nt the voters by whom
they were elected, but the special interests by whom they are
controlled. They believe so because they have so often seen Congress
reject what the people desire, and do instead what the interests demand.
And of this there could be no better illustration than the tariff.

The tariff, under the policy of protection, was originally a means to
raise the rate of wages. It has been made a tool to increase the cost of
living. The wool schedule, professing to protect the wool-grower, is
found to result in sacrificing grower and consumer alike to one of the
most rapacious of trusts.

The cotton cloth schedule was increased in the face of the
uncontradicted public testimony of the manufacturers themselves that it
ought to remain unchanged.

The Steel interests by a trick secured an indefensible increase in the
tariff on structural steel.

The Sugar Trust stole from the Government like a petty thief, yet
Congress, by means of a dishonest schedule, continues to protect it in
bleeding the public.

At the very time the duties on manufactured rubber were being raised,
the leader of the Senate, in company with the Guggenheim Syndicate, was
organizing an international rubber trust, whose charter made it also a
holding company for the coal and copper deposits of the whole world.

For a dozen years the demand of the Nation for the Pure Food and Drug
bill was outweighed in Congress by the interests which asserted their
right to poison the people for a profit.

Congress refused to authorize the preparation of a great plan of
waterway development in the general interest, and for ten years has
declined to pass the Appalachian and White Mountain National Forest
bill, although the people are practically unanimous for both.

The whole Nation is in favor of protecting the coal and other natural
resources in Alaska, yet they are still in grave danger of being
absorbed by the special interests. And as for the general conservation
movement, Congress not only refused to help it on, but tried to forbid
any progress without its help. Fortunately for us all, in this attempt
it has utterly failed.

This loss of confidence in Congress is a matter for deep concern to
every thinking American. It has not come quickly or without good
reason. Every man who knows Congress well knows the names of Senators
and members who betray the people they were elected to represent, and
knows also the names of the masters whom they obey. A re