IJK 273 .C3 I Copy 1 1st Session } HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES f Document 1 No. 48 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS By JOSEPH G. CANNON FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES [From the Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1913] May 15, 1913. — Ordered to be printed WASHINGTON 1913 ^^"^l^ 0. OF 0, WAY 23 1918 >. ^ FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. By Joseph G. Cannon, Former Speaker of the House of Representatives. Crusades for political regeneration come periodically, like other epi- demics. They are as different as are the measles, the whooping cough, and chicken pox. The crusaders are neither constant nor consistent. Each agitation is for a new idea, with new discoveries otf shortcomings in the Government and new remedies. I speak of these things with the utmost respect, because I have been a victim; and in my youth I sometimes despaired of the Republic and questioned the wisdom of the men who projected it. We had, back in the early fifties, the American or Know-nothing movement, so called because none of those engaged in it professed to know any- thing about it. They were franker than many of their successors in the reform movements we have had since that time, for these gentlemen profess to know all about everything. The Civil War absorbed the attention of the citizenship ; but even then we had men and newspapers in the North who thought that Lincoln was 'Hoo slow and unprogressive " or "too rash and impul- sive" ; and so much did they think alike on the central idea of oppo- sition to Lincoln that they easUy compromised their differences on principles to unite in their prejudices in an effort to defeat the reelec- tion of the Great Emancipator before the war was ended. Then we had the Liberal movement in 1872, with opponents of nationalism and protection supporting Greeley, the arch-opponent of State rights and free trade, with the assurance that they were the only men in this country governed by principle rather than by prejudice. Next came the Greenbackers, reenforced by the fiat money advocates, who insisted that the Federal Government could coin paper as well as gold and sUver and create wealth by the fiat of law. With them came the Prohibitionists, who believed that they could regulate man's appetite by statute and the Labor Party, which demanded special legislation for a class with the watchword of no class legislation. THE JONAHS OF POLITICS. A few years later we had the Grange and the Farmers' Alliance, which went a step further than the Greenbackers and insisted that Government deposits should be guaranteed by nonperishable agricul- tural products, which must have meant fertilizer, as that is the only nonperishable product of agriculture and the one into which all other agricultural products sooner or later resolve themselves. 3 4 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. Then came the Populist Party — to reform everything; and a Httle later the Free Silver Part}^, which was to the Democratic Party as the whale was to Jonah until the Lord released him. Now we have the Progressive Party, which seems to have almost played the whale to a Kepublican Jonah for the time being. These reform movements have all been earnest, and perhaps honest, though misguided, in demanding legislative reforms that could not be realized, and after each effort the people behind them found a place in one or another of the old parties. The last impulsive movement ol this kind is more ambitious and, in my judgment, more misguided than all the others, because it does not stop at legislative reform, but goes directly to fundamental prin- ciples and seeks to rewrite or destroy the prmiarv law of the country as laid down in the Constitution. In all other efforts the people have been handicapped by tradition or sentiment, veneration or patriotism, or somethmg that made them hesitate to lay violent hands on the Ark of the Covenant. But no tradition or veneration or sentiment has stayed the hands of the latest crusaders of reform, for they would imhesitatingly rewrite the Constitution or do away with it entii*ely as the fundamental law and convert this Government into a pure democracy, to be swayed like an old-time camp meetmg by the fervor of the exhorter rather than by the logic of the ordained minister. I have had some patience with all former reform campaigns, for in my younger days T had some of the same impulses; and, moreover, had any one of these campaigns succeeded the experiment could have been undone as quickly and as easily as it was done, when the experi- ment proved that it was not the panacea for all our political ills. I have little patience with these latter-day reformers who would upset all the developments of more than a century of government by law and return to the old rule of the mob, led by men endowed with superior ability — or, rather, plausibility. Had the Progressive move- ment of last year succeeded in carrymg with it a majority of the people, and had it been lasting enough to have abrogated the Consti- tution, this country would have been committed to revolution as completely as was France to that which placed that country under the rule of an unrestrained majority and a reign of terror. It would have required years ol sanity to undo that work ol the wreckers and patiently build up agam a foundation of fundamental law. To a man who has passed half a century in public life m the most strenuous and progressive period ol civilization, and who has for nearly 40 years had a part in the clash of opposing ideas, sentiment, and preju- dice in the House of Representatives, which Ls the clearing house of American policies, there has never been a more dangerous movement in American ])olitics or one more reactionary than this which has caught the eye of many people with the alluring label of the