Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1920 — OUR HOUSE OF LORDS [ARTICLE]

OUR HOUSE OF LORDS

Harding is not the nominee through any superior merits or est forts of his own, but has been merely the title chosen by a group of powerful politicians for an enterprise launched long ago. Their aim. was to dictate the plai> form and the ticket. Vfho should be chosen for the comparatively empty honor did not greatly matter, so that they selected him, pet him across and were known by han unequivocal!}' to be the authors of his nominal success and the masters of his acts.

A more cold-blooded or brazen urn dertaking was never planned or carried out with greater scorn for the popular regard. In full view of the convention itself and of the world at large, they manipulated the proceedings and the decisions without the slightest deference to good taste or to common honesty. Gross indifference to the people and to men iwho have been and still are to an extent popular idote was dispteyed with a sardonic glee that denoted a disposition to draft a piece of work satisfactory to the rulers and anger the masses. After Kansas, a progressive state, had cast its solid vote for Harding under promise that Henry Allen would ba named for vice-president, they coolly sent word to him that he was rejected for Lenroot, another senator, who should really have been chosen in order to make the senate’s representation as complete as its triumph.

The senate has had a great deal to say in recent months about the dangers of autocratic power. Its acts at Chicago show that the senate is afraid of autocratic power only in case it does not exercise it itseKThere are no limits to the tyranny with which the senate will rule the land, if it has the power. It resents Woodrow' Wilson’s dictation merelj' because it isn’t doing the dictating itself. This is the outfit and this the situation with which Harding, an irreproachable man in his own personality, now has to deal. An impecunious man, he will have to rely upon the ring to supply the sinews of war. The beneficiary of the senatorial rlngsters, he will doubtless find that his appointments are already mortgaged to the influences that have used his name to mask their own aims and plans. Our American house of lords, as it has well been called, never stood to win a larger stake or to lose more tragically. It is riding high, but possibly for a heavy fall. —Yesterday’s Indianapolis Star (Rep.)