VIOLATING THE "CONVENANT"
Violating the "Covenant" Or How the Bull Moose Platform was Changed From Anti-trust to Pro-trust NOW—AFTER ELECTION—we are beginning to get some amazing "inside facts" about the Roosevelt...
...In his testimony before the Senate Steel Trust investigating committee last year, Perkins referred to the German system of legalizing trusts and gave expression to the identical idea contained in this trust plank that was slipped into the new party platform...
...I do know that we worked all night over the platform...
...I believe all were astonished when the printed copies came out without this paragraph on the Sherman act...
...George L. Record of New Jersey sat next to me and as it was adopted I said to him, 'There goes your plank.' And Mr...
...Who's The Offender...
...ROOSEVELT'S views expressed in his "confession of faith" at the new party convention on August 6, are in entire accord with the views of Mr...
...The resolutions committee adopted the plank containing the La Follette principle...
...He goes even further...
...It should be remembered that they are doing this on a national scale and with large units of business, while the Democrats would have us believe that we should do it with small units of business, which would be controlled not by the national government but by 49 conflicting state sovereignties...
...Both Perkins and Roosevelt are opposed to the anti-trust law, even if strengthened, as a solution of the "trust problem...
...Whereupon, he says, it was pointed out to him for the first time that something was wrong...
...The only reason that the plank was struck from the platform was that it was never adopted by the committee on resolutions...
...It is apparent that some persons, at least, besides those who wrote the platform, were under the impression that the antitrust plank was included...
...On account of the misunderstanding it gave opportunity for Mr...
...Here is what he then said: "It is imperative to the welfare of our people that we enlarge and extend our foreign commerce...
...And the platform-making college professors of the Progressives jimmied it out of the La Follette strong box...
...There never was any trouble between him and me over the missing anti-trust plank and indeed the Colonel always was for it...
...He was Washington correspondent for a New York newspaper before the Roosevelt-Perkins people took him over into their headquarters as chief press agent for the third-term campaign...
...I have no information as to what happened to it...
...Davis was secretary of the Roosevelt national committee and convention...
...Others wanted a declaration favoring the trusts—of course, the "good" trusts—and encouraging combinations and mergers provided they didn't mind being "controlled" by a federal commission...
...He conceded, "The anti-trust law must be kept on our statute books and must be rendered more effective in cases where it is applied...
...This new plank was inserted in the platform in the same strange and mysterious manner as that employed in removing the antitrust plank...
...He also promised to support Senator La Follette's coal land bill—"a splendid bill"—but didn't...
...I tried to find out from the New York headquarters why the plank was cut out but never received any answer from the headquarters on that point...
...Munsey says naught...
...Republican and Democratic progressives and progressive magazines and newspapers exposed the "legalized monopoly" program that is contained in the Roosevelt platform...
...It is a story of gross fraud, the victims of which, if it had succeeded, would have been the whole people...
...Not at all...
...The "some one" who performed the sleight-of-hand feat of "perkinizing" this trust plank after it had left the hand of the —supposedly—official platform makers, not merely gave expression to the Roosevelt-Perkins idea—he actually used Roosevelt's own language...
...We are preeminently fitted to do this because as a people we have developed high skill in the art of manufacturing...
...The strangely missing anti-trust plank that "some one" so quietly erased from the new party platform was repugnant to what Perkins and Roosevelt had said about the Sherman law...
...The convention of the new party, which Roosevelt and his supporters called the "Progressive" party, was held in Chicago, August 5-6-7, 1912...
...Wilson and others, including Mr...
...A Story of Intrigue THE STORY of the changed trust plank is a story of intrigue and deception...
...Capital in this country is contracting rather than expanding, its operations, while Germany, Canada, and other countries are forging ahead with their industrial plans...
...Wheeler P. Bloodgood of Milwaukee was there and I have a letter from him saying it was adopted...
...This plank in question was cut out and another one on a different subject which the resolutions committee had adopted but had overlooked was added...
...Some watchful eye caught it...
...It is the old story of well-meaning lambs who fell in with designing wolves...
...Furthermore it appeared in the early edition of the Chicago Tribune of August 8. It is clear that when the resolutions committee ended its labors on august 7 that a strong anti-trust plank was included in the platform...
...I have no means of knowing who was behind Davis in this matter...
...Perkins, too, should not rest until the mystery is cleared up...
...Relief from the oppression of the trusts is insistently demanded by the public...
...It should be remembered that they are doing this on a national scale and with large units of business, while the Democrats would have us believe that we should do it with small units of business, which would be controlled not by the National Government but by forty-nine conflicting sovereignties...