Pro- gressive Party. THE CHANGES OF A GENERATION. I have, as a boy, watched the old weather vane on the barn box the compass in an hour on a gusty April day, and wished I could be as free in my movements and not controlled by the hand of necessity in driving a straight farrow to the end of the field. But after some years of experience I have no desire to see a Government of 91,000,000 people modeled after the weather vane, and swing to all points of the FOLLOWEKS AFTER STEANGE GODS. 5 compass in response to the zephyrs of impulse and the gusts of senti- ment or the whirlwind of passion ; to lynch a man in an hour and build a monument to him in the next hour as a hero and a martyr to rumor and prejudice. No ; the Constitution may have been the work of ordinary and even mediocre men, rather than of the great geniuses they are pictured by tradition; but that work is the foundation upon which has been built the greatest superstructure of legislative enactment, executive ad- ministration, and judicial decision that has ever been known in civili- zation. I am not willing to see without protest government by dyna- mite, either by mistaken labor leaders or by other mistaken enthu- siasts, who would apply the dynamite theory and blow up the foundation of a government by the people. I object to such methods, even though the wreckers may be as wise as Solomon, as devoted to the people as Brutus professed to be, or as virtuous as pictured in their own prospectuses. I have seen this country develop under that Constitution so as to make the United States the marvel of the world and the model of free government everywhere, even in the Orient. I am old enough to have seen the radroads cross the Alleghany Mountains and spread like a spider web over the whole continent — to carry the products of the West to the seaboard more economically for the people than they could be exchanged in New England before this era of steam. I have seen the reaper and mower, the gang plow, and the whole revolution in agriculture by labor-saving machinery. I have seen the telegraph and the telephone when they were looked upon as exper- iments; the electric railroad and the electric power-plant develop- ment; and I was ridiculed as a reckless spendthrift legislator when I helped make considerable appropriations to aid Prof. Langley in his experiments with the flying machine. I have seen great discoveries in science and medicme that benefited the whole people in the years since I left North Carolina with my parents and heard my mother cry out, "Good-by, civilization," be- cause we were emigrating to the West. And I have seen greater development, not only of enterprise, but also of education, charity, and benevolence, by the people, as a whole, through the agency of the State and also by the efforts of the individual, than had developed before m all the years from Moses to the time when I was born. I may "be a little old-fashioned, a little wedded to the past, but I like to ride in an automobile; and when I engage a chauffeur I look to his famiharity with the machine and how it is made, rather than to his ability to toot a horn and turn on all the power to surprise and scatter the crowd with his nerve and speed. And in government I prefer a chauffeur who can turn a corner without skidding against the curb and wrecking the machine. The auto is a progressive machine and a promoter of business or funerals — it depends on the chauffeur. In a government of the people and by the people there must of necessity be political parties to express the will of the people touch- ing national policies. It has been so from the beginning and will be so to the end. There have been two great parties, under varying names, since the Government was founded, and for more than 60 years these parties have been under the names Republican and Democrat. The Democratic Party is now in full power and has 6 FOLLOWERS AFTEE STBANGE GODS. full responsibility for legislation. That party represents the will of the people by a constitutional majority, and the change has come without any manifestation of passion or revolutionary protest. We all accept President Wilson as our President and the Democratic Congress as our Congress to make the laws and administer them. No better evidence could be presented that the American people are capable of self-government. No one wishes the present administration success more than I do, for the success of the Government represents the success of the people. That is what we are all striving for; and we shall all wait with patience to see whether the Democratic Party, in carrying out its pohcies, can give greater prosperity more diversified among the people, greater peace and happiness, than followed the enactment of Republican policies. If they can succeed in doing this they will have long life and deserve it. There is, however, wise caution in King Ahab's advice to the King of Syria: "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." There have been two great questions on which the American people have divided, and these two questions naturally created two great poUtical parties. These questions were the extension of slavery into the national territory and the revenue policy. Both were funda- mental. Other questions were secondary. One of these questions has been settled — at great cost, it is true, but in a way that no one now would have changed. The whole country has developed and prospered under the new freedom of men that could not have been under the old system of slavery. No one has more happily expressed the advantages of this change than did President Harrison in his inaugural address, when he said: "Mill fires were lighted at the funeral pile of slavery. The emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of the earth as well as in the sky; men were made free and material things became our better servants." AN ERA OF SWIFT EXPANSION. My