EDITORIALS
Ballinger's Resignation BALLINGER HAS RESIGNED. Confronted with the possibility of impeachment proceedings in the extra session, the Secretary of the Interior makes a precipitate exit from public...
...But in this case there was no "some one else" to tinkle the bell...
...In return for this support, the various state offices and the United States Senatorship two years from now, when Senator Burnham's second term expires, are to be delivered...
...The appointment of Walter L. Fisher to succeed Ballinger is prompted by a desire to secure a Secretary whom the public trusts, to make still more certain that an investigation will not be ordered, to win back, if possible, the confidence of the people in the Administration...
...Then it happened...
...They agree that Governor Bass alone can change the situation, repudiate the false ones, give courage to the true ones, draw up and announce a program, organize the forces of reform and make sure the fulfillment in this state of the hopes to which his election gave rise...
...This is a gloomy picture...
...LORIMER'S exposition—or, shall we say, confession—of bell-wether statesmanship in the United States Senate, printed last week on the cover page of La Pollette's, is in its way quite as effective as Tillman's blunt "I-want-my-share" speech of pork-barrel statesmanship...
...La Pollette, first of the "L's," voted "NO...
...that one Democratic member, deceased, was proven to have been present when the money was distributed, and proven afterwards to have had money in s-ubstantially the same-sized bills, and the same amount, as that corruptly paid to others...
...Lorimer," called the clerk...
...The action of the United States Senate on the Lorimer case, even more than the corruption disclosed in the election that sent him to Washington, has electrified the people of this country to action...
...NO...
...Two days before adjournment the yeas and nays were ordered on a Democratic motion to displace consideration of the tariff board bill...
...that strong circumstantial evidence points to the payment of money to still other members who were closely associated with those proven to have received it...
...Efforts to compel the railroad to establish the legal rates are of no avail...
...New Hampshire THE NEW HAMPSHIRE LEGISLATURE has organized with a progressive Speaker...
...Help was at hand...
...The people are aroused...
...The Boston and Maine Railroad comes forward with profuse promises to be good and to abstain from old methods of influencing legislation...
...The names of Cullom and Gallinger, deputy System bell-wethers (whom Lorimer, according to his speech, had learned to follow as "reliable") were reached and passed before these Senators arrived in the Senate to cast their votes...
...He must find his own way out—and quickly...
...Here he was, no-doubt, jumping over the fence again...
...They well understand that representative government fails at the point where they transfer their authority to the representative...
...With preparations under way for the most thorough and effective exposure of his Department he has yet had to meet, the official who has repeatedly declared he would never retire under fire, now beats his retreat...
...How to vote...
...The record which we are to make is enduring...
...For it really happened—almost before the strange plea of the "Blonde Boss" had ceased to echo in the Senate Chamber...
...There was no time to lose...
...The Tribune is entitled to the congratulations of all good citizens...
...And in its place there is going to be People's Control of the Senate...
...Mr...
...Lorimer rose, before the vote was announced, and addressed the Chair...
...bell wether Lodge also voted "NO...
...This is manifest in the record made yesterday for the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people after every effort to secure consideration has been baffled for more than half a century...
...voted Cullom...
...It is imperative that Congress and the public have full knowledge of the activities of Ballinger's department with regard to the Alaskan claims and other official matters wherein Ballinger was charged with administering his Department to promote private interests...
...It will confront the Senate again at the next session...
...President, you may go down the records of the Senate of the United States and you can find no other case like this one...
...The decision about to be recorded will destroy public confidence and create a revulsion of feeling beyond our comprehension...
...The Democrats will oppose the bill and Ex-senator Chandler has protested against the surrender in an open letter...
...But the relief of the Illinois statesman was fated to be brief...
...that at least one member of the legislature was bribed to vote for the sitting Member by the promise that he, the legislator, should exercise a certain control regarding a postoffice appointment at Jerseyville, Ill., and that this was on the promise of the sitting Member, and was the consideration and the only consideration for said legislator's vote for William Lorimer...
...Upon making this confession, the railroad sets about to secure the passage of a bill repealing the contract of 1883 and 1889...
...The "Blonde Boss" had gone astray...
...The forward movement in New Hampshire, temporarily at least, is stalled...
...There was but one way to get back...
...The "Blonde Boss" Bell Wetherless...
...Direct election of senators is very near...
...With him goes his faithful subordinate, Oscar W. Lawler...
...Confronted with the possibility of impeachment proceedings in the extra session, the Secretary of the Interior makes a precipitate exit from public life...
...It will not be denied...
...The precedent to be established will not only react on the future of the Senate, it will stand as a fearful example to our State legislatures...
...And of those Senators who by their votes condoned this manner of election, ten are of the "old guard,"—discredited by their own constituents and repudiated by the whole country, whose vote on this question was almost the last stroke of service they were permitted to perform for the System before stepping down and out on March 4. Lorimer holds his seat...
...Day by day it kept the public informed of developments, down to the minutest detail...
...Instead of opposing this, certain progressives, it is claimed, have agreed to support the bill...
...President, in the few moments remaining before the discussion is closed, I can only leave a word upon this record...
...Distressing, it was, to picture the perspiring bewilderment of the "Blonde Boss" alone with his vote...
...Those of us upon whom rests the responsibility for the rule which the Senate of the United States is to adopt are here but for a brief time at best...
...So strong was its case, and so convincingly presented, that it forced the matter to the courts and finally to the highest tribunal having jurisdiction...
