Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1908 — STANDING PAT. [ARTICLE]

STANDING PAT.

“Wall Street wants Taft,” says the New York Sun. We expected as much.

The President’s activity about the "Jim Crow” law is just to conciliate the negroes, who are somewhat off color in their devotion to the republican party these days.

The House Committee on Postoffices and Post Roads has pigeonholed the- ship subsidy bill. Seven democrats and three republicans voted against reporting it.

Elmer Dover, Secretary of the Republican national committee, according to the New York Sun, cannot figure out a majority of the delegates for Taft on the first ballot.

Up in Canada they have what they call a Tombstone Tariff. Our tariff will also need a tablet to its memory, upon which should be inscribed: "Prosperity was killed by too much protection.”

■ The Democrats in Congress cannot pass reform legislation without republican votes, but they are plainly showing the country the hypocricy of the republicans in pretending to be for reform.

The democratic national convention will be able to "point with pride” to the way the democratic members of Congress forced the republicans to enact all the reform legislation accomplished.

The Protective Tariff League can take comfort in the fact that republican prosperity has so dwindled under the tariff concessions to Germany that Imports from that country have fallen off 40 per cent.

President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor told the committee on the Judiciary of the lower House of Congress that “we may be driven into organizing in secret,” and threatened to hold the republican party responsible for its opposition to legislation for the relief of labor. Where would the republican party be without its share of the labor votes?

There is one fact made actually plain by the republicans in their attempt to tie the hands of the Democratic members of Congress, and that is, that any bill which the majority of the republicans really want passed can be put through even without debate and with only one roll call. That fact demonstrates ail that the democratic “filibuster," as the republicans term it, was intended to demonstrate. If, then, the republicans do not pass the reform and remedial legislation recommended by the President, it must be because they do not approve it. On the stump next fall, how can the republican members defend their course, when their national platform endorses President Roosevelt and his policies? They are in a dilemma.

President Rooeevelt, it la said, takes kindly to the Fairbanks plan of a special session for revision of the tariff Immediately after the election—that is, by the present Congress Instead of leaving the matter to the Congress that will come into power after March 4. What is the good of these tariff-fakirs telling of the great things, they will do "after election" when nothing is attempted before election. If tariff revision is needed so badly that it must be undertaken in November, why has the President and Congress been standing pat since last December?

The New York Sun, which evldently would be well satisfied with Fairbanks as the republican candidate for President, tries to boost him by publishing a discourslve editorial on the preparation of the seductive "cocktail.” Still we fancy that Fairbanks would be happier if the Sun would turn its attention to Taft’s neglect of his official duties In his attempt to secure delegates and let the cocktail episode alone in these cranky days of Prohibition or, at least, point to the fact that if Fairbanks furnished the cocktails for the feast, it was President Roosevelt who drank them.

Much has been said about "paramount issues” and “leading issues,” and so forth, but what, after all, is more to the point or truer than the following utterance of Mr. Bryan: "The only issue which manifests itself in all the other Issues is this: Shall the government be administered for the protection of the rights and the advancement of the interests of the general public, or shall it be controlled by the representatives of corporate wealth and administered In the interests of the few? The trust question, the tariff question, the labor question and all other questions Involve this issue. All the abuses the people complain of rest upon the privileges and the favoritism secured by fav-or-seeking corporations, and these privileges, or favors, are always at the expense of the masses.”

The Baltimore American thinks that we should turn our attention to getting revenue from inheritance and Income taxes. It notes that while we are facing a deficit Great Britain has just ended its financial year with an Increased revenue of 17,500,000, which is mainly accounted for by an Increase of more than four millions In the inheritance taxes, the rest coming from the income tax. The American continues: , The increase has come not from new burdens upon real estate and business, but from the nation’s wealth—from the great fortunes divided among heirs and from the owners of fortunes who are well able to pay and who should be made to pay. When Jay Gould died he left a fortune of $70,000,000, and yet he had been paying taxes on less than a million dollars. The public did not benefit from his wealth. Every day large American fortunes reported to the courts show that they have dodged taxes for years, and there is no law to reach them and secure for the public the share that It ought to have. The English and French handle these things better than the Americans. We should be guided by their experience.

The House of Representatives has now become but a machine to register the edicts of Speaker Cannon and Dalzell and two or three other stand-patters and trust protectors? Those who blame the Speaker for wielding his enormous power adversely to the evident wishes of the public, must remember that he is supported in running his autocratic machine by the votes of all the republican members. The vote of 39 republicans in conjunction with the democrats could depose him from power or again make the House of Representatives a deliberative assembly, but not one republican member has so far dared to show Independence for fear of what the machine would do to crush him. It is come to the pass that Congressmen who are in theory supposed to represent the people and carry out their will have surrendered their power to the three republican members of the Committee on Rules, namely, the Speaker and the two other members appointed by him, who are therefore messenger boys to do his bidding. Leaving the democratic members out of the question and looking at the matter from the republican point of view, how- many republican voters are satisfied with this condition? <

<Jf a referendum vote of the republican voters of the country could be taken on the question of repealing the tariff tax on wood pulp and print paper, is it not certain that but few would oppose it? Yet Speaker Cannon refuses to allow the bill to be reported from the Ways and Means Committee. On March 19 Mr. Ridder, President of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association, wrote to Congressman Payne, chairman of the committee, requesting that a hearing be granted upon the bills relating to free paper and pulp. On

March 21 Mr. Payne replied, stating that: "The majority of the committee determined early in the session that it would not be wise to enter upon a revision of the tariff during this year, thus adding to the uncertainty and disquiet always caused by a presidential election. They also had in mind the disturbance- caused by the recent panic. In order to avoid all agitation, they decided that they would have no hearings upon any subject affecting the tariff rates. After receiving your letter I again met with a majority of the members of the committee and they adhered to their opinion. I therefore feel authorized to say to you there will be no hearing upon tariff rates until after the presidential election.” This reply is but an exhibition of arrogance on the part of the "majority” members of Ways and Means Committee —the democratic members not having been consulted —for who is silly enough to believe that a simple bill putting print paper and wood pulp on the free list would disturb the business of the country or add to "the uncertainty and disquiet always caused by a presidential election.” If Mr. Payne and the other republicans had stated that it would disturb the business

of* the Paper Combine and probably prevent a liberal contribution to the republican campaign fund, they would have come nearer to the truth. This free paper and pulp bill Is one of those recommended by President Roosevelt, which the democrats are now trying to force the republicans to consider, and is but a sample of other bills that the republican majority of Congress refuse to consider. Every republican in Congress Is backing Speaker Cannon and the majority of the Ways and Means Committee in this do-nothing policy. New drastic rules to prevent the minority from even discussing the bills recommended by the President have been adopted. The voters that believe in these reforms will doubtless remember the standpat action of their representatives when election day rolls around and accept no excuses that they were standing with the majority of their party, for surely a republican member of Congress could politically afford to stand by the President.