...There he changed the "copy," striking out the anti-trust plank...
...McCarthy is head of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Department...
...He declares that "any corporation voluntarily coming under the commission should not be prosecuted under the anti-trust law as long as it obeys in good faith the orders of the commission...
...And as his administration progressed, his opposition to the Sherman law became more open and vigorous...
...But he hastens to add that "to treat the anti-trust law as an adequate, or as by itself a wise, measure of relief and betterment is a sign, not of progress, but of toryism and reaction...
...Progressive orators and campaign speakers supposing the final paragraph that had been eliminated was still in the platform, dwelt upon it frequently and with great emphasis in their addresses...
...The reasons for this attitude on our part arise largely from the fear engendered by the prosecutions under the Sherman act...
...Perkins.—"Not as efficient...
...They were, for the most part, men who had been identified with the La Follette candidacy, and had openly committed themselves to its principles, but had turned to the standard of Roosevelt who they said was the "sure winner...
...They were the masters of the new party affairs...
...Out of the fracas may—possibly—emerge the answer to this question that is being asked with angry, heated insistence by some of those who had a hand in the drafting—that is, the original drafting—of this "solemn contract" with the public...
...that something had happened...
...The Roosevelt platform had to con-tain a trust plank...
...Who is that mysterious "some one...
...Without these specific provisions strengthening the Sherman act there was no provision in the plank which would specifically, by law, do away with monopoly abuses, although the power would remain with the proposed commission to prevent unfair practices or stock watering or other abuses...
...He pleads for the big trust and combination, for monopoly, in business, "supervised and controlled by the federal government...
...Who Ordered Oscar King Davis to Remove the Anti-trust Plank From the Bull Moose Platform...
...And in his article on "Business and Government" in the Saturday Evening Post, Mr...
...In every way possible our Federal Government should co-operate in this important matter...
...The committee regarded it as important because they thought it necessary to put the specific provisions in because the people of the country would be assured that under such a provision competition would be maintained by law and not merely at the whim of the commission...
...GIFFORD PINCHOT: "I was secretary of the sub-committee mentioned and Professor McCarthy attended the meetings as he states as a sort of unofficial adviser...
...At any rate this plank appeared as the committee's plank in the typewritten copies of the platform handed out to the members of the convention...
...Just who did the "announcing," Davis neglected to state...
...Worse and More of It...
...And that, too, after the Convention was over—after the platform had been voted upon and—supposedly—passed unanimously by the Who did it...
...That, too, is plain, isn't it...
...Messrs...
...Perkins told the Senate committee that was investigating the Steel Trust that the enforcement of the anti-trust law was disturbing to business...
...Hanna and McCormick are not communicative...
...Attention may be diverted to other utterances which seem more radical, but there is none which has in it at once so much of the thrill of opportunity and immediacy...
...In entire keeping with his expressed attitude toward the anti-trust law were his orders to the Attorney General not to file a suit against the Harvester Trust until he received "further instructions...
...Such a policy is utterly out of keeping with the progress of the times and gives our great commercial rivals in Europe—hungry for international markets—golden opportunities of which they are rapidly taking advantage...
...Did Roosevelt "put one over" on McCarthy...
...As a sole remedy, universally applicable, it has in actual practice completely broken down...
...Perkins and T. R. Oppose Sherman Law NOW, WHAT ARE the records of Perkins and Roosevelt with regard to the Sherman Anti-trust law...
...A great many suggestions were received by the platform makers, and until I can consult the committee records, which I have in Washington, I can not speak authoritatively on the matter...
...It was Oscar King Davis whose pencil actually made the changes...
...McCarthy's Side Of It C HARLES MC CARTHY: "I was with Herbert Knox Smith and George L. Record as a sub-committee of the resolutions committee in framing the plank on 'business.' This plank as agreed upon by the committee, unanimously, contained the anti-trust plank that is missing...
...But the "MAN HIGHER UP" who ordered Davis to make these changes—who is he...
...This plank conveys the proposal of Mr...
...Some one then inserted in its place a new plank giving reassurance and approval to the trusts...
...Do you not think that each one of these units could be as efficient in business and in all the economics as the total aggregation in one corporation...
...Violating the "Covenant" Or How the Bull Moose Platform was Changed From Anti-trust to Pro-trust NOW—AFTER ELECTION—we are beginning to get some amazing "inside facts" about the Roosevelt candidacy...
...In his pride of authorship he is attempting to make a sensation out of nothing...
...That question has started trouble in the Roosevelt camp...
