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PBC0MBBB 11, 1903
The Commoner.
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JOSEPH a CANNON POSES AS A "DIZZY RADICAL"
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By Victor Murdock, Representative in Congres From the
Eighth Congressional District of Kansas
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Victor Murdock, a republican member of
congresB from Kansas, has written for the New
York World a fine piece of satire. It relates
directly to Joseph G. Cannon the reform and
reformed speaker of the house of representatives.
Incidentally a brief introduction of Mr.
Murdock may bo advantageous forby this, the
reader will know that Mr. Murdock is peculiarly
qualified to write upon Cannon and Cannonism.
The August number of the American Maga
zine printed an article entitled "A Congress
man's First Speech." This article was written
by Mr. Murdock. A preface to the article was
written by Mr. Murdock's friend, William Allen
White. Mr. White's article follows:
"Victor Murdock went to congress in his
early thirties, five years ago, determined to be a
free man. His first public act of any importance
was to bring to the attention of congress the
fact that the American railroads were getting
five million dollars a' year from the government
by a false system of railroad mail weighing.
Congress refused to act. Murdock, who was
refused the right to vote on the subject, ap
pealed from the decision of the chair to the
house; ho was the only republican who stood
up to be counted. The steal which was open
and palpable was so gross that the president,
after waiting in vain for congress to act oh Mur
dock's proposition, abolished the rule; under
which the steal was made the day that congress
adjourned. Murdock thus incurred the enmity
of the house organization, but he found favor
with the president. Last spring Murdbck led
the fight for a detailed consideration of the
postal appropriation bill in the house He said
in the course of his speech:
" 'Thjs bill carries two hundred millions.
There are twenty minutes allowed for its analy
sis. That is deliberation at the rate of ten mil
lions a minute.' Mr. Murdock then denounced
the extravagance of congress in dealing with the
the railroads. 'During the past thirty-four
years,' he asserted, 'by reason of congressional
blindness and departmental silence we have paid
the railroads on miscalculations sixty million
dollars. Still congress refuses to adopt business
methods in dealing with the railroads.' .
"This angered the organization again. Mur
dock also stood against the 'organization' in its
attempt to garrot the democratic minority.
Three times the clerk called Murdock's name,
when this rule came to a vote, and three times
did Murdock the only republican reply 'no.
He could not be bulldozed, and when signa
tures were needed to a petition to the repub
lican caucus" for any insurgent movement, Mur
dock's name always went down."
VICTOR MURDOCK'S SATIRE
Mr. Murdock's article, printed in the New
York World, was as follows:
Washington, November 29. Carnegie did
not begin it, but of all the color added to the
present situation in Washington, Carnegie has
brought the nearest combination to a Japanese
sunset yet produced. It may not prove to be
the most brilliant mixture, however. Your
Uricle Joe is approaching the canvas with an
air of abandon and a palette which in pigment
Scheme resembles a test tube showing the effect
of pepsin after three hours on. lobster, Welsh
rabbit and spinach. There are seismic vibra
tions in the vicinity of Joseph G. Cannon which
Indicate It.
John D. Rockefeller was really the first
man to bring disorder to the-gray tapestry of
our national prospect when a month ago he
uttered his famous indictment of men who live
for wealth alone. For whatever the rest of
the country may think of the most notable of
- our landscape gardeners, who picked up inci
dentally a competence in oil, there has been a
Becret though -precious belief in Washington
that Rockefeller's real worth, as Shakespeare s,
would come out two hundred years after death,
and that with his ultimate canonization, avarice
would be introduced into good society as a sister
in equal standing with virtue and valor
- That was the first rude shock. Then An
drew Carnegie climbed aboard the Protection
limited and quarrelled with the conductor.
Carnegie has never been commonplace, but when
he boarded the train with the steel trust and
insisted on paying full fare for the child, Wash
ington lost all patience. The conductor was
willing to carry the steel trust half faro, in fact
by long training had como to complete con
viction that the infant wa3 permanently Just
under twelve and stood ready to convince Cnr
negio himself that he didn't know a baby when
ho reared one. And for Carnegie to stand there
and belligerently confess that the cuto little
thing was past thirteen and had been playing
fullback on the international eleven for sovoral
season was a violation of every conventional
sense of decency that economic Washington has
had in forty yeaTs.
UNCLE JOE WIDE AWAKE
Just at thiB moment, too, the president of
the Amalgamated Order of Tobacco Leaf Pro
ducers, of Tariffville, Conn., was proving to the
ways and means committee that there was no
competition with the Sumatra leaf becauso the
American weed was superior, and, with that
refinement only possible in the human intellect
when it grapples with tho tariff problem, that
therefore tho duty on tho domestic wrapper
should bo Increased to protect it. And only a
moment before the spokesman for tho American
manufacturers of Advalorem, Pa., had testified
that a surplus at home was a domestic calamity
and a foreign philanthropy. In other words,
things wore moving along about as usual whon
Andrew Carnegie dismissed tho stage manager,
gagged the prompter and plunged into tho spot
light himself.
Rockefeller was theatric. His outbreak
may have been merely a weakness for homily.
Carnegie's paroxysm was dramatic. It was in
vested with specific horror and seemed to have
a plot.
Now, all this has not escaped your Uncle
Joe, speaker of the house. If this Is to be an
era of spectacular work he may show tho coun
try something. He is master of tho representa
tive portion of the government. His ofilce en
titles him to a seat next tho president at table,
while supreme court justices and the like must
look in envy to the sacred territory above the
salt and the ketchup bottle.
