KING CAUCUS
King Caucus FOE THE first time in the history of tariff legislation a bill is to be written into law by a secret caucus. Regardless of the character of the measure, this proceeding merits the...
...Even though legislation of great public importance were to be enacted by such methods, it is too dear a price to pay for it...
...Such a partisan course on any but a tariff bill would not be tolerated by Congress or by the public...
...Trades and deals and dickers and corruption thrive best in the dark...
...Thus on any bill, a minority of 26 Senators may dominate legislation...
...The bill having been received from the House was referred on May 16th to the Senate Committee on Finance...
...THE QUESTION now is not, "Does the Money Trust exist...
...If we are to have caucus made laws, then 26 Senators, a bare majority of the Democratic membership, may bind, gag, and deliver the entire 51 votes of the majority...
...He says, "I do not understand that the limitation was intended as either an amendment or or an interpretation of the anti-trust law, but merely as an expression of the opinion of the Congress—a very emphatic opinion, backed by an overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives and a large majority of the Senate...
...A FARM of 160 acres has been deeded to the schools of Paola, Kans...
...He has no right to go into a secret chamber and there constrain himself in regard to the public business...
...Better far that such provisions should undergo radical change if need be...
...He might have gone farther and stated that it undoubtedly expressed the opinion of an imposing majority of the people...
...it is open...
...It is a secret meeting of a part of the membership of the United States Senate, which in effect assumes to discharge a legislative function and determine the final action of one of the branches of the legislative department of government on a most important measure...
...What Will Be Done...
...But it is its subsequent methods of dealing with this bill through caucus action that is most reprehensible...
...The congress will be devoted to the two main topics of City Building and the Organization of Municipal Life...
...The People" IT WAS a great day for human progress when the Committee on Woman Suffrage of the United States Senate reported in favor of extending the ballot to the women...
...Caucus control destroys all independence and forces a legislator to submit his conscientious convictions to the party bosses who through skill in manipulation, dominate the party caucus...
...His position was that the anti-trust law should be applied to societies of laborers and farmers...
...His protest appears to be aimed at the method of legislating by "riders" attached to important bills rather than against the principle involved...
...Having completed their work on the bill the majority members of the Finance Committee should, thereupon, according to all precedent, have called in the Republican members of the Committee and submitted the bill for consideration by the full committee...
...it is not in the light of day...
...A nominating convention or a caucus outside is held in the light of day...
...The senatorial caucus is secret...
...Legislation is public business...
...Houb-wich presents in concise form the proposals advanced in Congress as a result of the Pujo investigation of the Money Trust...
...but "What are we going to do about it ?" Since the centralization of money and credit was dragged to the bar of the United States Senate—and the country—five years ago, there have been gathered facts and testimony sufficient to silence those who were formerly quick to scoff...
...The only intimation of the course to be pursued by this Administration is found in President Wilson's concluding sentence: "The law will be interpreted in the determination of what the Department should do by independent and, I hope, impartial judgments as to the true and just meaning of substantive statutes of the United States...
...Now it is up to Congress to destroy this evil Brobdingnagian...
...it is confidential, if you please...
...It should not be permitted upon a bill affecting customs duties...
...better far that such provisions should be defeated altogether than that a secret caucus rule of legislation should become enthroned in the Congress of the United States...
...Tariff revision downward— and sharply downward, too, —is demanded for every economic reason...
...This they did not do...
...They were elected to the United States Senate...
...ONE CITIZEN of Louisiana is so impressed with the need for medical inspection in the schools that he has furnished the necessary funds for the salary of the health officer in his community...
...The proceeding of this caucus is not in the nature of a conference for an exchange of opinions upon the provisions of the bill...
...It was taken in charge by the Democratic members of the Committee, who proceeded by themselves to revise the bill to meet their own views...
...Caucus control of legislation means minority rule...
...It cannot be maintained that the end justifies the means referred to...
...If all progressive citizens who believe with the committee that "it is anomalous and archaic, in the free Republic, professedly made up of, controlled by, and administered for all the people, to deny to one-half of its citizens the right of exercising a valuable function of citizenship,"—if they will send a message today to their representatives in the United States Senate it will help to speed the day when this government will really and truly be one of, for and by the PEOPLE...
...The Democrats in Congress have re-established the machine system in order to control the votes of these same representatives...
...The Committee has never been called together to consider the bill...
...It is not reasonable to expect that there should be unanimous agreement on every detail of a tariff bill containing more than four thousand items...
...And he assures the country "that this item will neither limit nor in any way embarrass the actions of the Department of Justice...
...Does that mean a possibility that the Department of Justice will accept the mistaken and wrongful construction of the Sherman law making it an instrument to suppress the unions and co-operative efforts of wage earners and farmers in protecting their labor against moneyed monopolies...
...YOUR Senators must act upon it...
...The resolution and this favorable report are how before the United States Senate...
...It is the well understood and openly avowed purpose of the proceeding to force all Senators to surrender their individual opinions to the control of the caucus...
...A Senator has no right to abdicate his duties here in this chamber...
...It prevents the scientific treatment of the tariff as an economic subject and makes it a mere pawn in the political game...
...This Committee is composed of ten Democrats and seven Republicans...
...In the concluding article of his series on "King Mammon Rules," on another page of this issue, Mr...
...If you are not certain where they stand, at least let them know where YOU stand...
...Other appropriations supply the Department with abundant funds to enforce the law...
...The people have the choice in the selection of their representatives...
