-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Treason of the Senate
David Graham Phillips
academic reprints
p.o. box 3003
Stanford, California
Cosmopolitian Magazine
Vol. XL - March, 1906 - No.5
--[7]--
CHAPTER VII
The Rise of Foraker
IN the Republican-Democratic "merger" for protecting and aiding the big
exploiters of the American people, there is, physically and oratorically, no
more attractive figure than Senator Foraker of Ohio. In intellect he is not
the equal of Knox, hardly the equal of Spooner or Bailey; he lacks the cold
audacity which has got Aldrich and Elkins their enormous riches, though. he
has made the service to which he has devoted the last twenty-five years pay
well enough to net him a large fortune and to keep him in the millionaire
class, despite his extravagance. His chief usefulness to "the interests" and
to his private fortunes has been his oratory. He is about the best stump
speaker at the command of the backers of the merged political machines.
Foraker's beginnings were away back in the late seventies, when the domestic
enemies of the people, enriched by the spoils of Civil-War contracts and bond
jobbings, were covering their huge grabs of franchises and privileges in the
nation and in the states by having their political agents wave the "bloody
shirt" and call on the people to "vote as they shot." Nowadays, Foraker, like
Aldrich, Bailey, Cannon, Williams, Spooner, and all the "merged," is an
ardent advocate of states' rights, flares fiercely at any suggestion of
repelling the national foes by national enactments, demands in the name of
God and Constitution that the states be left to deal with "the interests"�it
being, of course, impossible for the states singly to do so. But in the days
when the "bloodyshirt racket" was as good for fooling the people as "the
interests" think "Beware of socialism!" is now, Foraker was a wild and
winning waver of the "bloody shirt."
Thus Foraker became the protege of the respectable traders of campaign
contributions for licenses to loot, became the pet of his own Cincinnati's
notorious George Cox gang. They made him a judge; they and their pals
throughout the state ran him for governor, finally elected him, reelected
him-and gay and rich was the carnival he presided over. But when, in 1889, he
ran for another term, he was beaten. The people had had enough of him and his
gang; stump oratory as a cover for public plundering ceased to charm. The
people revolted against the rule of the "boys" calling themselves
Republicans, and turned to the so-called Democratic "boys"�who were equally
"boyish," and hungrier and clumsier about stuffing themselves. The Republican
"boys" soon got back, but not "Fire Alarm" Foraker; his public career, in
office for which the people vote, was at an end. While waiting for a
senatorship to be vacant so that the "boys" could reenter him in the "service
of the people" without their consent and all but beyond their reach, he
became a. lobbyist and the chief negotiator between the "boys" in control of
the state legislature and "the interests" feeding upon Ohio's rich resources
and industrious population. We find him in 1892 installed, not in a Columbus
hotel like a common lobbyist, but in the state Capitol itself, using its
library and committee-rooms as his offices. The legislature was called "the
Foraker legislature"; the supreme court of the state was known as "the
Foraker court."
An Immensely Profitable job
To relate his doings in detail would serve no useful purpose. There was the
law permitting parallel railways to consolidate and so create monopoly and
install extortion; there was the Cincinnati waterworks law, a
six-million-dollar job for Foraker's overlord, Cox, and the Cincinnati "boys"
both Republican and Democratic�for, in Ohio, the two machines work in joyous
harmony, with no quarrel except about which shall be harvester and which
gleaner, just as they do in New York and Pennsylvania, in New Jersey and
Illinois and Massachusetts, and so on through practically the entire list of
states where there are two parties. But let us pass over the enactments of
"the Foraker legislature" for financiers seeking to rob the people by means
of railways and telephones and insurance, etc., etc.; let us content
ourselves with citing in some detail only Foraker's immensely profitable
street-railway job.
