THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES "Vic" Murdock THE National House of Representatives is an interesting body. As a body, it is interesting principally because of its part in our scheme of...
...he is dynamic...
...he expected to have disclosed to him some of the mysteries of the postal appropriation...
...Long, he thought, knew the ropes and was his friend...
...As a body, it is interesting principally because of its part in our scheme of government...
...A character that challenges the attention of the visitor in the gallery and shortly commands his admiration is Congressman Victor Murdock, of Kansas...
...But, if the hard climb from cubdom up to a position of star political reporter on a great metropolitan daily made any impressions or depressions or otherwise dented Murdoch's persistent enthusiasm, no scars or disabilities remain...
...When the Postoffice bill came before the Senate, La Follette offered the honest divisor amendment and the amendment was promptly accepted on the floor by the Senator in charge of the bill...
...Even though a few members on the committee might be wrong, certainly the Republican "leaders" in the House and the Republican majority would never stand for such a palpable wrong...
...Nobody seemed to him to amount to much, except the Speaker and a few "leaders," who managed the affairs of the House in about the same fashion that the Chairman and executive committee of the Board of Directors manage the affairs of a corporation...
...Murdock, the elder, owned and edited, since "time \:hen the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," The Wichita Eagle, which, by the way, has long been known as one of the best newspapers in Kansas, the State that publishes and reads more and better newspapers than any other State in the Union, which, in turn, and also by the way, is the real answer to the recently repeated query of perplexed Interests, "What's the matter with Kansas...
...When the bill was reported, the honest divisor amendment was gone...
...These experiments were started because of a report that in the English markets it was found that the keeping quality of Norwegian butter is not as good as that of Danish butter...
...Our new Congressman was disappointed, and he began to think that Murdock the elder had been right about Congress...
...When the bill went to the Senate, Murdock followed it...
...He traveled with McKinley in Ohio, before Mc-Kinley was nominated for the Presidency...
...He tried to right it in the House Committee...
...He did not have to wait long for an opening and, after a bit of preliminary insurging against the conservatism of Murdock the elder, who insisted that it was a higher ambition to run a good daily newspaper than to go to Congress, he jumped into a free-for-all fight for the nomination, won it, and was elected to the 58th Congress, and took his seat November 9, 1903...
...In Norway the government is investigating the keeping qualities of butter made by Norwegian farmers...
...LEST we forget to mention it, Murdock is an insurgent...
...Murdock took his medicine and said nothing, but he went about to investigate the thing from the bottom...
...Of course, the point of order was raised against his amendment...
...Moreover, had he not, himself, in the hustings extolled our magnificent progress and prosperity resulting from having intrusted this Government to the Republican Party, under its able leadership...
...In the Committee on Postoffices, to which he was appointed, he followed the lead of the Republican chairman...
...So much was plain and satisfactory and all right...
...He attributed the deficit mainly to American disposition to demand extravagant expedition in mail facilities...
...He felt, as a member of the Postoffice Committee, bound to say something about the postal deficit, and what he said about it was certainly not calculated to embarrass him in his relations with the "leaders...
...The machine control which prevails under the Cannon rules exalts a few and levels the many, save a little handful of earnest men, who, by defiance of the machine authority, have managed to assert themselves, and in consequence have been dubbed "Insurgents...
...He is an Insurgent with an adjective, though we haven't the adjective handy...
...For, in spite of the general condemnation of the House for mediocrity, there are among its members some very interesting men with real and unusual individuality...
...His knowledge ripened into an active interest, and his interest into an ambition to go to Congress...
...He had been trying to understand some of them...
...He has about the liveliest pair of eyes that you ever looked into, and his mien is one continuous glow of enthusiasm...
...The first rude shock came when the Chair sustained the point of order, but Murdock recovered in time to demand a division...
...Reluctantly Murdock accepted this friendly counsel and abandoned his impulse of stirring up the country to the regeneration of Congress...
...It was a good speech and had a hint in it that Murdock was for doing something positive, though apparently he left it to the "leaders" to determine just what ought to be done to regulate the railroads...
...He could not believe that they understood and he offered his amendment again in another form...