...Who was there at the head of the Bull Moose army bold enough or HIGH ENOUGH IN AUTHORITY to rewrite that "contract" so that instead of an ANTI-trust platform it became a pro-trust platform...
...CHARLES E. MERRIAM: "The plank was passed by the resolutions committee and the convention...
...Some of the men who had a hand in writing that platform were in favor of the La Follette plan of strengthening and clarifying the Sherman Anti-trust law—"putting teeth in it...
...Roosevelt: "If we are to compete with other nations in the markets of the world as well as to develop our own material civilization at home, we must utilize those forms of industrial organization that are indispensable to the highest industrial productivity and efficiency...
...Nay, more...
...It would have been sadly out of place in a Roosevelt-Perkins platform...
...Such a policy is utterly out of keeping with the progress of the times and gives our great commercial rivals in Europe—hungry for international markets—golden opportunities of which they are rapidly taking advantage...
...Record replied, 'Write me some time what you think of this plank.' Henry F. Cochems of Milwaukee wrote me that this plank 'which was passed by the resolutions committee, read by Dean Lewis and adopted by the convention, is assumed in the Colonel's confession of faith to be a part of the platform.' Francis J. Heney when in Madison verified the fact that the plank was adopted by the resolutions committee and made a part of the party's platform...
...This anti-trust paragraph which was mysteriously cut out of the platform as circulated throughout the country was probably the only clause in the whole plank that made it a thoroughly strong anti-trust provision...
...And in arguing for such a policy he makes the point that "our great industrial corporations are the very bulwark of our foreign commerce...
...Hence, according to McCarthy, it is to be inferred that Roosevelt himself was "jobbed" by the secret removal of the plank from the platform...
...What McCarthy Urged DR...
...Roosevelt, there was one other matter that brought the delegates to this convention...
...Who laid profane hands upon the "covenant...
...He explained his action by saying that this plank was "in the draft of the platform as presented to the convention," and that "it was later announced that the inclusion was a mistake...
...Some one tampered with that "covenant...
...Get the idea...
...This stirred up the framers—that is, the original framers—of that platform...
...And when the official, printed pamphlet containing the Roosevelt "contract with the people" came forth from the presses of Mr...
...Roosevelt cannot object to that change without reversing his whole record...
...Roosevelt and his "contract with the people" have a right to know...
...The campaign hadn't gone very far before the Bull Moose met with snags...
...GEORGE L. RECORD: "As to what became of that plank, I could not say now as I do not recall...
...Bull Moose are turning upon one another with hoof and antler...
...Some one slyly withdrew from it the anti-trust plank...
...In the place of this "stolen" antitrust plank appeared another plank—a pro-trust plank...
...Perkins is mum...
...The people who were asked to vote for Mr...
...On one occasion, just by way of illustration, he told Senator La Follette he was in favor of physical valuation and would help bring about the passage of the Senator's bill—but didn't...
...Oscar King Davis doesn't know what he is talking about when he says that the Sherman anti-trust plank was not adopted by the resolutions committee...
...Besides the nomination of Mr...
...Roosevelt is silent...
...This "mysterious" plank is couched in Roosevelt's very own words...
...It is certainly up to Davis to produce some evidence to prove his contention that the plank was not adopted and that he had any excuse for cutting it out of the platform...
...Mr...
...My recollection is so faint, however, as to what took place that I would have to furbish my memory before I would say what did happen at that time...
...See if that isn't so...
...In his "confession of faith" at his Chicago convention, Roosevelt declared: "It is utterly hopeless to attempt to control the trusts merely by the anti-trust law, or by any law the same in principle, no matter what the modifications may be in detail...
...A Joke on Bull Moose Campaigners SO THE new party writers and speakers sharpened their pencils and cleared their throats to let the people know how effectively Roosevelt and Perkins were going to "curb the trusts" and bring about "social justice...
...After thus expressing his disbelief in the anti-trust law he urges the Perkins idea of a federal commission to sanction and legalize the trusts and to "supervise and control them...
...McCarthy...
...Roosevelt's idea about "good" trusts in order to be exempt from prosecution under the anti-trust law...
...The committee worked under great pressure and to that fact is due two mistakes...
...In later editions it was stricken out...
...Compare this with the plank quoted above...
...That, too, is the testimony of McCarthy and others interested in that particular subject...
...He said: "Anyone familiar with present business conditions in this country realizes that the brakes are on...
...Roosevelt participated in some of the discussions over this plank...
...He is a "practical" man...
...We are preeminently fitted to do this because as a people we have developed high skill in the art of manufacturing: our business men are strong executives, strong organizers...
