STOP-WATCH LEGISLATION
Stop- Watch Legislation REACTIONARY interests have many expedi-ents for blocking progressive legislation. There are the "Weasel phrases" that suck the meat out of a bill. There are the "jokers"...
...Morgan, "Has the price of coal increased to the consumer...
...There are the "compromises" that render futile all that a piece of legislation purports to accomplish...
...So well satisfied were the people of the city that a number of them came to Superintendent Meek and offered him 160 to 300 acres of land and half a million dollars if he would go further and develop the local high school into an industrial city college...
...They understand the meaning of public service...
...Wisconsin has had the investigation and it remains for the legislature to do the rest...
...As a spur to the private newspapers, it was watched closely by sociologists and publicists everywhere in the country...
...Members of the legislature in Wisconsin are no longer paid according to the number of days they are in session...
...They surely are to be credited with sense enough to know when their job is finished...
...The progressive movement has reached education, and Wisconsin is in the front...
...It isn't raining rain to me, It's raining roses down...
...In either event, the progressive cause suffers—and the interests have gained delay...
...For this reason, if for no other, the men who are sent to Madison to make the laws, are not to be...
...The Ultimate Consumer IDA M. TARBELL reports "The Hunt for a Money Trust," in the May American Magazine...
...Such a proposal may have a certain appeal to legislators...
...Missouri and Texas are following close upon Ohio...
...They are skilled in legislative procedure...
...The special interests never sleep...
...She was present at many of the hearings of the Pujo Committee in Washington...
...A health unto the happy...
...The Wisconsin legislature should reject this proposal...
...In Wisconsin, legislators are held to a strict accounting for their platform pledges...
...Lengthy sessions often become wearisome...
...Where every buccaneering bee May find a bed and room...
...They, on the whole, willingly make sacrifices in order to stay by their duty until their promises have been embodied in thoroughgoing statutes...
...Not all educators when the reflection of the school system is held up to them cry out, "Let us smash the mirror...
...They entail sacrifices, in many cases, of both time and money...
...To thousands of citizens it became a trusted source of information about the public business...
...Thirty-four states in the Union are now considering making a similar survey...
...It discloses a need of better supervision in order to make the rural school serve best the community and the young people entrusted to it...
...There are the "jokers" that, slyly inserted into a measure, defeat its whole purpose...
...Their emissaries are adroit...
...Let's have it over with, and go home," not infrequently falls upon responsive ears—to whom the suggestion of a limited session sounds like a feasible method of speeding up the machinery of legislation...
...There is no incentive of self-interest to prolong a session...
...It is not serving the cause of progress to hang platform pledges on the hands of the clock...
...In every dimpled drop I see Wild flowers on the hills...
...and it is by no means certain that it has been permanently abandoned...
...THE SCHOOL SYSTEM of Boise City, Idaho, was recently re-organized on the basis of a careful survey of the city's needs made by a committee of educational experts...
...There was a desire in the House to pass the Eight-hour Bill for women workers in the District of Columbia, for instance, but there was not time...
...That is the Wisconsin way...
...The clouds of gray engulf the day And overwhelm the town...
...In a progressive commonwealth, it would mean opening the way to them, if not to secure the passage of bills in their interest, at least to block the passage of measures to which they are opposed...
...This report presents in vivid, concrete form the facts about the rural schools of Wisconsin...
...This resolution should be defeated...
...expected to extend any session one day longer than is necessary...
...But of all the devices resorted to by the enemies of progressive measures there is none more fraught with danger to public good than limiting legislative sessions by law to a fixed number of days...
...A fig for him who frets!— It isn't raining rain to me, It's raining violets...
...It was an interesting experiment...
...Wisconsin again has set the pace...
...Put a limitation upon the sessions, however, and there is certain to be a congestion of bills in the closing days...
...Yet there is nothing the privileged interests and their paid lobbyists would like better...
...Ohio has followed the lead of Wisconsin and one of the Wisconsin investigators is in charge of the Ohio survey...
...Its political forum was open without discrimination to all parties...
...That," said Mr...
...A member does not receive a dollar more salary for a long session than for a short one...
...In Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois there are now calls for state-wide investigations...
...And in the closing hours of the last Congress important bills died because of the congestion...
...In those states where legislative sessions now have a fixed time limit, the experience has not been satisfactory...
...year of its existence it did its work with credit...
...During the campaign for the state superin-tendency Wisconsin county superintendents met and resolved that the investigators who made the Wisconsin survey were unfamiliar with country schools and country school conditions...
...And any other assumption is an impeachment of the intelligence of the members...
...That means either that progressive measures are going to be crowded aside in the rush and confusion or that they will be passed without the careful scrutiny by which alone clever "jokers" may be detected...
...There are many suggestions for giving the public a press that is untainted by counting room "influence...
...It isn't raining rain to me, But fields of clover bloom...
...The public newspaper is one of them...
...Untermyer said to Mr...
...Morgan with his consciousness of ability, his undoubted sense of responsibility towards those who dealt with him, had like many of his time, little or no sense of a personage with whom the rich and powerful must at last deal fairly or fall, and that is the 'ultimate consumer.'" And one is reminded of Senator Lodge's impatient remark during the tariff debate of 1909 —"The ultimate consumer is a myth...
...Morgan, "I do not know anything about" Miss Tarbell comments as follows on this piece of testimony: "It was in his apparent ignorance of the relation between the great enterprises he conducted with such simple and magnificent self-confidence, and the man who buys his coal by the basketful, who must pinch for a year to buy a harvesting machine, that the foundation of the popular mistrust of his power lies...
...At one stage of the proceedings Samuel Untermyer, the Government's lawyer, was examining J. P. Morgan about the relation of the voting trust to the price of coal...
...And whether or not the Los Angeles Municipal News is ever revived, it will still be a notable landmark in the movement to give this country free and un-subsidized newspapers...
...It reported news interestingly and, apparently, without any suspicion of "color...
...Sound statutes, not speedy sessions, should be its watchword...
...Leading educators throughout the country, however, have paid high tribute to this work...
...A Landmark THE VOTERS of Los Angeles have decided to discontinue the Municipal News, known widely as "the first publicly-owned newspaper in the world...
...It was like trying to force a six-inch stream through a one-inch pipe...
...There are days when the business of making laws appears to drag along at a snail's pace...
...The fair name of Wisconsin has not suffered from this report...
...The United States Bureau of Education, in a bulletin by A. C. Monahan, just issued, says that these conditions exist everywhere in the L'nited States...
...Following the Lead THE REPORT of the Board of Public Affairs on rural schools has placed Wisconsin in the forefront of the movement for a reorganization of our educational system...
...In his message to the Ohio legislature, Governor Cox says, "This subject (education) suggests possibilities of such tremendous moment to the people that legislation should be preceded by investigation...
...A resolution is pending in the Wisconsin legislature to amend the constitution so as to fix a definite limit for legislative sessions...
...At every session of Congress, at every session of every state legislature these things appear...
...During the one April Rain Ey ROBERT LOVEMAN It isn't raining rain to me, It's raining daffodils...
...It is the supreme duty of progressives to keep every door closed against them...
...If the county superintendents follow the newspapers in other states they will find that the "Wisconsin Idea" of first investigating and then acting has found renewed praise...
...Unable to controvert any of the facts presented in the report, they resolved to assail the persons who made it...
Vol. 5 • April 1913 • No. 17
