'AUGUST 26, 1910
The Commoner.
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railroad presidents to control elections through
their power to threaten their employes with
discharge.
The railroad presidents in politics, however,
will not be able to monopolize the credit for
hastening government Ownership. The Inside
rings, composed of officials, that plunder tho
companies will have a part. The Illinois Central
is now exposing one of these rings.
PLAIN TRUTII ABOUT ALDRICH
Collier's Weekly prints tho following "Plain
Truth About Aldrich:"
"Think of the power of personal enrichment
involved in Senator Aldrich's position when a
new tariff bill is being made. In tho course of
a speech at Winfleld, Kan., on July 9, Senator
Bristow made these charges, every ono of which
Is a matter of record and easily verifiable:
" 'When tho new tariff bill passed tho lower
houso of congress, the duty on manufactured
rubber was left the same as It had been in tho
DIngley bill, 30 per cent; in the senate, tho
rate was raised to 35 per cent; tho change was
made by Senator Aldrich In the room of tho
finance committee. This tariff became a law
on August. 5. Within a month, in September of
last year, the news came out that a rubber com
pany was being organized. Within three months
tho organization was complete; its capital is
$40,000,000, its -managing head is the son of"
Senator Aldrich, Senator Aldrich himself is a
director and holds 25,000 shares; among tho
other largo stockholders are Simon Guggen
heim, senator from Colorado, with 10,000
shares, and four of Senator Guggenheim's
brothers, with an aggregate of 38,900 shares.
.Within three months after its organization, the
new rubber company had paid dividends aggre
gating 18.2 per cent.'
"Mr. Aldrich is a' thoroughly sinister figure
in American politics. The story of another
tariff trick, his addition of a tenth of a cent
a pound to the duty on sugar, against the earn
est opposition of William McKinley, who was
later president, and the connection of that addetf
duty with Mr. Aldrich's personal fortunes, is
too long a tale to tell hero.
"Compared to Mr. Aldrich, mero bribers
of" legislators, like Lorlmer and ex-Senator
Clark, are not very harmful. But Senator
Clark's capacity and effectiveness for evil
depend not on any .power within himself,
but upon his position, upon the fact that a ma
jority of all the republican senators, for one
motive or another, can be depended on to vote
.with him.
"Moral Aldrich has effaced himself, but a
good many of his senators are candidates for
re-election."
. A PRAYER FOR NEWSPAPER MEN AND
WRITERS
' O thou great source of truth and knowledge,
we remember before thee the writers of books,
the newspaper men, and all whose calling it is
to gather and winnow facts and to inform tho
people. Grant thjem a determined love for hon
est work and a "staunch hatred for tho making
" of lies, lest they pervert the judgments of our
nation and teach us to call light darkness and
darkness light. Suffer them not to drug tho
mind of our people with falsehood and prejudice.
Since the sanity and wisdom of a nation, are in
their chaTge, may they count it shame to set
tho baser passions of men on fire for the sake
of gain.
Grant them boldness to turn the unwelcome
light on those wh'o love the darkness because
' their deeds aro evil. Put into their hands the
shining sword of truth, and make them worthy
sons of the champions of the people in the past
who held truth to be a holy thing for which
men should die. Make them realize that they
. have a public function in tho commonwealth,
and that their country may be saved by their
courage and undone by their cowardice and
silence.
Grant them the heart of manhood to cast
their mighty influence with the forces which
make tho people strong and free, and If they
suffer loss, may they rejoice in that' as proof
, to their own souls that they too have been
friends of the common man and servants of the
higher law. Walter Rauschenbusch in tho
American Magazine.
All new and renewal subscribers to Tho Com
moner during tho month of September will re
ceive a year's subscription to the national farm
paper, the American Homestead, without addi
tional charge. Give your friends an opportunity
to join yo in accepting this offer.
EDUCATIONAL SERIES
The Abolition of the House of Lords
(By W. DoWitt ITydc, President of Ilowdoln
College, in Twentieth Century)
tinder thiB title I do not refer to tho political
problem of our English cousins; but to tho
American house of lords and tho campaign of
1910 in the United States. By tho American
houso of lords I do not mean tho senate, though
individual senators aro its most effective agents.
I refer to tho rapidly increasing group of men,
hereditary through Incorporation, who determine
at the same time and by tho same decree how
much we shall .pay in taxes to tho federal govern
ment, and how much wo shall pay in bounty to
themselves.
First let mo stato my economic creod. I am
a moderate protectionist. If I wero In England
where. tho dumping of tho surplus products of
other nations is demoralizing domestic industry;
where a tariff could be utilized to bind tho.
colonies to tho empire; and where tho making
of the budget by the ministry, with adoption or
rejection but not amendment in parliament re
duces opportunity for log-rolling to a minimum,
I should vote for Mr. Chamberlain's program of
protection.
In our own country I should regard a sudden
and radical reversion to free trade as foolish,
treacherous, and disastrous. Wo are committed
to the policy of importing, on tho wholo, tho
workers rather than their works. I do not ob
ject to paying whatever taxes tho government
needs. I do not object, if the benefits of diversi
fied industry require and warrant it, to paying
ten times tho amount of my taxes In bounty to
protected manufactures.
Where I draw the line beyond which I refuse
to go in support of protection is precisely where
the English liberals are drAwing It in opposition
to their house of lords. They deny the righ; of
a group of Interested landlords to determine
what taxes tho English people shall pay and
what exemptions from taxation shall be granted.
