ATTEMPT TO BREACH THE CONSTITUTION.

We will now revert to the bold attempt made in presenting that rider amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill to breach the federal constitution, following which we will take up some of Mr. Hitchcock’s efforts to show how much or how little he knows about the business of publishing and distributing magazines and other periodical literature.

First let us inquire if Mr. Hitchcock and the coterie backing that Senate “rider” knew that, under the Constitution, all measures for raising federal revenue must originate in the Lower House of Congress? One scarcely dares conclude they were so densely ignorant as that. Then, was theirs a deliberate, calculated attempt to breach the constitutional prerogatives and rights of the Lower House? Did they figure upon putting through that vicious rider in the congested closing hours of Congress? I call them the crooked hours of Congress. Did those backers of that rider hope that Senators and Congressmen would overlook or fail to read that rider, hope that so many would be so fully occupied by the swan-song chorus being sung during those closing hours that they would not notice that “rider” jumping the constitutional hurdles?

Now, if either one of the last assigned reasons is valid, a word stronger than “ignorance” should apply to such tricky, treacherous action, whether it is practiced by Senators, Congressmen, cabinet chiefs or chiefs higher up. One greatly dislikes to apply a fitting term to such ulterior motives as lead high and respected public officials to breach the constitution by trickery about on a level with that of the sneak thief or with that of a “con” man who thinks he has done his full duty by the people when he has sold Reuben the painted brick. But how could Mr. Hitchcock and those Senators co-operating with him be ignorant of the plain letter of the law and supported by a long line of precedents in both the Senate and the House?

As to the Senate precedents for the House’s right to originate all measures for the raising of revenues, Mr. Henry H. Gilfry, Chief Clerk of the Senate, compiled in 1871 a work entitled “Decisions on Points of Order with Phraseology in the United States Senate.” Mr. Gilfry cites the attempt of the Senate to repeal the income tax. The House returned the bill to the Senate with a reminder that the Constitution “vests in the House of Representatives the sole power to originate such measures.” Mr. Gilfry cites many other precedents.

In 1905 the Senate tried to originate revenues by amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill. That amendment was very similar to the “rider” of Mr. Hitchcock. I will here reprint it:

“That hereafter the rate of postage on packages of books or merchandise mailed at the distributing postoffice of any rural free delivery to a patron on said route shall be three cents for each pound or any fraction thereof. This rate shall apply only to packages deposited at the local postoffice for delivery to patrons on routes emanating from that office, or collected by rural carriers for delivery to the office from which the route emanates, and not to mail transmitted from one office to another, and shall not apply to packages exceeding 5 pounds in weight.”

The House brought that measure to conference and flatly refused to recognize the power of the Senate in the premises. The Senate receded and the amendment was killed.

“Hinds’ Precedents of the House of Representatives” is a recognized authority. In Chapter XLII, Vol. 2, under the caption, “Prerogatives of the House as to Revenue Legislation,” Mr. Hinds cites many instances in which the House had invariably insisted upon the exclusive exercise of its rights as defined in Section 7, Article 1, of the Constitution.

Mr. Hinds cites in all one hundred and twenty-five precedents, each of which raises the same point of order as was raised in debating Mr. Hitchcock’s late “rider” and on each of which the House maintained its right to originate all bills for raising revenues.

In view of the fact that some of Mr. Hitchcock’s supporters were men of experience, skilled parliamentarians, in view of the fact that some of them were trained lawyers, and in view of the further fact that the works both of Mr. Hinds and of Mr. Gilfry are on file in the reference libraries of the Senate and House and probably in most of the departments, how, I ask, in view of the above facts, can either Mr. Hitchcock or any of his supporters enter a valid plea of ignorance of the fact that their attempt to put over that rider was contravening the constitutional rights and prerogatives of the House?

No, they were not ignorant. In my judgment, as based upon the reports which have reached me, that “rider” was a deliberate frame-up and its architects were a few conspirators who sought by means of that rider either to put certain periodicals out of business or force them to print what they were told to publish.

Possibly I may be in error as to this, but the careful observation of the best informed and most experienced correspondents on the Washington assignment, as well as a number of Senators and Congressmen, have, in reports made, supplied ample evidence to warrant my statement to the effect that there was a collusive understanding among a few people to present that “rider” in the closing hours of the session with the hope that in the rush of affairs it might escape notice and go through. And that hope was born of an ulterior purpose to get even with some monthly and weekly publications—publications of independent thought and voice and which have for several years been telling the truth about certain Senators and Congressmen. These independent periodicals have also been telling a rapidly growing multitude of eager readers the cold, unvarnished facts about some corporations and corporate interests which, it is generally believed and openly charged, are represented in federal legislation and in cabinet and other official circles in Washington by several of the very men who were so actively supporting Mr. Hitchcock in pushing his “rider” over the legislative course.