He first tried to give the street railways of the state a free gift of a
ninety-nine years' franchise with freedom from taxation. This was too much
even for patient Ohio; the "popular clamor" against this overstiff dose of
the "safe and sane" frightened the politicians, especially as the "freesilver
peril" was beginning to loom. But, just after his legislature elected him to
the Senate�that is, in April, 1896�he did push through a bill authorizing the
"boys" in control of Mark Hanna's Cleveland and George Cox's Cincinnati to
grant a fifty years' franchise to consolidating street railways-fifty years'
license freely to pick the pockets of workingmen and workingwomen by an
extortionate five-cent fare! And, in spite of public uproar and adverse
decisions of lower courts, the "law" held for Foraker's home city,
Cincinnati, thanks to supplementary acts of the legislature and to the
decision of "Foraker's court." He appeared before his court as lawyer for the
robbers to give it the plausible legal pretext for this assault upon the
wages of the poor. Cincinnati traction stock boomed to 130; the "law" netted
the inside traction ring upward of ten million dollars. Foraker's son is now
vice president of the company and his brother is its counsel. It was charged
that in addition to his stock profits he got a fee of one hundred thousand
dollars. In denying this charge, the worthy senator said he got only a
"present of five thousand" from an officer of the company! Such was our fiery
patriot and statesman's first public act on his promotion to the field of
national service, as a member of the body that is the final arbiter of the
distribution of prosperity for us all. A most propitious inaugural!
In 1896, Senator Foraker, paid attorney for the Southern (Morgan-Ryan)
Railway Company, advised and urged the people of Cincinnati to sell their
Cincinnati Southern ("Queen and Crescent") Railway for a paltry sum, compared
to its value. His eloquence was in vain; the fact is, though his great
personal vanity may still hide it from him, Ohio people know him for what he
is. They like to hear him "wind-jam," just as Wisconsin people like to hear
Spooner "orate"; but they would no more elect him to an office than Wisconsin
people would Spooner, or than Texas people will Bailey when they get a little
better acquainted with him. In 1905, the Southern Railway gang, having failed
to get Cincinnati's road outright, leased it for between three and four
hundred thousand dollars a year more than the interest on the Foraker
purchase price would have been�and at the end of sixty years Cincinnati will
still own the road.
What is Foraker's record in the body that is, as we have seen, officered. and
used by and for treason against the people in their struggle with our common
enemy, the exploiters of industry, the trimmers of wages and savings?
Of course, like all the "merged" senators, he has voted with the "party,"
that is, with Aldrich, for all the great tariff and commerce measures for
"the interests has voted against every notable measure in the people's
interest; like his fellow-conspirators, he has made occasional farcical, but
with the unthinking highly effective, shows of "independence" when his vote
or voice was not needed by the "merger." Aldrich has him as aid to Steve
Elkins on the committee on interstate commerce, whose sins of omission and
sins of commission are, as we noted last month, in large measure responsible
for the fact that wages have remained about stationary for thirty years while
rents and prices have greatly increased and the profits of the parasites upon
capital and labor have become the wonder and the scandal of the world.
Loot Side of Railway Business
There is probably no senator who knows the loot side of the railway business
so thoroughly as does Foraker�not even Spooner, not even Bailey, not even the
presiding officer of the Senate, Vice President Fairbanks, to whose
railway-got millions we shall advert. Yet not a word has Foraker ever spoken
against the colossal stealing, except the usual "hot air" generalities to be
expected of a rhetorical politician; and not a measure has he introduced or
advocated even looking toward lessening the enormous burden upon American
industry through the Monopolizing of the highways and the exaction of unequal
and exorbitant tolls. He concocted and urged a bill to permit the railways to
"pool," that is, to abolish even the pretense of competition. And last spring
his "great Constitutional speech" against the railway-rate bill was devoted
to proving that under the Constitution the people have no right to regulate
railway rates!
