The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-04-02
POWER CONFERRED UPON PRESIDENT
Publicity of Corporation Re
 turns Left to Executive
CHAMP CLARK'S VIEWS
Democratic Leader Says That GiIIett's Amendment Is Made to Get the Republican Party Out of
 Very Bad Hole


 to 123 the House today adopted a provision amending the corporation law so as to provide for publicity of corporations re- turns upon the discretion of the Presi- dent alone, instead of upon the discretion of the President or upon the Senate or House. An attack upon both the constitu- tionality of the procedure in enacting such legislation in an appropriation bill and upon the principle involved in the pro- posed legislation was made by Represent tative Bartlett of Georgia, who offered a resolution to send the bill back to the Senate with request that the objection able paragraph be stricken out because of the invasion of the constitutional privilege of the House to originate bills affecting the revenue'
 MT Gillett offered an amendment to take the place of the Senate provision. This amendment appropriated $25,000 for classifying, indexing, etc., returns of all corporations required by the corporation tax law, and then provide a form of pub llcity that took from the Senate and the House the right to call for such reports The proposed clause read as follows: Provided, that all such returns shall be open to inspection only upon the order of the President under rules and regula- tons to be provided by the Secretary of the Treasury and approved by the Pres ident."
 Under the terms of his amendment Mir Gillett said he thought the President would rule that records of corporations of use and value to the public would be made public. He said he thought the majority of corporation returns ought not to be made public as they should not be open to the inspection of their rivals
 Full Publicity Favored
 MT. Fitzgerald, combating the Gilett amendment, said he was in favor of the fullest publicity of all corporation af- fairs and offered an amendment providing simply that reports required by the cor poration tax law shall be open to public inspection and appropriating $5OOOO or more to classify such reports. etc.
 This amendment" said Mir Clark of Missouri, referring to the Gillett pro- vision should be entitled An amend mert to get the republican party out of hole Under the provision no one will have access to these reports of corpora tions except the President and his ad- vlsers, and that is dangerous proposi- tion. Human nature has been the same since the time when Adam and Eve were driven from paradise, and in the course
  ton for a political purpose''
 MT. Payne said publicity should not be accorded in response to mere curiosity and he believed the Gillett amendment would accomplish all desirable publicity.
 Mention of Wade Ellis
 MT. Hitchcock of Nebraska suggested that the head of the department in which information in regard to the corpora tons had been gathered had become the head of the republican campaign commit tee two years ago, and the great trust buster of Ohio-Wade Ellis,'' had been | taken from the prosecution of corpora- | tions and placed in charge of the cam paign in Ohio. These examples of activ- | ity in politics of men who possessed in- formation regarding corporations, he said should be remembered when it was pro- posed to pass the pending legislation MT. sherley of Kentucky parted com pany with his party associates in de- claring that the publicity feature of the tax corporation law could not be de- fended
 MT. Harrison of New York reminded the House that while the present occu- pant of the White House was "a benign President" the time might come when there would be ''melign president" and then the danger of trusting to him alone to make public these corporation matters would be seen
 Substitute Adopted The previous question was ordered by vote of 143 to TO- the 'lnsurgents' vot- ing with the regular republicans. By a vote of 132 to 123, MT. Gilletts substi- tute was adopted
 MT Fitzgerald introduced a sensation into the confederation of the corporation publicity amendment by moving to recom- init the legislative, executive and judicial bill to the committee on appropriations with instructions to that committee to report 1t forthwith with an amendment repeating the Payne-Aldrich tariff law.
 A long search of precedents was re- quired to determine whether Mr. Fitz- gerald was in order in making his mo- tion After an extended explanation of the parliamentary situation that faced the House, the speaker ruled that the mo- ton to recommit was not in order. Mir. Fitzgerald appealed from the decision of the chair, the House by vote of 150 to 116 voting to sustain the ruling of the speaker, the insurgents voting with the regulars.
 The publicity amendment then was sent back to the conference for further con- wideration.