The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-04
fcopyri.hs isos. by ;. L. sfefEems.l

washinGfoa, March i.---Some critics have been complaining that these let. ters are moving too swiftly toward conclusions: othars that they go too slow. Fast or slow. they are getting along pretty much as expected. Sud dSn' or ignorant" I am going about this job as have gone about certain cities and States. blundering. perhaps, aud groping. but Gin spite of all I don't know: sometimes think because of my curious ignorance) I have found out, finally. what wanted to know; to~wit: Who goveraed these cities and States: how: for whom and at whose cost? Washington Is more complicated than Chicago. The Speaker, Mfr. Cannon, told rne ought to stay here ten CT twenty years before writing a line. but I am afraid to: rm afraid that # ! remain ed in this atmosphere as longkas "un- els Joe, has I might cone to accept things as he accepts them. all as mat fars Of course; like a butcher who can't see tile blood at hts killings. No. I'm not quite ready to die for my country. not even morally. And that isn't nec~ essary. The National Government may be deeper to bottom than the State of Illinois: there may be more graft and better graft. but I'm not after graft. The System is my object---.he ordinary, every day business methods by which the American government wand part of the American press) has been brought to represent, not all men. but a few men. and not the best few. but the worst: those that contribute most of the corruption of our institutions and our life No the hidden sins of poIiti- cal organizations. but the open. rather arrogant boa violence of the business system hack Of our political corrup- tion. that is the Thing which I. person ally. want ts understand and that ap- parently IS the same here as in IlIi- nois.
 There are differences. A little while before .Ghr" rate bill came up In sour'' JJcuse. word i,oated into the Hobbies Of the Capitol. It was a name: Tut t1e." You heard 1t again and again. Some men whispered 1t. others spoke 1t aloud. but 1t was Futile this" and tTuttle that" till at last I asked:
 "who the deuce Is this Futile you all are talking abontT'
 "Tuttlag' came the astonished an- swer. Don't you know the President of the Boston and Maine? Why, he has taken hold of the railroad end of the rate fight and the New England mem ! bers are going to lead the debate in opposition"
 Now. in Uncle Joe's" great state- in the good old days before the reform
 
 --if It WIS reported that a railroad president war going to take hand in a light against '.anti-railroad" legisla- ton. the barkeepers would have poll is!ted up their bars and the hotel ser- wants would have dusted the poker ta- bIes. In a day or two the game would be t'on~; there would be much drunkenness: everybody would be flashing the green;7 and drivers and Il nswskoys would be disputing over the price of the last legislator landed
 Nothing like this occurred here. When Yerkes went to Springfield. ILL. to fight, he took chair and sat him. self down at the head of the great stairway in the Capitol. Futile never showed himself. He never even came here.
 And sure enough. a few days later the Hon. Samuel ". Mccall. of Mas sachusetts. rose in the House, and he read very finished essay along the lines of that old fashioned political economy which counted the wealth of nations and forgot. like a miser, the character of men and of peoples. It was against our ''un- American" bill to regulate railroads by governmental commission? It was for liberty. Lib- erty for whom? For Lueius Futile. MT. Mccall talked as though he would rath- CT see railroad kill off any number Of little shippers than risk & check upon the liberty of one Futile. The Hon. Charles E. Littleheld. of Maine. hailed once as a reformer, followed sadly the next day with an amend nlent which was to make perfectly sure that the "differentials' in favor of New England were not to be interfered with. And. after a leisureIy interval, the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, the se- rior Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, stood up in the Sem ate. and, to the manifest delight of Sem ators like Aldrich and Foraker (who knew that the public would think ''the Presidents friend" was speaking for the President). MT. Lodge delivered a masterly argument for rate regulation by the courts. He would keep the independent coal miners of West Vir- ginia hanging about the courts till they got tired fighting and became, like New Hampshire, patieEt under abuses that would make Wisconsin, for example, as mad" as Futile himself. And Futile is very high spirited. The Boston and Maine kept out of the Senate once Ives out of "our" IT. s. Senate) a Senator State of Virginia, the haul to said other points being shorter than to the favored points. Two of these favored points are Lynchburg and Richmond" competitors with Denville for trade in the same territory. Then the city gives examples of rates: by the, long haul whom several other railroad presidents advised forgiving.
 However as I was saying. this is