THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Those "Doctrines of Socialism" IT SEEMS only a few months back to the Republican National Convention of June, 1908. The Presidential nomination of that...
...For weeks of the present session the System "leaders" of the Senate have been maneuvering and "filibustering" to prevent a vote in the Senate on that crowning "socialist doctrine" of the Wisconsin Progressives—the direct election of United States Senators by the people-—because there are not in the Senate enough Democrats and Republicans together, who dare go on record against it, to prevent its passage if it were allowed to come to a vote...
...the preservation and enforcement of the anti-trust laws...
...That the measure was passed in the House with the support not only of the Progressive Republicans and Progressive Democrats, but of the System Republicans as well, may have been "a miracle...
...It even made some progress along the lines of "socialism" as declared In the minority platform on labor legislation...
...As to the tariff, the party saw fit to campaign declaring its intention to revise the tariff downward...
...He pointed out that Congress at the subsequent session had refused to enlarge the powers and duties of "such persons" as the President employed to assist in the enforcement of the maximum and minimum tariff so as to constitute them a tariff board or tariff commission with powers to make investigation and reports for the guidance of Congress in tariff legislation...
...Whether the "loaders" were acting in good faith in the passage of the tariff board bill in the House is yet to be determined by the passage of the bill in effective form by both Houses at the present session...
...publicity of campaign expenditures before election...
...But with the importance of a responsible, conscientious, and informed leadership of a great political organization, which is the only effective means of expression of the will of the people in public affairs, we are deeply impressed...
...These propositions in 1908 were by the overwhelming vote of a Republican National Convention, guided and directed by the "Regular Republican party leaders," rejected as "doctrines of socialism...
...Not the least illuminating feature of the discussion was the claim of Congressman Longworth to the authorship of the bill and his explanation of the change of attitude of the powers that control Congress toward tariff commission legislation as a "miracle...
...Since the minority platform of the Wisconsin Progressives was submitted to the Republican National Convention in 1908, party "leaders" who spurned it then with contempt have in nearly every issue presented been forced to reverse themselves and concede in legislation the main principles of the "doctrine of socialism" then contended for by the Progressive Republicans of Wisconsin...
...With politics as such we are not concerned...
...Already are heard threats from System quarters of the defeat of the measure in the Senate, either by amendments destroying its usefulnes or designed to accomplish fatal delay in its passage, or by the refusal of Congress to provide the necessary appropriation...
...On those issues on which they have not actually yielded and reversed themselves, they have been obliged to resort to evasion and subterfuge, not daring either to meet the issues squarely before the people, or put to the test in opposition to them their discredited leadership in Congress...
...Let us wait and watch...
...If the "regulars" were intelligent and sincere in passing this measure at the present time, they were either wrong or insincere in refusing to incorporate it in the Republican platform in 1908...
...As passed by the House, while not all that a tariff commission bill should be, it contained most of the essential provisions of such a measure...
...Even so late as last December, when Congressman Lenroot of Wisconsin and Congressman Good of Iowa, Progressive Republicans, and President Cobb of the National Tariff Commission Association appeared before the Ways and Means Committee of the House to urge the passage of the commission bill, it appeared that they alone were "so poor to do it reverence...
...A Miracle" UPON reporting his special order to the House, Dalzell made plain the necessity for a tariff commission or tariff board...
...A long time ago it was said that wise men change...
...Chairman Hopkins of the committee made the only answer, which was as fellows: "Gentlemen of the convention, the report that I have read to this convention embodies the work of fifty-two of the fifty-three members of that committee (applause...
...Both the effectiveness of that organization and the accomplishment of the will of the people in Government require that that leadership should be one which is at all times both responsible and responsive to the will of the people, and not a leadership which merely reverses itself in an effort to get right with the people after public repudiation and crushing defeat...
...On January 30, Dalzell reported from the Committee on Rules a special order providing for the consideration of the immediate bill "creating a tariff board...
...At the hands of this committee the fate of all progressive proposals was predestined to be dismal...
...All such bills were either ignored or overwhelmingly rejected both before and during the tariff session...
...Their arguments were not answered by the "leaders" or majority members of the platform committee...
...January 24, Chairman Payne reported in lieu of these four bills a committee bill creating a tariff board, with the unanimous recommendation ef the Ways and Means Committee that the bill be passed...
...Doctrines of Socialism" THIS tariff plank proposed by the Progressives was rejected by the committee on platform, which reported instead a plank which was a promise of tariff revision downward in the campaign and an excuse for tariff revision upward after election, and carefully avoided any suggestion of an impartial, expert tariff commission...
...The System "leaders" tried desperately to persuade the people after the tariff bill was passed that it was tariff revision downward, and further claimed special consideration for the bill upon the assertion that it provided for the creation of a "tariff commission...
...It was messaged to the Senate the next day and referred to the Senate Committee on Finance...
...It proclaimed continued loyalty to the protective policy, pledged the party to the immediate revision of the tariff "by the imposition of such duties only as will equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad" and, in order "to place our tariff schedules upon a just, scientific and more equitable basis" and provide for the "thorough and impartial investigation" required, declared, "We favor the early establishment of a permanent tariff commission * * * to be composed of men from civil life who represent all sections of our country and who are especially equipped by training and experience for this important work...
...I venture to say that this Government has today the best tariff commission in the world in its various executive branches and in the extremely efficient clerk and the assistants of the Committee on Ways and Means.' (Laughter...
...more progressive and humane labor and injunction legislation and election of United State Senators by direct vote of the people...
...A bill to create a tariff commission introduced in the last session by Congressman Good of Iowa, and another introduced by Congressman Lenroot of Wisconsin, at the opening of this session had been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means...
