Government by consent of the Rocky Mountains

JAY FRANKLIN

A brief calling-by-name of the Cowboy Senate, or, one reason why Congress does such funny things

• Geographically, the Rocky Mountains are that large wrinkle along the western seaboard of the United States. Politically, the Rocky Mountains are a state of mind, bounded on the east by cattle, on the west by sheep, on the north by mining and on the south by sugarbeets. The cardinal points of its political compass are: North (more accurately, magnetic North), Senator Borah and the Foreign Relations Committee; South, Reed Smoot of Utah, the Mormon Church and the Senate Finance Committee; East, Senator Thomas J. Walsh of Montana and Teapot Dome; and West, Hiram Johnson of California and the Opposition.

Whether the Rockies, as a political mood, include the Pacific Coast States is a moot— one had almost said, a Smoot—point. The Rockies fluctuate: sometimes they extend as far east as the Dakotas and as far west as Manila, at other times only Idaho is visible. The important thing about them, however, is not so much their position as their strategic importance. Taking advantage of the seniority rule in the Senate, the representatives of the higher altitudes are renowned for political longevity. They may be "backward" economically, as Joe Grundy told them point-blank, but politically they have produced an inextinguishable breed of old men of the mountains whose specialty is chairmanships of Senate committees.

• The legislative and executive branches of the United States Government, so far as the Senate can control it, are measurably at the mercy of a group of political prospectors, beet-tenders, wool-herders, miners and smalltown lawyers who have survived in office, while the Senators from the populated sections of the country have occasionally been known to fail of reelection. The result is not only that the Rocky Mountaineers are chairmen of nearly every important Senate Committee, but that if the Republicans should lose an election, there are Democratic mountaineers on the committees all set to step in and take their places. And if you think that a Senatorial Committee hasn't any power, just page Albert Fall, Harry Sinclair or President Hoover.

The statistics of the situation are peculiarly pleasing. The seven Rocky Mountain States— Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—contain about half the population of the State of Illinois. If you add to them the population of Washington, Oregon and California, the combined total is about equal to that of Pennsylvania and a million and a half less than that of New York. Naturally, these seven or ten States control from fourteen to twenty votes in the Senate as compared with two votes apiece for Illinois and New York and, until recently, one vote for Pennsylvania. That's fair enough, for it's precisely what the Sainted Founders of the Republic, in their inscrutable wisdom, wrote into the Constitution.

The consequences, however, are rather piquant. There is a horse and a half to every voter in Idaho and the great majority are for Borah. California has a cow for every republican vote and is solid for Hiram Johnson. There are eighty thousand people in the State of Nevada, 44,000 horses, four thousand mules, 343,000 cattle, and over three million sheep, and they are admirably represented by Key Pittman. Utah's Mormons with their beets have seven sheep for every voter, and Reed Smoot gathers their wool in Washington. In all seven Mountain States seven hundred thousand votes were cast for Hoover in 1928, when Illinois cast two and a half times as many and New York and Pennsylvania each tripled the mountain ballot. Even if you add the million seven hundred thousand ballots of the Coast, you can't escape the feeling that the Mountains are voting live-stock.

• You have six Coastal Senators to represent five and a half million persons, 690,000 horses, 3,994,000 cattle and over six million sheep at Washington. You have fourteen Mountain Senators to represent three and a third million people, 19,000,000 sheep, two million horses and six million cattle. When you stack this stampede up against the five or six Senators who represent the twenty-five million people of Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York, you get what is charitably described as a limited revision of the agricultural schedules of the tariff. You get Joe Grundy of Pennsylvania talking about "backward States" and meaning it; you get George Moses of New Hampshire calling their Senators "sons of wild jackasses" and not smiling when he says it; and you get Senator Borah believing that a farmer is an agriculturist who votes the Republican ticket west of the Mississippi; you get King of Utah believing that Cuba and the Philippines are insignificant trifles compared with his sugar-beets, and you get government by consent of the Rocky Mountains.

This, again, is just, fair and according to Hoyle; that is to say, constitutional. And if Pennsylvania and New York don't like it they can try to amend the Constitution. Until then, as an eminent politico-moralist has so pithily observed, they should abide by the law.

The only unfair aspect of the situation lies in the mountaineers' control of the Senate Committees. A Senate Committee ranks in power with a branch of the executive; it is a small government department, with archives and bureaucrats to match, and the Chairman is well-nigh all powerful. He can kill bills and he can push pet projects. In the bucolic constituencies west of the political Bad Lands, political life is not quite as arduous as on the sidewalks of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. Where constituents are few and railroads and mining corporations are big, where the voters are mainly preoccupied with watching wool grow, hunting for gold in them hills, or supervising Mexican women and children beet-pickers, a Senator has the life of Riley, compared to the high political mortality among the wretched Easterners who have to spend time, money and energy in fighting for renomination and election against a shrewd and well-financed opposition. The result is that the mountaineers survive from election to election while the Senators from States where politics has become an industry rather than a career die off very frequently. Even so, when they do get to the Senate, as in the case of Smith of Illinois and Vare of Pennsylvania, the chances are the big beefand-beet men from the Rockies will keep them out.

