The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-30

If admitted alone, the propositfqn to join it to New Mexico would haTe little standing in Congress. The population of this territory is to be ridden over rOughshod simply to serve temporary political exigency. of which the authors vii be ashamed in a few years,
 We say that the project is hsfiy to Senate, Mir. Foraker has proposdd an amendment to the pending bill, Fhich provides, as a condition to its b1eOm- ing effective. that the people both Arizona and New Mexico, votin sep arately, shall by majority Y0t ac- cept joint statehood. Nothing could be more fair; if the people are rgely opposed, as We are certain the! are, the oppressive wrong could not be1 con summated. Naturally, Mir. Bevedldge declines to accept the amendmentA in his political scheme no room is leftA Afor the consideration of the rights of the people; to let them vote upcn it w9slld, as he well knowns, defeat his proi4et. Inasmuch as Mir. Foraker is likely to have quite number of adherents in the Senate, even if a majority is not kin harmony with his amendement, the IVY can readily be talked to death if nsSg essary; and no utilization of the Sem ate rules in this manner has ever been made in better cause than this would be.
 But it may not be necessary to use such drastic measures to protect these people; in the House, Representative Tawney or Minnesota, who is chairman of the committee of appropriations and has been the party whip" for num- Der of years, has turned up with fol- lowing of about 65 Republicans in de- termined opposition to the proposed bill unless accompanied by an amendment which recognizes the rights of the peo- i pie, and since the Democratic repre- 1 sentatives are solidly opposed to the force law which bears the Beveridge label, the prospect is that the House
 will defeat the bill by decisive ma | jority. Mir. Tawney rarely takes the attitude of an 'insurgent" on sup posed party measure without having his reasons absolutely sound and his position strong; thus he becomes an
 energetic fighter for principles as he sees them, and the Beveridge faction is hence finding its way very thorny.
 It has developed that advocates of
 the bill now argue that the territorial | government is weak; that certain cor porations are favored in the matter of | taxation; that these corporations, in 1 fact, dominate to such a degree that
 the tax burden is very unequal It
 seems absurd that such an argument should be put forward seriously as a | logical defense of the joint statehood | bill; if such evils exist, is there any guarantee or even likelihood that the
 Beveridge plan of making the two ter
 ritories one state will correct them? Is | 1t not, on the contrary, much more probable that inequalities of this char
 acter can be dealt with far more prae-
 tically under existing conditions? Con-
 gress has plenary power over terri tories; the system of, government is
 subject to it's will and the laws passed by territorial legislatures may be re- vised by it. If, as is alleged, there is an 1 oppressive system of taxation in Ari- | zona, 1t is obviously due to the fact
 that the committees on the territories | in the two houses of Congress have failed to direct attention thereto; have
 in fact been negligent; and rather than
 correct the alleged evil they would doubly punish the inhabitants of the
 territory. It is not to be lost sight of
 that these people are not now clarno-
 rous for even seperate statehood; they
 are content to wait many years rather
 than be joined with the alien popula-
 tion of New Mexico, meanwhile raising
 no objection to the gift of statehood to 1.-the latter. The question is to them as
 importance as was that of independence
 of British rule to the men of 1776;
 shall the political schemers in Wash
 ington be permitted to ignore their
 rights ?-United States Investor.