The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-14
STUNNING AN ACCOUNTING


 If political party, having departed widely from its prediction pledges, and having failed considerably in it's dis charge of its public trust, is returned to power at the end of its term, then it may we'll interpret it's continuance in office as full license to continue its pol icy of prostituting its authority to po- litical purpose and to privilege. A politi- cal party must revere its stewardship, or it must pass out of the picture. As was so we'll said by MT. John W. Davis in his Denver address: "Unless political parties can be held to strict account, party government itself is base im- position and fraud" More than that, any political party that shuns an account ing of it's record deserves at once to for felt public confidence and public SUD- port.
 Not only has the Republican leadership summed an accounting, but it has even refused to take an inventory on it's own account. It has consistently sought to hide high official ~delinquencies from public view, instead of leading the effort to uncover fraud within the party and to eject those who brought reproach upon the party. Had it not been that two or three Democrats in the senate held key positions on Investigating commit tees, and had these men not been of nigh courage, inflexible purpose and great keenness of understanding, the re- prehensible acts of Fall, of Daugherty and of Forbes would not have been un- covered, and the spoliation of the gov ernment in which they were engaged would have continued unabated and un- rebuked The Republican leadership de- llvered itself over to the opponents of privilege and to those who would souan- der public resources for the private profit. To prove that such policy of plunder was not at variance with the Republican intent, it is necessary only to call atten- tion to that law by which private busi- ness is enabled grossly to tax the Ameri- can people-the Republican high pro- tective tariff. The tariff is proof suf- ficient that the Republican party is com mitted to the policy of giving to those who have much by wrestling it from those who have little.
 Although the Republican party under Theodore Roosevelt undertook a policy of conservation and reclamation un- precedented in the history of the nation, the Republican party in it's present re- gime has violated that policy, has wasted where its predecessors had conserved and has dissipated where its forerunners had reclaimed. The most outstanding exam pie of this dissipation of fundamental resources was the gift to favored parties of the great naval oil reserves at Tea pot Dome and in California. The most astounding example of indifference to this public outrage has been the adminis- trative failure to expedite the efforts to recover these magnificent properties so important to our national defense. In stead of being speeded up these efforts are shown by recent news items to have been held up because of flaws in the man ner in which the attorneys presented the case to the courts. Can there be any reasonable doubt that such flaws were due either to deliberate bungling or to carelessness, inspired by the Re- publican concern for favored interests? Are the most able lawyers the president was able to choose for this important function of such stupidity that even their initial efforts are baked by examples of legal ineptitude?
 As to the sincerity of the Republican platform plank promising reclamation of swamp and arid lands, MT. Davis quotes from a recent speech of Mr. Dawes, present spokesman of the Cool idge organization: Every reclamation project, whether by irrigation or drain age, furnishes added competition for existing cultivated farms, orchards and vineyards at a time when we are already seriously embarrassed by over-produc- ton in many lines" That means that the Republican leaders scorn their own platform pledges before the ink on them is dry. It means that the Republican leadership ignores the plight of those already settled on these projects, and who must move and lose their expensive holdings, if the government should with draw from it's covenants with them. It means that the Republican vision is too short to perceive that there is world want of the very commodities we pro- duce in excess of our own wants, and that these markets await only intelligent development to absorb our so-called sur l plus immediately after each harvest.