Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 27, 1912)
WILLIAM J-jRYANEDITOR AND PROPRIETOR VOL. 12, NO. 51 Lincoln, Nebraska, December 27, 1912 Whole Number 623 It is generous in Thomas Fortune Ryan to forgive the democratic leaders for the rebuke administered to him by the Baltimore convention, but possibly the leaders whom he has forgiven are not -the ones who administered the rebuke. THE B LIGHT OF "SENIORITY" The democratic party is going to have an other struggle in both senate and house over tho committee assignments, and it is again threatened with the blight of seniority that is, it will be asked to put the ambitions and in terests of individuals above the welfare of the party and the good of the country. The rule of seniority requires that when a man is once put upon a committee he shall be permitted to stay there until he voluntarily withdraws, and ho must be promoted as fast as those above him fall out. It entirely disregards the spirit of democracy and violates the fundamental prin ciples of representative government. Take the United States senate, for instance. The democrats in the senate were, until two years ago, largely of the reactionary type re actionaries were in charge of all the important positions allotted to the democrats. As a re sult of the democratic victory of 1910 a num ber of new democrats entered the senate nearly all of them progressives. The reaction aries insisted on retaining the leadership, al though it was apparent that the democracy of the country wag progressive. Tho democratic victory of 1912 brings in another group of new democrats all of them progressives. The progressive democrats will now be in tho majority in the senato caucus. Will they allow a reactionary minority to man tho ship? Will they allow length of service to outweigh sym pathy with the progressive cause? If it were a personal matter the new senators might prefer to yield to the older ones but a man who acts in a representative capacity is not at liberty to bo courteous at the expense of his constituents. The democrats of the senate owe it to the party to make tho senate organization represent tho prevailing sentiment of the party and thus enable it to work in har mony with the administration. To do this the rule of seniority should be ignored. Assign ments to committees should be made upon tho basis of fitness and with aview to giving faithful expression to the will of tho majority. No democrat is deserving of preferment who puts his personal interests above the general welfare. If our party is to earn a long lease of power it must regard the rights of the people as para mount. The same rule ought to be applied in the house. THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO SELECT COMMITTEES SHOULD BE MADE i:P TO SUIT THE NEW CONGRESS. Thero la no good reason why hold-overs on the ways and means committee should consider thomsolvca entitled, AS A MATTER QV RIGHT, to appoint ment on tho now committee. The democratic caucus fhould feel free to select thiH comrnittoo without regard to its present membership Just aft free as if the committee was being nolectod for the first time and from members entering upon their first term. If a new congress is to be bound by tho comrnittoo selections made by a former congress, the change in the ruloH will prove of doubtful advantage If tho rulo of seniority is to bo Invoked in behalf of tho re appointment of those now on tho com mittee tho selection of committees should bo entrusted to a special committee whoso existence will cease when its work is done; and whether the right to recommend members for tho various committees is conferred on tho wnys and means committee or upon a special committee, chosen for the purpose, the caucus should feel free to reject any recommendations made. Tho democratic party is pledged to tho doc trino of representative government tho doctrino of seniority is destructive of both tho theory and tho practice of representative government. TOO MUCH POWER Referring to Woodrow Wilson's notice to Wall street, the Denver Times says: "This sounds plausible, but it will not do. A little over five years ago a 'bankers' panic' was forced upon the nation as a lesson to Roosevelt and the gentle reader may remember what took place. Overnight the overlord of tho banking world, J. Pierpont Morgan, was transmuted into a hero, and more than Wall street acclaimed him the savior of the republic; and, incidentally, it may be stated that. Mr. Morgan has believed himself the salvation of the nation a good many times in the last forty years. When a panic comes the people forget their good resolu tions, and banker and broker and bank de positor will seek cover with the politician. Equally as courageous a