The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-05-23
POLITICAL LANDMARK PASSES

TN spite of attacks by Senator David A. Reed
4 and ogden Mills President Roosevelts
New Deal" will be made easier of realization
as a result of the passing of one of the more
notable landmarks in American economic and
political history-the Republican "Old Guard"
The personnel, doings and disappearance
of this notable group are made the subject
of an excellent article by William c. Murphy
Jr, in the American Mercury. AS he sug-
gests: "Unwittingly doubtless, the lamented
Hoover administration made it's greatest bid
for the remembrance of posterity by burying
the Republican Old Guard"
The Old Guard were the political agents
through which moneyed powers ruled the
United States for most Of the time between
the Civil war and the World war. They reached
the height of their power between the cleo
ton of Mckinley and the defeat of Taft.
The Old Guard represented the most per-
feet exemplification in American history of
John Lockes famous dogma that the main
purpose of government is the protection of
property. Some of these men were wealthy
industrialists and f1nanciers themselves, while
others were representatives of such interests.
But all alike were faithful devotees at the
shrine of the vested interests.
Win the Slavocracy which had governed
the country during most of the generation
before the Civil war was endorsed by the de-
feat of the south, the Republican Old Guard
gradually emerged and created system of in
dustrial and financial feudalism unmatched
elsewhere in the modern world
They seized upon the United States senate
as the best vantage point from which to work.
The senator held office for a long term and
was elected by state legislatures which were
more easily manipulated than whole electo
rate The control of the senators over federal
patronage facilitated their control over state
legislatures.
The policies and methods of the Old Guard
in connection with the protection of property
and the crushing of liberal legislation were di-
rect and unabashed. Most of them believed
sincerely that government existed primarily to
advance the interests of those Christian men
to whom God in his infinite wisdom had given
the control of the property interests Of the
country"
They carried on openly in the senate as
Grundy did a generation later in the lobby.
But when Grundy was elected to the senate
he realized the improperly of doing openly
in the senate what he had no hesitation in
lobbying for outside"
This fact in itself showed that the days of
the Old Guard were over.
The leaders of the Old Guard we're Nell
son w Aldrich, of Rhode Island; William
Boyd Allison of Iowa. Orville Hitchcock Plat,
of Connecticut, and John Colt Spooner, of
Wisconsin. Powerful lieutenants were Quay,
of Pennsylvania Plat and Depew, of New
York; Hale, of Maine; and Lodge of Massa-
chusetts.
Together they formed an inpregnable wall
over which the waves of liberalism and radical
ism broke in vain until the defeat of Taft in
1912 Not even Theodore Roosevelt's spurts of
liberalism were able to overcome their resist
ance
They kept high tariff laws on our statute
books and resisted or hamstrung most legiSla-
ton designed to curb irresponsible capitalism
and advance social justice. Not until they
overreached themselves in the Payne Aldrich
tariff in the Taft administration, thus fusing
the insurgents, was their hegemony seriously
challenged.
In 1912 they applied the steam roller to
Roosevelt at Chicago, taking the logical posi-
ton that they preferred to maintain control of
defeated party rather than to surrender
dominion over victorious one. During the
eight lean years of the Wilson administration
they had tough going, but they took on a new
lease of life under Harding and Coolidge.
They were no longer, however, the same old
powerful autocracy that once had been led by
the naughty Aldrich. The old leaders had died.
Only Boise Penrose in any way matched the
giants of the old days in constituencies ire
sponSRihty and arrogance OF manner, and he