honored friend, the leader of the majority in the House, Mr. Underwood, can testify to the force of this expression. I under- stand that the great industrial city where he has his home is the best illustration of mill fires lighted at the funeral pile of slavery that can be found in the country; for the iron ore, coal, and limestone which give life to that city had lain for a hundred years under a cotton plantation, and that wealth was not brought to the surface until the emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of the earth to make these factors better servants than had been slavery. While I rejoice in the new development and prosperity of the South, and also of the East, let me briefly call attention to the devel- opment which came, with a force never before witnessed anywhere, bj^ reason of the abolition of servile labor, by the granting of home- steads for the people on the national domain, and under the Repub- lican policy of protection. We have some people now who fear the Government has been too liberal and has wasted its public land; but I can remember when the Government practically could not give away lands that are now worth $200 an acre. We have given away millions of acres of the public lands; but we have by so doing FOLLOWEES AFTER STEANGE GODS. 7 built up an empire in little more than half a century that could not have been developed in a thousand years under the old regime, and we have made men more of an asset than mere land. The map of the United States to-day, as compared with the map in the geogra- phies when I was a boy, tells the story more graphical^, and so do the reports of the Census Office. When I left North Carolina to find a home in the West my map of the United States had little but Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as the West; and beyond the Mississippi River was marked the Great American Desert, the Staked Plains, and the Rocky Mountains — a country of which few men knew anything. The United States was then practically east of the Mississippi River. There were but two States west of the Mississippi River — Missouri and Arkansas. Our total population was seventeen millions with less than four millions west of the Allegheny Mountains. But to-day we have ninety-one million people in the United States, and forty-five millions of them are in that territory which was then called the West and the unex- plored country beyond. Why, in 1860 we had but thirty-one million people in this country, and only eleven millions west of the Alleghanies. We encouraged and protected manufacture and agriculture; we passed homestead laws ; gave public lands to the people and to aid in the construction of the Pacific railroads. This legislation covered the whole country and gave an impetus to every kind of industrial development; and, with the settlement of the old question of checking the extension of slavery, it made the East a center of manufacture and the Great American Desert and the Staked Plains the granary of the world. Even the mountain fastnesses have been converted into gardens, and millions of enterprising people there are still unable to estimate their wealth and opportunity. I have no regret for the liberality of the Government in giving away public lands, for this liberality brought such results as would not have been recorded in many generations under the old policy of having the Government hoard its public lands and wait for purchasers. The losses to the Government were relative. The railroads and the homesteads were tremendous factors in the building of a nation; and to-day nearly one-half of our western people are there, making two-thirds of all the wealth taken from the soil and two-fifths of all the manufactured products of this country. Yes; the Government has been liberal and liberally has it been rewarded. We were liberal in our iiTimigration policy, and millions of men and women from every civilized country under the sun took advantage of that liberal policy to come here and become American citizens. Wlio can look over this American commonwealth and tell from whence came the blood of the great body of the American citizenship ? We have developed men from those who here first learned the meaning of the word manhood, and we have developed industry, skill, enter- prise, and intelligence in keeping with American citizenship. It is in this new West that we havs the lowest percentage of illiteracy to be found in the United States. When I am inclined to grow pessimistic after readmg some of the wailings and criticisms of latter-day economists and reformers, I take down the map of the United States and a volume of the census reports and find there the realization of the wildest dreams of the greatest optimists who ever lived; and I 8 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. am satisfied that the mistakes of the past were, after all, rather fortunate mistakes. This marvelous development of the West, however, demoralized agricultural conditions m the East and in the older countries across the sea. It demoralized the western people, too, for a time, because they could not measure their own opportunities with older conditions that prevailed elsewhere. The opening of the new prairie lands of the West made com])etition in the East embarrassing and sent millions of acres in New England, the North Atlantic, antl the South Atlantic States back to the wild lands and abandoned farms. The House of Representatives, where the membership is based on population, tells the story of our develoi)ment as a nation. In 1840, when I went to the West,' the old South had 98 Representatives; New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had 112, and all the countr}' west of the Allegheny Mountains had only 32. To-day, in the same grouping, the Old South has 109 Representatives, the East 124, and the West 202 ; and there are 1 15 Members now in the