• Now Committee chairmanships go largely by seniority. Observe the results: McNary of Oregon, Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture; Smoot of Utah, Finance Committee; Norbeck of South Dakota, Banking and Currency; Howell of Nebraska, Claims; Jones of Washington, Claims; Smoot again, Appropriations; Borah of Idaho, Foreign Relations Committee; Johnson of California, Immigration Committee; Indian Affairs, controlled by Senators from North Dakota, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Oklahoma; Pittman of Nevada, ranking Democrat on the Interstate Commerce Committee; Irrigation and Reclamation, solidly controlled by Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, California, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Arizona; Oddie of Nevada, Chairman of the Committee on Mines and Mining, with Senators from Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Utah; Waterman of Colorado, Patents; Phipps of Colorado, Post Offices; Shortridge of California and King of Utah, respectively ranking Republican and Democratic members of the Committee on Privileges and Elections. Public Lands and Surveys are controlled by the Dakotas, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and Arizona. The Committees which are headed or controlled by others than mountaineers and their allies from the Coast and the Bad Lands, include such potent bodies as the Library of Congress Committee, Printing, Enrolled Bills, Executive Expenditures, Inter-oceanic Canals, Public Buildings, and Territories and Insular Affairs. Interstate Commerce manufacturers (which is headed by La Follette, who is a mountaineer by disposition), Military Affairs, Naval Affairs and Rules are the only important committees under American control. The Rockies' control of Finance and Foreign Relations is worth all the other Committees in one.

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Seniority does it. You can't make old men of the mountains in a day. Ashurst of Arizona has been in the Senate since 1912, Hiram Johnson arrived in 1916 and his colleague, Sam Shortridge, in 1920. Phipps has represented Colorado since 1918. Borah has been a Senator since 1907, Reed Smoot since 1903, King of Utah since 1916. Wesley Jones of Oregon first went to the Senate in 1909. The late Senator Kendrick of Wyoming first appeared in the Senate in 1890, his colleague in 1917. Walsh of Montana first began to make a noise like an investigation in 1912. Turning to the States where politics represent more people than live-stock, of the two Senators from Illinois, one dates from 1924, the other from 1928. New York's two Senators date from 1922 and 1926, respectively. David Reed of Pennsylvania first saw the fierce light of bombast in 1922. His protectionist colleague, Grundy, is new.

That is why the rest of the country hasn't got a chance against the old men of the mountains. They have numbers, seniority, the Constitution, unlimited oratory, sheep, beets, mines and Mormons at their back. Threequarters of the mountaineers are lawyers and the Court House manner survives in their Senatorial equipment.

Nothing can pass without winning the consent of these orators. Senator Borah is consistently opposed to the Administration, the League of Nations, the World Court, the American Navy, the British Navy, the Monrovoid Doctrines. He is firm for Peace, the Outlawry of War, the Freedom of the Seas and Parity for Agriculture— all nice, specific propositions. Smoot wants protection on sheep, wool and woollen goods and he doesn't care who knows it. Dear old Senator King of Utah who, according to the inimitable Mr. Shearer, once wanted to have a naval base established at Salt Lake City, is opposed to the Marines, to Haiti, Nicaragua, Santa Domingo, China and elsewhere. Hiram Johnson wants a Boulder Dam badly. Shortridge wants peace and the old time religion. Key Pittman of Nevada wants a good market for silver. Phipps of Colorado wants the same for steel. McNary of Oregon wants the farmer to say he's happy, and a stiff duty on Canadian lumber. Walsh of Montana wants another oil scandal. Thomas of Idaho wants people to remember that there are two Senators from that blessed State. And they all want—and expect—to retain office.

This story has no happy ending. It will simply be continued in our next. Congress. The sheep-chaperones, cowcurriers, desert rats and beet-herders are going to keep right on writing tariffs, rejecting treaties, ejecting Senators, sinking battleships, and keeping us out of foreign entanglements, wise or otherwise, until the cows come home. As there are over ten million cattle in the state of mind known as the Rocky Mountains, this will take a long, long time. But if the East can't change the Constitution that gives the West its bucolic omnipotence, the least it can do is to build a few Borahs of its own and export them to the Rockies for use in national politics. And that's what the East has been doing. Of Colorado's two Senators, one was born in Vermont and the other in Pennsylvania; New Mexico has a Senator who was born on Long Island. Of Idaho's Ambassadors, one is from Illinois and the other from Kansas, which explains many things. Washington's Senators hail from Illinois and Ohio originally. Kendrick of Wyoming was a Massachusetts man. Of Montana's two investigators, one comes from Wisconsin and the other from Massachusetts. These things suggest that, while the East should exercise a little more care in selecting its Rocky Mountain Senators, the best advice that can be given to an ambitious Eastern politician is, "Go West, old man, go West!"