man as Mr. Wilson under stress of circumstances made terms with the enemy and helped to en'd the panic five years ago. Wo have reference to Colonel Roosevelt. Testimony from the money trust committee at Washington these days is sufllcient to cause mathematicians and star-gazers to hold their heads in wonderment, to say nothing of the plain citizen who can not think in .billions." On the same line tho Omaha Bee says: CONTENTS "President-elect Wilson's warning of a gibbet higher than Hainan's for the king of commerce using his power to precipitate an artificial panic during his administration is very Interesting. Hainan, it will be remembered, was the man who built the gibbet for King Ahasueras from which the melancholy Mordecai was to swing, and if Mordecai's comely adopted daughter, Esther, had not found such marked favor in the eyes of the king it might have been even as planned, but, lo, it fell out that Mordacal lived and Ha inan died. The president-elect says ho fears nothing and nobody. That is all right, but he will find a few kings to deal with quite as regnant in certain spheres as was this one who ruled from India unto Ethopia and brooked de fiance not even from his own queen. And what is more, these Wall street sovereigns are not blown by the fickle winds of emotion from Vashti's to Hadassah's." If the situation is as bad as these papers de scribe it then it is certainly time for another Andrew Jackson. If the money trust has all the nower these newspapers say it has, then It has altogether too much power. For the reason that Americans believe it has too much power and uses it against the public interests they are sending to Woodrow Wilson and to tho men who are honestly investigating the money trust words of encouragement. hundred stock brokers to prolong their saturna lian feast at the expense of the public. Pro gressIvenesB includes legislation which will pro tect the public from both the pirates and the gamblers of Wall street. THE MONEY TRUST THE BLIGHT OF SENIORITY WOODROW WILSON'S WARNING CHEERS FOR THE PRESIDENT-ELECT THE BEST GIFT CONGRESS WILL ACT ON BIG RAIL ROAD EXPOSURE J. PIERPONT MORGAN'S TESTIMONY HOME DEPARTMENT WHETHER COMMON OR NOT WASHINGTON NEWS NEWS OF THE WEEK THE MONEY TRUST The testimony now being given before tho Pujo committee will open the eyes of those who Svp rewarded the "money trust" as a myth and he cSmof it as the "mouthing of deina- eotiies " The witnesses, many of them reluc- fan ones, are forced to admit the existence of tant ""' a , , h si10Cks the moral sense of the a condition hichBhocKB York are unable tobreak the hold of this tyran oiK are ""au ., ought to be grateful to n,ICal Cn oftide for7 the release that is sure the people outside or ,nve8tigatIon. The to come as a result 01 people will not n n blackhand methods toleratea contguatlon or Mted the SUe w5?w! neither will they allow a few SAVING SENSE OP HUMOR Governor Wilson seems to have something of Lincoln's sense of humor. lie often Illustrates his ideas with a story. He was recently quoted as follows, in discussing cabinet positions: "With respect to his cabinet, Governor Wil son said he had not made any final selections. At no time in his conversations with tho corres pondents who have been traveling with him con stantly has he mentioned the name of a single Individual as a possibility for his cabinet. "Governor Wilson said ho realized that bo fore deciding upon the personnel of his cabi net he would have to determine Just what typo of cabinet he would form. Ho recognizes two types from a review of the manner In which his predecessors have met this question. "One type is tho political cabinet constructed from party material that must in a sense be re garded to preserve party harmony. The other is characterized by Mr. Wilson as tho personal cabinet, made up of men whose business fitness is known to him personally and on whose judgment he would like to lean. "Carefully steering the correspondents away from all questions of personnel, Governor Wil son also declined to say which type of cabinet he now prefers. He said he had written some years ago a magazine article criticising Presi dent Cleveland's cabinets, but he had not speci fically asked President Cleveland which type ho had found the most desirable. " 'The two types of cabinet,' he said, 'remind mo of a question I was once discussing with Dr. James McCosh, president of Princeton in the late SO'r. We were speaking of tho two types of teachers the one who tried to reach the average Intelligence of the class and the other, who catered to the most intelligent and let tho rank and file get along as best they could. I asked Dr. McCosh which he liked tho better. 'Ob he said, 'we need a little of both ' " il