The Bemidji daily pioneer. [volume] (Bemidji, Minn.) 1904-1971, 1910-07-20
MIR. STEENERS0N'S RECORD
A Brief Summary of Some of the Work O.
Our Representative in Congress.
From the Frazee Free Press

From the Frazee Free Press
Halvor Stevenson missed being a
native of Minnesota by about a year.
But at that he has been in the state
much longer than most of US, being
at the present time fifty-eight years
old. His father came from Wiscon-
sin and settled in Houston county
nine years before the civil war, and
our present Congressman's earliest
education consisted in learning to
milk the COWS, remove weeds from
the garden and plotting a yoke of
oxen back and forth across the farm.
After having done these tasks "a
sufficient number of times he con-
cluded that the study of law would
interest him and in 1878 he gradu-
ated from the Union College of Law,
in Chicago. Two years later he
located in Crookston, and from that
time until he was elected to Congress
he was the most conspic uous figure
around the court rooms of every
county in the valley. Because of
bis fondness for taking up the
fights of those who had but little
money to reward him with, be be-
came known as the poor mans
lawyer" and when the lumberjack,
railroad employee or farmer of small
means got into trouble their tracks
usually led straight to Steenerson's
Office, and he has the record of
never turning down any one for
lack of money to pay a fee, if the
case had any merit. His reputation
along this line became so great that
some of the big companies offered
settlement as soon as Steensrson had
the case. He could have made a
fortune as corporation attorney,
but he is fighting -raan-and-anp
prospect of becoming the hired man
of some corporation and earning
big money never appealed to him.
The many people he had thus
helped during his years of law prac-
tice were the ones who secured him
his first election to Congress. His
fame as lawyer and champion of
the people was first established in his
conduct of the celebrated grain rate
case, begun in 1898, and finally dis
posed of seven years later by the
Supreme Court. 1t was the original
instance where the rate-making
power of a state over the railroads
was judicially determined, and has
been cited and used as leading
case and a guide in such matters,
both in the federal courts and in
Congress, as we'll a. in various states
of the Union. But he has now been
in Congress for eight years, and his
record as a Congress man is becom-
ing as we'll established, throughout
the district as was his former record
as an attorney, although the great
mass of his constituents has not the
facilities to keep a correct tab on
those things. This has given some
people-and it is noticeable fact
that most of them are new arrivals
in the district-an opportunity to
misrepresent him, and to make the
voters believe things about him that
are not so. The Free Press has
taken the trouble to look up the
main points in his Congressional rec
ord, and we will try to give them to
the best of our ability.
His most important committee ap-
pointment during his first three
terms was on the postoffice CON-
mittee In this place he was the
main fighter for the reduction of
railway mail transportation rates
and during the seven years of his
service there the cost was decreased
from 80 to 22H per cent of the
whole expense of the mail service.
which difference makes a saving of
sl0,O00,0o0 per year to the govern
ment. He spent much work in
getting the free rural mail delivery
system perfected, and it was through
his move that the pay of rural mail
carriers was raised from: $500 to
$1,000 per year. Now, you under
stand, Mr.. STEVENSON did not do
these things all himself, but he took
the lead in getting them done
which is the most anyone can
do. He took the lead in fighting
the several railroad subsidies until
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