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GEORGE W. BERGE, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER
Volume 16
Lincoln, Nebraska, April 27, 1905
Number 49
A CALL TO DUTY . ,
. When this government was first established, the people had their hands
on its machinery, and it was under their control. Now the government
machinery is in the hands of the corporations and the people are crowded
away from it.
Corporate power has become so potent in politics that the public official
is but a servant to corporate will. '
In the western states corporation power is exerted chiefly through the
railroads. In Nebraska, as in many other Trans-Mississippi states, railroad
power is absolutely supreme.
We have here no government jy the people. We have the form of rep
resentative government, but the power exerted over our public affairs is
railroad power. This railroad power operating through the machinery of
politics, controls t-e selection and election of our public offi'als.
As public service corporations, the railroads have certain rights and
their business is entitled to all proper legal protection. But their right is
the right to do business, to transport commodities and passengers from one
point to another, not the right to manage politics and control government.
Under railroad rule hired lobbyists are quartered at the State Capitol,
and these hired lobbyists exersise a controlling influence over our political
conventions and our public officials.
Under such conditions only railroad supporters can be elected to office.
Under such conditions the officials elected become railroad officials. The
untrammeled. citizen can hardly hope to secure an office1. The people can
hardly hope to secure faithful representatives. V .
The effect of all this, when computed in dollars, is extortion and dis
crimination in freight and passenger' rates. It means in the end, also, high
taxes and extravagance and corruption in public affairs.
. The Nebraska people are now engaged in a -struggle to get back into
their own hands the power of self-government which was taken from them
years ago. The same struggle is being waged in other states. There are
many earnest, men everywhere who have not yet surrendered and who never
will surrender their rights as citizens.
Whatever we may believe about it the struggle is now on to determine
whether the people or the corporations and trusts shall rule. So far as I
am concerned I have cast my lot with the people and what little influence
I have will be given to them, and this paper will champion their cause.
As I see it, before the people can have a chance again to really govern
themselves, corporation influence must be driven out of politics. How to do
this is the burning question of the hour. This influence is largely railroad
Influence in the states and the nation. In the cities it comes principally
from railroads, street cars, lighting plants, water plants, etc.-
How shall we go about it to destroy this influence? It can be accom
plished only one way. The government must own the railroads and our
cities must cwn their own street cars, lighting plants, water systems and all
other public utilities.
With the railroads and these other public service corporations out of
politics it will be easy to solve on an equitable basis all other problems.
To solve the railroad question means a solution also of the trust question.
But until public ownership shall become an accomplished fact, the rail
roads must be regulated and controlled . by law. This is the immediate
struggle. The railroads in the states and nation and the public service cor
porations in the cities must be made the people's servants in the meantime.
I do not believe that we can make any headway in regulation and control
of railroads or government ownership as long as the paid professional lobby
and the free pass remain. The professional lobby, as it operates today, is a
disgrace to civilization. ,The free pass is both unjust discrimination and a
colossal bribe. . -
The lobby should 5 be spurned by every public official and driven from
every legislative hall. -
The free pass official should be branded as a betrayer of his people,
and never again permitted to go to any convention or hold any office of trust
The railroad question is the question of the hour and around it will be
fought the Jiost memorable battle of this century.
To win this fight the country needs men. I would rather have a good
man upon a bad platform than a bad man upon a good platform. All the
corruption and graft we read about and all the betrayals of trust we know
about comes largely from men and not parties or platforms. '
The country needs honest, courageous and fearless men. Every state
ha3 them. Let them come forward. Your help is needed. To help in this
struggle is the ambition of this paper. GEORGE W. BERGE.
MEN BEFORE MEASURES.
