The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923, November 18, 1910, Page 2, Image 2
z The Commoner. VOLUME 10, NUMBER "K "V f tk if i- h. V f t ( i r f ii a T - j ir age and go to work. The time Is ripe for a vic tory for this great reform open the gate and then It will be possible for the people to nil in the senate as elsewhere. Write to" your legis lators; write to your congressmen; write to your senators. Slake your views known to every one who acts officially upon this question. Act now, and continue to act until the amend ment is submitted to the states for ratification. MR. ROOSEVEIrS NEXT MOVE What will Mr. Roosevelt's next move be? The election returns are certainly discouraging to those who have regarded him as a presi dential possibility. A man must be a very en thusiastic supporter of the ex-president not to see in tho returns a warning against any attempt to violate the precedent against a third term. Mr. Roosevelt's personal popularity has suffered a severe blow, or possibly the people now see that his personal popularity was exaggerated. Nothing is more easily magnified than personal popularity, and nothing Is so likely to be mis understood. A man Is strong or weak in pro portion to the strength or weakness of the things for which he stands. As long as Mr. Roosevelt's influence was not put to the test, his friends believed that he could sweep everything before him, but when the trial came, It was found that his support did not insure a victory for the candidates whose cause he espoused. In New York, where he dominated the conven tion and threw himself into tho campaign in supptfrt of the ticket, he received the most se vere rebuke. In Connecticut, where he at tacked the democratic candidate for governor, he was rebuked again. In Massachusetts and In Ohio, where he made personal attacks upon the democratic candidates, his blows were harmless if not really beneficial to those at whom they were directed. But with the third term danger removed, what then? It will be very easy for Mr. Roose velt to regain his prestige if, announcing that he will not be a candidate, he enters upon a campaign to secure the nomination of a real progressive. The election returns show that sham progressiveness will not fool the people. Real progressiveness has been vindicated, but the fraudulent variety is no more acceptable than standpattism. Mr. Roosevelt can be a power for good if he will give the public a chance to separate Mr. Roosevelt's ambitions from Mr. Roosevelt's advocacy of popular re forms. Just as long as the people have reason to fear that a triumph for Rooseveltism means a renomination, he will be handicapped in his fight. As soon as he stands forth as an unselfish champion of progressive measures, he will be able to wage effective warfare against the crooks of his party. He declared at Osawatomie that the corporations must be driven out of politics. Is he willing to help to drive them out? He must not confine his opposition to the crooks who are personally unfriendly to him; he must declare -war against all political crooks. The doctrine that the -worst republican is better than the best democrat will not do for a slogan. He ought by this time to be able to distinguish between the democrats who are seeking to ad vance the public welfare and the Wall Street democrats Who are trying to make the govern ment an aBset in their business. It Is not certain that the- progressive repub licans can control the next national republican convention even with the aid of Mr. Roosevelt, but he can help them If he will. He can not aid by helping Mr. Lodge in Massachusetts and other standpatters elsewhere, but he can do It by helping men like LaFollette, who have shown their faith by their works. Mr. Roosevelt's fu ture depends entirely upon his attitude In the fight now on in this country. It Is a real fight between plutocracy on tho one side and democracy on the other; if he is going to be In the fight, ho must be wholly on one side, not a standpatter in some places and a progressive in others. He must choose sides. Whom will he serve? WHEN BARKIS ANNOUNCED THAT HE WAS WHiWN' (From the Chicago Record-Herald) Champ Clark of Missouri, who probably will bo elected speaker of tho house in the organiza tion of tho Sixty-second congress, informally announced his candidacy for that position February 27, 1908. A whole congress will have intervened be tween that announcement and the realization of the prospective speaker's ambition. There was under consideration on the floor of the house a resolution relative to the re-assignment of office room In connection with the opening of the new several-million-dollar house office building, and it was proposed successfully to remove the -ways and means committee from the very desirable and commodious quarters it had occupied for years in the house wing of the capitol in order to give, the speaker .an enlarged and imposing suite. Champ Clark was defending- the committee against the territorial encroachment of czar dom, and in one of the drollest of colloquial speeches made In congress, in recent years he said: "Mr. Speaker, I do not have any idea that the republic will cease to exist, no matter how this question Is determined. Still, it is a matter of a good deal of interest to the members of the ways and means committee and it is a mat ter of some importance to the other members of the house. My friend from Illinois (Mr. Mann) offers me a very tempting bait that after the 4th of next March in my capacity as speaker, I -will occupy these rooms now occu pied by the -ways and means committee. ' (Ap plause and laughter.) "I used to have a constituent named Nat C. Dryden, a very brilliant man, who was very fond of giving out this dictum, 'A bird in the hand is the noblest work of God (Laughter.) I am the ranking democratic member on the com mittee of ways and means, and no matter how the cat jumps at the next election I suppose, as a matter of ordinary courtesy, I would retain that place if the house were republican; if dem ocratic, why, 'Barkis is willln' ' In the matter of the speakership. (Applause.) "The situation about the speakership is this: There are 391 members in this house. One of them 4s speaker, and not a single one of the other 390 would decline it if offered to him on a silver platter. Now, the speaker has a small room. In the present exigency in which the presiding officer of this house finds himself he ought to have two. (Laughter and applause.) There are three sorts of people who wait on the speaker one set