To show how minute is his attention to the "problems of statesmanship" he is
in the Senate to wrestle with: on December 17, 1902, Patterson of Colorado,
one of the "unmerged" senators, asked unanimous consent to a resolution
directing the Interstate Commerce Commission to send the Senate a report on
the unsanitary sanitary appliances of sundry great railways; Kean of New
Jersey, for the "merger," objected to this effort to look after the health of
the vast traveling public, and the resolution went over; when it came up
again on January 5, 1903, Foraker, for the "merger," had it referred to the
committee on interstate commerce. We have learned what that means. We can
imagine what chance a measure for the people and against "the interests,"
would have of escaping alive from a committee presided over by railway owner
Steve Elkins, and containing railway owners Aldrich, Kean, and Foraker.
Once more we search in vain the record of an avowed and admired leader of the
Senate for a single act of friendship or even of neutrality toward the people
in their struggle against the great, the real enemy. Foraker in the Senate
has always been against the people, always for his franchisegrabbing,
stock-and-bond-watering, pocket-picking clients who have given him the
retainers that make him rich. But, after all, what reason-except such trifles
as honor and self-respect�has a Foraker for keeping his oath and serving the
people? They didn't send him to the Senate; they don't keep him there; they
didn't pay him the sums which enable him to swagger in "society." Indeed, if
they got a good, square chance they would probably "give it" to him where he
has for so many years been "giving it" to them�in the region between the head
and the shoulders.
Lodge and the "Boy" Methods
Foraker naturally suggests Lodge. There are many surface differences between
the senior senator from Ohio and the senior senator from Massachusetts.
Foraker rose from poverty; Lodge was born rich, inheriting one of those "rum
and nigger" fortunes that form the basis of the amusing aristocratic
pretenses of so many of the New England "old families." Foraker pretends to
be democratic in his ideas; Lodge is frankly contemptuous of "the mob" and
morbid on the subject of his haughty lineage. Foraker is as magnetic as
Spooner or Knox, or as Depew used to be; Lodge is so vain and self-centered
that he is almost friendless. Foraker is eloquent and has originality of
thought and expression; Lodge is as dry and commonplace as an old-style
college professor. These surface differences obscure from the casual glance
the essential likeness of the two men�the fact that they are the product of
precisely the same conditions, owe their office to them and are maintained in
office by them. They are of about the same age�Foraker, sixty; Lodge,
fifty-six -and they entered public life at about the same time.
Lodge, like Spooner and Knox, makes a specialty of prim "respectability," and
does it with better countenance because he does not take "fees." Also, he
deceives because his manner is forbidding instead of apologetic, and because
he has been careful rarely to speak for the "merger" but only to vote with it
and play its game by standing for "strict arty discipline," and has made
foreign affairs seem to be his specialty. Like Foraker, he is a product of
the petty grafters, not of the big grafters. In the days when the two were
not thoroughly united, when the big respectable thieves in the two parties
looked disdainfully down upon the Coxes and Crokers and" Bathhouse Johns,"
Lodge, like Foraker, took sides with the "boys." The last open battle in the
Republican party between the "boys" and the "big fellows" was over the
nomination of Jim Blaine. Jim was the idol of the "boys," was abhorred by the
"big fellows," and also, of course, by the high-minded men still influential
in the party in those days. The "boys" won and nominated Blaine in 1884.
Foraker was heart and soul with them; Lodge, striving in vain to establish
himself in politics in Massachusetts, then wholly under the domination of the
big tariff and railway corruptionists, hesitated at the Blaine dose. He
almost bolted with the moral element and with those big financial backers of
the party who thought Blaine a demagogue and likely to do almost anything,
even possibly to attack them, in his pursuit of his passion for popularity.
The temptation to get political power triumphed over the desire to be thought
moral and the natural hankering of a conventional man like Lodge to herd with
his "social equals." Lodge swallowed Blaine.
It has often been charged that Lodge is responsible for the low plane of
Massachusetts politics, that he introduced the "boy" methods. This, however,
is unjust to Lodge. He simply conformed, stooped to use and to be used by the
forces that have created and made powerful the chain of bosses and boodlers,
of which Aldrich and "the interests" are the lock-links.
