Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1907-07-12
Senator LaFonette's S
Great Speech.
A Brilliant and Able Discussion
OF Representative Govern
ment as it Was and as
it Is Now.

ment as 1t Was and as
it is Now.
Senator LaFollette arrived in Can
ton at $3.50 Monday after travelling
Sunday night by team and train to
Sioux City where he missed connec-
tion for Canton. Then he took the
Northwestern to Sheldon where he
was met by Ben Churchyard and his
auto and made the run to Canton In
two hours and twenty minutes.
The Senator was greeted with en-
thusiastic applause by an audience of
nearly 5000 people as he stepped to
the front of the platform at the con-
clusion of Superintendent Caves in
PRODUCTION. He explained why he
was late and then began II a masterful
discussion Of representative govern
ment. He spoke rapidly and with
dramatic effect and carried his audi
ence spellbound with his magnetism
for two hours and fifty minutes and
none were tired when he concluded.
He spoke from until ten minutes of
and that audience would have miss
ed supper and everything else had he
spoke longer. His train left at 1880
and he just had to stop for he was
billed for an address In Nebraska on
Tuesday and had to travel all night
to make his appointment.
He is a wonderful combination,
possessing magnetic energy and ora
torical power that arouses and slim
ulates the people to sense of their
political obligations and of their pow
er and no man on the public platform
today is doing a greater work to re-
store representative government to
truly representative condition than
the brilliant Wisconsin senator.
He thundered his denunciation of
the4men who had destroyed equal OPP
portunity for all the people and his
description of the trust system and
it's manipulation in the interests of
those who are robbing the producers
and consumers was a picture before
which men must realize their helpless
ness unless true Representatives. of the
people are sent to congress. The peo-
pies part in the government depends
on their representatives in congress,
and when men are sent to congress
who betray their trust they must be
swept aside and honest men put in
their place. The power of the people
to right the wrongs they suffer, he
said, is so plain and SO perfect in our
system of government that he who Is
robbed must destroy the robber or
suffer at the hands of men who are in
combination in violation Of law. The
| American people must arise and per-
form patriotic duty and restore rep
resentative government and preserve
liberty and equal opportunity for
themselves and their posterity or
suffer Industrial slavery through cow
ardice.
| The great corporations, he said, are
the bane of state legislatures and our
politics and only two sessions Of con-
gress in thirty years have been free Of
railroad domination, a burning dis
grace but unfortunately true. This
country belongs not to the Rockefell-
ers or the Morgans, but the rights Of
the people have been sold and barter
ed by dishonest representatives into
the hands of men who scott at law
and defy justice, and through their
plant tools in congress are permitted
to rob and plunder the consumers and
producers. How long, ne shouted,
will the people permit this brazen in
iquity? The manhood of the nation
must strike this monster and destroy
it. 1t is gradually destroying the
liberties of the people and compelling
men to sell at prices fixed by the
trust and buy at prices fixed by this
infamous combine.
| Talk about liberty and equality!
None possess it but the men who rule
and regulate the trusts. You think
you are free, he exclaimed with a
spirit that would have made Patrick
Henry smile in the days when he
thundered for liberty or death. Where
is your boasted freedom when the
trusts rule the nation?
The private corporations were abb
sorbed by the trusts and the trusts
are regulated by an inner circle
who dictate the. buying and selling
price of the products of the nation.
The trusts of the country today are
i Va -
million dollars and seventy-fve men
dictate the policy of the trusts. God
never gave that power to them. They
got it through trust owned congress
men and corporation satellites and
these traitors to the people support
and protect this unholy combina-
tion. He described the organization
and manipulation of the steel trust
which is levying a ahighwayman's trib-