on business, another set on business and another set just to see the speaker and shake his hand. That room is not as com modious as It ought to be for the speaker. I freely admit that. Certainly he ought to Jiaye two perhaps three. "I will tell you how I feel about that in con nection with the speakership. The first time that my wife and I ever attended a White House dinner she was assigned to the Peruvian minis ter to take her out to dinner. She could not talk any Peruvian (laughter) and he could not talk much English, and though she is a fine talker, the conversation lagged somewhat. "But, sitting on her right was Mr. Secretary of State John Sherman. She had never been introduced to the secretary, but she recognized him by his pictures. She had frequently told me privately that she intended, if she ever got close enough to him, to ask him about the Crime of '73.' (Laughter.) "They scraped up an acquaintance, and Secre tary Sherman explained to her how the presi dent and his wife -were bedeviled with all sorts of people, and how insanitary the conditions of the house were, and that "it wore the president and his wife to a frazzle and endangered their lives. After drawing as gloomy a picture as he could, he asked her, 'Madam, would you be -willing to see your husband live in this house four years with all that trouble and danger and under those conditions?' With that good sense which she exhibited when she picked her hus band, she said, 'Yes; I think I would.' (Great laughter.) She said she was willing to take the chances of insanitary conditions and nervous prostration to see her husband In the White House for four years. "Well, I would like to see the speaker have two rooms. I would be perfectly willing to ac cept the speakership -with one or even without one." (Laughter.) EDMOND S. KINKAID In the death of Edmond S. KInkaid of Lex ington, Ky., democracy has lost an Intelligent, earnest and faithful champion. His experience as a journalist gave him Intimate acquaintance with the principles and policies of his party and his unusual literary ability enabled him to use his knowledge most effectively. He leaves a large circle of friends and Mr. Bryan joins these In extending sympathy to the family. Tho American Homestead, a monthly farm journal of national scope, -will ho sent to all Commoner subscribers, without additional cost, who renew their subscriptions during the month of November when this notice is mentioned. Practical Tariff Talks One of the chief objections that can be urged with truth against the present prohibitive duty on lead ore and lead in pigs, oars and other forms is that it -makes the finished products in -which it is used coat from 50 to 100 per cent more than they would if lead were untaxed by the tariff. The mine owner has a very large protection, $30 a ton, which is more than tho cost of mining, according to some authorities. After the lead ore leaves the mine it is run through a concentrator and then goes to tho smelter, where it is turned out as pig lead. Tho pig lead is the raw. material for many industries. Among these might be mentioned white lead, shot, pipe lead, sheet lead, alloy for type metal, electrotyping, solder, red lead and the like. It3 use in the making of paint is wide; it is a neces sary article in the printing industry, in machin ery, in the telephone and telegraph business, and plumbing. These -taxes, that on the ore and that on the pig lead, are all carried along through these various industries, and the consumer foots the bill in the end. There is, in the tariff law, a rebate clause which gives back nearly all of the duty on im ported lead, but the testimony of several lead ing manufacturers was that this was of very little benefit to them for reasons stated. Tho duty is so high on the imported product that it permits the lead trust to exact from the man ufacturer a high price for the domestic pro duct, thus putting him at the outset under a heavy handicap, if he exports. They have found that in their efforts to sell such goods in foreign countries whose tariff laws include the so-called "anti-dumping" clause, they are confronted by the provision that goods offered in that foreign country at a lower price than sold for at home are penalized in some cases to the full extent of the difference if -the goods are of a class that are also produced in that foreign country. This closes a large part of the foreign market to the lead manufacturer, that is, the man who uses lead as a raw material in making his fin ished product. The testimony of one big electrotyping con cern is to the point. It uses lead as-the principal ingredient of electrotyping metal. Before the Dingley law went into effect this concern was buying this metal at four cents a pound, a figure at which there was good profit for the miners and smelts. Ten years later the price was 7 cents a pound. The explanation was that the lead trust, absolutely sheltered by tho tariff, could squeeze the price up to that figure, and did so. The panic brought the price down, but the figure has been steadily mounting sinco then. This was and is a pretty serious matter for the electrotypers, who have no trust. Their wage scale has been advancing, and the sharp competition of the manufacturing houses pre vents them from putting up the price. The re sult has been a steady narrowing of profits, but this argument did not have any weight with congress, because these electrotypers were consumers. The ramifications of the lead tariff, reaching out and Into so many industries, makes it diffi cult to follow so as to accurately bring home to the millions who use lead in one of the many forms stated just how much they are being robbed. One instance will, perhaps, suffice. Over in Canada the man who buys white lead to mix with his paint or the manufacturer who uses it in the making of paint that he sells to the many pays, on an average, about 4 cents a pound. The white lead is made in Germany and carried over the ocean to Canada. Just across the line from Canada the American consumer of white lead pays 6 to 6 cents a pound for an article that, it is stated, is of inferior quality. This Is but one of the common necessities that is heavily taxed for the benefit of the mine owners and the smelter trust, dominated by the Gug genheims. The same excess is noted in your plumbing bills, it is represented in tho dozen and one things that are of every day use. A reading of tho testimony taken before the house committee on ways and means will make this very clear to the average reader. C. Q. D.