House who come from States that were unknown in 1840. The statesmen in the Washmgton of that day, while talking about "fifty-four-forty or fight," had not yet determined that the Oregon countrv' was worth keepmg. Notwithstanding the explorations of Lewis and Clark, in the earty part of the nineteenth century, there were men in Congress in 1840 who insisted that the Rocky Moimtains marked our western boundary and that a statue of the fabled god Termmus should be planted tliere to warn our i)eople against tempt- ing fate by trying to go farther. Gen. Fremont had not then set out on his exploration of the West, and the old missionary, Marcus Whitman, hatl not made that memor- able ride from WaUa Walla down across Utah and Colorado and through Missouri in the winter to tell the wise men in the National Capital that there were Americans in Oregon who had made their way across the mountains and were beginning to set up housekeeping for themselves with a government under the American flag, but without the recognition of the parent Government. I have seen one-half of the 48 States admitted to the Union and, as a Member of the House, I have helped admit 11 of them. THE WESTWARD COURSE OF EMPIRE. The West is not all-wise and the demagogues have been as success- ful there as in the older sections of the country. They have preached new doctrines and are tiying some experiments that have failed else- where. The peo})le have been too busy to study these questions for themselves; but they will in time, and then tliey will cease to be gulled by demagogic theories as opposed to practical conditions. I have heard much talk about progress and progressive ideas and poli- cies in the last few years; but I have seen no better evidences of progress than were manifest by the pioneers who peopled the^ West and created an empire greater and richer than was the whole Nation, which at that time gave more of discouragement than of aid to their progressive efforts. I have heard in Congress some of the men who aided in that first progressive western movement denounced as reactionaries. They can not protest, because they are dead; but that is the way of progress— FOLLOWEES AFTER STRANGE GODS. 9 in the hurry to get forward we fail to note the work of the front rank who blazed the trail and opened the way for the newer Progres- sives. When I see men beat the air and grow hysterical about pro- gressive policies, I am tempted to call their attention to the great picture that fills the wall space over the western stairway of the House wing of the Capitol, which portrays the progress of their forbears who went out and conquered the West. I have never been schooled in the arts, but to me that picture is one of the most inspiring paintmgs I have ever seen. I have passed it these many years; and I have never failed to look up at those heroic men and women who moved westward, scalmg the Rocky Mountains, which some of those in Congress marked as the boundary the Almighty had placed there to limit the adventurous spirit of the American and forever fix the western confines of the Republic. Those progressive spirits of the past did not make the air vibrate with lamentations, but with shouts of encouragement as the stalwart youths planted the flag on the higher cliffs to inspire with courage the women and children who were toiling up the path to find a way to the golden Pacific beyond. They did not even tarry long to bury the dead, but silently prepared the grave there in the mountain fastnesses and, with a benediction, passed on to the new duties and new con- quests. When the history of the West and the men and women who made it is written, larger space will, I hope, be given to the pioneers who toiled and suffered in silence than to those who have from time to time grown hysterical over the growing pains of this mighty empire that has spread in my time from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and beyond the Arctic Circle and almost to the shores of Siberia. I have for 40 years heard the lamentations of western poHtical progressives because nature gave that section a surplus of wheat and corn which could not be turned into gold and silver at once and a surplus of silver which could not be turned into coin of the realm at the mint on demand. I have heard the lamentations of the Green- backer and the Populist in days gone by, and they were no more doleful than some of the progressives of to-day. More than 20 years ago, when I offered an amendment to the Mills tariff bill to place sugar on the free list, as we did not then need the revenue, the Kansas delegation to a man complained that I was striking at the great Sun- flower State, which had begun to raise sorghum. They had the figures to prove that with protection to sugar Kansas would in a few years produce more sorghum sugar than would be necessary to sweeten the tooth of the whole civUized world. The tariff on sugar has remained, but what has become of Kansas sorghum ? It now sounds like a joke, but Kansas was just as earnest then and just as apprehensive of the calamity to that State from free sugar as she is now hopeful for the initiative and the recall. The grasshopper blight was no more perilous to Kansas than was free sugar, and neither of them more awful to contemplate than are reactionary policies, to-day. Moses, in his rebuke to the chddren of Israel, said the Lord had found them in the desert lands and made them to ride on the high places of the earth and eat from the fat of the land, with milk and honey. "But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked," and followed after strange gods. So it has ever been with the children of men. So it has been with a part of the people of these United States. 