...By his own confession, he" usually waited for "some one else" to vote, in case he found La Follette and Lodge voting the same way...
...We trust our informants have overdrawn it...
...With the Senate packed against the progressives, with the members of the House right but lacking in militant and effective leadership, with the Manchester Union leaning toward the railroads, a splendid political reform movement in the East is in danger of collapse...
...Will he prove equal to the emergency...
...The principal facts are as clear in the public mind as they are clear in the minds of Senators here, and no discussion of technicalities as to how many tainted votes are needful to corrupt an election will affect their judgment...
...And the Senate of the United States, exercising its prerogative as the sole judge of the character of its own membership, voted to retain Lorimer in his seat...
...President, I desire to change my vote...
...that still another, who refused to answer because if he answered and told the truth it would incriminate him, claimed his privilege before the Senate committee...
...The Manchester Union, belonging to R. W. Pillsbury, chairman of the railroad rate committee in the House, advocates this surrender to the railroad...
...that four Democratic members confessed to receiving such money, under circumstances that can leave no doubt that they were bribed...
...The bells rang to summon the absentees and the roll call proceeded...
...The Big Business Machine is ready for the scrap heap...
...Forces as irresistible as the tides are at work and moving throughout the land toward a complete restoration of self-government...
...Only the other day the Senate, defying the platform pledges, refused to ratify the income tax 'amendment...
...Bills for electing national delegates and nominating United States Senators at the primaries do not appear...
...Not one investigation of the railroad's past political activities has been ordered...
...Governor Bass's position is uncertain...
...that three other members of the legislature—one of them the leader, the organizer—swore that he did not know the sitting Member 'except to see him,' a 'mere passing acquaintance,' 'hardly a speaking acquaintance,' and that Lorimer contradicted him and said that he 'became very intimate with him years ago;' that one other member of the legislature, as soon as an investigation was ordered, ran to cover, and remained beyond the reach of a subpoena for weeks...
...But imagination, at its best, conjured up no such spectacle as that which was offered to the country when Lorimer did find his bell wethers absent...
...His panicky calculation had carried him quite out of the fold...
...I vote "NO...
...From the day it printed White's confession, to that day last week when the Forty-to-Forty-six vote was cast, it wavered not one instant from its course...
...But no resignation, no presidential assurance, will remove the public necessity for a searching and thorough-going investigation...
...The initiative, referendum and recall are not even mentioned...
...Several times during the Ballinger-Pinchot investigation was the Administration thrown into a panic when startling evidence of misconduct was dragged out of the murky secrecy of the Interior Department by the untiring and resourceful Brand-eis...
...The purchase of United States Senatorships, the bribing of Stale legislatures, has occurred too often in recent years...
...Aldrich, Lorimer's chief bell wether, was absent...
...We wonder how many who read it shuddered, as we did, at the very thought of Lorimer's predicament when some day on some roll call he should find himself without a bell wether...
...But it is doubtful if anything that has yet transpired reveals so clearly the fear of the Administration of an investigation that will succeed in throwing open to the light of day all the transactions of that Department...
...The Tribune's Service AGREAT DAILY NEWSPAPER may be of untold service to the public interest, or it may be a menace...
...Mr...
...Mr...
...NO...
...The next United States Senatorship is being bargained for...
...voted Gallinger...
...It took courage to do that, and persistence, and ability of a high order, and, above all, faith in public decency...
...The resignation of Ballinger is the last desperate attempt of the Administration to close the pages of history to the official actions of Ballinger...
...In the case which we have under discussion, these are the facts that will hereafter be accepted and established as a precedent for all time to come: That money was paid to members of the legislature, Democratic members, who voted to elect a Republican United States Senator...
...Governor Bass has submitted a reasonably progressive message...
...Forty to Forty-six JUST BEFORE the gavel fell in the United States Senate announcing that the time had come for the vote on the legality of the election of William Lorimer, Senator La Follette made a brief speech...
...Before the roll call was concluded, the "reliable" bell wethers arrived and had their names called again, that they might vote...
...Part of what he said follows: "Mr...
...Did ever a bell wether statesman find himself in a more complicated situation...
...And the American people are waiting with even tenser feeling than this audience the result of the roll call upon this question...
...Thus the reformers are dividing into two camps—one joining with the railroad in carrying out its schemes...
...Corrupt the election of the representative and the whole system goes down...
...Lodge had impaired his standing as a "reliable" bell wether, according to the Lorimer standard, for was he not found voting with La Pollette the other day on a resolution to unseat a certain Senator...
...that at least one other member of the legislature was offered money to vote for the sitting Member and that others were approached and sounded on the subject...
...said Lorimer...
...It confesses that it grossly violated law by raising rates of freight in defiance of a fundamental contract made in 1883 and 1889 when the railroads of the state were allowed all to consolidate into one, with much watering of stock...
...And (did his ears deceive him...
...The vote was 46 to 40, yet there were 42 Senators who were convinced by the evidence that the election was brought about corruptly...
...As the roll call proceeded rapidly down toward the "L's" Lorimer became more and more perplexed...
...But the bi-partisan majority that kept him there is passing out of control...
...The Chicago Tribune has demonstrated in a manner that is likely to become historic how effectively such a newspaper may champion the cause of clean politics and real popular control of law-making bodies...
...Public welfare demands that this be done...
...Every citizen knows that the Senate is the judge—the absolute judge—of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own Members...
...Bell wether Lodge was there to vote...
...Naive it was, and glowing with candor...
...AYE...
Vol. 3 • March 1911 • No. 10