The "Scholar" in Politics
The Massachusetts Republican machine, deserted for the time by the big
grafters, needed money; Lodge had money, and spent it freely. The machine
needed "respectability"; in Massachusetts, to be a Lodge and a Cabot, a
relative of the Quincys, and the Adamses, is to be "respectable." Lodge won
the gratitude of the "boys" throughout his state, became boss of the machine
at Nahant, to which he had removed in the early eighties after his failure to
get into politics in his native Ninth Ward of Boston. He was beaten twice for
Congress, in 1882 and again in 1884; but by 1886 his good work among the
"boys" began to tell; he was elected, and held his place through three more
elections until he intrigued himself into the senatorship. It must not be
imagined that he abandoned for an instant his game of respectability. He
spoke with heavy and therefore convincing solemnity for civil-service reform,
got himself dubbed a "practical reformer," a "successful type of the scholar
in politics." The solemn farce goes far everywhere, nowhere farther than in
New England. While Lodge was preaching civil-service reform like a dedicated
missionary, he was filling the public service with his henchmen, was one of
the most assiduous and successful securers of 'Places for janitors, elevator
men, messengers, etc., etc. One example out of scores, literally scores,
which might be cited: In October, 1889, he drafted and put into the
Republican state platform a strenuous civil-service plank; yet at the very
time he was using his influence with the newly installed Republican national
administration to fill the Charlestown navy yard with his heelers. In the
first seven months of that administration, when the "Blaine gang" was still
powerful with Harrison, there were eighteen removals at the Charlestown yard
above the grade of laborer, two "extra" men were appointed, and no less than
forty Democratic laborers were removed. All these places were filled with
Lodge "boys."
We have seen enough to identify beneath the robe of the "gentleman scholar"
the familiar coarse type of machine politician. But Lodge is not merely that;
he is far more dangerous. He, the disguised "boy," got the senatorship by a
deal with the "big fellows" who had returned to the party which could be most
useful to them in Massachusetts, just as they "stand by" the Democratic party
in Texas. To realize the nature of this Lodge deal with the "big fellows"
through the eminently respectable Drapers, General W. F. and Eben, rich
manufacturers and tariff-troughers of Hopetown, let us recall the once famous
outburst of indignation from State Senator W. D. Butler on January 4, 1893,
when, by the "snap" action of a caucus, Lodge was foisted on the party as its
senatorial nominee:
"Away back-perhaps two years ago in some instances�one of the candidates who
has been suggested with reference to this great and honorable office, began
his efforts to obtain it. He employed methods never before heard of in this
commonwealth with reference to this office. Prior to the election on November
8th this state was gone over with a fine-tooth comb, not in the interest of
the Republican party, but of the man who is a candidate for this place. . . .
There has been such a use and abuse of the machine in his campaign that the
precedent may be established in this state that no man can go to the United
States Senate in the future except by resorting to similar means."
At that time. "Harper's Weekly" was universally recognized as an organ of
intelligent, honest public opinion. In its issue of January 21, 1893, it
summed up the authentic facts thus:
"He (Lodge) pressed upon the legislature a 'gerrymandering' scheme from the
shamelessness of which even his followers recoiled; he laid the wires for the
election of members (of the legislature) favorable to himself; he brought
about the holding of a 'snap' caucus, outdoing our own Hills and Murphys. Had
he devoted the ability and time and labor he squandered on this miserable
business . . . to the earnest study and treatment of public questions and to
the establishment of a solid reputation as a statesman, the senatorship would
have come to him as a free offering by a state proud of him, instead of his
running after it like a man who would steal it if he could not get it
honestly."
