinger.— Ohio State Journal (Columbus...
...When the Pinchot-Ballinger controversy, involving the conservation of natural resources, was to be investigated, Roberts voted to have Speaker Cannon appoint the investigating committee to whitewash Ballinger and convict Pinchot, and against the election of that committee by the House...
...Again he helped Wall Street by voting for the Vreeland and the Aldrich-Vreeland so-called "emergency currency" bills...
...Chelsea is interested in the Boston yard...
Vol. 2 • September 1910 • No. 38