10 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. THE AMAZING INCREASE OF WEALTH. In the last 10 years we have had the most phenomenal prosperity ever known here or anywhere else ; and we have followed the example of the Children of Israel and kicked until not only have we almost convinced ourselves that we are suffering imiisiial hardships, but have caused the people of the Old World to wonder if at last their predictions are not commg true, and that the Republic is about to crumble under dissatisfaction and division. I do not make this assertion about our prosperity on my own observation alone. I take the census figures, and I am told at the Census Office that our total wealth is to-day estimated at $150,000,000,000; it was $88,000,000,000 in 1900, $65,000,000,000 in 1890, and only $16,000,000,000 in 1860. The increase in wealth was not only the greatest in volume but the greatest in percentage in the last decade that has ever been recorded by the Census Office. This total wealth has not been gathered into the hands of the Money Trust or the tariff barons, nor has it been centered in Wall Street. It is just where wealth has always been — among the people who go to the soil, the mine, and the factory and produce wealth. The total value of farm property increased from $20,000,000,000 in 1900 to $41,000,000,000 m 1910, and to this should be added the estimates of the Agricultural Department of $9,000,000,000 for last year's crop to make the farm wealth of the country $50,000,000,000, or one-third of the total wealth of the country. Our manufactured product was valued at $20,000,000,000 in 1910, and this does not include the value of the plants. Our railroads are worth $20,000,000,000, and the real estate in cities and towns is esti- mated at between $40,000,000,000 and $45,000,000,000. So, with- out counting the value of the mines and the shipping interests on the coasts and on the Great Lakes, I can find no evidence that the Money Trust has gobbled u]^ all our wealth. The value of farms and farm property not only doubled in the last 10 years, but it has increased fivefold in the last 40 years, for this farm wealth was only $8,000,000,000 in 1870, and it is now almost as great as the total wealth of the country in 1880. It may help to relieve the fear from the Money Trust to locate this farm wealth. It is not in New York or in New England, or within a thousand miles of Wall Street. More tlian thirty-two billions, or more than four-fifths of it, is in the West — the country that has been developed in my time. Let me repeat the fraction — four-fifths of all our farm wealth is west of the Allegheny Mountains, in what was the old Northwest Territory and in the States west of the Mississippi River, where the people are still supposed to be easily frightened over the bugbear of a Money Trust ; but to-da}^ those western farmers use high-power automobiles on their farms and have safe-deposit vaults in the village banks. And, should this Money Trust make a raid into that country, the people could piobably escape with their ready cash. Only $8",000,000,000 of this farm wealth is to be found in New England, the North Atlantic and South Atlantic States — or what was consideied the United States when I was a boy in North Carolina. New England has 4,000,000 acres less of improved farmland than she had in 1860; tlie Middle Atlantic States 4,000,000 acres less of FOLLOWEES AFTER STEANGE GODS. 11 improved farmland than in 1880; and the South Atlantic States 3,000,000 acres less of all farmlands than in 1860. This means that the farmers of the country are in the West and that there has been an increase of 500,000,000 acres of farms in that new empire. It means that two-thirds of all the crop values are in the West; that 80 per cent of all the cereals is raised in the West; that 77 per cent of all the cattle, 80 per cent of the horses, 77 per cent of the hogs, 86 per cent of the sheep, 66 per cent of the dairy products, and 72 per cent of the eggs are produced in the West. This may explain to some people in the East why food products are higher now to them than a few years ago. They have to buy from the West; and the West s not only feeding them but an m- creased industrial population at home, as well as selling abroad when the prices are sufficient to invite export. In addition to these factors the West has 56 per cent of all the mineral products of the country. It has practically all the gold and silver, 86 per cent of the iron ore, 43 per cent of all the coal, 58 per cent of the petroleum and natural gas, and 40 per cent of all the manufactured products. The West has the raw material and is fast developing its manufac- turing industries, so as to turn its own products out ready for the consumer. THE TARIFF ISSUE FUNDAMENTAL. This may explam why the West is not as hostile to protection as it once was. But has not the Lord blessed these western people as He did the Children of Israel, makmg them ride on the high places and live on the fat of the land ? And have not some of them waxed fat and kicked ? , i i i i We settled the slavery question, and smce then we have had the revenue policy as the great question to divide our people; it is a natural and legitimate issue. On that question we have had divisions since the organization of the Government, and we shall continue to divide on it for years to come. The Democratic Party still holds to the old Democratic policy of a tariff for revenue only, while the Republican Party stands for the old doctrme of protection to Ameri- can production." We each have good ancestry for our political belief touchmg this question, but I think the Democratic policy belongs to the old system of labor that has been abolished. The revenues that maintain the machinery of government form the very lifeblood of the Government, and the revenue policy is fundamental. We can cross party lines on other questions, but here is where we must represent the people on a fundamental issue; and the man who desires to take the tariff out of politics does not know what he is talking