The age-herald., 1902-02-13
Washington Day By Day


 government found nobIest voice in the Senate when MT. Joseph Welden Bailey of Gainesville, Tex, arose in his might in his mighty place as a member of that august or rather February, body, and metaphorically smote hip and thigh the outrageous proposition to pay United States judges and members of Congress the half of decent salaries.
 Not since de Toqueville, nearly seventy years ago, pointed out in the very mas tery of prophecy the perils of the Repub- lie has there been uttered such surpass- ing wisdom-in statesmanship as Joseph Welden Bailey's triumphant cry that if the salaries of Congressman were in- creased the hotel men and merchants of Washington would raise prices to an eX- tent that would leave the Congressman Just where they are "at' now! Clearly that is an unanswerable arguments, pro- foundly logical, overwhelming.
 Assuming that this MT. Bailey of Gainesville, Texas. pays his hotel for himself and small family two hundred and fifty dollars month for sumpen teat an place to sleep, his salary being five thousand dollars a year, he in effect de- clared that he would have to pay for the same hotel accommodations three hun dred and seventy-fve dollars a month in event his salary was raised twenty-five hundred dollars year, and coat for one of his boys which costs him now six dollars of his five thousand would cost him nine dollars of his seven thousand five hundred. All this, and Baltimore but forty miles away!
 If this be not the highest order of statesmanship as applied to hotels and merchants, then there must be pleading to Champ Clark, who represents Casa conade county, Missouri, or to James Montraville Moody, who represents Bun combe county, North Carolina, both these great men being members of that lower house of Congress wherein Joseph Well den Bailey was wont to shine before he was elevated" to the obscurity of the upper house, there to make his maiden speech immortal by the unanswerable logic that judges and congressman are paid enough, and that the hotel men and merchants of Washington would swindle them out of all possible increase in salaries.
 Senator Bailey's motives, his sincerity or insincerity, may be left to himself: this is not the place to judge him. But his tack is in line with all the dema- gogues who have afflicted the Democratic party in the past and those who afflict l. h. Ifv,o xr-itl good men who are neither demagogues nor were notoriety-seekers.
 But more of political cant and hypo- crisy rages and raves around the three words, 'undemocratic," 'unconstitu- tional' and "unamerican," than is at- tached to all the rest of the American vocabulary, legitimate vulgar And this sort of rubbish of the musings has served to set the south back fifty years in pro- gross.
 In 1878 Alabama suffered a calamity from which it has never recovered. It was a prolonged and unexampled rainfall in July. In all the rivers and smaller streams of the state were terribly disas- trous floods, which destroyed half the crops of the state and left thousands Of people destitute. From eight hundred acres of colt on in the valley of the Ala bama river, good in ordinary years for six hundred to eight hundred bales, but ten bales of cotton were gathered in the harvest The state was then represented in a Republican Congress by Republicans, some of them being of the carpetbaggers of reconstruction. Congress was quick to adopt a measure of relief, and dozens of railroad trains ladened with bacon and offering of the government to the desti- ute and the suffering.
 Yet there were violent and impassioned protests against this Congressional pro- tests against this Congressional benevo- lence to the Alabamians. Some of the Democtatic newspapers indulged in ran corous language and urged that no white man accept the bread and meat so gen. erously given. One of the Republican Congressmen, Charles Hays, who had been very active in procuring relief for his starving constituents, was nicknamed by those newspapers "Sidemeat Charley" though he was charged with some 'crook- edness' in the distribution of the food supplies.
 Probably there was much unfairness even rascality, connected with the great donation of the government; perhaps there was shameless misrepresentation of the bacon and corn; but at bottom the governments gift was 'undemocratic" and "unconstitutional'-c in the eyes of all demagogues of the Democratic party, and of a multitude of Democrats who were in no sense dema gogues, but were amongst the best and truest men of all America.
 So it was when the government under took the improvement of its own prop erty-the property of the nation exclu- sively-the rivers and harbors of the country There was a mighty howl of "unconstitutionalism" from the Demo- cratic party
 The fact that if private enterprise had been powerful enough to improve the rivers and harbors the work could not have been undertaken without the ex- press permission of the government was never for a moment considered by those who by consent or presumption under took to represent Southern sentiment Such improvement was demonstrations al" 'un-Democratic" and so lot the