...The pro-trust plank so mysteriously slipped into the "progressive" (!) platform expresses faithfully the very idea that both Perkins and Roosevelt had, with such perfect agreement, voiced...
...With these provisions in it the plank was practically the La Follette-Bran-deis proposition...
...That paper secured, early in the day, a copy of the original draft, which it printed in its first edition...
...Where La Follette got it the writer does not know, which is, perhaps, confessing dark and inexcusable ignorance...
...It was embodied substantially in the speeches of Colonel Roosevelt during the campaign and in the speeches of many others...
...The plank referred to by Professor McCarthy had not been adopted by the resolutions committee but in the hurry of assembling the platform it was included...
...What Happened ? AND SOMETHING HAD HAPPENED...
...Brandeis and Mr...
...Roosevelt are both on record on this point...
...Colonel Roosevelt and I had a few little tilts, but men who are engaged in framing an important platform are likely to do just that thing if they are pretty sure of their opinions...
...Perkins and Mr...
...THE MEN WHO HAVE DONE THIS INJURY TO THE PROGRESSIVE CAUSE OUGHT TO BE EXPOSED...
...Perkins on this question of sanctioning the trust so that this country could get its share of foreign commerce...
...The "some one" who cut it out knew this...
...There was never any opposition to it, as far as I know, as it was a plank in which the overwhelming majority of the Progressives believe...
...But not so fast...
...If I were asked to put my finger on one disadvantage greater than the other it would be its effect on the foreign trade...
...our business men are strong executives, strong organizers...
...It is self-evident that we could not begin to do it as effectively as with one large company...
...Do their records indicate that a declaration such as that in the La Follette anti-trust plank would meet with their approval—or the reverse...
...Certainly every Progressive in this country should be satisfied as to what became of that plank...
...Any one who has had opportunity to study and observe first hand Germany's course in this respect must realize that their policy of cooperation between Government and business has in comparatively few years made them a leading competitor for the commerce of the world...
...When it came to performance, he opposed it...
...Perkins was at the convention pressing hard for a plank of his own—quite different from this anti-trust plank—which contained his "legalized monopoly" scheme...
...Many of them wrote to me and no one could find out why it was left out...
...So much for the trust-favoring plank...
...I never heard of the new plank that was inserted in the platform and am sure that it was not adopted by the committee or the convention...
...It was the La Follette idea of Regulated Competition against the Perkins idea of Legalized Monopoly...
...Perkins' New York Mail, it did not contain the antitrust plank...
...In the September number of Everybody's magazine, for instance, there was an article by Peter Clarke MacFarlane entitled "Measures, Not Men," which quoted this "missing" plank as a part of the Roosevelt Platform and said of it: "This anti-trust plank is by all odds the most immediately important plank in the progressive platform...
...However that may be, Roosevelt does owe it to those who helped make his "contract"—and now complain of trickery— to help the public find the man who did it...
...That is the testimony of McCarthy, Merriam and others of the committee who say there was not a dissenting vote cast against it...
...Perkins refers to the "confusion worse confounded" of attempting to destroy the trusts by means of the anti-trust law—which proceeding he terms "repression...
...It is known by all familiar with the facts that the McCarthy plank slipped in by mistake, and that the other plank on commercial development, which was adopted by the committee, was omitted by error in the draft submitted...
...The whole trouble can be traced to the egotism of Dr...
...But here is what some of the other new party men have had to say: OSCAR KING DAVIS: (On November 26, the day after the newspapers published the "discovery" of the missing plank...
...CHARLES MC CARTHY was one of those who insisted that the platform should contain the anti-trust declaration that was in the La Follette platform presented to the Republican National Convention last June...
...I did not hear a dissenting voice against it...
...Perkins and of Mr...
...He asserted that it was "unfortunate that national laws" on corporations "have sought to prohibit what could not be effectively prohibited...
...Gifford Pinchot was there —was in fact secretary of the committee —and I have a letter from him saying that it was adopted...
...There is not the change of a single word...
...These men were the real power in the Bull Moose campaign...
...Roosevelt, in substance: "We must have trusts in order to compete in the world market with the trusts of other nations, like Germany...
...On November 29, after Professor McCarthy had told the newspapers that Davis' explanation was "simple nonsense...
...Some of them have told me that it was the strongest thing that they used throughout the country...
...What was it to be...
...It was too great a power to give to any commission and gave the opponents of the Progressive party an opportunity to excite suspicion against it...
...using the power of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns, and other unfair business practices...
...The American people and the English people are jealous of giving power to any commission so great as that which was contemplated in the plank as it remained after the specific legal provisions were cut out...
...Say Mr...
