The Iowa plain dealer. [volume] (New Oregon, Howard County, Iowa) 1867-1895, 1884-01-31

The sale of the Ohio Senatorship to
Mr.. Payne, Of the Standard Oil COM
pany, is another step in the change by
which tho Upper House Of the National
Legislature is being made into club
Of millionaires and fortress Of monop-
oily. There are sevcnty.six Senators,
and recent census Of them shows that
not less than twenty are millionaires,
while enough more IRE the representa-
tivcs Of millionaire corporations which
can be helped or hurt by the action Of
Congress to bring up the number who
may be properly styled millionaire
Senators to fully half the whole num-
Der. There are. in other words, suf-
ficient number Of Senators who are
millionaires in the flesh or in the spirit
to control the action Of the body and
wake it matter OF rs much difficulty
to get from it a measure Of reform rs
to obtain anything Of the kind from the
British House Of Lords.
The Standard Oil company now has
two Senators - Payne and Senator
&uHueH, u eest sHBHlt, WIZ Hoe
long ago openly defended this mo-
nopoly IN the North american Rerie,c
in m article the strong and correct
English Of which was in strange con.
trast with the usual speech of its MS
sumed author. The Union Pacific rail-
road has one; the Pennsylvania rail
road has two: the Georgia railroads
have one; the lumber monopolists Of
Michigan and Wisconsin have two or
three; the Chesapeake and Ohio has
one; the W lmington Match company
has one; behind every one of half Of
the portly and well-dressed members
of the Senate can be seen the outlines
of some corporation interested in get
ting or preventing legislation or Of some
syndicate that has invaluable contracts
or patents to defend or push.
Twenty or thirty years ago the
Senate was composed mainly Of brainy
poor men, and its leaders were Clay,
Webster, Calhoun, Sumner, Benton,
Ewing, Corwin, Douglas, Trnmbull,
Fcssenden, Wade, Chase, and the like.
Now the Senate has no leaders, and a
larger proportion Of its members are
millionaires, who buy their elections
from their State Legislatures for the
purpose of acting rs the attorneys Of
some sinister interest, or OF browning
the editice Of their huge possessions by
the glory of seat in the American
House of Lords. Oace, great men
went to the Senate to work for their
principles and ideas: now, rich men go
there to work for their interests or to
air their purses. The room that once
rang with the periods of Webster
and Sumner, Clay and Calhoun,
and Chase and Douglas. is now
stupefied by the predatory and plati-
tndinous ESSAYS OF the defenders Of
monopoly land grants, monopoly taxes,
monopoly contracts, monopoly opposi-
ton to all reform and investigation.
1t results from the plutocratic char
actcr Of the majority Of the Senators
that the Senate is becoming, like the
English House of Lords, merely OBJ
structive branch of the Government.
1t was in the Senate last year that the
worst jobs were introduced into the
Tariff bill. 1t was the Senate that re-
sisted as long as it could the passage Of
the Cisil-Service law, and which has
been relied on implicitsands successfully
to prevent the forfeiture Of IMMIGRANTS
or the enactment Of any laws for the
regulation of the railroads. or the in
corporation of postal telegraph, or
any other measure Of popular need or
benefit. The English House Of Lords
is the bulwark Of one monopoly-that
of the land-but the American Senate
has as many monopolies intrenched
within its lines as it has members.
At the present rate ut which pluto
Gratis are buying their way into the SEN
ate it will not be many years before the
common people will have no represent
alton in it whatever. We will have 4
House of Lords as much worse than the
English House of Lords as the pride Of
purse is more ignoble and more despotic
than the pride of blood and rank.
When that contamination is reached we
can do no better than raise to them the
magnificent song Of rhythmic sarcasm
which Swinburne recently sang to the
House Of Lords:
Yours are bays
That not the dawn's plebeian pearls bedew;
Yours laurcls rlucked not OF such hands as
woye
Old age its ehapet in Colono's grove.
Our time, with Heaven and with itself at odds,
Makes all lands else a seas that seethe aud boil
Hnt yours Il vet the corr, and wine. and oil.
And yours our worship Vet, . Lords, our Gods
Chicago Tribune.