Our house of lords is not made up of land
lords, but of steel lords, woolen lords, cotton
lords, lumber lords and, as the latest creation,
zinc lords. The amount of taxes and bounties on
steel, woolen and cotton goods, lumber and zinc,
is determined for us, not by a responsible min
istry as in England, but by these lords, through
the influence they can exert on individual mem
bers of congress; still more through tho pres
sure they bring to bear on senate and houso
committees; and most of all by their power to
dictate terms to the committee of conference
which, subject to the votes of their colleagues
and tho presidential veto, practically determines
what tho tariff shall bo.
Under such conditions a tariff becomes, not
a careful adjustment of revenue to estimated
expenditure, modified by a scientific comparison
of the cost of production at home and abroad,
but a resultant of what each producer wants,
plus what all are willing to give each other to
secure support for their own demands.
For Instance, when the president sent his de
mand for a reduction on lumber to the recent
committee of conference, Mr. Aldrich announced
. that, if that was an ultimatum, the whole bill
was at an end; the conference did nothing for
six hours, until ono of the conferees, on the
part of the house, himself a lumber man, went
out and labored with the representatives of the
lumber Interests, induced them to withdraw
their claims, and reported their concession to
the conference committee; whereupon Mr. Aid
rich said, "Of course, if they yield, we yield;"
and so, -by grace of these lumber lords, wo pay
the Aldrich-Payne rather than the DIngley rates
of tax and bounty on all sorts of things.
A protective tariff is a bounty hid behind a
tax, a tax concealed within a bounty; and this
its dual nature is not altered by the fact that
bounty and tax are paid together over the same
retail counter as often as we buy a woolen coat
or a cotton shirt or a steel hammer or a galva
nized iron kitchen utensil.
What I am objecting to Is not either tho tax
or the bounty, or the mixture of the two, or the
amount of both; but having theso things as
sessed upon me by the very persons who are
to draw the bounty. This is utterly inconsistent
with the traditions of Anglo-Saxon liberty on
both sides of the water, and is a disguised form
of essentially the same tyranny as that against
which, when attomptod by tho British houso of
lords, tho English nation Is protesting.
Fortunately, tho germ of a better method is
In sight. Tho tariff board (our houoj of lords
refused to lot it bo called a commission, and
tried ineffectually to atrip It of a commission's
powers), "properly construed," enables tho presi
dent to get. tho facts about a particular schodulo
and present those facts simultaneously to con
gress and tho country.
To bo sure, in his testimony before tho ways
nnd means committee, ono of tho woolon lords,
Mr. Whitman (the man who nunlo information
about "what I need" so conveniently obtainable
for tho framors of tho DIngley bill) declared that
"comparative costs of production in tho United
States and foreign countries aro unobtainable."
Of course, if such information is "unobtainable,"
tho republican platform, which was based on
tho assumption that such facts aro obtainable,
is meaningless. Doubtless tho facts aro unob
tainable by present methods from persons in
terested In their concealment. President Taft
evidently believes that such facts aro obtain
able, for ho saidV in a recent speech: "Tho wool
schedule is too high, and ought to have been
reduced; and probably represents considerably
more than tho difference between tho cost of
production abroad and the cost of production
here." And In another speech, referring to tho
methods of tariff-making above described, ho
said, "There ought to bo other methods of ob
taining tho evidence and reaching tho conclu
sion." The other methods aro ready to his hand.
Tho country will watch eagerly to see whether
ho avails himself of them.
In some form or other tho tariff is bound to
b"b tho Issue of the campaign of 1910. The
tariff is with us, and prices are rising upon us,
To bo sure, tho tariff Is only ono of three causes
of the alarming rise in prices, monopolistic ten
dencies of both capital and labor being the sec
ond, and tho inflation oftho currency of tho
world through the Increased production of gold
being the third. But on tho democratic stump
tho tariff will figure as the solo or chief cause,
and on that Issue pure and simple tho democrats
aro suro to win. The republicans can hardly
expect to create a diversion like tho Spanish
war; and this not being a presidential year, tho
democrats are not under the necessity of put
ting up a candidate for whom Independents re
fuse to vote.
Tho only chanco for the republicans is to shift
the Issue from the merely economic aspect of
the tariff to the political issue outlined above. A
genuine effort, with the help of tho tariff board,
led by tho president, to remove, one at a time,
the worst injustices of the recent tariff would
be. accepted as a real though belated fulfillment
of party pledges. Nothing else can save tho
party from overwhelming defeat. In other
words, tho only way by which President Taft
can hope to maintain his party In power is to
take advantage of tho popular support that such
a movement would havo and abolish once for
all the method of tariff-making which has cre
ated and maintains our present houso of lords.
Having begun with a confession of my econ
omic creed, I will conclude- with a declaration
of my party affiliations.
Born and bred a republican, I thrice Voted
for Cleveland with all tho ardor of youthful
conviction, twice reluctantly for Mr. McKinley,
onco enthusiastically for Roosevelt, and onco
with mingled doubt and hope for Taft. Tho
doubt has been neither dispelled nor confirmed;
tho hope has been neither destroyed nor ful
filled. I make this declaration of party affiliation, not
because It is of any consequence in .'tself, but
because I am one of hundreds of thousands of
citizens in the same state of mind, and who from
now on propose to vote primarily on this clear
cut issue. The independent vote, large and
growing as itis, has an importance out of all
proportion to Its size. The independent in poli
tics is like tho steersman in a boat. He need not
be as strong or heavy as the men who row. The
rowers are the two great parties, each with Its
face to tho past, too often unmindful of the port
In their eagerness to pull each other around.
The independent Is the man facing forward with
his eye upon the port, who, with little strength
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