Uncle Joe enjoys life In Washington. Ho
has enjoyed it since tho day he left Danville,
back in 1874, when, with fading visions of a
cow to be milked and horses to be fed at dawn's
early light, he looked Into the eyes of a Wash
ington hotel clerk and received In gladness tho
sybaritic assurance that guests would be break
fasted as late as high noon. It looked good to
him then, and since he has consistently stood
pat. He has been the Grand Lama' of all tho
stand-patters. Only the accident of birth and
time kept him from being a friend to the rush
light and the latch string. An eager world, un
der the spur of discontent, groping into tho
dark of the bountiful future and ambitiously
clutching at new things, had forgotten them
before he was born. Else he would have pro
tested against their elimination. At the caucus
on Creation he would have stood loyal to Chaos.
It Is In his heart to approve things as they are,
to burn incense at the altar of Status Quo and
level a lance always at Change.
Howe had slipped the needle's eye down a
notch or two; Stephenson had mounted jo. steam
cylinder on a T rail and McCormlck had turned
a pair of elongated scissors loose In the wheat
field by the time Uncle Joe arrived, and he has
stood by them loyally ever since. They got his
friendship by beating him hero. Of course, hu
manity has had some travail in assimilating
them, but your Uncle Joe's worry over the prob
lems they brought with them has always been
lost in tho hlazing sunlight of his great, glad
approval of the fact that we have them at all.
He has been speaker now for nearly six
years. He found the speakership the sole repos
itory of responsible party leadership in the
house. He patted it about and kneaded it and
moulded it into shape, until now It Is also tho
repository of personal power as well as political,
and as master of both majority and minority
he has created an atmosphere of reserve and
conservatism that would strangle a Manchu
mandarin. The basic philosophy of the present
rules of the house, under his interpretation, is
that the house is so large that it must be pro
tected from itself. If left unhampered, the
house, in its efforts to be representative, might,
in some way, actually respond to public senti
ment. It was, then, in the spirit of philan
thropy that ho rushed in between 319 raon and I
themselves and saved them.
Yot thoro has been criticism. It has been '
sovoro. Ho has felt it. Ho believes It to be
unjust, but ho recognizes that hero and thoro,
as in the caso of tho man in Oklahoma who dp- '
dared that, while ho was not religious himself,
ho would havo to voto against Taft becauso Taft
was a vegetarian, It has lost somo vote.
Thoro is opposition to your Undo Joo;
thoro Is opposition to the garroto rules of tho
houso, and now comes a disposition to tanglo
tho revision of tho tariff up In tho complication.
Your Undo Joo has been a: standpnttor o
tho tariff, in tho courso of years ho has be
come an expert on tho schedules. In his first
term ho may havo had an idea that tho best
thing to do with our raw material was to cook
it, as tho boy In Dickens' story thought but
for many years ho has had a knowledge of the
schedules running from tho Horn of pyronitroch
lorobonzol to coll chains. And ho has bolloved '
In lotting them alone.
But tho domand has como for revision,
and tho demand is for a downward revision.
Thoro Is a knowledge in congress that "revision"
is derived from two Latin words, signifying "to
see" and "again," and thoro is a fooling la
congress that tho people will aoo congress Utor
if that revision Isn't downward In sovoral not
able instances, as in stcol and lumber. Coupled
with this consciousness is the apprehension that
the tariff may bo brought into tho houso under
somo special rule, or under a suspension of the
rules without tho right of amendment, or that
cortain sacred sections may bo saved from the
violating hands of a barbarian house by placing
the said sections in tho hands of a dork to be
inserted in tho bill after its engrossment anil
passage, which can bo done under tho practices
of tho houso under rule twenty-eight, as is
duly recorded in the precedents of parliamentary
procedure
x And right hero is whoro your Uncle Joo
may get into action. Rockefeller has flipped".
Carnegie has flopped. Your Uncle Joo may out
do them both and, turning from a long record
of standpattJsm, blaze suddenly forth into a
dizzy, dazzling radical. ',
There are signs in tho sky aud subtor-,.
ncan murmurings. For thirty years, following
the unbroken rulo of all conservatives, your
Uncle Joo has given his newspaper interviews
off-hand. The other day, In tho manner of all
radicals, ho gave out a typewritten statement
and barred tho door to all interrogations there
after. As between a downward revision and an
upward revision, ho was specifically and in
terms for a .revision.
Is this premonitory? Is ho to stand for a
downward revision?" Is ho to turn to the house
and ask It to choose for itself that autocratic
group known as tho committee on rules, to which
the house surrenders its procedure first and Jt
self afterward? Is your Uncle Joe, grown weary
of power, to turn it back to tho house, where
under the constitution, it belongs? Is ho about
to restore to tho individual on the floor the
right of initiative and the high privilege of
recognition without tho humiliating necessity
of first arranging for it, hat In hand, at a private
interview in tho speaker's chambers?
Is ho about to pass the word out among
the chairmen of committees that Independence
among the members of the committee, and not
blind subserviency to tho chairman, will here
after meet with fitting reward? Is he about to
demand, that several important measures of
public policy be snatched from tho ancient dust
of pigeonholes and the house-ltself be given the
responsibility before the country of voting them
up or voting them down? Is he about to an
nounce to the members of congress that they
are representatives and that the responsibility
of legislation fs theirs, not his? Is he about to
let loose the responsive forces of popular rep
resentation, planned by the fathers, and permit
391 men to attend to the pressing leglslatfo
of eighty million people, giving to the tarMC
bill reasonable time of debate, unrestricted ojh
portunlty for amendment and the precious right
of specific vote?
Is he on the point of demonstrating to the'
American people that a revenue meaBure, suck
as the tariff, touching vitally the business of the
(Continued on Page 9)
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