The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1909-09-24
TAFT SCORES INSURGENTS
Declares Those Who Voted Against the
Payne Bill Abandoned Party.

CdT1H OIL as the pest tariff
measure ever passed by a re-
pu blican congress and hence
the best tariff bill the people
have ever known.
The president boldly assert
ed that the insurgents who
voted against the bill had
abandoned the republican
party.
Was it the duty of mem
ber of congress, who believed
that the bill did not accomplish
everything that it ought to
accomplish to vote against it?"
ask the president.
/ am here to justify those
who answer this question in the
negative. I am not here to de-
fend those who voted for the
Payne bill but to support
them."
Tothis statement the crowd in
the Winona opera house re-
sponded with cheers which
could be heard down the street.
It was given by adherents of
Representative James A. Taw-
ney of this district, chairman
of the house committee on ap-
preparations, who has been on
the defensive ever since the ad-
journment of congress because
he did not vote with the other
members of the delegation
from Minnesota, both in the
house and senate against the
bill. Mr.. Tawney met the
president at La Crosse this
afternoon and accompanied
him to this city, his home
town. It had been reported for
some time that the president
intended defending Tawney for
his party regularity, but there
were none to predict that the
president would go so far as he
did tonight in characterizing
the position taken by the in
surgent senators and represen-
tatives. The president had
met Senator LaFollette of Wis
consin, one of the leaders of the
insurgent movement, at Mil
waukee during the forenoon,
and had greeted him quite
cordially.
To make party government
effective" said the president
tonight, members of that
party should surrender their
personal predictions of COM
parative less importance. lam
not here to criticise those who
felt so strongly and believed so
intensely that it was their duty
to vote against the tariff bill,
because it did not contain all
they thought it should.
It was a question for each
man to settle for himself.
In matters of this kind, it is
a question with the party rep
resentative whether he shall
help maintain the party solid
arity for accomplishing it's
chief purposes or whether de-
parture from the principle in
the bill, as he regards it, it is so
extreme that he must in con-
science abandon the party"
Further along the president
gave final word to the insur-
gents. ..
Il am glad to see that those
who voted against the bill still
insist that they are republicans
and that they intend to keep up
the fight for still lower tariff
rates within the party.
That is their right and in
their view of things is their
duty. :
All I have to say in respect
to Mr.. Tawney's action voting
for the bill and my action in
signing it, is that / believed
that the interests of the coun-
try, the interests of the party,
required me to sacrifice the
accomplishment of certain
things in revision of the tariff
which 1 had hoped for in order
to obtain party solidarity,
which I believed more import
ant than reduction of rates in
one or two schedules of the
tariff. /"
President Taft 8 speech was a
remarkably plain-spoken de
fense of the Payne bill. He
has been met with many
queries since the beginning Of