The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-18
By LINCOLN STEPHENS.

| Cl fSWSs dl lEdSL--LOl Jiit ShippCi Ds 1 If they represented business gen. erally. It wouldn't be quite 80 bad but i they represent especially. those Sena- i tors and Congressmen, the kinds oi business that want license and ad' i vantages and that corrupt government l from Boards of Aldermen up to thu | United States Senate to get their l license and to keep their advantages | The present tariff laws are preposter- ous and Speaker Cannon admitted tt | me that the schedules should be re vised. asked them why they didn't l revise them then. The Speaker gave the usual answer, the danger of re- l opening the whole question and hurt; ing business. MT. Aldrich was mort candid.
 Tt isn't for us here 10 do that" he said.
 l ''who, then, is to do it, and where?' When I asked him that. the Senator shot me a keen glance and said he meant that public opinion must first 1 demand it.
 I But y6u call public opinion public I ciamor here in Washington" I said. "Only when 1t Is excited and unrea- sonable,' he answered.
 f Are you going to wait on tariff re- ] vision as you have on rate regulation till the people clamor for what you call imperfect and ill-advised legisla- l tionY
 l MT. Aidrich said the Senate hadnt waited, and he cited the Ellkins law to I show that it had done something. But he had to admit that neither the Elkfns law nor the Hepburn bill would solve l the problem.
 The fact is that they can't act here | until the business interests they repre- sent will permit them to act. The | Senate, which Senators call the head oi the Government, isn't the head of the Government The Senate. like q politi- cal boss, only represents the head of the Government, which is Big Business Mir Aldrich objects to that view. He met 1t by citing his own case. He re- ferred to the charge that he repre- | scented Standard Oil, and he didn't deny it; he said that he never went to see those peeopie or received instructions from them.
 No" answered, and if I were they, I'd never send for you or offer to send youa instructions. That wouldn' I seem necessary. If I had man like you here representing me I'd trust you to do instinctiveiy what was right for | me"
 When he grasped the point that I did not mean to charge bribery or anything that he would call corruption against him or the Senate he admitted all that need be alleged.
 "of course d man Is influenced here, '' he said. "by the business he has been in, by the alliances he has formed and by his environment"
 We'll, thats all there is of it. There are Senators under suspicion (and con- viction) of taking fees" or retain ers;" the Senate has it's retail trade. l And. as good an authority as the Hon. Charles H. Grosvenor, Member of Con- gress from Ohio (before reform). told me the withdrawal by the railroads of passes had had no little to do with the rivival in the House of the policy of | enforcing certain railroad laws, But; want to disregard all this cheap" "ex- eeptional.' sporadic" corruption and l get down to the bottom truth. And when MT. Aldrich admitted that a Sena- tor Is Influenced by the business he has been in, by the alliances he has formed and by his environment" we were scraping bottom.
 Senator AIdrich was street railway magnate. Ignoring for the moment the corruption of tl4e people of Rhode Isl- and, which enabled him to control his State Legislature. 1t is enough to say that he having that power. used 1t to grant his company privileges which his people opposed and which netted him and his associates a fortune each. Ig- noring also his alliance with the Rocke- feller family. 1t is safe to say that hls sympathy naturally would be with the Standard oil or any other business that wanted grants subsidies or a tariff which would net millions. It is na- tural that Senator Xean and Senator Foraker, or any other Senator in the business they have been in," should prick up their ears--as they do--when- ever 8 railroad or a land grant, a tarih or a subsidy Is suggested in their cham- Der.
 We represent ourselves" said Sena- tor Aldrich, and pointing across the cor ridor to the Senate one day, he dded, T venture to say there Is not a Senator in on that floor who does not represent himself"
 This is an extreme statement. and the Senator contradicted 1t a moment later when he was contrasting the East and the West in the matter of railroad control of States. But let's accept his statement for the moment; The Sena- tors represent themselves. The best of the worst of them do. They aren't owned and they don't have to be bribed They represent themselves. But when they represent themselves most truly they represent the corrupt Legisla- lures, the corrupted people and the cor
 
 and they represent those things with conscience clear. But look at the net result;
 United States Senate,
 washington. D. C.. Feb. g. 1903.
 Dear Sir-Yours of the 18th ultimo came duly to hand. It has happened as l feared; tho Interstate Commerce Committee will not report the measure giving power to the Interstate Com merce Commission to fix rates. It Is expecting too much from human nature that Senators whose every association is with the great railroad corporations and whose political lives largely de- pend upon them, should in good faith approve a measure that would to an extent make the railroads servant of the people and to be subject t0 the decision of the Commission when a question of rates is raised. The Sem ate Committee Is by a decided majority men who bear those relations to rail- roads. I hope that sometime in the future. the Committee will be so con stituted that legislation Of the charac- ter mentioned will issue from it, but am afraid that you and I will be many years older when that occurs. Yours truly,