THE ROLL CALL
THE ROLL CALL ON MEN AND MEASURES Olmsted—Inquisitor THE HONORABLE MARLIN E. OLMSTED is the Representative in Congress from the Harrisburg district of Pennsylvania. In theory and by obligation he...
...Congress, in the first session of the 60th Congress, when appropriating for the secret service, added a proviso to the appropriation bill the effect of which was to tic up the Government secret service and prevent its use except in a very .restricted capacity...
...Olmsted is a worker who counts...
...will recall that a Congressman from Connecticut named Lilley made certain charges involving the conduct of a company which was building submarine vessels for the government toward legislation affecting naval appropriations...
...Olmsted does not especially represent the people of his district...
...Olmsted was a member, and at the time was generally understood to be the dominant member...
...Lilley...
...Olmsted stood shoulder to shoulder with Cannon, Dalzell, Payne et al and voted to defeat the Appalachian and White Mountain forest reserve proposition, which was one of the most important conservation measures that has been allowed to come to a direct vote in Congress...
...It was a laborious report and an able one...
...Of the committee appointed under this resolution Mr...
...He voted for the bill as it passed the House, and he voted with Cannon on every roll call for the adoption of the Payne-Al-drich conference bill...
...Mr...
...The House appointed a special committee to handle the President's message without gloves, but rather with the tongs and poker...
...As a matter of course, he has all this time voted for and worked for the election of Cannon as Speaker and for the adoption of the House rules—and Mr...
...But Mr...
...Cooper of Wisconsin, who had displeased the Speaker by his independence, was deposed from the chairmanship of the House committee on Insular Affairs, and, also naturally, Mr...
...Upon the record it can not fairly be said that Mr...
...Olmsted never raised his voice to advocate the reduction of a duty or to enounce a principle of public policy...
...When it was offered in the House, Congressman Higgins said, on the floor: "The committee was appointed to investigate a certain corporation and its relation to legislation...
...In the tariff session Mr...
...and, finally, for the Aldbich-Vreeland conference bill...
...It was a measure that the stand-patters reluctantly stood for, because it was forced by an overwhelming public sentiment and because a certain vigorous person was manipulating a big stick in their direction from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue...
...The reader will recall the submarine investigation in the 60th Congress...
...At the present time Mr...
...In theory and by obligation he should represent in Congress the people of that district, just as in theory and obligation the grafters who built the new Pennsylvania capitol should have put into the building what the specifications called for...
...More particularly he represents Speaker Cannon, and, in representing Cannon, represents the Interests and the System that Cannon represents...
...Olmsted was appointed to that place...
...He is an active member of the committee...
...Olmsted later performed inquisitorial functions in another connection...
...Lilley was done brown...
...but put Mr...
...In the 59th Congress the most important measure of legislation was the railroad rate bill...
...When the investigation was through, Mr...
...a measure which had the endorsement of the Conference of Governors and was seven times recommended by the President in annual mes-sages to Congress...
...But, just as the capitol builders did not put into the building what the specifications called for, so also Mr...
...But the rate bill was not distinctively a Cannon measure...
...To this appropriation Representative Williams offered the following proviso: "Provided, further, that whereas the British sea monster which we are imitating has been named the 'Dread-naught'—an archaic name—this man-of-war is hereby named the 'Skeered-o'nothin,' as an expression of our true American spirit...
...Another measure of prime importance before Congress was the Pure Food legislation...
...Olmsted was not especially interested in this measure, to judge from the Record...
...Naturally it came to pass that when the House committees were appointed by the Speaker at the close of the tariff session, Mr...
...The committee met and proceeded to investigate, not the charges, not the conduct of the boat company, but Mr...
...Olmsted's record is not altogether negative...
...and the findings are substantially against him and not against or in favor particularly of anybody that was charged with something in this resolution...
...Olmsted is one of the most generally available of the "reliables" of the House machine...
...On the currency legislation Mr...
...The committee refused to act upon his recommendations for the employment of counsel, the calling of witnesses and the production of papers...
...Olmsted's committtee concluded with a recommendation that the secret service force of the Treasury Department and of the Department of Justice should be permanently provided for and their duties clearly defined and limited by law...
...second, because he was a witness...
...It was referred to Cannon's Committee on Rules, which committee, instead of reporting Mr...
...Olmsted is engaged in investigating the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy...
...In the second session of the 59th Congress, in the first session of the 60th, and in the second session of the 60th Congress, he voted consistently in favor of the ship subsidy graft for the shipping interests...
...In the second session of the 59th Congress he voted with the Cannon machine to promote the interests of the Steel Trust by defeating an appropriation for the improvement of the naval gun foundry at the Washington Navy Yard, intended to enable the Government to make some of its own castings...
...His attitude on conservation, which is the real issue in this investigation, is reflected in one roll call in the House of Representatives...
...This broadside from the strenuous executive sent Congress up in the air with a howl of rage...
...Olmsted's public service which transcends in importance his defeat by the point of order of John Sharp Williams' proposed amendment to the "Dreadnaught" appropriation of the 59th Congress...
...In the first session of the 59th Congress he got into the Record in behalf of the Steel Trust's Lake Erie and Ohio River Ship Canal proposition...
...Olmsted contributed much to this legislation...
...It is not fair to construe technical and parliamentary defects as evidence of bad faith...
