The Boise citizen., December 07, 1906, Image 1

About The Boise citizen. (Boise, Idaho) 1906-1910

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HE BOISE CITIZEN
BOISE, IDAHO, FRIDAY, DECEMBER
VOL. VII.
7, 1906
NO 28.
OF THE DAY
Election of Speaker Should
Not Be Left to Packed
Caucus
J. Frank Hunt Again
Selected By Bosses
The election of .a speaker of the house
in the Idaho legislature should be a mat
ter of grave concern to every citizen.
For the past two sessions J. Frank Hunt,
a bishop of the Mormon church, has
been selected for this important posi
tion at the dictates of self-appointed
bosses of the Republican party. He is
again slated by the same power.
It is time that the unholy alliance of
the bosses with the Mormons be dealt
with without gloves. Mr. Hunt is in
no wise the proper man for the place.
His absolute subserviency to the cor
porations and to his church in its work
in the field of politics is so well known
that comment is unnecessary.
The Capital News, that lies awake
nights, for fear that something may hap
pen to Borah, timidly inquires . what
that gentleman proposes to do about the
Hunt candidacy. Mr. Borah will do
nothing. He will do as he did at the
Pocatello convention, leave the matter
entirely in the hands of Brady and Good
ing, who will dictate the nomination of
Hunt.
Mr. Borah's actions in any emergency
can now be accurately judged by his ab
ject surrender at Pocatello, after being
given the plum he personally sought.
• It is the duty of Democratic members
of the legislature to take a hand in the
fight as the Republican caucus, if par
ticipated in, will be dominated by the
Mormon counties, with the slight help
that need be extended by the machine.
There are 12 Democratic members of
the house. These should let it be known
at once that they will vote for any Re
publican candidate for speaker who can
command 14 votes against the un
speakable candidacy of J. Frank Hunt.
This is the duty of the hour. It rises
above mere party politics and becomes
a patriotic duty.
Relative to the candidacy of Hunt, the
Payette Independent, a loyal Republi
can paper, has this to say :
"J. Frank Hunt's announcement a few
days ago to a reporter for the Boise
Statesman that he would be a candi
date for the speakership of the next
house of representatives is discouraging
but not altogether surprising. Mr. Hunt
has done several things in Idaho poli
tics that were indiscreet, to say the least,
and it might have been expected that he
would keep on doing them. It was
hoped, however, that his friends would
have kept him from this latest and great
est act of indiscretion.
"There are several good and sufficient
reasons why J. Frank Hunt should not
be a candidate for the speakership this
year—reasons so obvious that it should
be unnecessary to mention them. One
of these reasons—and it is said without
prejudice, merely as a plain statement
of fact—is that Mr. Hunt is a prominent
leader in this state of a church which is
under suspicion of meddling unduly
with Idaho politics through the agency
of its own leaders and the leaders of the
Republican party, and that for any lead
er of this church to accept at this time
from a Republican house so important a
position as the speakership would be to
cast the church and the Republican party
under still greater suspicion. Another
and a more potent reason is that Mr.
Hunt, when speaker of the last house of
representatives, was leader of the faction
that succeeded in keeping that body from
fulfilling its party's pledges on the Mor
mon question, and as a result placed
the party strictly on the defensive in
the campaign just closed, when its po
sition might have been impregnable
and without doubt cost it hundreds of
votes in certain counties of the state.
What is more reasonable, therefore, than
to say that it would be unwise to elect
any Mormon to the speakership at this
time, and doubly unwise to elect one
who has, through his personal ambitions
or the designs of his church, placed his
party in a questionable light?
"Viewed from a political standpoint,
it would be bad politics, if nothing else,
to place such'a Weapon in the hands of
the Democrats. Viewed from the broad
er standpoint of honesty and straight
dealing with the voters, it would be ut
terly reprehensible to honor a man with
such a position, who, when formerly
holding it, used the power it gave him
to assist in violating his party's pledges."
Legitimacy of /lining.
The wise men in the East, some of
whom have grown immensely wealthy
out of mines, are crying down the pres
ent inclination of the East to buy min
ing shares, says Goodwin's Weekly.
What is the matter? Is it pure philan
thropy on their part ?_ Have they some
railway shares or shares in the Whis
ky trust or the Beef trust, or some
other of the innumerable trusts of the
east, which they wish to unload at a
profit? Have the men who have gam
bled in the shares of any enterprise
they have offered them grown so rich
that they are satisfied and are willing
to let their neighbors get rich? Or are
they turning to mining with a thought
that at least some mines turn out well
and that is better than anything they
have tried while all the great trusts have
been floated?
We want to teil them a secret. Ex
cept a few in the great cities, they none
/ , . , . . 1
of them had any money to buy stocks
with until the steady flow of the money
from the mines of the West vitalized
their business, gave then, the credit to
. .. . ... ,
build railroads, which enabled them to
market their products, and generally do
a live business.