Present : conditions require a reversal of Goldsmith's famous conceit:
"Measures, not men, have always been my mark." For good public service
the public must look to good men before good measures. -
Mr. Phelps, publicist of high repute and one time our ambassador
-to the. court of St. James, understood and strongly expressed the modern
demand: '
"It used to be an applauded political maxim which was expressed in
the words, 'Measures, not men.' . I venture to deny the soundness of this
maxim, and to propose in its place its converse, 'Men, not measures.' I
think the first need of good government, like the first need of a large busi
ness corporation, is the right men to administer it. Right in character,
in ability, in patriotism, in disinteredness. Better a hundred times an honest
and capable administration of an erroneous policy than a corrupt and
incapable administration of a good one."
The evils which elicited this spirited protest from a conservative states
man are far more acute than when he uttered it in 1889.
The English revolution in the seventeenth century and the American
and French revolutions in the eighteenth, sought and accomplished the
change from one man, or aristocratic forms of government to the popular
or representative form. But the despotic, tyrannous spirit and power were
not destroyed by this change; they were only temporarily displaced, and
while the people slept in the fancied security of the ne wgovernment, b
cause it was republican in form, the old despotism, in a somewhat new
guise, obtained possession of it. The new feudal system reigns almost as
absolutely and tyrannously and corruptly in our so-called popular legisla
tive halls as it did centuries ago in the feudal halls of Europeon countries.
The spirit of the old feudalism was largely sentimental and social; that of
the new is sordidly commercial. Our commercial lords lack the chivalrous
spirit of their ancestors, and they set a price upon all virtue which stands
in the way of their own aggrandizement.
This return of feudalism is illustrated in , countless ways. , For many
years ; the people have been asking for effective public control of railways
and especially of railway rates; but the same people at the same time have
stupidly permitted the, choice of railway men , for United States senators
and for members of state legislatures, who. brazenly balk, their purpose.
All the resolution of a Roosevelt, backed by an overwhelming public
sentiment, counts for nothing against the obstruction of our feudal house
of lords. " . , . :"';.
The house of representatives in five or six successive congresses has re
solved in favor of submitting an amendment to the constitution which
would give to the peopl3 the direcV pow to elect United States senators,
and the legislatures of more than half of the states have demanded such
an amendment, but all without practical effect. With very few exceptions,
corporation men instead of peoples' men have been chosen for senators
this very year, and Nebraska is not one of the exceptions. This is because:
the people have chosen unfit men for members of the legislatures, and as)
they choose these unfit men by direct vote they are directly responsible
for them and the resulting misgovernment. '
In the states of Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois three resolute and
honest governors have used all their influence toward securing better gov
ernment in ways indicated by the people, but many of the reforms which
were demanded, and were promised before the elections, have been, or
will be defeated because the people sent the wrong men to the legislatures.
For the same reason regard or respect for the popular wish and welfare)
was conspicuously absent from the late legislature of Nebraska.
Some years ago Washington Gladden, a high-minded, but rather too
theoretical champion of good government, sought to reform municipal gov
ernment by ref-trmed city charters with elaborate provisions for secur
ing honesty and efficiency, and some. of the changes suggested have been
adopted in many cities to some advantage. But the most skillfully drawn
charters are of little avail against dishonest and incapable officers, aa
might have been foretold before the experiment in question was tried!
But when public sentiment was directed against the "gray wolves" of the;
Chicago city council and men tried for integrity and capacity by the closest
scrutiny were put in their places, substantial reform was accomplished
even in that most difficult field. A single resolutely honest officer may
revolutionize the political conditions of a whole state. Governor Folk's:
mere proclamation,' backed by his reputation for confounding public cor
ruptionists, drove from the capitol of Missouri last winter the vile and
shameless set of railway and other lobbyists which had infested and cor
rupted the legislatures of that state for immemorial years. -
Governor La Follette of Wisconsin has accomplished, very important
reforms, among them an advanced primary election system and a radical
change in the system of taxation; and though he has been elected United
States senator it is not likely that he will relinquish his hold on the state
until he has won his desperate fight for a rate-making railway com
mission. The career of these two governors illustrates the momentous results
and therefore the primary importance of putting the right kind of men in
public office.
Good government is the ultimate object of all endeavor for political