The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 10, 1919, Page 8

% - 1 Washington Bureau, Nonpartisan Leader DWARD J. KING of Galesburg, Ill, is an ordinary Republican congressman. He is neither a gangster nor a pronounced pro- gressive, but just an ordinary Republican who has fought his way up through the various factions to a seat in congress without having to tie himself . Congressman Tells of Security League (A How Illinois Representative Was Slandered by Notorious Special Interest Agents Masquerading as Chicago Branch of Pretended Patriotic Society account for many mysteries that had not been cleared up before.. The Chicago papers printed everything that was requested by the National Security league. . “Mr. Bancroft was fighting Mr. Britten, and in order to make the articles appear that they were not directed particularly against Mr. Britten, he thought about his former home and reaches down and gets hold of me and includes me in the article. Those articles were printed in a Chicago paper, and I wasn’t running in Chicago, and probably for the to any of the big corporations as their lobbyist. King got into trouble during the 1918 cam- paign with the Chicago ing their bit of war profi- teering and who had chosen as their camou- flage for this crime the National Security league. When he came before the congressional committee investigating the Secur- ity league, Representa- tive King displayed a clipping from a Chicago paper which said: i “A vigorous attack on .. . disloyal and anti-war { candidates for the sen- i | ate and house of repre- {ii | sentatives will be launch- ‘i ' ed soon by the Chicago branch of the National Security league, a patri- otic educational organi- zation. The candidates’ records in public office, if they have held any, their l ‘! | gentlemen who were do- - \ 3 Scarcely less disgraceful for an hon- orable nation than our widespread war profiteering was the use of patriotism as a cover for special interest politics. The harm which this activity did to our cause far outweighed anything the real disloyalists were able to do, for it was engineered by the most powerful financial interests in the country, who had control of our big press. The Na- tional Security league was one of the camouflages which these dissension- breeding interests used and congress is now investigating its activities and with good reason from its own point of view, for this league found that only 47 congressmen met the “acid test” of loyalty. The story on this page shows a typical case of its persecution of pub- lic men. Why were the agents of our department of justice silent about this, league and its purpose when they must have known what was going on? benefit of someone else in the district against me, because they were pub- lished in full-page ad- vertising, at advertis- ing rates, in every pa- per in'my distriet. * * “Mr. Bancroft is chief counsel for the Interna- tional Harvester com- pany. He used to lobby, down at Springfield. I was a member of the legislature for eight years, and for four yvears I was chairman of the committee on la- bor and industrial af- fairs. I always found Mr. Bancroft and his as- sistants vigorously op- posed to anything of such a nature as the workmen’s compensa- tion act, of which I had considerable charge.” Then King went on to tell how he introduc- ed in the Illinois legis- lature a bill which was it opinions on the war, and i their spoken comment a ] will be rigorously exam- ined by a committee of the league during the next two weeks. Those candidates who do not pass the acid test of loyalty will be assailed by pamphlets and letters to the voters, deseribing their records, by public, speakers, and by newspaper publicity. it ¢ To remove any possible stigma of politics (!) no {1 ¢ loyal candidates will receive any active aid toward i election.” These Chicago patrioteers selected a committee of 12 to conduct this “acid test” of the records and opinions of candidates for congress. Then the daily papers began to announce, day by day for two weeks, that Congressman King would “be called before” this committee at a certain time, to answer to charges affecting his loyalty. As the primary campaign was on, this had the effect of finding him guilty of some mysterious crime, long before he even got a chance to face his inquisitors. And who were these judges, responsible for poisoning the public mind far beyond even the or- dinary range of political defamation? The chairman was Emil C. Wetten, head of the Chicago branch; the others included H. H. Merrick, Cyrus McCormick, John F. Smulski, Edgar Ban- croft, James A. Patten and Joseph W. Mosez. “PATRIOTS” INCLUDE WHEAT GAMBLER PATTEN “Patten, the wheat king,” the victim ex- plained, “was the. man who, just prior to the declaration of war, bought up millions and millions of bushels of wheat for the National Biscuit company and had it stored away out of reach of the common masses. “Cyrus McCormick is in the International Harvester company, that manufactures all the harvester implements, practically, for the country—known as the harvester trust. I don’t think the price (of farm implements) went up over 300 per cent during the war, but it was very close to it. “John F. Smulski is a Pole, at one time state treasurer in Illinois. I was informed, and I heard it before, * * * that he had.pre- sented to him a decoration from the Austrian emperor. 