A brief summary of the history of that rider may be presented at this point. The Penrose-Overstreet bill was before the House in the early part of 1910. It carried no recommendation of an increased rate on second-class matter. This Penrose-Overstreet bill was, however, reintroduced in the House by Congressman Weeks, of Massachusetts, Chairman of the House Postoffice Committee, and by Senator Carter in the Senate. The House refused either to approve or take action on Mr. Hitchcock’s recommendation. After consideration, the Senate approved the House bill. That bill carried no recommendation for an increase in second-class postage rates. Not a single member of the Senate during the debate suggested nor introduced any bill or amendment recommending such increase.

In his message of December, 1910, President Taft recommended an increase in the second-class mail rates. His recommendation was couched in language very similar to that used in his message of December, 1909.

Mr. Samuel Blythe, from whom I have previously quoted extendedly, says some pertinent things in commenting on the situation at this point in our brief outline of how this “rider” got mounted for a lap or two and then was blanketed in the home-stretch:

“The Postmaster General had not been idle in the matter. He had it on his mind. Moreover, his party had been defeated at the polls in the previous November and about the only Republicans who were successful were Progressive Republicans against whom the President had admitted, in his famous Norton-Iowa letter, he had been discriminating and for whom Mr. Hitchcock had no sympathy. The policies, and in many cases the individuals, in the progressive movement had had large support from the magazines and periodicals; and before that, the reactionaries who had ultimately been defeated, had been assailed because of their misdeeds.”

There is a lot of bone and sinew in that. Of course, both the President and his Postmaster General wanted to make good; wanted, as I have previously intimated, to get rid of those pestiferous independent periodicals which had been so conspicuous and powerful in unhorsing some of their stand-pat friends in the elections of November.

Mr. Hitchcock is not one of the sort of men who rush in where angels fear to tread. He is quite a general. He can make the waiting tactics of General McClellan, it would seem, apply beautifully to a political maneuver. He can wait and bide his time. At any rate, he waited. He waited until the President and other friends had worked that announced method of “discriminating” against the progressives, the so-called “insurgents,” to the end of appointing a Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, the personnel of which suited Mr. Hitchcock’s quietly nursed purpose—in fact suited him as well as if he had selected the committee himself. Mr. Hitchcock, however, still waited, and while he waited, the House Committee had been appointed and was engaged in considering the postoffice appropriation bill. This House Committee held numerous sessions and gave hearings to many newspapermen and to publishers of periodicals. It went over the entire field of requirement in the government postal services and appears to have gone into the subject of second-class mail rates and the cost of its transportation and handling most carefully and thoroughly. The result of its deliberations was to tender to the House a bill carrying, as previously stated, an appropriation of some $258,000,000 for the year’s salaries, maintenance and operation of the Postoffice Department, a sum which must certainly appear liberal to any informed reader.

In this connection, two points stand out in bold relief. First:—When the House bill covering the 1911 appropriations for the Postoffice Department was passed and advanced to the Senate, it carried no provision or recommendation for an increase of the second-class postage rates.

Second:—As previously stated the House committee held many sessions while considering and preparing its 1911 Postoffice Department appropriation bill, and at no session of that committee did Mr. Hitchcock urge an increase in the second-class postage rates. He made no propositions or recommendations to that committee touching on increases in the second-class mail rate.

In fact he made no proposition of any sort to that committee. Nor did he submit any statements or figures to that committee, other than those contained in his 1910 report and in the President’s message.

Rather a queer procedure that, is it not? Especially is it queer, likewise suggestive, in a man who, for two years, had been running with anti-skidding tires on and the high-speed lever pushed clear down, in a wild chase to capture an increase in the second-class mail rate.

That is the way it looks to The Man on the Ladder, anyway.

Why did Mr. Hitchcock so completely ignore that House committee? Or why, at most, did his attitude, when present at any of its sessions, manifest so little interest as almost to indicate an indifference as to what was done or not done? Why, again, was Mr. Hitchcock so inactive, so void of suggestions and recommendations when before that branch of federal legislative authority with which he knew must originate all measures for the raising of revenues?

Why? To that question there appears, to The Man on the Ladder, but one valid answer. Mr. Hitchcock was waiting.

When the House bill was sent to the Senate and referred to the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, it appears from reports of people whose business it is to watch things done and doing at Washington, D. C, that Postmaster General Hitchcock livened up a bit, being careful, however, not to put any noticeable pressure on his high-speed lever until those meddlesome publishers had left town and were well away.