about— in my judgment. So long as we have these two schools of economic thought as to the policy governing the raising of revenues, the tariff will remain a question of politics — and of the highest and best order of politics at that. We who represent the projection policy have been in control for many years. Since 1860 the Democrats have had complete control to enact laws in harmony with their poUcy for only the short period of two years. They then enacted the Wilson-Gorman tariff law. I am not going into the history of that act, but it did not meet with the approved of a majority of the American people, and for 16 years we 12 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. have again been able to have this Government follow our policy of protection. The country has pros])ered under that policy. The Democrats have again come into control and have all the machinery to enact a tariff law in harmony with the policy they have consistently maintained should be the proper revenue policy of this Government. Their platform last year was just as radical on this question as it was in 1892, and even more radical than in the years before the Civil War. I do not believe that policy when carried into effect will be any more satisfactory to the people than it was in 1894; but we all have maintained that platforms represent the demands of the people; and, as Mr. Cleveland said, should be accepted as the decree of the masters of Congress and written into the statutes. President Cleveland, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1893, declared : The people of the United States have decreed that on this day the control of their Government in its legislative and executive branches shall be given to a political party pledged in the most positive terms to the accomplishment of tariff reform. They have thus determined in favor of a more just and equitable system of Federal taxation. The agents they have chosen to carry out their purposes are bound by their promises, not less than by the command of their masters, to devote themselves unremittingly to this service. And yet President Cleveland refused to sign the Wilson-Gorman tariff bill, indicating by that action that either the Congress or the President forgot or ignored the command of their masters. THE ROUGH ROAD OF REFORM. I have no doubt President Wilson will remind Congress of the same promise — -that the Democrats are to carry out the command of their masters, who have voted for a change in our revenue policy. I tlo not believe it will succeed any better than it did in 1894; but I recognize that it would be craven and disloyal if they did not make the effort and devote their best energies to a tariff revision in har- mony with tlieir platform — a tariff for revenue only — and set their faces stendy against incidental protection or progressive free trade, or any other compromise between the two systems. They have declared all protection to be unconstitutional and the robbery of the many for the benefit of the few. They can not compromise the Constitution, nor can they comjiromise with robbery. I have no doubt they will try to reach their ideal in a tariff bill, and I suspect they will find fairly good Democrats in Congress who are perfectly willing to strike down the tariff that protects some other industry in some other State, but who will urge delay touching schedules that benefit their own people in the States and districts they repre- sent. It is the weakness of human nature for men to be more eager to reform the affairs of others than to reform their own. We had that kind of human nature to deal with, and the Democrats wdl have it to deal wdth. They will even find the great metropolitan press, which has been with them in favor of tariff reform, differentiating as to what the term means when they come to deal with its i)roduct. But they will have to do this, whether their work meets with the ap])roval of a majority of the people or not, for political parties are made up of the l)est manhood of the country, notwithstanding the FOLLOWEES AFTER STRANGE GODS. 13 wails of the miickraker, and the manhood of the Democratic party is now compelled to go forward with legislation to carry out the platform of that party, whether their new legislation spells political defeat or political victory. A constitutional majority of the people has given the command, and the Democrats can not ignore that command without being condemned for cowardice and treachery to the people, which would be worse than condemnation for another failure of their poUcy. They will be opposed by the same forces that have opposed them in the past. The opposition will not be measured by the men who are called Republicans in Congress — these may be few — but the opponents will be the people of the United States who believe in protection — the men on farm and in factory, who will be the first affected by the policy when written into law. They are the pro- ducers, and they are also the consumers of the country. It was one of the Democratic policies that brought defeat to their political opponents last year. They furnished the votes to pass the reciprocity pact, which received the indorsement of a Democratic House in"^ the beginning of the Sixty-second Congress. That act, carrying into law the recommendations of a Republican President, raised up more opposition to him than any other act of his admin- istration; in fact the good acts of his administration were not all equal in the balance to the weight of that one act with a very large part of the American people. A majority of the Republicans m Congress voted against that bill, though it came from a Republican President; but it received a hybrid majority both in the Plouse and in the Senate that placed it on the statute books, and some men said the tariff had been taken out of politics. The opposite was true. That act raised up opposition to the