The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-12-01
Nelson ". AldriCh, the Leader Of the Senate
BY sAVoYARD.

Vest supported him-the rapier of
Busy d AmbiOse thrusting with the
mace of Athalstone side by side La
mar was another, the finest magma
/ ton that has sat in Saxon council
since Burke. OF Ben Hill have spo-
ken. Harris was there. and Garland
! Morgan. too, was just disclosing TO his
fellow citizens that he was in the front
rank of American speculative states
men. Pugh. his colleague, was scarce
! second to him as a thinker, ana per-
haps was his superior as a LAWYER
Bayard was yet in the senate. a pure
! type of man and high type of states
man. There was Dan VOORHEES,. one of
the foremost orators and most gener-
Gus men of his generation. Ben Har-
rison was his colleague, and worthy
even Ben Hills steel. Vance was there
from North Carolina. a wonderful COM
bination-soldier, orator, statesman,
and as ready in debate as any man
who ever broke silence in the senate.
The new members were Hawlev.
Harrison, Hale Frye, German. Con-
ger, whom Joe Blackburn swore to be
even meaner than he looked, and
that's impossible" Van Wyck. who
according to Zebe Vance had too
much shag leather in his pants" like
the elephant Now. anyone who ever
looked at old Vans trousers was bound
10 think or the surplus hide on Jumbo's
legs. Perhaps there was no man at the
national capital who dreamed that the
DAY was not distant when the new SEN
ator from Rhode Island would be the
most powerful individual senator who
ever sat in that body. So far as l know.
he was engaged in a debate hiIt to hilt
with but two adversaries, and they
were glants-JOhn G. Carlisle of Ken
lucky, in The Fifty-first congress, on
the Mckinley tariff, and William Lind
say OF Kentucky, in the Fifty-third
congress, on the Wilson tariff Here
were two profound thinkers engaged
Dy man who got his knowledge
standing by the loom. And strange it
IS, that both these jurists utterly over
threw the practical man.
Aldrich, after making the DingIey
tariff to suit New England, gave US our
present imperfect gold standard. which
supplies US with currency. above half
a billion of which is nearly so per cent
nat And, strange TO say, he now al
lows the treasury to make monthly
purchases of 100000 ounces of silver for
minor coin, when good husbandry i'm
peratively demands that the subsidi-
airy silver coin should be made of the
Bland-Allison full legal tender silver
dollars.
Senator Aldrich is generally sup
posed to be out of sympathy with the
new evangel f1ippantly called the oc-
topus chase. But that is a crusade
that must run its course. Congress
passed the Sherman law that requires
the railroads to compete, and to en-
phasize the thing killed the pooling bill.
The roads went ahead competing. for
that is all that rebate is-competitfon.
To Illustrate: Two merchants are ri
walls at the cross roads. They have
cases of boots they bought, perhaps.
from the same jobber at the same
price. The goods are marked, say, s.. 50
pair and sold at that figure to their
regular customers, respectively: but a
grasping fellow comes along and these
storekeepers get to competing for his
trade. He will get the boots at 50. per
haps less, pair. That is rebate Here
was the meat trust, the steel trust the
oil trust-all grasping feIlows-and |
they made the railroads compete for |
their business and thus got rebates.
But along comes Senator EIkins with |
a law that makes it criminal to COM |
pete. for that is all the anti-rebate law
lo- W nat IL TIE poor octopus to do y |
The Sherman law commands it 10 COM |
pete; the Elkins law fOrbids it to COM |
pete. The octopus is thus in the fix |
De Bracey was in the novel of Ivanhoe /
-CeOur de Lion with battleax in hand /
is in its front and burning Torquilstane /
is in its rear.
One of these days somebody will /
come forward with wisdom enough to !
the difficulty. Pie first ef-
fective move will be the destruction of /
competition. The next will be to serve
the public at so low a cost that COM /
petition will stay dead. That is the
only possible solution; but the solon 1
who would propose il now would soon
find himself out of a job.
X
I wish l could get Aldrich's opinion |
of that wonderful grafton, Beveridges |
debut in the senate. the marvellous /
speech on the Philippines.
Washington, Nov. IS