The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-10-08
IT'S A SAD STORY
Victor Murdoch, Minority Con-
fierce ON the Tariff Bill,
Says Bound Boy at Huskin' a
Cyclone in Comparison.

Washington, D. c., Oct. S.-Congress-
man Vic Murdoch, the authenticated
Bull Moose leader of the house, who
| was kept ION the outside looking in
| While the Democratic conferees on the
tariff bill framed their report without
aid from the minority, furnishes an in
| side story of the way he was treated
This thing of being a minority con-
fierce on a tariff bill isn't such great
| thing, after all, says Vic, who remefn-
| bers how the door of the conference
room was shut in the face of all MI
nority conferees while the Democrats
| reached an agreement among them
| selves. Mr.. Murdoch made this breezy
confession before the conference report
| was adopted:
It's rare honor to be conferee on
a tariff bill, and few men reach this
| high estate. And yet 1 have to say
that things are not what they seem.
Il have heard always of the helpless
| ness of bound boy at husking pee
I've never seen one, but I can imagine
| a bound boy at a husking bee is cy-
clone of activity compared with mi
nority conferee on a tariff bill.
THE ajority conference was held in
the senate finance committee room.
Outside of that room is a riot of mural
ornamentation. However chaStely
white the corridors of the capitol may
be elsewhere, yet there are elaborate
decorations and there are frescoes with
peaceful farm scenes between, and hg-
ures of rakes and hoes and walking
plows and other tokens of our print
tive and pastoral beginnings as a peo-
pie.
ION the outside of the room, in the
midst of those frescoes, are various
legends Over one arch is one thought
was fitting. The function of the SEN
a tie committee on finance is taxation,
and this legend read, 'Esto perpetuo.'
81 asked the janitor what it meant,
and he said, Let it be perpetual over
the portal of the committee room itself
is a neglected portrait of Benjamin
Franklin, with one eye gone, the other
CLASSY with time, arrayed in a pair OF
yellow plush breeches in a state of
spotty and scaly decline.
In those surroundings I watched
from day to day the proceedings as
nearly as I might. I was not offended
at my exclusion, but L was outraged
in a sense at the hurt it meant to that
new-found champion of the open cau-
Gus, Mr.. Payne.
Outside the room there were always
gathered little groups of men, whis-
pering together. They whispered of
brandy, barley, bagging, bran, and
what not, and of specific and ad valor
EN- duties. For the most part they
were sullen men. They seemed empty
of hope. That was the lobby, whether
insidious' not / do not know. They
never ceased to whisper, except when
the portentous procession of tariff tini1-
ers passed in and out.
The suave Alabamian Mr.. Under
wood, placid eye, urbane in attack,
tender even in tyranny; the smiling
North Carolinian, Mr.. Kitchin, of in
finite jest, a sta teSman yet unwrecked
by his humor, and a partisan notwith-
standing his laughter; the rotund Raj
ney, Roman in face and figure, parti-
san, braced mentally against all the
partisan winds of his native fields of
Illinois, and they are constantly shift
ing; and then the slim, trim, studious,
silent gentleman from Indiana, Mr..
Dixon, hungry for contest; and four
United States senators, who under the
rules, are inviolate and immune to my
description.
These eight men made this tariff
for the 616 controyerted items are in
fact the tariff, and these eight men
wrote them At the conclusion of their
labor they called in the minority con-
ferees but the proceedings were pa
thetically perfunctory. L took out my
watch and kept time, and it took just
seven minutes to dispose of the confer
ence report. That is. this great bill
which began in secret, ended in secret
and there was not moment in it's long
career when any jot title of it was
changed in the OPEN.