Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1920 — POWER LESS PERFORMANCE [ARTICLE]

POWER LESS PERFORMANCE

Thus far in the course of a spe-i cial session of more than six months, 1 and in two months of the current * regular session of congress, the Ite-1 publican majority’s record has been one of negation. The Republican leadership is notorious for the wise .and needful and salutary measures it has opposed instead of notable for providing the beneficent legislation that it promised and the people expected. There are two damaging counts in the popular indictment of the Republican congress which has ’had control and responsibility for threefourths of a year.’ One is that, having proclaimed a program of con-' structive enactments of its own, it has failed to acoomiplisih a single j important task to which its leaders pledged it. The second count is that, though seemingly unwilling or unable to take the initiative, the Republican majority, in their partisanship and prejudice, 'have stubbornly refused to accept the recommendations of President Wilsdni. Nothing comild better reveal the ■contrast between Democratic aggressiveness and progressiveness and Republican incompetence than the history of the last eight moinths. In all that period the executive branches of the government have been under Democratic authority and direction. The legislative depdrtmient has been wholly dominated iby Republicans. All the great problems and accomplishments of recotastr uct ion — negotiations of peace, readjustment of the nation’s finances, the settlement of two and ■the prevention of several great strikes, the suppression of revolutionaries —have been met and sue--ceesfully solved by the executive agencies, and that not only without fa dp, but often in the face of Ihind-

rance, from the Republican legislature. All the while the Republican senate was obstructing peace and making Lhe treaty a Barrier to the mok vital requirements of the country. Even if the Republican House of Representatives had been capable of functioning, its product in.the form of bills would have lain like driftwood in the senate. SurelJ', the people cannot be mistaken as to the identity of those who, througli Incapacity and indifference and virulent hostility to the president, have become responsible for withholding the measures and machinery wnlch the country has needed during these many months of Republican regime.