Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1906 — BACKED BY MILLIONS. [ARTICLE]

BACKED BY MILLIONS.

The Lobby Agntnaj Arizona Statehood Is Very Powerful. Lobbies are thick in the corridors of the big. white national state house these days. There is the railroad lobby, well and persistently maintained. But the most strenuous nnd dangerous, as well as the most picturesque lobby of all, is the mine owners’ lobby from Arizona, fighting statehood for that territory. It is picturesque because o£ the bold methods its employs, and because it has at least two United States Senators among its backers. It is dangerous because of the possibility that grave scandals riiay result from its operations. It is a lobby with hundreds of millions of dollars back of it. The agents and manipulators of its schemes are too smart to offer outright bribes. But they have mining stock for sale —stock which is sure to earn a big profit—stock that will “pay big to all who get in on the ground floor. And just now we are letting a little of it out to our friends.” It seems rather strange that the rich mine owners of Arizona should be fighting statehood, either single or joint, but the reason for it is not far to seek. They own the territory now. They run it. They are lords of the estate. Naturally they .do not want to run any risks by a change to statehood. These mining corporations have had things their own way all along the line, but in no particular so emphatically as in the assessed valuation of their property upon which they are called to pay taxes. These powerful corporations do not want statehood. They can operate more independently and profitably under a territorial form of government, and they stand ready to devote a big share of their millions 1 9 the work of preventing the passage of a bill giving Arizona either single statehood or joint statehood with New Mexico.