...On the contrary, it is because these Senators would otherwise vote to serve the thousands of farmers and laborers who grow sugar beets and sheep and cattle and grains in their respective states that they are to be made to feel the caucus lash...
...They were elected to perform their legislative functions in the open Senate, not in a secret caucus...
...Taft declared this exemption clause to be "class legislation of the most vicious sort...
...This is vicious in principle, and fraught with the gravest danger to democracy...
...Write to them...
...Is that to be regarded as the "true and just meaning" of this statute...
...To that end the direct primary and the direct election of Senators were established...
...it is under the direct eye of the people...
...Every member of the Democratic Party in Congress declares in favor of such reduction...
...The procedure in the Senate on the Tariff Bill, is a repetition of the action of the House on the same measure...
...THE GOVERNMENT of Belgium has invited the United States and the separate States to be represented at the First International Congress of Cities to be held in Ghent in July...
...Caucus control in practice is secret control...
...It is very fine reading...
...But tariff revision, important as it is, and even more important, the legislation dealing with the combinations that control our markets, and more important still, the legislation to free money and credit from the Money Power;—one and all are but phases of the long struggle to make the will of the people the law of the land...
...To that end the caucus and convention system, the ready instruments of the political boss and the political machine, have been torn down and cast aside...
...A Protest That Points a Duty PRESIDENT WILSON signed the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill...
...These votes are held to bind all Democratic senators...
...A secret vote is taken upon each of its provisions, and will be taken upon the bill as a whole...
...The committee's splendid report, by Senator Ashurst, is printed in full on page four...
...It was the same bill that Tapt vetoed in the closing days of the last session because it prohibited the Department of Justice from using any of this money for the prosecution of labor unions or farmers' associations under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law...
...It is incumbent upon every voter, therefore, to follow the course of currency and banking legislation, and particularly to know what is brought forward with a view to driving Speculation out of the financial markets...
...There is nothing in President Wilson's statement to indicate that the present Administration is going to apply the anti-trust law to labor unions and farmers organizations...
...it has no reporters present...
...Instead they followed the bad example of the Democratic majority of the House and called a party caucus of the Democratic members of the Senate to act upon the bill...
...Public opinion will largely determine what Congress does...
...But there is an immense difference between such an assembly and a senatorial caucus...
...From the hour when a bill is introduced, in all the various stages of its consideration before committees, and conferences, until the final vote is taken in both branches of Congress, the people are entitled to open, public, daylight proceeding on the measure...
...The Senate is composed of ninety-six members, of whom 51 are Democrats and 45 Republicans...
...Money from the farm is used to buy books, clothing, etc., for boys and girls who wish a high-school education but can not afford it...
...there are reporters present...
...Senators were not elected to the Democratic caucus...
...It is conceivable that a party caucus may ignore party advantage and all political considerations in framing legislation...
...When the bill comes before the Senate, where it will be fully debated by both sides, should any Democratic Senator in voting bis honest convictions vote on any provision contrary to caucus action, he will be branded a bolter...
...To take the public business into a corner to be transacted under a seal of "confidence" is the first step toward public betrayal Of an attempt to make caucus action binding upon a member's vote, Charles Sumner, away back in 1871, said to his brother Senators: "We are all under the obligation of an oath as Senators, obliged to transact the public business under the Con-stitution of the United States...
...The public has a right to know every fact presented and every argument used to influence legislative action...
...Time will tell...
...That pledge was interpreted by President Wilson and his party leaders to mean revision downward "with fairness to every legitimate industry...
...The Democratic party is pledged to revise the tariff...
...The truant authorities have been ordered to be on the lookout for all such cases...
...Meanwhile, there should be a revision of the Sherman law making such construction forever impossible...
...It may act solely for what is believed to be the public good, but such a procedure is so antagonistic to every principle of representative government that nothing can justify or excuse so pernicious a precedent in legislation...
...When a committee of the highest legislative body in the land recommends that steps be taken to abolish the sex discrimination in the suffrage, its statement merits the most earnest consideration of all good citizens...
...It is not that the Senators from western states are in danger of betraying their constituents and voting for the eastern tariff interests that resort was had to caucus coercion to "line them up...
...The bill is debated behind closed doors...
...LOUISVILLE has established an open-air • * * PARENTS who keep their children at home to help in the housework and with the family washing have been warned by the Milwaukee authorities that these will not be considered valid excuses for keeping children out of school...
...I make a great, broad, clean distinction between a nominating convention outside, or a caucus outside and a senatorial caucus...
...You will find them helpful in determining what evils there are to be remedied...
...Why, Sir, to take the public business from this chamber and carry it into such a caucus is a defiance of reason and of the best principles of government...
...We have no right to desert this chamber and go into a secret conclave, and there dispose of the public business...
...To this extent the Finance Committee followed the bad practice of its predecessor...
...Nothing more truly indicative of the forward sweep of this movement can be imagined...
...Regardless of the character of the measure, this proceeding merits the severest criticism...
...The only purpose in resorting to the un-Amer ican, un-demoeratic method of a caucus rule, is to coerce some Senators into a violation of conscience as to certain provisions of the bill, on penalty of being outlawed as members of the Democratic party...
...Wilson protests against the exemption clause and declares he would have vetoed that particular item, if he could without killing the rest of the bill, "because it places upon the expenditure a limitation which is, in my opinion, unjustifiable in character and principle...
Vol. 5 • July 1913 • No. 27
