Indianapolis Times, Volume 36, Number 106, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 September 1924 — Page 7

WEDNESDAY, SEJPT. 10,1924.

MY OWN STORY SEN. DOLLIVER SWINGS FROM * MACHINE POLITICS IN SENATE

"MY OWN STORY" is an exclusivr •scgpaprr version of one of the great autobiographies of modern times: La Foliette s ow n story of adventures in politics as written by himself in 191", together with an authorized narrative of his experiences in the years since then. SYNOPSIS OF I’KKYIOIS INSTALLMENTS After years spent in fighting the political bosses in the House of Rep.esentativeg and lat r as Governor of Wiseonsni. La Kollette is elected to the Senate in 1905. At Washington, as in Wisconsin. he discovers the machine politicians combating progressive legislation. In a speech before the Senate La Kollette defies the bosses and presses forward with constructive railroad legislation. meeting with many r, 'oulfs. In another fight against the railroad inter sts. which have entrenched themselves i:i the Interstate Commerce Committee. La Koilette secures the pasage of an employers' liability law-—in the interests of the railroad brotherhoods. I also secured the passage in 1907, j after much opposition and filibus-; tering, of a law to limit the hours ; of continuous service of railroad employes. This law has been of great use in preventing those accl- , dents which formerly arose from continuous employment of men for j twenty-four or even thirty-sis hours without sleep or rest. What Is undoubtedly the most sis- ; nificant development of recent years in the Congress of the United States, especially in the Senate, has been the growth of the so-called pro-; gressive group—reectlng a similar ' change in political view upon the i

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By ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE part of the people of the country. When I entered the Senate I was alone. Dolliver, Slapp and Beveridge. all of whom were afterward active progressives, had been members of the Senate for some time and were still recognized as regular, though Dolliver had shown some symptoms of revolt. I have already described the first occasion tyton which the few Republican Senators who were willing to oppose the reactionary bosses were brought together—upon the naval appropriation bill in January, 1909. 0 Later, after we got into the tariff fight in 1909, we began to know who could be depended upon, and our meetings were frequent. Beveridge There Dolliver, Beveridge and Clapp were here when I came; Dixon and Bourne entered March 4. 1907; Borah, 1 BOS; Cummins, November, 1908, and Bristow, March, 1909. Dolliver was a wonderfully gifted man. His command of language and facility of expression equaled that of any man l ever knew. He had imagination, humor, alertness. He could command all of hia powers instantly. This was something of a misfortune to Dolliver, because it tempted him often to depend upon this wonderful readiness of power in-

stead of engaging in the drudgery \t hleh is necessary to enable any man to master first the principles and then the details of a complex problem. He entered public life very young and everything came to him easily, j He did not have to encounter opposition in his own district. He did not have to fight for anything in his own State. He was taken up by the leaders here in the House and afterward in the Senate. He was always in demand as a speaker at banquets, always flattered and applauded, and he drifted along with the old crowd. So. whetr I came to the Senate Dolliver was one of the men put forward to answer any criticism that I might offer against things as they existed. I had been out through lowa before T came to the Senate, and I had reviewed the struggle that was then on in Congress to amend the interstate commerce act. I spoke In Dolliver's’ town and in I Hepburn's’ town, and they came in <ir my criticism against the committees for holding up legislation. Senator Doliver was piqued and prepared a speech for the Chautauqua platform designed to answer my criticism, though he never mentioned my name. So. when I came to the

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Senate, although we had been good friends in the House, and though he greeted me corially, I felt that he was more than a little against me. Makes Fight In 1908 I was the one Republican in the Senate w'ho made a fight on the emergency currency bill. Dolliver came back a day or two before the vote was to be taken. Anri he was staged for an eloquent fifteen or twenty-minute talk aimed directly at me. Pie did not mention my name, of course, but it was intended as a rebuke to me. I used to say to Mrs. La Follette, "Dolliver some time or other wil! come to himself,” and so I never would he drawn into any controversy with ‘ >n which would lead to a brer our friendly personal relations.^^ As we were coming into the new session, in 1909, and the tariff bill was coming up, I thought a great deal about Dolliver. One day I went over to his seat and said, "Senator, I want you to come down to my committee room. I want to talk with you.” He said, “Sit down and talk here." “No,” I f said, "I want a serious talk with you. We will both get angry before we get through, hut we will stay until we get it over with.” “What is it all about, Bob?” he asked. “I want to make you see that you ought to break away from Aldrich,” and I pointed to the other fellows sitting all about him. "These fellows are not serving the public; they are betraying the public and you are following them. Your place is at the head of a movement here in the Sen-

ate and fn the country for the public interest” , He said, "Boh, your liver ts af! out of order; you’re jaundiced. You see things awry. Cheer tip.”