President in his own party and all explanations could not satisfy the people. We had there a demonstration of the fact that the tariff is in politics, whether men in public life choose to discuss it or not. The President's friends tried to ignore the reciprocity pact— tried to forget that there had been such recommendation and legislation; and so did the newspapers after they had secured free print paper; but the people would not forget. This question must be settled according to one policy or the other. The Democrats have declared in favor of a tariff for revenue only and they will break with then- own people if they are not true to their profession of faith. On the other hand, they will drive back to their old moorings all protectionists who were not satisfied with the present tariff law if they do carry out the pledges of their plat- form. I do not see how they are to escape the embarrassment of the old preacher out on the Wabash, who said : You shall and you shan't; You will and you won't; You'll be damned if you do And be damned if you don't. I have seen a number of efforts made at tariff revision as well as a number of tariff bills enacted by Congress. The Democratic Party tried to revise the tariff in the Forty-eighth Congress, when William R. Morrison, as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, reported his famous horizontal reduction bill. Some of the best protection speeches I have ever heard in the House were made by Democrats in opposition to that bill. 14 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. When the bill came up for final vote on May 6, 1884, it was George L. Converse, an Ohio Democrat, who moved to strike out the enacting clause. That motion was carried in Committee of the Whole in a House that had a Democratic majority of 74. The Democratic oppo- nents of that bill were not satisfied without a record, and when the bill was reported from the Committee of the Whole to the House, with the recommendation that the enacting clause be stricken out, Mr. Converse demanded a roll call; and on that roll call 40 Democrats voted with the Republicans against the bill reported from a Demo- cratic Committee on Ways and Means. Among those Democrats who voted against the Morrison bill were Samuel J. Randall, who had been the Democratic Speaker; Andrew G. (\utiii, an old Democratic war governor of Pennsylvania; and William McAdoo, of New Jersey. William R. Morrison, the first great tariff revisionist since the CivU War, was beaten in the House of his friends; and his bill only provided for 10 per cent and 20 per cent reductions on the various schedules. I saw the Democratic Party in control of the House when it passed the ^lills bill, and there was strenuous opposition by Democrats as well as Republicans to that measure. I saw Samuel J. Randall pun- ished for his opposition when Morrison reported from the Committee on Rules a new rule taking from the Committee on Appropriations the control of man}' appropriation bills and giving them to other committees. That was done to minimize the influence of Randall, who was chairman of the Conimittee on Appropriations. I was in the House when it passed the Wilson tariff bill, and I heard the present Speaker denounce those Democrats who opposed the bill as traitors to the people. I also heard Democrats in the House declare they would never accept the Senate bill; and after many, protestations they suddenly grew tired of their opposition and adopted a rule by whicn the House had to vote on the whole list of Senate amendments without division. So I am impressed with the Possibility that they may have trouble in enacting a tariff law m armony with their platform, and that they wUl have trouble if they do succeed. Irresponsible promise and responsible performance have different effects. We do not need any new system of initiative, referendum, and recall. The system that is as old as the Government is entirely effective. The election of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress last fall was the initiative for a tariff for revenue only, and the people have the power to reverse the legislative engine two and four years from now. They are the only power to recall the command given last November; and, though it may be discouraging to the Democratic efforts to realize that they may be recalled, it is one of the fates of those who represent the people m our form of government. We have had much discussion about the high cost of living and the Democrats have laid the responsibility on the tariff. They are now to demonstrate just how much and in what way the tariff affects the cost of living, especially when more than one-half of our people live in sections of the country which produce less than one-fourth of the food products. FOLLOWEKS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 15 THE middleman's TOLL. After all, it is an old saying that it costs more to market a product than to produce it. We have developed an extravagant if not a luxurious method of marketing our products, of both the farm and the factory.