And who elected Lodge to the Senate? From whom did he get this office "like a
man who would steal it if he could not get it honestly"? From a legislature
that in its betrayal of the people, in its subservience to public plunderers
great and small, was the worst Massachusetts had known up to that time. It is
manifestly impossible in the limits of these articles to go into the record
of the Massachusetts legislature since the rise of the machine of which Lodge
is the chief manager and chief political beneficiary-he leaves the financial
spoils to others. The legislature has been bought again and again, every
session, several times, by gas, railway, traction, and insurance interests;
it has killed child-labor legislation, legislation seeking to prevent the
extortion of monopoly, it is openly attended by an expensive and active
lobby. At this writing it has once more been forced to make pretense of
investigating itself because it is being really investigated by District
Attorney Moran and a grand jury at Boston�this time because it killed a bill
to stop that barefaced form of plain stealing, the bucketshop. Representative
Frank Gethro, who was expelled last June for attempting to bribe
fellow-members, became so enraged by the action of the "mob of hypocrites who
have taken ten bribes to my one" that on June 23d he gave inside facts as to
a typical session:
"Scarcely a measure came before the House but came with it money offers for
my vote from representatives, senators, and lobbyists. . . . I found what
prices were being paid to leaders, both senators and representatives, and to
the rank and file, and determined to get for myself the contract to buy a
large block of votes. I agreed to buy Republican votes, got the contract and
bought the votes. The Republican leaders told me if I would not divulge the
names, they would stand by me. I depended entirely upon them for my escape in
the investigation, and this was my fatal error."
And this is notoriously typical of the body which has three times elected
Lodge. A stream can rise no higher than its source�that is not an axiom of
physics only.
If Lodge were a patriot, would he not have been using his talents and
energies in striving to make decent the political conditions in his state?
Yet never, not once, has he opened his lips against corruption there.
We have seen that the "boys" were with Lodge, and who the Massachusetts
"boys" are. Since the healing of the factional quarrel between the "boys" and
"big fellows," he has had these latter with him also. Their stronghold is the
Arkwright Club�and that is Lodge's stronghold now. The idea of patriotism, of
the glory that is American, which those gentlemen entertain, was well
illustrated in the report of the committee they sent down South to see why it
was compelling them to cut their huge dividends. Said the committee
(December, 1897):
"The working day in North Carolina is twelve hours, and the price paid per
day for common labor in the mills is from fifty to seventy-five cents. So far
as we could learn there is no disposition to organize labor unions. . . . It
seems a duty to apply at once to the legislatures of the New England states
to put us back on a footing with the manufacturers in other parts of the
country. It is particularly incumbent on us to urge the legislature of
Massachusetts to repeal the legislation reducing the hours of labor to
fifty-eight."
How Lodge Works the People
Not to be content with fair returns on their actual capital. Not to urge
Lodge, their especial friend, to press legislation forbidding anybody
anywhere to degrade and enserf an American man, woman, or child. But to try
to get ten-hour laws and child-labor laws repealed! To "put us back"�what a
significant phrase! And in 1905 the legislature that reelected Lodge for the
third time killed in its upper house a bill prohibiting the employment of
women and children in factories before six o'clock in the morning and after
six at night. We are in a position now to understand why Lodge the senator
has never done or tried to do anything effective for the people, why he has
pretended to concern himself with foreign affairs, talking not against
corporate oppressions or child-labor or the corruption of politics in the
nation and in his own state, but about war with Germany, whose only
difficulties with us have been when she refused to receive without inspection
the rotten products of the beef trust and again when she refused to let the
big insurance companies ravage the German people as the American people have
since learned they were ravaging them. In all ages and countries "foreign
affairs" has been the specialty of the politician who wished to distract
attention from the operations of a devouring privileged class within his
country's borders. Lodge knows well that no country on earth would
contemplate the insanity of making war on us with our boundless resources and
our absolute ungetatableness. But inasmuch as his pose of Spartan purity will
not permit of his openly aiding "the interests" that finance his machine and
rule his party, he "saves his face" by manufacturing war clouds and puffing
them away; thus, he can affect ignorance of the real war, the struggle
between the people and their Senate-guarded and Senate-licensed plunderers,
and can deceive the unthinking into believing that he does not know what he
is doing when he "stands pat" on Aldrich's tariff law for robbery chiefly, or
votes and even occasionally speaks in favor of some "safe and sane" measure
for the perpetuation of privilege.