China has no end of rich soil, the
biggest coal and iron mines in the world,
but the masses of the people are law
fully poor. Why? Because they have
no money to help themselves, no trans
...... .it*
portation facilities, no means to make
their iron and coal available. Hence
with them it has been a struggle for
food, a fight against famine for three ;
thousand years.
Now all the money that there is in
the world came out of mines; all that
there ever will be will have to come
from the mines. The dream of the
old alchemists of transmuting base
metals into gold has never been real
ized, and there is no prospect of its
ever being realized.
Before mines can be made to yield
they have to be developed and their ores
reduced. The men who find mines, as
a rule, are poor men. They have to
obtain help to do that. Why, then, is it
not legitimate for them to sell a por
tion of their interest to obtain that
money? If they put the interest in the
part they sell into incorporated shares,
what is there dishonest in that? "But
the mine may never pay," shrieks the
wise men. There are chances, of course.
Where is there not? If a farmc;- had
forty acres of growing wheat which
promised twenty-five bushels to the acre,
and wanted to borrow 10 cents per
bushel on the probable crop, any old
Shylock would loan him the money, tak
ing his chance on rust, wevil, flood, hur
ricane—all the calamities that follow the
farmer.
But if a miner has a prospect which
shows an ore shoot 600 feet long, 10
feet wide and assays enough to show
there will be a clear profit in working it,
and wants to sell some shares for a
working capital, then the wise ass shakes
his head and says, "You do not know
that the ore body will extend down a
foot below your lowest working." And
this though the rule is that an ore body
is as deep as it is long.
In truth, mining is the most legitimate
business on earth, for these reasons :
What the miner obtains is newly created
and permanent wealth. Could the silver
that Abraham paid in order to obtain a
burial place for his wife, be examined,
it would be found that it had lost noth
ing in weight, ductility, malleability,
tensile strength or lustre.
If the farmers in this valley were to
raise twice as much wheat as the peo
ple could eat, and they had no outside
market, wheat would fall 50 per cent.
If a man had a mine in the adjacent
hills and he could from it double the
money of Utah, he would double the
value of every other form of property
in the valley.
Money is the one thing of which no
over-supply can be obtained. Rather the
more of it that is produced the more is
business along all lines vitalized. Hence
we say it is the most legitimate of all
occupations; hence to open a mine is le
gitimate, and hence when mines are of
fered on the square mining stocks are
the most legitimate of all stocks to buy.
Shall The Legislature
Abdicate?
curely fasten their grip upon the party
an( J 5tate - The bargain made at Po
catello was repudiated in whole or in
part by many Republican strongholds in
th c state and was saved only from com
f' e,e wr f. ck b / th , e Mormon comities of
the southeast Less than 1000 votes
propcr |y distributed would have changed
the complexion of the legislature and
the boasted popularity of Mr. Borah
brin f fl™ throu » h on, y h y the skin ° {
0 f course the legislature will humbly
do the bidding of the bosses and will
record the final consummation of the
t^e made at Pocatello, for abject in
submission is the Republican party of
Idaho.
Shall a legislature abdicate the power
granted to it in favor of a political
convention that is responsible to no one
for its actions? Shall the edict of self
constituted bosses override the sober
judgment of the chosen representatives
of the people?
It is the duty of the legislature of
the state of Idaho to elect a
United • States senator. It has the
entire state to choose from and it
can be only from some silly aberration
of the mind that the members give over
this power to a political convention.
It is true that Mr. Borah received
a so-called nomination for United
States senator at the hands of the Po
catello convention, but he received it at
the dictates of machine bosses and in
return permitted these bosses to name
the entire state ticket and to more se
CALIFORNIA
UP IN ARMS
President's Messaoe Is
Severely Scored
PRESS AND PEOPLE
ARE UNANinOUS
Chronicle Saus Efforts to Garru
Out Threats Would Lead
to Impeachment
A San Francisco special to the Ore
gonian, under date of the 5th inst., pre
sents the following view of President
Roosevelt's recommendations in refer
ence to the Japanese in his annual mes
sage : ;
Popular sentiment in California, which
has been smouldering quietly during the
discussion of the Japanese question, has
been fanned into flame by the heated
declaration in the president's message.
Resentment is. general. The impression
prevails in both high and low places that
Mr. Roosevelt has done the state and
the entire Pacific Coast a grave injus
tice. His flat assertion that the Japa
nese have been driven from the com
mon schools; his inference of a low civ
ilization ; the reference to the discrimi
nation as a "wicked absurdity," and final
ly his suggestion of the use of military
force have made of a question which
has heretofore excited but little interest
a burning topic. The proposal to grant
citizenship to the Japanese is roundly
denounced by the press of the state.
STATE IN PASSIVE REBELLION.
California at the moment is in a state
of passive rebellion. No action will be
taken until the question has been
threshed out in all its legal phases. Pro
fessor Louis Hengstler, head of the de
partment of international and constitu
tional law at the University of Cali
fornia, declared today that Mr. Roose
velt in his contention did "not have a
leg to stand on."
