EDITORIALS
The Last Wail OVER IN THE Senate Office Building the Senate Committee is conducting the new investigation of the election of William Lorimer; hunting down new evidence that will throw more light...
...President, when the original legislation was enacted it was vicious enough,"— Senator Heyburn is referring to the law enacted in 1910 which provides for publicity of campaign contributions after election, but not before election...
...hunting down new evidence that will throw more light upon that one hundred thousand dollar corruption fund...
...The discussion commences...
...MANY POLITICIANS these days are true to their trust...
...President, I am very much in favor of this legislation...
...Mr...
...On February 9 in a communication to the National Grange, Secretary of Agriculture Wilson said: "Free barbed fencing wire will be a boon to our farmers...
...Listen for a moment to the outpourings of this scion of the Old Guard: Heyburn: "I thought this a proper and convenient occasion to point the morals of this class of legislation...
...For the millions of dollars he will lose in wheat and barley and dairy products and other products of his farm, the American farmer is promised a "boon" in the shape of free barbed wire...
...When it is remembered that our wire manufacturers sent over into Canada last year more than thirty million pounds of barbed wire, to fence the Canadian farms, and that Canada's total output of wire fencing in 1905 was worth only a little over a million dollars, our farmer may find a little grim humor in this "boon" offered him by the President...
...Baffled, but not silenced, Heyburn takes the floor again...
...President...
...He is afraid of it, but he is afraid to say that he is afraid of it, that is all...
...This class of legislation reflects upon the dignaty, it reflects upon the intellectual integrity of the Congress of the United States...
...He speaks with vigor and confidence: Borah: "Mr...
...MR...
...If we pass this now, we say to the country that we are afraid of ourselves...
...NEARLY A MILLION dollars has been paid by the government in two years as extra fees in trust prosecutions...
...Then Senator Borah, Progressive Republican rises...
...Heyburn: "I ask that that bill go over, Mr...
...It is the last wail...
...before as well as after election—cannot longer be stayed by the organization...
...Philadelphia North American...
...GUGGENHEIM, appointed to a place on the Senate Committee on Conservation of National Resources, will see to it that the public domain does not fall into the hands of ignorant men who have no appreciation of its value.—Kansas City Star...
...It detracts from the character of the representatives in Congress, and it is heralded among the schools and among the people of the country as an evidence that Congress itself admits that it needs the restraint of these laws...
...Heyburn loses by a vote of 42 to 11, with 38 not voting...
...Publicity—full and complete...
...But it does not give up without a struggle...
...The Committee on Privileges and Elections through its chairman, Dillingham, has reported favorably the bill that passed the House on April fourteenth, with certain amendments designed, as Senator Dillingham, explains, to broaden its application so as to cover every kind and mariner of congressional and senatorial elections...
...At the same time the Senate is considering the publicity of campaign contributions...
...The Senate refuses to grant Heyburn's request...
...By implication we say we want to be held to prevent us from violating them by a statute...
...And while Lorimer's election is facing the ordeal of enforced and painful publicity in the investigating committee room, the bill providing for the most searching publicity of campaign contributions is riding over the Old Guard on its way to passage...
...The lines are sharply drawn...
...I do not suppose any member would acknowledge that he was afraid of himself personally, but he is afraid of his neighbor doing something that is discreditable and that ought to be checked...
...In his speech at Springfield, Ill., on February 11, President Taft mentioned this as one of the benefits of his deal that is of particular value to the farmers...
...If a member or other than a member can rise up and propose some legislation to prevent a member of the people's chosen representatives from committing a crime, he seems to think he has done a great thing, and the newspapers will flash it in large type at the head of their columns, So-and-So introduced a resolution that will hereafter prevent members of Congress from being criminals...
...It is a mark of the muckraking spirit of the age...
...But it was worth a million dollars to have the supreme court sentence the trusts to be reasonable.—Philadelphia North American...
...A Boon to The Farmer" CONFRONTED with the necessity of placating the millions of indignant farmers of this country, whose interests are so ruthlessly betrayed in the President's Canadian pact, the Administration holds up to the farmer the alluring prospect of free barbed wire...
...Governor Woodrow Wilson...
...It has become popular...
...If properly regulated and devised, it is a means of restoring to administrative officials what the initiative and referendum restore to the legislators—namely, a sense of direct responsibility to the people who choose them...
...but there seems to be a disposition in these times to out-Herod Herod in declaiming against the honesty of those who administer the government or make its laws...
...I will be no party to such a tacit admission of the necessity of being restrained from resorting to criminal proceedings to become a member of the legislative body...
...I am in favor of it for the reason that I think our elections, even to this body, ought to be protected against the things this measure is designed to protect against...
...THE RECALL is a means of administrative control...
Vol. 3 • July 1911 • No. 26
