Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1909-11-16
SENATOR ALDRICH.
He Believes In the Divine Right Of the
Dollar to Rule.

He Believes In the Divine Right of the
Dollar to Rule.
The divine right of the dollar to
rule Is the political creed Of Senator
Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, Of Rhode
Island, dictator Of the United States
senate. Senator Aldrich is a tory
but no tool. He Is no messenger boy
for Wall Street, but the Washington
embodiment of the Wall Street spirit
He is just as sincere about the di-
vine right of the dollar to rule as was
Louis XIV over absolutism. The
French King made a prosperity issue
of the divine right of kings. Touch
the dollar, such is the Aldrich atti-
tude, and you have a Roosevelt pam
| ic.
The man at sixty-eight, shows a
strong face, ruddy with health, above
big frame, we'll padded with muscle.
He moves with the nervous sway Of
active middle age. Working over the
tariff in the stoke-hole heat of
Washington summer, Aldrich wore out
his colleagues, from the youngest Re-
publican insurgent to the record hold
ing long distance orator on the DEM
ocratic side. When his limousine
stalled in the mud Of a country road
last spring, the senator swung a
shovel like a Turk and laughed like
a boy.
The senate boss will bully a fellow
senator, q cabinet officer, or even a
president, but he is always courteous
to a senate page. One Of his col
leagues may hesitate to question
him, but the youngest reporter never
does. He talks at all times with
amazing frankness. Stormy and
domineering on the floor, reading Re-
publican insurgents out Of the party
with every appearance Of intense an
ger, Aldrich does not make public
business a personal matter, as does
Speaker Cannon. Off his feet he Is
ready to joke or gossip with the reb-
els. Declining all formal functions,
Aldrich keenly enjoys the society of
his friends. He is an entertaining
talker, and he has the advantage Of
every ruler who unbendS that his un-
bending in this wise cannot but flat
ter the most sophisticated. The per-
sonality Of Aldrich is another of his
assets.
The operation of the Darwinian
law made him senate dictator. He
came to the senate twenty-eight years
ago, grounded in the same through
experience in a city council, a state
| legislature, and the house Of repre-
sentatives. Were he merely mediocre,
the senate system and its traditions
of seniority would make him an in
| fluential figure now. The system is
| log rolling buttressed by party reg
| ularity. The veteran senators, who are
mostly New England senator's, con-
troll the committee assignments.
When it comes to legislation, a tariff
bill, for instance, the control gives
them the initiative and direction Of it.
They decide on what New England
must have, and they count the num-
Der of votes they need, added to their
own, to form a majority. Those votes
are secured by giving enough senators
what they want out of the bill. Re-
publican senators left out in the cold
must go along or be guilty Of party
disloyalty. Aldrich is the greatest ex-
pert at this system that congress has
seen.
| His present danger and the sys-
TENS danger. lies in the example of
rebellion set last spring by Beveridge,
of Indiana, and the Mississippi Valley
senators. They bolted the Aldrich
tariff If such rebellion is not only
to go unpunished but even to prosper,
the Aldrich control and the old sem
ate system will totter. Last spring
the absence of effective Democratic
Opposition Offset, to a large degree,
the Republican detection. Aldrich
himself has never furnished a more
interesting study than now, when at
the height of his power is so serious
| ly threatened. Stand or fall, he will
not compromise He was never so ar
bitrary as last spring-American
] magazine.