...So the platform appeared in the newspapers next morning without the anti-trust plank...
...He uttered them in his "confession of faith" the day before the platform was prepared and passed by his followers...
...Said Mr...
...The plank which he urged upon the new party platform makers was worded thus: "We favor strengthening the Sherman law by prohibiting agreements to divide territory or limit output, and refuse to sell to customers who buy from business rivals and sell below cost in certain areas by maintaining higher prices in other places...
...I was there and I know it was unanimously adopted...
...In every way possible our federal government should co-operate in this important matter...
...They, surely, should have no difficulty in tracing back this business to the one who is responsible for it...
...In that article he speaks of "the awful curse of ruthless competitive methods...
...Hapgood of Collier's Weekly, to attack the plank effectively...
...You take ten such companies and go out and compete with Germany...
...As was pointed out in Senator La Follette's article on Roosevelt's record as President, in an earlier number of this magazine, Roosevelt began his administration by insisting that "combination and concentration should not be prohibited but supervised," —although the Sherman anti-trust law in plain terms prohibited even an attempt to form a monopoly...
...Here it is—this trust-favoring plank: "It is imperative to the welfare of our people that we enlarge and extend our foreign commerce...
...No, the internal evidence in this peculiar case points not to the "jobbing" of Mr...
...There was a fight on this, inside the committee room...
...George W. Perkins wrote an article entitled "Business and Government" for the Saturday Evening Post of March 16, 1912...
...Leaders of the Progressive party were considerably disturbed over the secret elimination of this important provision as they were losing tremendously in the country...
...It was the writing of a platform that would appeal to the progressive spirit of the people of the United States...
...On the night of August 7 after the typewritten copy of the platform had been sent to the newspapers, Oscar King Davis, press agent for Roosevelt, called at the office of the Associated Press...
...With Roosevelt, promise and performance have not always gone hand and hand...
...Roosevelt's record on the Sherman Anti-trust law is definitely that of opposition to its intent and prohibitions...
...As far as I know, the sentiment favoring it was unanimous...
...Others who took part in the writing of Roosevelt's "covenant" united with McCarthy in favoring this plank...
...Also about that "sacred" document written by those who "stood at Armageddon and battled for the Lord"—the "Progressive" platform which its framers announced as "a covenant with the people...
...Roosevelt did not know that this plank was missing from the platform until the day before he was shot in Milwaukee, when Heney told him...
...The convention favored this final clause as agreed upon by the committee...
...And he ended by telling Congress that "it is a public evil to have on the statute books a law incapable of full enforcement, because both judges and juries realize that its full enforcement would destroy the business of the country...
...These different planks were written upon separate slips of paper and in gathering up the slips in a hurry to get to the convention the slip containing the paragraph which it is asserted was added was overlooked...
...He participated in the Roosevelt convention as one of the platform-makers...
...WHO IS that "some one...
...McCarthy, for one, protested to Norman Hapgood, then editor of Collier's, for assailing the "legalized monopoly" scheme in the Roosevelt platform...
...Whoever made the changes conformed strictly to Roosevelt's publicly expressed views—even to the extent of taking a paragraph from Roosevelt's "confession" to slip into the platform as the "added" plank reassuring the trusts...
...BUT THAT wasn't all...
...At this writing, there has not yet been a confession...
...For a week this question has been hurled at the Roosevelt "inner circle...
...Except the Chicago Tribune...
...And it was later read to the convention by Dean Lewis, and adopted by the convention, together with the rest of the platform, without a dissenting voice...
...Oh, of course, none of these government-sanctioned trusts must carry on "wrong" or "immoral" practices—they must merely conform to Mr...
...McCarthy declares Roosevelt informed him more than once that he was in favor of this anti-trust plank...
...Note the following colloquy: Senator Newlands.—"Suppose the steel company were divided to-day into ten corporations of $150,000,000 each instead of being organized in one corporation having nearly a billion and a half of capital...
...Roosevelt's Position MR...
...Gary of the Steel Trust—and approved in oft-repeated utterances of Roosevelt—to encourage and foster and "legalize" the trusts under the kindly auspices of the United States government...
...Roosevelt's Own Words THAT'S PLAIN, isn't it...
...He wants industrial corporations handled just as the banks and railroads are now handled by the government...
...Also his assistance to Morgan and Perkins in further strengthening their monopolistic power by permitting them to take over the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company...
...Any one who has had opportunity to study and observe, first-hand, Germany's course in this respect must realize that their policy of co-operation between government and business has in comparatively few years made them a leading competitor for the commerce of the world...
...Perkins and Mr...
Vol. 4 • December 1912 • No. 49