These publishers, knowing the constitutional prerogatives of the Lower House, considered matters safe and settled when the House bill making appropriations for the Postoffice Department was adopted and advanced to the Senate. They knew it carried no section advancing second-class postage rates nor any recommendations favoring such advance. With the publishers that ended it. But they failed to consider Mr. Hitchcock. His wiles and ways were, it appears, neither understood nor even suspicioned by those publishers. So, confident and content, they gathered up their belongings, packed their grips, paid their hotel bills and hied away to their several homes. Then it was that Mr. Hitchcock got busy with that discriminatingly selected committee of the Senate—the Committee on Postoffices and Postroads.

To see how “discriminating” some one or more persons had been in selecting that committee, let us look over its membership. At its head, as Chairman, sat Boies Penrose. He is the reputed Republican boss of Pennsylvania and an “organization” man. So is President Taft an organization man. Therefore Senator Penrose is an Administration man to the last ditch—that is, of course, if the administration is Republican. Mr. Hitchcock is also an organization man, and if both the President and his Postmaster General wanted this “rider” turned loose on the senate tanbark, Mr. Penrose was willing to go along with them. The other members of the committee were:—

Republicans:—

Democrats:—

We will scrutinize that list and see how the members fared at the November election. The first four Republicans and the first Democrat as named in the list were defeated at the last senatorial selection—in fact they were repudiated by the states they had been representing or misrepresenting, as the reader cares to take it. As these defeated toga-smudgers attributed their overthrow largely to newspaper and other periodical attacks upon them, Mr. Hitchcock naturally found them in line for anything he wanted to visit upon those offensive publications.

Of the other Republicans, Crane, is reputed to be lugging around with him a large-sized aspiration to be Republican leader in the Senate. If he cashes that ambition, he must necessarily stand pat with the President and Hitchcock, in spite of the alleged fact that Senator Crane does not carry an over-load of esteem for said Hitchcock. The other left-over Republican member of the committee, Guggenheim, would not be worth mentioning were it not for the fact that the methods pursued by himself and his friends in his elevation to senatorial honors have put him in the class almost removed from criticism. Those methods received much caustic consideration from newspapers and other periodicals. Simon Guggenheim, though reputed to be noticeably obtuse in comprehension and decidedly pachydermatous of integument, is probably neither so dull nor so thick of skin as not to have felt and to have remembered the exposure the magazines made of the methods they asserted were used to secure his toga; methods, it was asserted, which virtually bought his “friends,” both those in and those out of Colorado’s legislature. Yes, Simon probably remembers those exposures and the sources from which they emanated.

Entirely aside from that fact, Simon Guggenheim is a dyed-in-the-wool Administration man. In fact, if reports be true, and his record in the Senate appears to justify the reports, Senator Guggenheim could not be other than an Administration man. First, it is said, there are “official” motives and reasons for his being such, and, second, that his intellectual equipment is so out of repair, or so lacking in native operating power, as virtually to disqualify him for any part or position save that of a nonentity in legislative procedure and affairs.

So Senator Simon “Gugg” must necessarily stand with the President and the Postmaster General on the “rider” amendment as on any other proposition they wanted to forward.

As to the hold-over or returned Democratic members of that committee little needs be said as the Democrats were in the minority anyway. Senator Bankhead is quite generally recognized as a congenial, obliging and accommodating politician. In all probability, he would not enter any strenuous objections to Mr. Hitchcock’s proposed amendment, provided a hint was given him that the President approved it. That such hint was handed around quite freely before the committee’s report was submitted to the Senate is a matter of common knowledge.

Senator Taylor first voted for the rider amendment. Later, however, when he neared Jericho, the scales appear to have fallen from his eyes and he then saw things differently. At any rate he later voted against the amendment.

Senator Terrell of Georgia was ill, and therefore not present when action was had. It will be seen, then, that the Postmaster General had his “discriminating” committee.

Mr. Hitchcock began his advance on that committee February 1st. He approached certain of its members on the 1st and 2nd and informed them, in effect, that he wanted them to urge a second-class amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill, which the committee had under consideration. He, it is reported, also assured these senators that President Taft most earnestly desired that an increase be made in second-class rates. He got a committee appointed, consisting of Senators Carter, Crane and others to confer with the President regarding the matter. Owing, however, to the pending of other legislation in the Senate (the ship subsidy bill in particular), the matter dragged along until the 8th of February. During the delay, Hitchcock made sure of the committee by nailing down Penrose, Crane, Burrows, Carter, Scott, Bankhead, Taliaferro, Dick and Simon “Gugg.” On the date last named, Senators Carter and Crane went to the White House “by request” to confer with the President. The President, it is said on authority, flatly told the two Senators that they “must” put the amendment into the bill. It is also reported, and to their credit, that the two Senators argued strenuously against the expediency of inserting it, pointing out the fact that such an amendment would go out on a point of order under Senate Rule XVI. Mr. Hitchcock was present throughout the conference. Incidentally, it may be likewise noted that Vice-President Sherman dropped in, quite “by accident” of course, but he showed no hesitancy, it is said, in participating in the discussion as actively as Postmaster General Hitchcock had been doing from the beginning of the conference. While the President and his Postmaster General were arguing with the Senators to prove to them how important the action was to the Administration; why the “rider” must go into the bill as an amendment, and probably why it was “time for all good organization men to come to the aid of the party,” Mr. Sherman probably dropped a few timely hints to the effect of how easy it would be, with the gavel in his hands and a quick, true and favoring eye for floor recognitions, to get around Senate Rule XVI. In the end, Senators Carter and Crane were won over and a meeting of the Postoffice and Postroads Committee was called for the afternoon of the same day, Wednesday, February 8th, 1911.

