The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1906-05-03
A E REPUBLICAN

and furnished it with the inspiration
that has moved 1t to joint action with
it's corporate membership, whenever
any legislation was proposed in the
interest of the people, regulative or re.
Strictive of either of the corporate in
terests named; and has also opposed
with frenZied determination all efforts
to enlarge and improve the methods,
and increase the power by which the
people select the officers that shall
serve them in county, state and nation
al government.
CORPORATE Political MACHINE WORK.
You know, as many do not, that the
corporate members of the machine,
while their first duty is to the railway
companies, are also commissioned to
stand guard over the interests Of the
telegraph companies, and express com
panies, whose passes they distribute as
may seem to be needed, and the Stand
ard Oil abomination that pays cash in
like manner and all other corporate
interest that are tarred with the same
stick. For ten years the representa-
tiyes of corporations, railroad and
otherwise, have ruled with royal au-
thority in the ~counsels of the machine,
and no important meeting of the ma
chine has been held that it's corporate
partners were not present to control it,
so far as any action proposed might in
any degree affect the corporate inter-
eSts represented. To facilitate the at
tendance of the corporate members of
the machine at important meetings,
and conceal the disgraceful fact of
such attendance, from their cOnstitu-
ents, such meetings were held behind
locked doors in either Chicago, or Min
neapOlis, and were so carefully man
aged, that hotel registers seldom
showed their arrival or departure from
such meetings.
For ten years.the corporate political
machine has had it's sub-agents in
every county, and every sub-agent has
had one or more confidential agents in
every precinct, to echo the orders re-
ceived by him from the machine; men,
the people Of the precinct were in the
habit of looking to for sugges-
tons about the time of year nomina-
tons were made, and who were all
unconscious of the fact that their
~neighbor vas q stool pigeon of a ma
chine system, who was rewarded from
time to time with a trip pass on the
railway. Then there were and are the
local agents and attorneys of the sew
eral corporations named residing in
towns all over the state, 1900 in the
aggregate, who W service to their
employers; surely the machine is a
formidable power which the Roosevelt
republicans arc up against.
During every state administration
since statehood, to my personal knowl-
edge one or more representatives of
one or more of the great railway sys-
TENS of the state has been On the
ground at the opening of the legisla-
ture, and been the dominating influ,
ence in the election of a speaker of
the House, and when that was accom-
plished there would follow the most
humiliating spectacle that ever mant-
led with shame and indignation the
cheek of an honest American citizen
the representatives of the railways and
leading members of the machine closet
ed alternately with the speaker of the
| house and the lieutenant governor, be-
hind locked doors, and there, when
others slept, the selection of all COM
mittees that could affect by their ac-
ton any railway or corporate bills,
were agreed upon. With committees
thus made up, it is not so much to be
wondered at that during all these years
the railway and express and telegraph
companies have gone untethered, by
legislative restriction, and the Stand
ard Oil abOmination, and old line in
surance companies, and school book
trust, etc, etc, u%nwhipped of justice,
and half the wealth Of thp state nm
taxed. The corporate republican ma
chine has protected all these with a
watchful care that only liberal ON
pensation of some kind could have SC
cured.