^ An ultimate consumer up in Winnipeg last fall bought a barrel of apples, and found a note m the barrel from the apple grower in Ontario, which read: "I got 70 cents for this barrel of apples. What did you pay for it ? " Mmd you, that was not in this country, but in Canada — ■ a country many consumers have desired to reciprocate with in trade. Well, the Winnipeg consumer had paid $5.25 for the apples. He was anxious to know where the $4.55 increase went, and he found that the barrel had cost 30 cents and the freight 70 cents. Still there was left $3.55 to pay for the cost of marketing the fruit. It is the same over here with a suit of clothes. The Tariff Board gave us an example m its report. That board found that in a suit of clothes selling for $23 and upward the wool- grower received $2.32 for the wool; the woolen manufacturer received $4.78 for the cloth, and the cost of all the material that entered into the making of the suit, except the labor, was $7.55. The cost of making the suit was $3.74 and the entire factory cost of the clothes was $12.41. This was the factory price, but the consumer had to pay anywhere from $23 to $30 for that suit of clothes. If the suit sold for $23 the profits between the factory and the consumer amounted to $10.59; if it sold for $25 it cost more to get that suit from the factory to the consumer than it did from the back of the sheep through the factory. Mr. B. F. Yoakum has estimated that in the year 1911 the farmers received $6,000,000,000 for their products, and that the consumer paid $13,000,000,000 for those same products. The railroads received $495,000,000 for transportation; so that the cost of production and transportation combined was less than one-haK of the price paid by the ultimate consumer. More than $6,500,000,000 went to pay the expenses and the profits of the men who sold these products to the consumer. The tariff had nothing to do with it. This is one of the problems the Democrats have to deal with, and they will only embarrass themselves by continuing to hold the tariff responsible for all the troubles of the ultimate consumer. When the Democrats have fulfilled their promise for revenue reform they will find how numerous are their critics, and that criticism and op- position will crystallize just as they have in times past under the same old organization and the same old principles that have dominated the Republican Party since its organization. A good many gentlemen have been agitating about the future, but I have no fear as to the future of the Republican Party. It will not be reorganized in Des Moines or in New York, or Chicago, or Kansas City, or by any group of men who are willing to undertake the direction of its affairs. The Republican Party does not need reorganization. It is as much in evidence now as it was in 1892, when it went to defeat. It has been temporarily divided between personal ambitions, but personal ambitions have never made the party and they will be of little effect when the Democrats have enacted legislation in harmony with their pohcy. The Repubhcan Party will be in the field then and the millions of Republicans will select theii* leaders just as they have always done in the past. In a government of the people the leaders LIBRARY OF CONGRESS FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GO! 16 come from the ranks and are not designated either uy j^i*xxx^ w~„„ • or by self-constituted authority. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the raiment of Lincoln has been parceled out by any board of executors who may think they have been appointed to settle the estate of the Republican Party. Some of my former associates in the Republican Party, who have come to the conclusion they are the John the Baptists for a political regeneration, are anxious to reorganize the Republican Party. They claim that the old party has strayed after false gods and that they are the only true followers of Lincoln. I have heard this claim pre- sented by others in the past who made no pretensions of relation- ship — even the remotest — to the Republican Party. For instance, the senior Senator from South Carohna, who would resent the sug- gestion that he is anything but an old-fashioned Democrat, traveled over my State several years ago campaigning for William J. Bryan, and carried with him a volume of Lincoln's speeches from which he quoted to show that Bryan was a better follower of Lincoln than waa Theodore Roosevelt. JUDAS OR SAUL OF TARSUS. The Republican Party may need some reformation — not reor- ganization; but that work will not be left to any self-constituted leadership. It is said that Judas claimed to be one of the earliest tlisciples of the Master and that Saul of Tarsus was not converted until he was bhnded by a great light. Does any one now present the whole history of Judas and his 30 pieces of reform silver as an evidence that he did more than Paul to establish the Christian religion ? The RepubUcan Party is to-day constituted — just as it was before the election — of the millions of men who believe in protection to American production; and the Democratic Party in Congress is going to sound the note which will show that the Republican Party does not need any other organization than the note of alarm that will come from the House early this summer. Both political parties have had great leaders, and these leaders have grown up in the service. They have not been selected by any small body of men to be clothed with the people's approval. We had one sad illustration of the failure of that kind of leadershij) when a few public-spirited men, who had opportunity to make themselves heard, selected an old-time Republican to lead the liberal hosts and the Democratic phalanx to the White House. It was one of the saddest tragedies in our political history. There were brilliant and able men in the movement of 1872, and they controlled the greatest organs of publicity in the country. They were able to make a great noise ; but when the ballots were counted it was the silent deep and not the shallows that spoke. Grant was re-elected with the most overwhelming majority ever given up to that time to a President, and Horace Greeley died of a broken heart a few days after the election. But for the tragedy which followed, that effort of Carl Schurz, Murat Halstead, Horace White, Whitelaw Reid, and Henry Watterson would have been one of the greatest jokes of American politics. As it was, it showed how a few men in control of the organs of publicity can fool a great political party by adopting the same methods those do who sell breakfast foods and patent medicines — by advertising their wares. o LIBRARY OF CONGRESS mil nil 1 1 III nil mil 012 051 529 9 Q HoUinger Corp.