Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1920 — “GILLETTISM” IN THE HOUSE [ARTICLE]

“GILLETTISM” IN THE HOUSE

“Gillettism” is the Republican’s dynasty’s newest fad. It is more up to date than “Cannonism,” and goes farther. It is not dissimilar to “Czarism” in the old Russia, or Bismarck's “blood and iron” policy. As applied by the Republican Speaker, from whom it takes its name, at the direction of the Republican “millionaire steering committee,” it is most effectively used in the House of representatives to silence those w r ho would say such things as Speaker Gillett and the “steering committee” do not wish to have said. By the application of “Gillettism," the Speaker, who, though he is but one of the 435 members of the House, may refuse to recognize a gentleman on the floor, regardless of whether it is the will of the other 434 members that the gentleman be heard. “Cannonism,” “Czarism” and “blooa and iron” have all run their evil course and are no more, which ought to be a lesson to the Speaker and the “steering committee,” although, as former Speaker Champ Clark says, a Bourbon forgets nothing — and learns nothing.

The revelations made of the enormous expenditures in the interests of the various Republican candidates for the presidency, made public through the senate investigation that has been going on for the past two weeks, is enough to shame all decent members of that party. While it was generally known that immense sums of money have been used in the past by the Republicans in buying up elections, such charges have never before borne the stamp of undisputed truth through official investigation and sworn testimony.

It is a disgraceful mess and will give the bolshevik and anti-govern-ment radicals a lot of campaign thunder which they will use to good effect among their bomb-throwers and assassin followers. The Senate Republican majority passed the separate peace resolution and thus left only the President to save the country from the “everlasting dishonor” Senator Lodge said a separate peace would bring upon the country. Such an act is quite in keeping with Chairman Hays’ “we are more Interested in the stomach of our people than the hearts of the world.” It was a fine sense of considertion that prompted Senator Knox to agree to elimination from the “dishonorable” peace resolution of the clause requesting the President to negotiate another peace with Germany. Doubtless the Senator who said the treaty the President negotiated was “too severe on Germany” felt that the President might not be trusted to negotiate a “soft peace.”

From peace with victory on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, to peace with “dishonor” in the American Senate on May 15, 1920, is a far cry, and a cry that only selfish, time-serving politicians who are out to catch the hyphenated vote can hear. If Hiram can help it, there won’t be many “niggers in the woodpile” of delegates at* Chicago. The quadrennial fight over delegates from the “black belt” is always an interesting preliminary to the main bout on the G. O. P. National convention floor. Ho# to head off Hiram and wallop Wood without alienating their followers is the problem that keeps the G. O. P. “Old Guard” bosses lying awake. To Republican Senators, the Constitution is what a peace treaty was to mere “scrap o£ paper.” Not even Senator Lodge can galvanize a separate peace from an “act of dishonor” into respectability.