When the committee got together it was found that there was not a single proposition of any sort relating to second-class mail rates before it for consideration. Neither was there a written suggestion, recommendation or report bearing upon that subject before them. Mr. Hitchcock, however, was present at this committee meeting. He formulated his proposition and the committee went into session, the discussion being led by Senators Carter and Crane, who had become “convinced” against their best judgment if not against their will, in the forenoon of the same day, to support the amendment. The discussion lasted for several hours, with Mr. Hitchcock’s deficit occasionally buzzing as his wheels went round. Then the committee adjourned until the next afternoon, February 9th.

Mr. Hitchcock left the room after the discussion and, it is said, went immediately and reported to the President. Upon learning that the attitude of the committee was unfriendly, the President at once began to turn on more current, not hesitating to use his patronage club in doing so, reports say.

The committee met, as agreed at its adjournment. Mr. Hitchcock was present with his rider amendment all written up and fully varnished and frescoed, and in two hours Mr. Hitchcock’s rider amendment was tacked onto the bill, in wording substantially as it appears on another page.

Then the real fight began. Hitchcock stood to his embrazured guns, to his reprisal rider, throughout the entire engagement. As an evidence that it was his rider, or his and President Taft’s, I desire here to present to the reader points in proof:

That picked “discriminating” Senate committee had a majority of defeated or otherwise disgruntled politicians. They were defeated or disgruntled because certain independent periodicals had, figuratively speaking, peeled the varnish and smooth epidermis off them, thus exposing their decayed or decaying carcasses to a public not only able to read and understand, but a public willing to read and understand.

I will offer a few other established facts. Mr. Hitchcock, during the closing days of the fight, devoted nearly his entire time to pushing and advocating his measure, his carefully prepared scheme. A canvass of the Senate was made, which canvass led Mr. Hitchcock to believe he had the votes to put his rider over the course a sure winner. In that, however, he was mistaken. A number of the Senators had wised up as to the real purpose and purport of that rider and, in the canvass, they handed back to him a little of his own peculiar brand of jolly, which he had delivered to them in unbroken packages, freight prepaid.

After his canvass, Mr. Hitchcock still kept his oil tank well filled, and his “deficit” playing rag-time to boost his rider along. He even kept his deficit buzzer going after nearly everyone about the Capitol knew that Senators La Follette, Bristow, Owen, Gore, Cummins, Bourne, Clapp, Beveridge, Borah, Brown and others intended to talk his rider into the ditch or talk the postoffice appropriation bill into the Sixty-second Congress.

Yes, Postmaster General Hitchcock, though neither a very competent nor scrupulous tactician, nor an able manager for any large business, industrial or other, is a good fighter. That much must be said for him. When a man fights to the last ditch for a lost or losing cause or purpose as he fought for his “rider,” that man has courage, nerve, whatever we may call it, in him. At any rate it is a quality which commands respect and the man possessing such a quality will receive his just meed of respect wherever men are men.

Mr. Hitchcock worked up a vigorous support for what The Man on the Ladder considers not only an objectionable cause, but a cause viciously dangerous to our form of government, to the material welfare of our people, to their educational advancement as well as to their moral and intellectual betterment.

That is the reason he opposes the purpose of this rider amendment and the methods used to enact it into law. In brief, that is why this book has been written. How Mr. Hitchcock secured a following, even for the brief period his followers followed, for such a cause and the methods used to advance it is as difficult for me to work out or solve as the “Pigs-in-Clover” puzzle or the “How Old Is Ann” problem. He must certainly have learned some new “holds” or tricks in what Sewell Ford calls “the confidential tackle,” or he could not have secured so many “falls” in so short a time for a cause that was bad and for methods even worse, if such were possible.

Now we will take up the Postmaster General’s somewhat prolific, if not always lucid, verbiage, to prove that he knows more about the publication and distribution of publications than the most experienced and successful periodical publishers have yet learned, however experienced they are and however hard they have striven to familiarize themselves with the many intricacies which the business involves.