We need give space to only a few illustrations of Lodge in senatorial
actionnot the Lodge who talks and occasionally proposes some petty futility
of "popular" legislation, but the real and efficient Lodge. On December 17,
1895, Senator Call of Florida moved that a special committee of five senators
investigate the efforts of "the interests" to control federal elections and
to influence legislation. Here was a chance for Lodge, the reformer, the
denouncer of corruption. Did he speak for the resolution? No; he sat silent.
Did he vote for it? On the contrary, when Hale of Maine, for the "merger,"
moved its reference to the committee on privileges and elections, where it
could be secretly strangled and buried, Lodge lined up in the "merger," with
Republicans like Elkins and Democrats like Brice of Ohio, to protect the
corrupt sources of the "merger's" revenues for financing the two party
machines.
As we have seen, the two obvious and conclusive tests of the treason of the
Senate, and the obvious and conclusive proofs that the ''merger" of the
machines of the two parties on all vital questions, all questions affecting
food, clothing, shelter, wages, prices, plunder, and privilege, is in force
and effect, are found in the Senate's attitude toward the high financiers who
misuse the railways for wholesale robbery of the people and misuse the
protective tariff system for binding the people and making them helpless
under robbery.
A Persistent "Standpatter"
What is Lodge's record on the tariff? In 1894 he spoke against the income tax
and voted with the "merger" to inject more than four hundred robber
amendments into the so-called Wilson, but really "merger," bill to use the
tariff for robbery. In 1897, Lodge lined up with the rest of Aldrich's band
to stuff the Dingley bill with "good things" for "the interests," to make it
over completely into a "merger" measure, to make it the traitorous thing
which that stalwart Republican, Governor Cummins of Iowa, thus concisely
described last spring,
"All the robberies and thefts committed by all the insurance officers since
the life insurance business was originated do not amount to the extortion due
to the Dingley law in one year."
Lodge is a "standpatter." And what is his record on the railway test of
senatorial treason? Let us not linger on his partthat of the railway
lawyer-in the debates and votes on the railway-rate bill. Like all the
"merger" senators, he voted against the "unmerged" Republican La Follette's
amendments that would have made it a reality of justice instead of a sham and
a fraud. Let us not waste space in explaining his futile little "popular"
amendments with which he sought to confuse the public mind as to his real
self. Let us recall a real achievement, his specific proclamation of himself.
It has been proved again and again that the people pay the railways for mail
service no less than ten times what the express companies pay for exactly the
same service, that by clearly extortionate charges the railways have got in
loot about a billion dollars since 1873. Not since 1878 has there been a
reduction of the rate. Again and again honest senators have tried to end this
robbery, but the "merger" has always prevented. The last very vigorous
attempt was made in 1895 by Senator Blackburn of Kentucky, who, by the way,
is being retired by the Louisville and Nashville Railway, which is almost as
powerful a factor in Kentucky politics as are the New York Central and the
Boston and Maine in New England politics. When Blackburn moved an amendment
to the post-office bill giving the postmaster-general discretionary authority
as to railway-mail rates, up jumped Lodge to defend "the interests." The
debates on this and kindred motions in January and February, 1895, spread in
the "Congressional Record," make exceedingly interesting reading. Lodge is
not an adroit debater; his shifts and squirms at that time were very amusing.
Allison and other "merger" senators had to help him out, though they
evidently enjoyed his unhappiness-he is unpopular in the Senate because of
his obstreperous egotism and lack of tact. It was a sad plight for Lodge the
poseur to have to face such shots as, for instance, Peffer's in saying.:
"I asked Postmaster-General Wanamaker why he did not propose legislation, or
why Congress did not act. His reply was that the railway companies see to it
that the representatives in Congress in both branches take care of the
interests of the railway people, and that it is practically impossible to
procure legislation in the way of reducing expenses." (Debate of February 11,
1895.)
When the debate ended, the "merger" -the Senate then had a small "Democratic"
majority-voted down the attempt to reduce the railway steal.