...Hii efforts in the forming of this legislation consisted in offering an amendment to benefit the patent medicine and "dope" dispensers by providing: "That the quantity or proportion of opium or morphine need not be stated (on the label) unless the proportion in such package contains more than two grains of opium or one-quarter grain of morphine to a fluid ounce, or, if a solid preparation, to an avoirdupois ounce...
...Provided further, that it is hereby made the duty of the first Captain who shall command her to challenge, in the Nation's name, the so-called 'Dreadnaught' to a duel a l'outrance, to take place upon the sea somewhere inside of Long Island, and that upon the occasion of the combat the President and his Cabinet, except, of course, the Secretary of Agriculture, who is ex officio a noncombatant, being all of them fond of a strenuous life, shall be entertained on the quarterdeck as guests of the ship and of the Nation...
...Olmsted's position in the Cannon machine is reflected in the confidence reposed in him by the Speaker, perhaps more frequently than any other member of the House, by his designation to preside as Chairman of the Committee of the Whole...
...To bolster up its position the House undertook more or less elaborate inquiries to establish that the administrative branch of the Government was adequately provided with appropriations for the investigation and prosecution of frauds upon public lands and violations of Federal law...
...President Roosevelt, in his message at the opening of the following session of Congress, said: "In its present form the restriction operates only to the advantage of the criminal, of the wrong-doer...
...but it is true that the work of the secret service agents was partly responsible for the indictment and conviction of a Senator and a Congressman for land frauds in Oregon...
...Olmsted presided in the House as Chairman of the Committee of the Whole no less than twenty-three times, by the Record...
...But if this is not considered desirable, a special exception could be made in the law prohibiting the use of the secret service force in investigating members of Congress...
...Lilley's resolution, reported a substitute resolution of its own, reciting that Mr...
...It is in such a position that his legal talent displays itself...
...The report of the committee was submitted to the House in writing...
...Just why this was done there will probably never be any substantial agreement...
...In the second session of the 60th Congress Mr...
...In the tariff session Mr...
...In the first session of the 60th Congress he voted for a proposition to increase the frequency of mail weighing on railroads, in order to increase the already excessive pay of the railroads for transporting the mails...
...Williams' amendment and thereby saved a number of illustrious lives...
...Olmsted was one of those who voted for the adoption of the resolution, and was further honored by the Speaker with appointment as chairman of a committee to investigate and report to the House upon the extent of the provision made by appropriation of Congress for the maintenance of agencies for the detection of land frauds and the violation of the criminal laws of the United States...
...And further resolving that so much of the President's message as related to the secret service be laid upon the table, and the committees of the House be discharged from its farther consideration...
...A search of the Congressional Record covering five sessions of Congress fails to show an instance of Mr...
...Lilley had charged the boat company with corrupting Congress and recommending an investigation of the charges...
...Co., 187 U. S. 617...
...Congressman Keifee, of Ohio, said: "The report, so far as I have examined it, is a brief against Mr...
...Olmsted is a lawyer, and his principal activities on the floor of the House in the past five sessions have been devoted to the defense —a lawyer's defense—of the Cannon rules...
...With only two exceptions—on hides and petroleum—he voted always with Cannon and the Cannon machine...
...The report of Mr...
...Kansas City Southern Ry...
...but this also was a measure designed in the interest of tha public, and not of special benefit to the Cannon machine...
...When special interests are to be taken care of, it becomes more definitely positive, and likewise consistent...
...Olmsted commands especial attention at this time, because of the important position which he holds upon the Bal-linger-Pinchot investigating committee...
...At one time in the debate he offered a few words of criticism because the measure failed to authorize the Interstate Commerce Commission to require the railroads to charge proportionately more, or at least more, for the transportation of products of Minnesota to eastern markets than for the transportation of products of central Pennsylvania to the same markets...
...Olmsted performed his greatest public service, in raising the point of order which defeated Mr...
...Lilley, first, because he made the charges...
...Lilley introduced a resolution in the House to provide for an investigation of the methods and conduct of this boat company...
...Olmsted's record is merely that of voting with the Cannon machine: First, for the Vree-land Bill in the House...
...Very little of such investigation has been done in the past...
...He seldom says anything in public, his name is not conspicuous in the House organization and he has controlled no important committee, but it is well understood in the House that Mr...
...Lilley upon the grill and said to him, in effect, "Now you make good, sir...
...and the said special committee reported to the House a resolution "that the House in the exercise of its Constitutional prerogatives declines to consider any communication from any source which is not in its own judgment respectful...
...Still sixteen of the twenty-three conclusions of the committee are devoted to the mover of the resolution and I, for one, cannot accept those conclusions as true...
...I do not believe that it is in the public interest to protect criminals in any branch of the public service, and exactly as we have again and again during the past seven years prosecuted and convicted such criminals who were in the executive branch of the Government, so in my belief we should be given ample means to prosecute them if found in the legislative branch...
...Olmsted is an inquisitor of experience...
...It was at this point that Mr...
...The chief argument in favor of the provision was that the Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated by secret service men...
...On another occasion he delivered himself of a legal definition of interstate commerce,—a definition which was not the law, which the Interstate Commerce Commission has always said was not the law, and which certainly has not been the law since the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Hanley et al vs...
Vol. 2 • February 1910 • No. 7