5 “Edgar Bancroft is the head and front of the harvester trust. He is a lawyer and at one time lived in my town. As soon as I got into Chicago and found his name on the list I could T S R S T D A 8 00 st | ST PP e intended to remove what was known as the . “death warrant” clause in the contracts which railroad companies, espe- cially the Burlington, forced upon their employes when they joined the company’s accident relief as- sociation, whereby the employe forfeited all insur- ance if he sued for damages, and waived his right to sue if he accepted any money from the relief association. The harvester trust lobby prevented its pdssage as the trust was defrauding its injured workers by the same method. King was finally nominated by the Republican caucus for speaker of the lower house, but 25 corporation Republicans walked over to the Demo- The Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. This department during the war has failed to make any note of the disloyalty and evil of slandering those American citizens who had courage to stand against the special interests. It has put no damper on the vicious work of the National Security league. Rather The special interests were, of course, quick to seize on the opportunity as a means of discrediting reform. The department, according to the National Civil Liberties bureau, which has kept a careful record, has not caught one spy under the espionage act, but the act has done much to shut off liberal opinion and Public’ ownership of this department is essen it ‘has encouraged private spying and talebearing. PAGE EIGHT : ‘gan. As King told the committee: the fight on the profiteers. ' tial to our liberties. cratic side, elected a Democratic speaker, and then secured the election of Lorimer to the United States senate by this bipartisan combination. “I know that Bancroft led that fight,” said Congressman King. “Not in the open—he never comes into the open—but always behind, always planning, always scheming, talking high moral propositions in daytime and all the time working for the International Harvester com- pany and nobody else. For the last 10 years he has followed his clients as defendants in prosecutions brought by the government. Whether he finally kept them out of the peni- tentiary or not, I don’t know, but he served them faithfully and long.” STREET RAILWAY HEAD ONE OF THE “PATRIOTS”, There was another shining light among these . Security league inquisitors who lorded it over the congressional candidates in Illinois, by name Busby, who is president of the Chicago Surface Street Railway lines. King identified him as a former lobbyist against bills for the protection of the motormen and conductors on the street cars, who had insisted on naming a hand-picked subcom- mittee to deal with this legislation. Then there was H. H. Merrick, president of the Chicago As- sociation of Commerce, who seems to have shown his patriotic caliber by asking King, “How do you_ feel on government ownership of railroads?” Moses, a former president of the Chicago Bar association, demanded of the victim, whose speech in congress he had in his hand: “What do you mean here when you said this about Mr. Morgan?” King had spoken of J. Pierpont Morgan’s pri- vately conducted loan, which was floated in this country for the British and Frenth governments before the United States went to war. This man Moses couldn’t see anything but that name Mor- “When that name was sounded before the committee of the Security league there was a dead sil ce. Some- body had certainly committed blasphemy, or lese majesty, or something else, by lugging into the Congressional Record the name of Mr. Morgan.” Congressman King is just an ordinary Republican —not a reformer, nor a strong progressive, nor an agitator—but he has had a bellyful of the McCor- mick-Bancroft-Busby-Big Business Security league. H}s son was in the army as an aviator. His family had 150 years of American fighting record —on the people’s side—to their credit. He wishes he had told the Security league what Major _ Whittlesey of the “Lost Battalion” told the Ger- mans in the Argonne! e e I GLAD HE IS A MEMBER 5 - Norman, Okla. Editor Nonpartisan Leader: I have 13een a member of the Non- partisan league for some time and am glad to be a member. My hope is that the day is not far distant when every state from Mexico to Maine will be like the Northwest. I have read several comments from other papers finding fault with the farmers for organizing. I inclose a clipping from Indus- trial Democracy of Chi- cago, however, which is very good cempared with most of the stuff we see in print. It makes one feel better to think we are not fighting alone, and that some others at -least think we are justified. We are bound to suc- ceed. the opinions of Norman shows that the North- west is really not a safe place for his kind. HENRY LUTTMER.. The clipping giving - B. Black, for instance, il 5