Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1908-05-09

about that Same hour, the writer and
Ed Heller climbed up on two high
stools in Cedar Rapids restaurant
and started talking politics while watt
ing for a lunch.
Strangely enough. Mr.. Heller. too,
thought 1t was all right for the boys
to go thru the motions of supporting
Abe; but he guessed Shaw was coming
so fast nobody could stop him.
That Sunday was the day when tho
plan to nominate Shaw began to be
unmarked. The Perkins crowd at
Sioux City knew about it first. What
did they do to prevent it?
The next day, Monday, delegates
flocked to town. Business was active
everywhere except at Funk headquar-
tiers. There, nothing was doing. There
was no manager In charge. Funk was
on hand to receive his friends. He kept
up a good face-and sent Pete Marcy
and the writer of these lines to hunt
up Heller, who had got lost. and who
remained lost practically all that day
and night. He had gone out home with
a friend, and spent almost twenty-four
precious hours away from the head
quarters where he was supposed to be
in charge, and where the work must
be done that would prevent the rail-
roads carrying out their plan Of di-
viding both the Tenth and the Eleventh
against Funk.
1t begins to be apparent why Heller
and Perkins were both able to predict
the nomination Of Shaw before any
body but Hubbard and the corrupt old
race, doesn't it?
Senator Delivers Part.
At the end Of that Mondays dirty
work poor Abe Funk was betrayed,
ruined, dished--and knew It. He went
thru the motions of a candidacy. He
was the last man to be convinced that
Heller and Perkins had played him
false. It was the most pitiful case of
misplaced confidence that could be I'M
agined. 1t lasted to the very end. Per-
kins came to town, but did nothing.
He was manifestly anxious that the
prediction with which he had bade
Sioux City goodbye should me veri-
fled.
Well, this is a long Introduction to
a story about Senator Delivers part
in that convention. Mr.. Dolliver was
then congressman from the Tenth.
When he reached Cedar Rapids the
mask was off. Shaw was to have the
presented as the districts candidate.
Mr.. Roberts was slow to accept the
situation. Harvey Ingham cussed CO.
piously, and up in Funk's room at the
Grand hotel had long heart-to-heart
talk with Mr.. Dolliver, in which he in
sisted that Dolliver for this once, must
stand by the old friends in tho north
end who had always fought Delivers
battles.
But it was useless. The ancient
practical fiction that the district
must stand by the districts candidate
was to serve once more Its purpose of
enabling the manipulators to beat the
will of the delegates. Delivers po-
litical future, he was made to believe,
depended on his standing by the dis
trict candidate. The time had not yet
come for "boxer" rebellion such as
the Eleventh got up some years later
when Alva Hobart had to be eliminat-
ed to prevent railroad control.
Dolliver an opportunist.
The Dolliver influence went to Shaw
Roberts succumbed to the argument
that his townsman's interests were at
stake. It was the refusal Of Dolliver
sible finally to nominate Shaw in that
recounting what will quickly come
4, 80
knows the last decade of Iowa politics
even as it appeared on the surface.
Mr.. Dolliver was not at that time an
ardent enough anti-railroad statesman
to go up against Judge Hubbard. He
didn't like Hubbard. but he feared
him. and he wanted to stay in con-
gress with as little discomfort as pos
sible. A very little Of the courage and
fighting quality for which Mr.. Dolli-
yer would have credit, If all his claims
to pioneering in the cause of reform
were conceded, would have rescued
the state from the Hubbard-Blythe
domination right there. But reform
hadn't yet assumed a vicious and in
growing character with the senator.
Dolliver made Shaw-and Shaw, in
due course Of time, made Dolliver-
a senator. Reluctantly, it is true. for
Shaw had as little consideration for
the service Iolliver had done him as
he had regard for the manifest fact
that the party was for Cummins to
succeed Gear.
Dolliver was merely weak. Always
an opportunist, seeking the line of
least resistance, he was the kind of
politician to whom the railroad bosses
could make such appeal as has been
described.