Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 225, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1912 — How Mr. Beveridge Answers Questions [ARTICLE]

How Mr. Beveridge Answers Questions

Taken all in all, Mr. Beveridge’s Bull Moose speech Wednesday, was a very nice piece of up-to-date political slight of hand work. He started with the words “I want to talk, not to you, but with you,” and not only offered to answer questions, but asked for them. Omitting the flowers and the fine art work, the logic that tan through the first and main portion of Ms address was along the line now being put out by Theodore Roosevelt that there is no hope of restoring real genuine representative government In this country except through the instrumentality of the new progressive party; that corporate Interests are so strongly entrenched- behind both the old parties that no matter which way goes the victory, the wishes of the common people will be throttled by the dummy senators and dummy representatives of the old parties with corporate interests holding the string. He offered as one proof of this condition the fact that the packing industries of the United States for many years had government inspection of meat for foreign shipment but no inspection for the AtoerlQ&n meat consumer until in the Roosevelt administration the meat inspection law was passed. He did not say bills for this Inspection had been offered previously in congress and blocked by the dummy representatives with the packing interests holding the string. Recalling, however, that Mr. Roosevelt did not become president until In 1901, and that Mr. Beveridge was elected to the senate in 1898, the unbiased and unprejudiced seeker. for political truth would like to know how many meat inspection bills, if any, Mr. Beveridge introduced during Ms first three years. Fairness would compel one to insist that there was no improper influence used against the public health or public good until it is shown or claimed that himself or other champions for the people had been held up in their effort to * enact such legislation. It was the meat shipments to Cuba during the Spanish-American war that started the sentiment .for this legislation, and memory tells us that Beveridge’s tbeme about this time was not meat inspection, but his plea of “Wherever the American flag is planted to never haul it down,” bending his efforts to make sure that the U. S. was in the Philippine Islands to stay. One other proof he offered of corporate legislation was the short-weight tobacco package joker which occurred through a change in the internal revenue law, and which was common knowledge. But with these and one other instance he proceeded to repeat the words of Theodore Roosevelt which we have been reading every day in the large newspapers, namely, that the republican party is in the control of such men as Mr. Penrose, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Guggenheim, of Colorado, and Mr. Barnes, of New York; that the democratic party is controlled by Sullivan, of Illinois, Taggart, of Indiana, and Murphy, of New York. For the sake of his argument grant that It is so. When he mentions Penrose !he thinks of Standard Oil; when he mentions Guggenheim he thinks of the Smelter Trust; when he mentions Murphy he thinks of Tammany Hall; and with each so called boss goes the thought of the interest behind him. Taking his request for questions at its full face value at this juncture, the writer asks “How about Perkins, Morgan, Flynn and Cecil Lyon?” By the same method of branding men as

bosses which he insists upon applying to the republican and democratic parties, the object of the question naturally would be to determine whether or not the progressive party was not already in the hands of men who are just ae properly termed bosses and whether the party is not being financed by other corporate interests just as sinister as those he tells the common people to beware of. As some prominent men have lately deserted the progressive in various parts of the country, with the statement that it Is already more' boss ridden than either of the old parties, we consider this question justified. By his same rule at the mention of Perkins we would think of the International Harvester Trust; with the mention of Morgan we think of the U. S. Steel Trust; with Flynn we think of the statehouse steal in Pennsylvania, and with Lyon we think of corrupt politics In Texas. - But 1q! And listen to the answer that answereth not. Perkins, he says, isa young man of wealth working for the ultimate object of others whom we might term public benefactors (incidentally interested in dividends) but not bosses; that Perkins’ influence in the steel corporation brought about the policy of profit-sharing with its employes, and the adoption of the old age pension. No mention of Mr. Morgan, who is standing behind Perkins. He gets an immunity bath. No reminder that Perkins was sufficiently allied with Morgan in Roosevelt’s panic of 19Q7 to write a U. S. Steel check for 320.Q00.00Q to afford bank relief. No mention of how the merger of Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. with the Steel Trust (Morgan, Perkins and Roosevelt all present) operated to the public good. Yet this very act made the monopoly of the steel trust complete. But, Perkins started an innovation on the pay-roll and now appears as a public benefactor, and U. S. S. is to be hailed as an examplar of justice equalling, if not surpassing, that of U. S. A. The test then by which we are to judge a good trust from a bad trust is not the question of conspiracy in restraint of trade, not the question of Mr. Perkins’ reorganization with 70 per cent watered common stock on which it draws a dividend from the farmer; it is not a question of partial or complete monopoly, but a question of the pay-roll. The farmer then who buys any of the six harvester machines made by the International is to be told that he should not be conn corned with what the price would be with healthy and natural competition restored, but gets his comfort from the statement that Mr. Perkins at its head will sooner or later apply the profit-sharing plan. He Is not concerned with whether it fixes the price on 75 per cent of the grain binders of the U. S. (which Perkins himself admits) but gets his consolation in the fact that the men who made either the Champion or the Deering, or the McCormick, or the Milwaukee, or the Plano, or the Osborne, will some day get an old age pension. I am not decrying good treatment for workingmen, but insist that, Mr. Beveridge’s reply was a straight-out dodge, and constitutes present day political slight of hand talk. The whole attitude then of the progressive party In its appeal to the voter may be summed up In these wors: "“Fear hot; we are holier than they.” W. C. GILMORE.