The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-18

II lCQpyT1Snt, l3Ubt Dy J. IA Sbe1SiEH. Washington. March 16.-"There's 3 1 Senator in the United States Senate who
 is dead. Yes, dead. Oh, he walks about; he holds his seat; if he ls prompted, he can make a report for his committee. You may call that life. If you will; will cali 1t death. And | cali 1t death because there is but one pin point of vitality left In him that Is l all alive. That is the lobe of his brain which guards his money. That Is all vigilance. Most of the time this man 1 lies sick at home on his bed, but he has
 a large property which will be affected Iby a certain bill; a bill that will tax his property as it should be taxed. Let this bill come up at any stage and the ghost will walk It will rise from its bed, totter into the Senate and there 1t will watch and wait, to object and to vote--No. Senator - lives for his dividends. Life? Death? This Is
 immortality, the rotten immortality of an utterly corrupted soul"
 A United States Senator said this. He was speaking of colleague. His description, delivered in anger. was vivid and terrible. If a newspaper writer had sad 1t so well. it would be called yellow" and "sensational" And 1t Is an exaggeration. Bat there is in 1t the truth the bottom truth about the Senator. the Senate and Washington. My angry Senator was pointing at the typical form of our national political corruption. have spent months on investiga- tions in cities whose Boards of Alder men were shown to have ben corrupted by money-bribery, and the picture of those Aldermen, once good fellows, de- 1 based and misshapen, was a scandal. But what did 1t all amount to? Simply
 this: That by this process of corrupt ing men. that Board of Aldermen had
 been brought to represent-the brfbe- givers. We used to think, most of us outsiders, that this sort of thing was political, and that our political corrup-
 tion was purely political But now we realize that the source of the corrup-
 tion of our politics is business, and that the net result of that corruption is to make our city governments represent business.
 Now, take the Congress. Suppose l we're able to prove that Senators and Representatives took money. Tho pie ture of them thus debauched and sordid would be sensational But couldn't produce in twenty years such scene of corrupt squalor as my Senator sketched in a second for me of his rich col- league, man he has known intimately for years Yet that dead Senator takes no bribes. He has given uribes, but he doesn't receive them He is a
 business man. He is one of the busi- ness men of his State who found 1t necessary to the success of their busi- ness to corrupt the people and the
 politics of their State, and having
 bought the Legislature to represent their business, they sent him to the Senate to represent--his business and theirs. And he represents his business, and theirs. He is as base as any AL derman, Judge or Legislator, he ever bought or made" he has corrupted himself also with his own money. He is a self-made boodler. But his own depravity Is not his chief offence. His crime is that he represents business. And that is the crime of the Senate.
 The Senate represents business. Es- tablished to represent all men of all States and of all vacations and classes, 1t represents those special businesses which, having corrupted cities and States, and having bought Councils and Legislatures for business purposes, have come into possession of seats in the United States Senate; and having those seats in the United States Senate those businesses have sent here their Presidents, their counsel. their agents or their friends to represent their busi- ness. Those businesses don't have to practice bribery here; this is no com mon council. But the net result is the same. The Congress stands. like a common council, for business. The Con- gress represents honestly what the State Legislatures represent corruptly- business. Speaker Cannon Is proud of 1t; Senator Aldrtch admits it; nobody denies 1t.
 What else would you have us rep resent?" asked Mir. Aldrich.
 I thought of the bought voters of Rhode Island and of the Legislature there, which. like the United States Senate, doesn't have to be bought. I thought of the legislators retained" in Illinois; I thought of the bankers in Cincinnati silenced by deposits of pub lie moneys and of the manufacturers made civic towards by protection" everywhere. I thought of able cap tains of industry. like H. H. Rogers and Thomas F. Ryan and Charles M. Schwab. made--well, what they are2 by prosperity" But what was the use of talking about character 6n Capitol Hill? When was interviewed by the Speaker. referred to such things, and his "Oh, well, human nature"-showed that such men have no sense of the effects of bribery and corruption and artificial prosperity on the character of a nation of men and women. So long as business is good. all must be well.
 So to MT Aldrich meekly suggested that he might represent the shippers the little shippers" who can't get cars to ship their coal or rates on oil to en- able them to compete with the trusts.
 And what do you think he answered? He answered that he was looking out for the little shippers at that very mos ment. It was on account of the ship pers, not of the railroads. that he want ed to have put into the Hepburn rate bill an amendment providing for an ap- peal to the courts on the facts! GA bit