“I WANT A SERIOUS TALK WITH YOU.” So Dolliver laughed and turned me off with a joke, and I did not get any serious talk with him until March, after the committees were selected. Alison w-as dead and Cummins had succeeded him. According to Senate usage, two

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Senators representing the same State and belonging to the same political party cannot serve on the same committee. Dolliver had gone to the ! boss of the Senate, Mr. Aldrich, and said; “Will you put Cummins on the Interstate Commerce Committee if I resign?” "Why, if you want it, I will,” said Aldrich. Having resigned from that committee to make way for Cummins, he applied for . appointment to the vacancy created by Allison's death on the Committee on Finance. Dolliver had a right to expect that his friends. Aldrich and the rest, would put him on. But after getting his resignation from the Committee on Interstate Commerce, Dolliver was not only denied a place on the Committee on Finance, upon which he had set his heart, but Cummins himself came within a hair’s breadth of losing the appointment to the Committee on Interstate Commerce. Meeting Dolliver in the corridor one day after the appointments were announced. I said to him, "Jonathan, are you pretty nearly ready to have that conference with me?” He answered, “Yes, I atn coming over to see you.” "Well,” I said, “come now.” And he went with me to my committee room. We spent several hours together. Dolliver reviewed all of his associates with these masters of legislation in the House and in the Senate. He went hack to the treatment which he had received on the Committee on Interstate Commerce, when Aldrich took his railroad hill

away from him by a combination of votes in the committee and placed him in the humiliating situation of having to see his bill reported by a Democratic member of the committee. ~ He told me then of the difficulty with which he held himself in restraint from making an outbreak against Aldrich and the system, but that he had yielded to the counsel of his old colleague, Senator Allison. Going to Break But he said that he had told Allison that he could not stand it much longer; that he was going to break away and declare his independence of the system in the Senate which was manipulating legislation for the benefit of great interests. And Allison, whom he loved like a father, had said to him: “Jonathan, don’t do it; don’t do it now. Wait until lam gone. I know it is wrong. It has grown up here gradually in the last quarter of a century. I have gone along with it. These men are my associates. I have only a little while left, and I haven’t the strength to break away. It has got to come. It is a cancer; it’s got to be cut out. But wait until I am gone, and then go into his new movement where you belong." ’> Dolliver said to me, "From this tipie on I am going to be independent. I am going to serve my conscience. I have been lecturing. I have saved my dollars and put them into a form up there in lowa. "I am going to judgment in the next twenty years, and I am going so I can look my Maker in the face.

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I do not have to stay in public life. I can take my hooks, my wife, and my children, and if I am dismissed from the service for following my conviction, I will go cut to my farm, and stay there until the call comes.’* After that I don’t know how many times Dolliver. when our little group would be conferring, would turn toward me and say, “Bob has been taking the gaff all these years, and isn't going to take it alone any longer.” Dolliver never came to the fullness of his strength until this great political revolution took place within him. And then it awakaned the sleeping giant and he became a student of the details of the tariff; he dug it out by the roots. Dolliver had a very remarkable memory. He often told me how he trained it. His father had insisted upon his committing all of his Latin themes and whole books of the Bible to memory'- He could write out a speech and deliver it almost literally as it was written. (Copyright, 1924, NEA Service, Inc.) (Continued in Our Next Issue) Soldier Is Honored Appreciation of the services of Ermal C. David of Whiting, member of Company F, 115th Engineers, who died of appendicitis at Camp Knox. Ky„ where his regiment was in training Monday, has been expressed by Harry B. Smith, adjutant general of Indiana.

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