...Meanwhile, he had been looking forward to the time when the "leaders" might regard him as a person entitled to explanations and capable of understanding...
...Murdock went to La Follette of Wisconsin, and La Follette understood...
...His protest went for naught and the committee reported the bill without curing the evil...
...Again the point of order was raised, and again sustained by the Chair and the bill passed the House without a provision to stop the public wrong which he had been fighting...
...He delivered an eulogy on Inc;alls...
...He found that the government paid the railroads by weight for carrying the mail, and that the mail was weighed for a certain period once in four years, and that the basis of payment for the succeeding four years was the average daily weight determined in the weighing period...
...As a body of men, it is interesting, too...
...The reasons and explanations which were offered to him were neither clear nor satisfactory and Murdock protested against the continued use of the false divisor and urged that the bill be amended to prevent it in the future...
...The House must adopt it...
...Murdock is big, rotund and ©rotund...
...Not that anything he says or does is puerile, for it is not—most decidedly not...
...But we are running ahead of the story...
...Ebullient Insurgent suggests it, only Murdock is more so...
...It was tho light of Insurgency,—the light that leads a man to follow his conscience, as against the fiat of party regularity, and Murdock resolved thenceforth to do his own thinking and to square his vote with his own judgment...
...Now, so far as we have heard, Chicago news-paperdom has never been considered as offering any "snap'' openings for cub reporters...
...It seemed to Murdock that the thing was wrong...
...Long's Advice to Murdock AT THAT time, Chester I. Long, erstwhile Senator, was Big Boss of the Kansas delegation in Congress...
...When he went back to Wichita to make the Eagle even a better paper than his father had made it, he took with him, in addition to his newspaper training, a considerable knowledge of politics...
...It is probably true that there are many more interesting characters in the House than is generally supposed...
...But never mind, the House would amend the bill and so he carried his fight to the floor of the House...
...The amendment was offered on the floor of the Senate and, without a word of objection, the party "leaders" accepted it there, but accepted it, as subsequent events showed, only that it might be effectively disposed of in the secrecy of the conference room...
...Statesmanship seemed to be at a big discount in tl-ie House...
...But his words fell on deaf ears, and he was over-ridden in the committee by the Chairman and the older members, very much as though he were a Democrat...
...Thus does the government of Norway step in to help the farmers secure and hold a market for their products...
...But in the Committee on Postoffices...
...Here was a wrong that cost the people $5,000,000 a year...
...There was another thing that impressed him, and that was the lack of Patrick Henrys, and Henry Clays, Charles Sumners and Daniel Websters in the House of Representatives...
...The first recorded insurgency of "Vic" was upon the issue of the financial conservatism of Murdock the elder in the matter of salary...
...You never see Murdock in repose...
...Vic" was brought up with the Eagle, and was writing for publication before he was in long pants...
...He himself was only a new Member of the lower House, and perhaps he was wrong as Long had said...
...Needless to say, he was disappointed...
...to raise a disturbance and to make the voters realize the condition so plainly that they would elect bigger men to Congress...
...By training and previous condition of servitude, Murdock is a newspaper man...
...He was as regular as the most regular...
...As he read history, it seemed to him that Congress had deteriorated in personnel...
...Murdock is less than forty and, seems almost boyish...
...In his vote1: in the House during that first term, Murdock did most of the wrong things that a man does who follows bad advice and accepts bad leadership...
...They told him that all the things he had heard or read in criticism of it were merely so much political thunder of Democrats out of office...
...It Is merely that Murdock does the hig and earnest things he does with a rollicking hurrah and a ceme-on-boys air that one never looks for and seldom finds in the proceedings of a legislative body...
...And he was writing good stuff, too, or it would not have got by Murdock the elder and into the columns of the Eagle...
...When the bill came up in the committee he wanted to know...
...There was one thing in particular that troubled him...
...All his investigations confirmed his first impressions, and the suspicion that somebody was "doing" the government, and that the Post office committee was backing them in it, became a conviction...
...When the bill was returned to the House, the Cannon machine stood pat and a motion to agree to the Senate amendment was defeated and the bill was ordered to conference aad Murdoch waited hopefully the result of the conference...
