'AUGUST 26, 1910 The Commoner. 3 n - m -' mt :: I 1 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 A - t v. , 'Ji.sl"i'l...' ; t.JJ.-VifemJtfem i t id 1 -1 -j. jr - 'imna.