One more instance: On May 12th of this year Senator La Follette proposed as
the penalty for rebate thievery a heavy fine and imprisonment for from two to
five years at hard labor; that is, Mr. La Follette proposed that the law be
no respecter of persons among thieves. Up rose Lodge to move that the
imprisonment be for not more than two years and without hard labor. Need it
be said which amendment the Senate accepted?
But enough of Lodge. Clearly, he is like the other leaders of the Senate
whose records we have examined; is of the "merger," is against the people, is
for "the interests." To expect him to originate or to endorse any measure of
democratic justice would be like looking for potatoes among the roots of a
dock-weed. Let us pass on to his new-elected colleague, Crane.
Acts of Patriot Crane
Crane is a paper, woollen goods, and shoe manufacturer, grown hugely rich by
some of the most inexcusably predatory schedules in our tariff. Quiet,
seemingly retiring, of great tact and adaptability, charitable, with
aspirations to be a part of our aristocracy of wealth, "birth," and
"breeding" �such is Crane as a private man. But all that is of no interest or
importance to the people. A man may be good to his family and friends, may
pay his debts and give alms and attend both church and Sunday-school, and
still may be a Rockefeller. A man may profess, indeed may have, the best
motives in the world, and still be an enemy of his country. Benedict Arnold
said, and probably believed, that it was for the best interests of the
American people to have England take care of them. And the Cranes may
honestly believe that the American people would go to the "demnition
bow-wows" if "high finance" didn't take away from them the surplus money they
earn and might waste. They will "stand for" the very worst plundering scheme
of "the interests" as "better than mob rule."
Murray Crane was appointed to the Senate in October, 1904, by Governor Bates
of Massachusetts, who had just ruined himself politically for anything but a
senatorship or federal judgeship or other non-elective office by vetoing a
bill forbidding the employment of women and children more than twelve hours a
day. In 1905 Crane was elected to the Senate by a legislature whose upper
house killed the same bill, reintroduced. But we have seen what kind of
legislatures "the interests" elect in Massachusetts. Crane had hardly taken
his seat in the Senate when the "merger" chose him for a place an the
powerful committee on interstate commerce. This, in itself, without the facts
of the origin of his senatorial honors, would be enough to arouse strong
suspicion of Crane; for new senators never get such places as that unless
they come with home records which make Watchman Aldrich sure they are "safe
and sane."
What was Crane's home record which satisfied Aldrich?
His crucial acts as governor were twothe Boston and Albany and the Fitchburg
transactions.
The Boston and Albany Railroad was built by a combination of public and
private capital, the city of Albany supplying one million dollars first and
last, the people of Massachusetts $4,300,000 and the most valuable part of
the franchise, and private capital supplying only eight hundred thousand. By
a series of the familiar juggles of "the interests," the share of
Massachusetts had been reduced and "the interests" were in control and were
using the road to loot the people and to corrupt politics. Governor Crane had
been a large stockholder; but on his election, he virtuously got rid of his
holdings-to his brother and partner, Zenas Crane! With mind thus completely
freed from the faintest shadow of personal interest, he was ready to consider
strictly on its merits the proposition which was made by "the interests,"
with whom he was allied by personal friendships and by very large holdings in
the infamous Bell Telephone monopoly and other similar enterprises for
corrupting politics and levying upon the industry of the people. The
legislature, amid a storm of protests from the people and the independent
press, accepted the terms of "the interests."
How He Sold Out the People
What were those terms which Crane recommended and ratified and, so, made
legal? Under the terms of the original charter, the state could have acquired
the entire road for about thirty millions; and so rich a property was it, the
state could have reduced freight charges twenty per cent. and still easily
have made annually enough entirely to have abolished state taxation. Also,
state ownership of the road meant freedom from monopoly. Under the
Vanderbilt-Crane perpetual lease, the state gets only two, million dollars a
year and "the interests" are absolutely free to loot and to monopolize. No
wonder Crane refused even to recommend that the question be referred to the
people for a vote. No wonder the legislature killed a bill to compel a
popular vote before final action. No wonder Representative Dean of Wakefield
was able to charge, during the debate, that it was "common rumor in the state
house that members were receiving three hundred dollars apiece for their
votes."
