Montana labor news., 1939-02-09
Memorial 10 Give Dies
More Money Shows Up
Friends a nj Enemies

uVuEOS kuVu1btVS
A story is connected with the
Montana legislature memorializing
Congress to give more funds to the
Dies investigating committee. In the
first place, the memorial was sent
to the House from the Senate and
when it appeared on general orders,
some of the Butte liberals fought
the bill on committee reports and
received the assurance that all ref
erence to the Dies committee had
been taken out of the memorial
However, later on, the printed MEM
orial showed that although the word
"Dies" had been taken out, the
memorial still referred to the in
vestigating committee. Immediately
a fight was started to have these
words taken out and have it changed
so that it would refer to "a COM
mittee to investigate American ac-
tivities." Mcleod of Cascade county
made a motion to indefinitely post
pone action which carried in the
committee. Later on when the COM
mittee of the whole to report,
an attempt was made to s%egregate
the report. A roll call was requested
to be entered on the House journal.
In this roll call those who voted
AYE" were in favor of keeping the
bill alive; those who voted mo"
voted to kill the bill. The vote was
almost strictly partisan as the Demo-
Gratis feel that the Dies committee
has injured the Democratic national
administration.
One of the worries of the repre-
sentatives of the House is the con-
slant stream of letters coming from
constituents of the various counties
regarding the introduction of bills
of one sort or another. Much of this
correspondence could be eliminated
if the writers had even a modicum
of appreciation of the duties attend
ing members of the House and of
the Senate. Writers should remem-
Der that their representatives are
neither super men MOI magicians and
that they cannot conjure a bill out
of thin air. 1t takes time and study
to properly handle these bills. The
law clerk in Helena is swamped with
requests and has already drawn up
nearly 100 bills with a great many
more to be drawn. Anyone who has
a pet hobby and wishes it enacted
in law should have enough interest
in it to put the ideas on paper and
send it to the representatives in
definite and concrete form. Most of
the requests for bills state that a
certain law should be changed and
then go on to stale their reasons,
but when the matter is looked into
thoroughly, it is found that there
either is such a law or that the
matter suggested is already covered
in some other way. This article is
to ask the citizens to look thoroughly
into any proposition which they
want to submit to their representa-
tives and senators and not take up
their time needlessly insofar as the
labor representatives are concerned.
1t must be admitted that most of
their time is spent watching their
opponents-the men and women in
both the House and Senate who are
representing the Anaconda Com
pany and other corporations and not
the people. It would be fine if all
the people of the state of Montana
could 60 to Helena and watch the
course of a bill step by step from
the Senate through the House or the
House through the Senate, but of
course this is impossible. There are
some fine books in the library on
legislative procedure which would
do many people good to read.
In the following roll call on the
Dies memorial the mos are lib
erals and the "ayes" reactionaries:
Ayes-Acton, Anderson (Phillips),
Antrim, Armstrong, Aronson, Baker,
Balgord, Berthot, Brewer, Clark,
Cole PETROLEUM., Cole (Prairie),
Collins, D'Ewart, Duncan, Dunn,
Emswiler, Findlater, Freshman, Geb-
hardt, Green, Hageman, Hammond,
Holiness, Kellogg, Laubach, Lehr-
kind, Leuthold, Liggett, Lippard,
Listug, Longenecker, Lowe, McFat-
ridge, Melin, Morrison, Moss (Flat-
head, Newell, O'Connor, Padbury,
Parker (Flathead), Potter, Reed,
Roehl, Scofield, Smith, Stewart,
Watson, Wenger, Williams, Wilson,
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