The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1910-08-25
WAS T. v, COSHMAN AN |NSURGENT?

who elevated him? Is the speaker
of this house a mere mortal man of
common flesh and clay, or is he sup
ernatural and immortal? What mir
acle was wrought at his birth? Did
a star shoot from it's orbit when he
was born. or did he come into exist
ence in the good old-fashioned way
that ushered the rest of us into this
vale of tears?
Il make no onslaught on the indi-
vidual. l have high regard for the
speaker of this house personally and
for him politically; but we face the
fact that we have adopted q set Of
rules in this body that are an absO-
lutte disgrace to the legislative body
of any republic. With me this Is not
political question as much as it is
patriotic question. These rules are
un-republican, they are. un-democra-
tic, they are un-American. The
patriotic duty that today confronts
every member of this house is the
necessity of rising in our might and
proclaiming a new Declaration of In
dependence. We need to restore this
house to the great patriotic plane On
which the founders of the republic
placed it, where every individual
member on this floor stands upon an
equal and exact plane with every
other.
Under this set of rules the voice
of the individual member of this
body often is not allowed to do the
determining what shall be done; but
at the same time he is always forced
to share the responsibility of it after
it is done. A system of that kind
represents the superlative de-
gree of everything that is unfair
The way this house was intended to
be run by the mighty men who
fashioned our constitutional govern
ment was that the members of the
house were to inform the speaker
what legislation they intended to
take up, not that the speaker of the
house would inform the members
what legislation he would permit
them to take up.
I'VE operate here under a set of
rules confessedly designed to belit-
tie the hopes and dwarf the ambi-
tons of the individual members of
this body, while that same set of
rules vestes more power i'm the hands
of two or three men than was ever
enjoyed by an oriental despot or
ten button mandarin! Here we sit
like lot of human midgits and leg
islative Lilliputians trying to do bust
ness under set of rules especially
designed to dwarf the power and dim
the hopes of the vast majority of
the members of this body, while the
same set of rules on the other hand
is intended to swell the power and
enlarge the influence of few men
beyond the point that it was ever in
tended that the influence of any one
man should go in free legislative
body.
THE system is rotten at both ends.
1t is rotten at one end because it
robs the Individual member in this
house of the power that the constl-
tuition of his country and the ere
dentials of his people entitle him to;
it is rotten at the other end because
it vests power in the other men that
they have no right to, and oftimes
places on them duties they have no
capacity to fulfill. Mr.. Chairman,
there are people of Washington City
today who are going down to a
theatre and paying out fifty cents
each of lawful money of the United
States of Americe, of present stand
ard weight and fneness, in order to
Torrance of Lilliputians Great God!
what a sinful waste of money, when
they can come up here and watch
this house perform six days in the
week for nothing!
Mr.. Chairman, let no man charge
me now with trying to tear the re-
publican party down. l am not try
ing to tear down the republican
party, but l confess that l sometimes
feel that | would like to put my
hand on the throat of one or two men
who think that they are the repub-
lican party. No, it is not because
want to tear down the republican
party, but because l want to build
it up, that 1 call attention to these
things. Centuries ago in the Holy
Writ it was said, Whom the Lord
loveth He chasteneth" And in this
modern day the true friend of his
party is the man who does not sit
idly by and watch his party drift into
disrepute and toward destruction,
but the man who rises up and calls
attention to the evils that exist"
Nero sat on the hilltops and I'D
died while the Eternal City rose In
smoke and sank In ashes: and we are
sitting here today idle and uncon-
Germ while the great power OF this