Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-08-27
CANNON A MENACE,
CHARGES FOWLER
REPRESENTATIVE, IN OPEN LET
TER, SAYS SPEAKER USURPS
LEGISLATIVE POWER.
SAYS HIS RECORD Is ROTTEN,
In the Tariff Fight, New Jersey Man
Accuses Uncle Joe" of Duplicity
and Treachery.
HE CONSPIRED WITH ALDRICH?

ELIZABETH, n. J., Aug. 24.-Repre-
sentative Charles n. Fowler, recently
deposed as chairman of the committee
on banking and currency, has made pub
lie his promised open letter TO Speaker
Cannon. He announced several days
ago that the contents of the letter would
be Of national Importance, and would go
to the root of the trouble which resulted
in the attempt of the insurgents to
defeat the speaker for reelection. Mr..
Fowler was modest, as politicians who
saw advance copies of the letter learned,
for the communication is by far the
most vigorous and comprehensive attack
on Cannonism that has yet appeared.
Mr.. Fowler does not hesitate to call Il
spade spade. In language that would
make Senator Tillman envious, he lays
charge after charge at the door of the
speaker, winding up by declaring him a
national menace that must be removed if
Republican government is to continue in
the United States.
Mr.. Fowler charges Speaker Cannon
with being responsible for two-thirdS of
the national losses i'll the panic of 1907,
through his defeat Of the bankers bill
providing for a system of credit cur
rency. He declares that the speaker
credit the President and defeat the
Payne tariff bill. He warns the Ameri-
can people against Mr.. Cannon's plan
Ito make American banking and COM
merce the football of our politics, pre-
cisely as our productive industries are
today, by the establishment of a central
bank"
Tariff Tilt Challenge.
81 challenge you" he writes of the
tariff controversy, Ito cite in all your
political history a more dishonorable and
disreputable piece of business unless,
perchance, you cite something in your
own career of which the people are not
yet advised"
And finally: "As you are aware, we
now have government by edict, so
completely have you absorbed and
usurped all power, legislative as well as
political. You have succeeded in Rus
sanizing the House of Representatives.
But you will be the last of the political
Bourbons,, and the conditions which
made such a creature as you possible
will end with the Sixty-first Congress-"
Beginning with the recital of the cir
cumstances of his candidacy for the
speakership and his subsequent removal
as chairman of the banking and currency
committee. Mr.. Fowler dominates the
speaker briefly for membership in the
Ananias club in connection with the con-
ly to a review of Mr.. Cannons record
on financial and currency questions.
In taking up the subject of the credit
currency bill prepared by a commission
of fifteen bankers in the fall of 1906,
he writes:
the banking and currency committee to
the House, l went to you as was nee
essary, diSgraceful as the necessity may
seem under the circumstances. to ask
whether | could call up the bill for con-
sideration, telling you we were facing
a financial crisis, that something should
be done to meet 1t, and that this bill
had been drawn for that specific pur
pose
Lays Blame for Panic
"You literally hooted the idea of
panic, and inquired, What does this
bowling in Wall street amount to? The
country don't care what happens to
those spectators. Everything is all
right out west and around Danville.
Then, l don't take any stock in your as
set currency AS usual, your ignorance
and prejudice We're all-suffictent then.
But the panic came, as every man
who had any intelligence on this subject
knew it would. And one-half to two
thirds of all our losses | charge to you
personally, because if the bankers bill
had passed the House and gone to the
Senate these losses would have lain at
their door if they had failed to pass it
as the matter now stands, they lie
at your door.
'"This is your record upon our financial
and currency legislation. | challenge you
to find a single living man with so rot
ten a one. 1t is a record of ignorance
or political cowardice or a disgraceful
hybrid of the two. And yet, sir, you
assume TO dictate the financial and cur
rency legislation of a civilized country.
1t was III contemplating the unmeas-
ured losses and terrific consequences to
my country resulting from the crisis OF
1907, because of your ignorance, preJu-
dice, and absolutely unchallenged power
as speaker of the House of Representa-
tives, that | resolved that, 50 far as IN
me lay, never again should such tinan-
cial tragedy fall upon the American peo-
pie Therefore, / announce myself as
candidate for speaker.
Ignorance and Prejudice
DO you suppose, sir, that | did not
appreciate fully the probable couse-
quence of my act when | undertook to
play my part in securing this reform
appointment of a calendar day for in
PRODUCING BILLS? Do you suppose that
/ was not aware of your ignorance, pre-
judice, inordinate conceit, favOritism,
putrid preferences, and that, like all such
characters possessing absolute power,
malice is the handspring of your every
action under such circumstances?
You can insurge and plot against the
Republican platform, and against the
President himself-of which | shall now
adduce stronger circumstantial evidence
than that on which many man has
gone to the gallows.
1T seems from all that can be learned
with reference to the conference on the
Payne bill, that you, with every mem
bers' political head in your basket of
favors, shuttle-cocked through the halls
Of Congress, trying to secure the passage
of the Aldrich bill ard disfiguring so far
as you could the Payne bill, with the ex-
ception of a few schedules