...He continued, as before, to accept the leadership of the Republican organization of the House at face value...
...At the proper time, he offered his amendment, again he explained to the House the wrong he sought to right...
...There were things that came up in the Committee on Postoffices that he would have liked to go into...
...At any rate the Speaker and the "leaders" were wise and able, for see how they managed the business of the House and how they dominated the ordinary Member...
...From which Murdock calculated that the "average daily weight of the mail" was not the true average weight at all, but an average which was 16 2/3 per cent, too high...
...Thus reasoning, our young Congressman took the place that was waiting for him in the ranks of the Republican regulars...
...Long was very nice to Murdock and solicitous about his welfare...
...Murdock just naturally bubbles insurgency most all the time, though there was a short while just after he came to Congress when he kept the "lid on...
...From the soles of his feet to the topmost of his parted-in-the-middle, auburn curls, he enjoys being alive...
...But the amendment was clearly in order and it was simple honesty...
...Murdock traveled as a reporter with some notable political campaigners...
...The result was that the young scribe decamped, and by way of proving that he was right about it landed a job on a Chicago paper at more than twice the salary his father had refused to raise...
...If he showed disposition to urge the inquiry, he was met by an attitude of superior assurance, as much as to say, "Why, my dear young man, you can not expect to understand these things—not yet...
...He purposed to do something about it...
...And on the floor of the House he accepted the lead of Cannon and his lieutenants...
...But Murdock discovered that the "average daily weight of the mail" was determined by adding together the weights of the mail for seven days and dividing by—not seven, but six...
...Murdock Begins to Insurge ON HIS return to the Fifty-ninth Congress, Murdock was again given an appointment on the committee on Postoffices...
...He could hardly credit his powers of observation *:hen he saw all the machinery of the House organization put in motion to beat the amendment by sustaining the decision of the Chair and when the Members had passed between the tellers and the tellers reported, and the vote was announced, he found that he was beaten by the overwhelming vote of his Republican colleagues...
...Murdock is not merely energetic...
...By a little more calculation he found that this bit of false arithmetic increased railway mail pay about $5,000,000 a year...
...And Murdock sat down and thought it all over...
...He made the dishonest divisor business so plain that he who runs may read...
...This impressed Murdock...
...He determined that he would take an appeal to the House itself...
...He explained it all to the House and offered his amendment there, and the House organization was marshalled against him and overwhelmed him and his amendment...
...He availed himself of the freedom of debate, which was allowed by the House management out of deference to public opinion, and made a speech on the subject of railroad regulation...
...So, early in the next session, he put the results of his investigation together and laid the whole matter before the House in a carefully prepared speech, and then he went into the Committee on Postoffices prepared to see the chairman and his supporters in the committee recognize the sentiment of the House and make the concessions which he demanded in the next postoffice bill...
...The chairman and the ranking members repulsed him...
...How he did it and how he disposed of the exhaust are unsolved mysteries to this day...
...Just what happened in the secret chamber of conference has not been told, but there was nothing in the bearing of, the Senate conferees which would indicate that they had argued themselves hoarse in conference in an effort to retain the La Follette amendment...
...He talked of his plan with Senator Long and Long told him that he was all wrong about it, that he would understand when he had been in the House a while, adding that for his own good he should not do anything that might embarrass him in his relations with other Members of the House, more particularly the Republican Members, and most particularly the Speaker and the "leaders...
...Again he explained it...
...The railway mail pay section of the Postotnce Appropriation Bill invited his investigation, but to the chairman and the older members of the committee, it was an old story...
...And as far, at least, as the Record discloses, during his first term in Congress, Murdock was certainly faithful to this leadership...
...In the Senate, there was freedom of debate and he would get some one there to take up the fight which he had lost in the House, and to make the demand for honest mail weigh so positive and so plain that no one could vote against it...
...But the frequent visitor in the gallery finds himself, after a brief time, losing interest in the House as a body of men, and becoming interested principally in the things it does, the manner in which it does them, and in the aloings and sayings of the "old man" in the Chair and of a few striking characters upon the floor...
...Murdock summed it up and a new light broke upon him...
Vol. 2 • October 1910 • No. 39
