EDITORIALS
Vetoing Popular Government IT WAS NOT the recall of judges that TaFt vetoed; it was the basic principle of popular government. The most that Congress conceded to the people of Arizona was the...
...They have been forced to fight hard for their constitution...
...it breeds discontent.—Judson C. Welliver in Hampton's...
...Consider the amazing spectacle of a President of the United States giving utterance to solemn and carefully-prepared warnings against the "tyranny of a popular majority" and the dangers of "momentary gusts of popular passion...
...The most that Congress conceded to the people of Arizona was the privilege of voting once more on the question of including the recall of judges in their new constitution...
...Her right to self-government is still intact despite the assault of the President...
...He sat in the Senate gallery during the closing days of the extra session of Congress and observed how the lines between the Progressives and the Reactionaries of both parties were drawn sharp and plain...
...that up to a certain point it is well to let them play at self-government, but beyond that they must submit to government from above...
...The reason is fear and distrust of the people...
...But Taft exercised his constitutional power to deny these people even that privilege...
...now he has put it into enduring words...
...Yet they persisted, and a new and chastened Congress voted to let them have their own measure of self-government...
...TRUE ENOUGH, in making these scores of American lords with dollarmarked crests we have also made thousands of underpaid laborers, of illclad children, of mothers toiling and grandparents in poverty...
...Meanwhile, and for all time, will his veto message remain a denial of the right of the people of this free country to complete self-government...
...We are fortunate in having this splendid story to give you...
...And deliberately, sanely, intelligently the people have set out to apply the cure...
...For years it has been recognized that "the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy...
...Taft believes in government by a select few...
...Arizona is forced to go through the throes of amending her constitution to secure what lawfully and morally should have been left in her fundamental law...
...That the Arizona constitution contained the recall of judges was not the reason for this pronunciamento...
...His message is an effort to turn the prestige and power of presidential disapproval against a movement that is gaining remarkable headway throughout the union...
...He has many times indicated that by official deeds...
...Anything golden looks good to the trusts.—Atlanta Georgian...
...it was the excuse...
...The people of Arizona know what kind of a state government they want...
...Because the special interests, and a President whose administration has been consistently a special interest administration, see their end in complete self-government...
...Why...
...He calls the roll on the Stand-pat Democrats and the Stand-pat Republicans who came together when the high cotton duties were threatened and, by cheap trickery, prevented the passage of a well-considered, scientific bill,—a bill which Taft could find no valid excuse for vetoing,—and secured the passage of a bill which his campaign pledges would not permit him to approve...
...But President Taft inveighs against "legalized terrorism," and turns down their petition...
...President TaFt's experience with the tyranny of public opinion may account for his fear of the "tyranny of a popular majority...
...He admits as much in his message, but suggests that he is using this as an opportunity to "assert in no doubtful tones the necessity for an independent and un-trammeled judiciary...
...Such progress as they have made has been achieved in spite of the most desperate opposition of the trusts, the railways, the land and lumber barons, the jack-pot politicians,—the powerful host that flourishes upon ill-gotten privileges...
...to think begets disaffection...
...Will you not read it with especial care...
...not democratic...
...Baker is known wherever people read as one of "the greatest reporters of big things" of the present generation...
...But it is not well that we think on those things...
...Now comes the President of the United States—himself exalted by the votes of that "popular majority"—and declares that the people cannot be trusted to rule...
...His leanings are autocratic...
...The Unholy Alliance" THIS WEEK we give to the readers of La Follette's, in the place of the customary Roll Call on Men and Measures, an article by Ray Stannard Baker on "The Unholy Alliance...
...Clinging desperately to the narrow ledge of secret orders, conniving department officials, and "unreasonable" decisions of the high courts, they are engaged in the last desperate attempt to push back the tide of democracy that is steadily rising to engulf them and their works...
...It is not strange that Taft should be sensitive about what he terms the "tyranny of a popular majority," in view of the reception given by the people to his "best ever" tariff speech, his alliance with Cannon and Aldrich, his friendliness for the Hammonds and the Guggenheims, his consideration for Morgan and the Money Trust, his attempt to foist upon the country a railroad regulation law written in the interest of the transportation trust, his secret order in the Controller Bay affair, his repudiation of sincere and honest efforts to relieve the consumers from the iniquitous burdens of the Payne-Al-drich tariff law, and all those other acts so flagrantly against the public interest...
...we have made poverty the commonest estate, and pauperism the easy destiny of the masses that to that the few may loll...
...The President well Knows that his veto cannot prevent the people of Arizona from writing the recall of judges into their constitution—ultimately...
...PUDGE GARY WANTS the trusts to adopt the Golden Rule...
...They are on the defensive...
...All the power of the railroad-smelter trust-federal machine combination has been used against them...
Vol. 3 • August 1911 • No. 34