But this was not Crane's worst. That worst is the Fitchburg transaction. The
people of the state had built at great expense the Hoosac tunnel,' the key to
New England for direct traffic with the rest of the country. The Boston and
Maine, a harmonious part of the so-called Vanderbilt but really
Rockefeller-Morgan branch of "the interests," got various governors and
legislatures of Massachusetts to loosen the state's hold upon the tunnel and
its traversing Fitchburg railway, until at last, with Crane in the governor's
chair and a good "safe and sane" legislature of Lodge's "boys" in the
Capitol, the time was ripe for the grand stroke. The state's hold upon the
system had been reduced to fifty thousand shares of the common stock, but
these shares were necessary to "the interests" for complete control. By the
familiar manipulations the common stock had been rendered completely
worthless. The state commissioners, in their report filed in January, 1900,
gave the full facts of that corrupt performance. Did Crane proceed against
his offending "high finance" friends? Not Crane! When the Boston and Maine
with an air of magnanimity offered thirty dollars a share for these fifty
thousand shares which, if the laws had been enforced, would have been worth
at least ten times that much, not to speak of their greatest value�the
guarantee of railway freedom for the people of New England�Governor Crane
announced, not that they could not have them at any price, not even that they
could have them at their real value, but that they could have them at par,
that is, for five millions instead of one and a half millions. This offer was
eagerly accepted by "the interests" on January 29, 1900. The people had been
trained to regard the stock as all but worthless,, their treacherous servants
having let the Boston and Maine crowd depreciate it for so many years. So,
the controlled press's acclaim of Crane's shrewdness and patriotism as a
bargainer was echoed by the people until they began to realize that by the
two transactions together they had been delivered over, bound hand and foot,
to a transportation monopoly, and had got in return a sum that was paltry as
a bare purchase price for the Fitchburg stock alone. If Crane had shown this
kind of' sagacity at bargaining in his private business, he would not be the
vastly rich man he is to-day. He cannot divide the responsibility for the
Fitchburg sell-out of the people who entrusted him with the governorship. He
personally made up the deal with Ledyard of the American Express Company and
President Lucius Tuttle -of the Boston and Maine�the famous Tuttle who
dominates, all New England politics and consults with the New England
senators whenever the railways want anything at Washington. The whole
transaction, by the way, was in direct violation of the state law which
declares that the Fitchburg line must be maintained "permanently as an
independent line from Boston to points in New York state."
An Aldrich Favorite
Is it strange that Crane, on his arrival in the Senate, should step at once
into high favor with Aldrich? Is it not natural that he should at once get
into Steve Elkins' committee, which determines the present scandalously
unjust distribution of the annual twenty thousand millions of interstate
commerce, the bulk of the year's product of the brains and brawn and capital
of the whole American people?
Foraker, Lodge, Crane�three more leaders of the Senate to be added to the
galaxy whose records we have examined; three more seated in the body that is
the final arbiter of wages and prices, and seated there in the interest of
the only dangerous enemies of their country. As in the cases of Aldrich and
Spooner and Bailey and Elkins and Knox, it is impossible to imagine these
three originating or favoring or not fighting any measure that would disturb
the greedily sucking lips of the class to which they belong, the class they
associate with and serve. They are as harmonious with the present Senate as
La Follette and Tillman are discordant. And of the three, Crane, the quiet,
the good mixer, the sincerely and conscientiously devoted to plutocratic
rule, is far the most dangerous. When Aldrich passes, Crane will succeed
him-unless Massachusetts learns that good character and good motives are of
no more importance than plausible speech, if the man's acts be not for the
public good. It would be more sensible to call in an English duke to decide a
controversy between us and England, than it is to let such men as the
Aldriches, Elkinses, Baileys, Lodges, and Cranes arbitrate between us and
their friends, associates, and political sponsors, our enemies.
pps. 72-82
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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