"The Iron trade is still in a depressed state. Output is much below the capacity of the mills, and prices have not recovered from the demoralization of early spring. Yet the other day the common stock of the Steel Trust sold higher than ever before. When issued, this common stock was rather thinner than water, and it represented mostly a capitalization of the Trust's tariff graft. At the new high price the market valuation of the graft, therefore, is some three hundred million dollars. A few days before this new high price was made, eighteen Democratic Senators voted with the Aldrich Republicans to take iron ore from the free list - where the House bill had put it - and protect it by a substantial duty. This action was generally regarded as insuring a continuation of the Trust's tariff graft. Hence a record price for the common stock was logical enough, although the iron trade was not exactly flourishing at the moment.
"Similar acts by Democratic Senators were denounced by President Cleveland as party perfidy and dishonor; but the regrettable fact is there is only one party in the United States Senate - just one party, with some scattering Republicans and Democratic Insurgents. For the purpose of getting elected and making stump speeches, different labels and catchwords are employed; but when it comes down to real business in the matter of taxing eighty-odd million users of iron and steel products for the benefit of an opulent trust, we find forty-three Republican Senators and eighteen Democratic Senators staunchly voting aye, against fourteen Republicans and ten Democrats who vote nay.
"With over half of the Democratic members of the Upper House fondly recording themselves as Little Brothers to Protection, there is slight danger that the tariff will be revised otherwise than by its friends."
Appendix
Tables of Votes.
The test votes given in the several tables record in every instance the result of a contest between the machine and the anti-machine forces in Senate or Assembly. It is quite evident that a unanimous vote cannot be counted a test vote. Thus the unanimous vote by which the Reciprocal Demurrage bill passed the Senate cannot be regarded as a test, although the machine fought the demurrage principle viciously in 1907.
Nor can a vote on a measure be taken as a test vote, where the vote was taken without the members fully realizing what was before them. Thus the votes on the Wheelan bills do not appear in either Senate or Assembly tables. These measures were slipped through Senate and Assembly without the members of either House fully realizing what the bills were, their purpose, or far-reaching effects. To be sure, a member of the Legislature should know what he is voting on, but when one considers the incidents of the whirl-wind close of the session of 1909, the injustice of holding a member accountable for inadvertently voting for a measure which he had intended to oppose, becomes apparent.
Following this rule, a vote on a given measure may be a test vote in one House and not in the other. The Change of Venue bill is an example in point. The Change of Venue bill was slipped through the Assembly, without the members fully realizing its import, and hence without opposition. But in the Senate the issue was fought out. The Senate vote on the Change of Venue bill, then, is taken as a test vote, while the Assembly vote on the same measure is not so regarded. In the same way, the vote on the substitution of the Wright bill for the Stetson Railroad Regulation bill was a test vote in the Senate. But in the Assembly there was no test vote taken on the railroad regulation measures, for the Wright bill was put through practically without opposition. The test railroad vote in the Assembly came on the Sanford resolution providing for government steamships on the Pacific. There was no test vote on this in the Senate, for in the Senate it was adopted practically without opposition.
Table A - Records of Senators.
The records of the members of the Senate on sixteen test votes are shown in Table A. The names of the Senators are arranged in the order of the number of times their votes were recorded on the side of progress and reform, the name of the Senator with the most positive votes to his credit appearing at the top of the list, and the Senator with the least number at the bottom.