The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.) 1881-1918, 1910-04-14
THE ALDRICH CONTROL
La FOllette's Magazine Tells
Plain Truth.


A recent issue of La Follette's
Magazine publishes the following
Illuminating article upon Congress
sional trickery.
There is many people who think
something mysterious about the Al
drich control of the Senate. Why
and how does Aldrich control? Those
who see Aldrich from day to day and
have abundant opportunity to note
his limitations are especially mysti-
fled. There is nothing exceptional
about Aldrich, either in ability or in
personal magnetism. He is, in these
respects at least, ordinary, very ordi-
nary.
Only those who get close enough
to the Aldrich machine in the Senate
to look inside of it and see the wheels
90 round can understand and appre-
ciate the character and manner of
operation of this control. OF course,
the great cementing forces back of
and sustaining the Aldrich control is
the "System"-"Big Business" doin
big Politics." But the immediate
cohesive force, the sanction which
sustains and effectuates the Aldrich
control is the cohesive force of pub
lie plumber.
OF course, the Aldrich bunch do
not go down to the treasury and fill
their pockets with twenty-dollar gold
pieces, Their work is not so coarse
and, besides, that would be Small
pickings. Also it would put the
"pickings" in the wrong pockets.
This is the Systems" game and the
"pickings" belong to it, not to the
Senators, The System" wouldn't
even trust its Senators with the
"pickings. " The business of the SEN
ators is to wear their honors and de
liver the goods" Moreover, the
System" plumbers always within the
forms of the law-or at least within
the forms of law according to the
best advice of its KnoXes and Roots.
Aldrich is shrewd trader, that is
he is shrewd trader as the white
men, who exchanged a few baubles
with the American aborigines for
whole miles of rich, fertile country,
were shrewd traders. He is a shrewd
trader as the man who sticks the
muzzle of gun into your face on a
dark night and demands "your
money or your life" is shrewd trad
err. He ascertains what you want to
prefer and then he makes you pay
his price for it, as he has in his pow
err to do like the man with the gun.
And his price is fidelity and subser-
vience to the Aldrich control.
The shrewdness of the Aldrich con-
troll was depicted in the tariff session.
1t was described by Senator Dolliver
in the Senate in these words:
eve have seen in this Congress
spectacle that has discouraged my
heart, the spectacle of men being
compelled to bargain with the au-
thorities which control the Senate for
the protection of the interests of their
own people,"
II was able leadership and shrewd
trading for Aldrich to put into the
Senate Tariff Bill a number of in
creases and reductions, which he did
not want and which the House would
not stand for, to trade the System,
and he did not want. But such
schemes require favoring circum-
stances for their successful consum-
nation. And the shrewd trades which
Aldrich Framed up" would have
fallen flat indeed had not Cannon
packed" the House conference COM
mittee-the other party to the trade
to sit in with Aldrich and play his
game his way.
II was the Aldrich control assert
ing itself that warned senator's that if
they opposed the passage of the AL
drich Emergency Currency Bill of
the last Congress, they would do so
at their peril of having stricken from
the public buildings appropriation bill
certain provisions for needed public
improvements in their home states.