...Longworth's evident desire to to have the measure known as "the Longworth bill" tempted an impulsive Southern Congressman to reply: "Mr...
...Meanwhile, the strenuous efforts of the administration and of the "old guard" and the System press to appease the popular wrath and denunciation occasioned by the tariff betrayal availed nothing...
...There was no intimation that they would be considered there, but after the Christmas recess Congressman Longworth, "Regular" and Dalzell, Cannon floor manager of the House, each introduced a bill for a tariff board, so-called...
...Of course, the "tariff commission" provided for in the Payne-ALDRICH-cannon-enacted and taft-approved tariff law was not a tariff commission at all in the sense in which the people demanded cne, or in the sense in which it was advocated by the Wisconsin Progressives in the Republican National Convention...
...The Presidential nomination of that convention was dictated by one politically powerful personality, backed and supported and trusted by the people...
...The proposition has been since re-indorsed by the Interstate Commerce Commission and indorsed by President Roosevelt and, qualifiedly, by President Taft...
...One of the most important planks of the minority report was that on the tariff...
...For the rest—the nomination of its candidate for Vice-President and the making of its platform—that convention marked the zenith of System control of a great political organization in this country...
...No interest was apparently manifested by the Republican "leaders" on the committee...
...But, on the other hand, it did incorporate into the commerce law amendment of that session the "socialist doctrine" of federal regulation of telegraph and telephone companies...
...Longworth) manifested some pride in the parentage of this bill...
...Two years ago he made a speech upon the tariff, in which he said: 'We hear a good deal nowadays about the necessity for a tariff commission— a commission of experts to advise Congress in tariff matters...
...During and prior to the campaign, the "leaders" and especially the ultra-regulars were emphatic in their expression's that the country needed no tariff commission...
...A special meeting of the Committee on Finance was called for its consideration and on February 9th it was reported by Senator Lodge to the Senate, with amendments, and its passage recommended, and on February 13, its consideration was taken up in the Senate on motion of Senator Lodge, and some of the amendments agreed to...
...Chairman Payne, in discussing the tariff board bill on the floor of the House, said that it had been made up by the committee to embrace what the committee considered the best features of the bills introduced by Congressmen Good, Lenroot, Long-worth and Dalzell...
...In the last Congress there were introduced by Progressives in both Houses measures for the creation of a tariff commission...
...The last hours of a Republican Congress were approaching, and Republican politics were becoming more desperate day by day...
...In our deliberations every plank that has been offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin was considered by that committee...
...Laughter...
...We rejected in those planks that have been offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin the doctrines of socialism embodied in them (applause...
...The committee was packed to an overwhelming majority with Big Business "statesmen...
...tariff revision in conformity with true protective principles, and a permanent, non-partisan, expert tariff commission...
...The Progressives were not even accorded a decent hearing to present the minority report to the convention...
...The "doctrines of socialism" embodied in the minority planks offered by the Wisconsin Progressives embraced physical valuation of raiiroads as the basis for government regulation...
...Be pointed out that the tariff act of 1909 merely authorized the President to "employ persons" to assist in administering the maximum and minimum provisions...
...Wisconsin had a member on the platform committee who was a Progressive and who, though he stood alone of the committee, was not afraid to carry the Wisconsin demand for progressive platform declarations before the convention in a minority report...
...It was officered, conducted and managed by System agents...
...Something had happened...
...PHYSICAL valuations of railroads have been and are being made in many Republican states as a basis for State regulation...
...Chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr...
...Everything that is Republican in any one of those planks is already adopted in the majority report (applause...
...Now, gentlemen, the question for you to determine is whether you will stand by the report of the majority, or whether you will take the socialist-democratic utterances of Wisconsin (applause) ." The roll was called and the organization "steam-roller" passed scornfully over the minority planks and the "doctrines" of socialism embodied in them...
...What Has Happened...
...This should be the last of the fulsome contention in respect to the tariff law that it created a tariff commission...
...The bill passed the House before adjournment that day by a vote of 186 "Yeas" to 93 "Nays...
...Upon that basis I want to establish the fact that the gentleman from Ohio is entitled to rival Solomon of olden time...
...Meanwhile, the "best ever" tariff was enacted and given to the country...
...The hearing was brief and perfunctory...
...Many of these are among the "party leaders" who have for years controlled legislation in the two Houses of Congress...
...The "miracle" of Longworth is thus made more conspicuous, perhaps, but no more "a miracle," than the change of Payne and Dalzell and the rest of the "old guard" upon this measure of the "doctrines of Socialism," urged by the Progressive Republicans of Wisconsin in the national convention and advocated by other Progressive Republicans before and since...
...Tammany Congressman Fitzgerald further declared that the employment of the President's assistants as a tariff board in this sense was, moreover, in violation of the Tawney proviso inserted in the appropriation act of the Sixtieth Congress in order to do away with the Roosevelt conservation and country life commissions...
...Senator Hopkins of Illinois, predecessor in the Senate of William Lorimer, was chairman of the platform committee...
...Forcing the "Old Guard" to Action THE LATEST CHAPTER attesting the weakness, inconsistency, the untrustworthiness of the old leadership is that which has been written in the proceedings of Congress upon the bill for the creation of a tariff commission or tariff board...
...In the last session of Congress, a Republican majority failed and refused to follow the recommendation of the party leadership in the attempt to weaken the anti-trust law and to repeal it as to railroads...
...federal regulation of interstate telegraph and telephone business...
...At the November election the country made answer, repudiating the tariff and electing a Democratic majority to the House of Representatives...
...The President's strenuous efforts at "translating the tariff into English" to that effect to stem the tide of universal public disapprobation of the tariff act were vain indeed...
Vol. 3 • February 1911 • No. 8
