The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1919-03-29
A NEW ACID TEST

A NEW ACID TEST
The Tribune has on more than one occasion invited at
tention to the humiliating spectacle presented some months
ago By political activities of a certain commission that was
created by congress for a most laudable pOrpose. This was
the Federal Trade Commission, a body created to deal with
trade problems, and more particularly with the problems
growing out of the antitrust legislation, restriction of traj'.
competition, etc.
There is in every state an unwritten law which warns
the judiciary to keep out of politics. In many states, In
most of the states where judges are chosen by the people,
including Nevada, this rule has been Incorporated into the
constitution. This should never have been necessary, but
evidently it was.
Now if this rule was necessary to preserve the conf
dence of the people in their courts, it applied with multi
piled force to the members of that commission, for no judge
from any bench ever had the opportunity to appeal for votes
with half the force that the members of this commission en-
joyed:
The people welcomed this commission, for they saw in
it an opportunity to get the truth about many things that had
disturbed them. And one of them was the three-sided con-
troversy between the meat packers and the live stock grow
es and the consumers. And when the Trade Commission
took up it's inquiry of the alleged abuses of the packers
something more than a year ago the public was keen in the
interest displayed. But this interest soon turned to disap-
pointment and finally to disgust and contempt. There were
five members of the commission and an attorney, six in all.
After keeping themselves on the front page of the news
papers for a sufficient length of time, one member reveal
cd an ambition to go to the United States senate from
Georgia and another from Wisconsin, and the attorney en-
tered the race for governor of California, all on the strength
of "what they had done to the beef trust"
X
And the president from the White House - the one in
Washington, not Paris-on White House stationery, asked
that these men be elected, a thing he had, while writing as a
teacher of political economy, denounced as deeply i'm
moral" But the people of Wisconsin and those of Califor-
mia evidently thought that if it was deeply immoral" for
other presidents to use the prestige of their high position
to control the electorate it was more deeply immoral" in
one who as a teacher and reformer had published his con-
victions on the subject. And besides, if these candidates
would use a judicial position as sacred as the one they had
recently occupied to further their personal ambitions, what
would they not do in the senate or the gubernatorial chair?
And except in Georgia the people voted for somebody else.
x \
And how completely they have been vindicatedl One
of these candidates, the one whom the president told us had
stood the "acid test" was Mr.. Davies of Wisconsin. He want
ed to go to the senate "for what he had done to the meat
trust"
Since his defeat for the senate he has been acting
as attorney for the so-caled Consumers Packing Com
pany, now in the hands of a receiver, and he is now try
ing to square himself with the federal district court in Chi
cago. On Thursday his attorneys asked that he be permit
ted to return 81, 800 attorney fees on condition that an or
der be entered absoving hin from all illegal completely IN
connection with the Consumers Packing Company. The
court refused. And in doing so the judge took occasion to
say:
There has been conclusive evidence presented that those
trying to get the sanction of the capital issues committee at
Washington for the sale of stock were crooks. Mr. Davies
appeared for them before the capital issues committee a an
attorney. assumed that Mr.. Davies, having been involved to
this extent, would appreciate the privilege of appearing in
court and invited him to do 81 last Monday. He did not ap-
pear"
It is quite probable that the acid test the court would
apply to Mr.. Davies will differ somewhat from that applied
from Washington.