Consul-General Miller, of Yokohama,
who is in California on a visit, met this
morning with the school board and re
ceived full statistics on the subject.
United States District Attorney Robert
T. Devlin, acting on instructions from
Attorney General Moody, at the request
of Secretary of State Root, conferred at
length this afternoon with City Attorney
William Burke in an endeavor to arrive
at an agreement on the law involved,
with a view to a test in the state or
federal courts.
WILL STIFFEN SCHOOL LAW.
Governor-elect Gillett refused to dis
cuss the issue, but members of the legis
lature which will meet in January are
almost a unit in their assertion that the
state law providing for separate schools
for Japanese will be strengthened in
stead of relaxed, and the California del
egation in congress will be instructed to
redouble its efforts to secure the passage
of a Japanese exclusion bill.
CALLS ROOSEVELT INSINCERE.
Following are extracts from the state
press :
San Francisco Chronicle—This is an
implied threat to use the military forces
to put Japanese children into our
schools, when he well knows that he has
no authority to do anything of the kind
and that any such attempt could only
lead to his own impeachment. The ex
pression will strike the country as an ex
hibition of impotent rage which it is
very mortifying to see in a formal mes
sage of the president. But the worst of
all is the president's evident insincerity.
When referring to Hawaii, he says :
"Hawaii is now making an effort to se
cure immigration fit in the end to as
sume the duties and burdens of full
American citizenship."
That language and the context show
that the president recognizes that the
immigration which Hawaii has been re
ceiving is not so fit. That immigration,
however, has recently been almost ex
clusively Japanese.
NEW SUBJECT FOR RHETORIC.
Call—There is a good deal of excited
rhetoric in the message, based on mis
information.
W'e refuse to accept a re
buke that springs from misapprehension,
and, as for these "mutterings" of which
the president amusingly speaks, they
take their rise in a sense that the
1 American standard of living is impos
sible in competition with the Japanese.
We commend that to the president
subject worthy of his eloquence.
Sacramento Union—The president has
dealt with this matter impetuously; he
has argued from wrong premises and
he has reached wrong conclusions. Not
even the big stock is big enough to
compel the people of California to do a
thing which they have a fixed determina
tion not to do.
as a
The Message
The president's
message is unique,
even for him, in many respects. After
wading through his dreary and thread
bare lectures for some fifteen to eight
een columes the impression is that it is
undoubtedly a third-term campaign doc
ument, says the Lewiston Tribune. It
seems to get on all sides of everything
and to cast an anchor to the w inward
wherever there is a chance for a little
popularity. He has apparently tried to
be very, very good, but after doing the
best he could he gets natural again and
gives expression to his real sentiments
without disguise or thought of the
sequences.
in the finality and ensemble of the
sage. For some years now the president
has industriously side-stepped the ship
subsidy proposition, but this time he
boldly advocates the grant as per the
recommendation of the merchant
rine committee, which in substances pro
poses to tax the people in order to give
their money over to the steel trust and
shipping barons. Flexible
con
There is no third-termism
mes
ma
money, or
granting the power to banks to issue
and retire lawful circulating medium at
their pleasure thus giving them domin
ion over all property values, has also
previously been avoided by him, but
it receives his complete endorsement
and support. The president goes
further and recommends the depositing
of the customs receipts in banks, which
now
even
w
lie.
would practically abolish the treasury,
as there would then be no receipts, the
internal
going direct
ly into the banks. The president's hys
teria over the Japanese is little less than
amusing. Referring to the California
law—"To shut them out from the pub
lic schools is a wicked absurdity," quoth
he, and "in the matter now before
affecting the Japanese, everything that
is in my power to do will be done, and
all the forces, military and civil, of the
United States which I may lawfully em
ploy will be so employed." The chances
are he will find he cannot lawfully
ploy one single soldier or gun of the
people of the United States to change
or suppress the laws of
revenues now
me
em
a sovereign
so un
state, and if he attempts to do
lawfully the chances again are that he
ill hear something drop that he ought
to have heard long ago. Outside of
these spasms perhaps the most import
ant part of the message is the
sion of any mention of the tariff. This
question is generally considered to be
the most serious problem in American
political life and the president has noth
ing to say upon it although he has col
umns for. South America, The Hague,
international morality, seals and
suicide.
omis
race
The trusts and corporations
are extensively dealth with and again
the president attempts to distinguish
between "good" and "bad" combinations
in violation of law.
The plain man
well knows though that we can make
no progress toward redemption of ar
bitrary classifications for licensing trusts
that fill our own pockets while outlaw
ing trusts that fill the other fellow's
Pockets. Despite the encouraging
steps toward prosecuting Standard
Oil and other huge monopolies, the
administration neglects to explain why,
if they are guilty of the grave criminal
offenses with which they stand charged,
they have not been criminally proceed
ed against according to iaw. Of course
the president and his advisers have
some reasons for the adoption of the
soft and inocuous method and their
reasons may be perfectly sound, but
they have not been given to the public
and they ought to be given to the pub-