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As to the
Senate.

A more difficult problem is that of
keeping the United States Senate

equally in touch with national opinion and duly responsive. The difficulties arise from several considerations. One of these is the secondary election of Senators. The two seats in the Senate for each State have come to be the most highly coveted prizes of success in American public life. The Constitution directs that Senators shall be chosen by the State legislatures. The candidacy of ambitious and powerful men for seats in the Senate does not, as a rule, await the assembling of the State lawmaking bodies. Since the legislatures have to choose the Senators, the would-be Senators make it their business to choose the legislatures. The whole public life of not a few of our States within the past few years has been demoralized by the struggle for seats in the Senate at Washington. This clause in the Constitution, which specifies that the Senators shall be chosen by the legislatures of the States, has abundantly proven itself an unwise and improper restriction. The States should have been left to choose their Senators as they like. Some States for a long time,

THE PEOPLE

ENDORSE THE

in that case, might have preferred the present plan of election by the two branches of the legislature; but most of the States, and in our opinion all of them, as the result of an unrestricted opportunity to test different methods, would have come at last to the plan of direct popular election of Senators.

of Senators.

✓ Every year brings fresh confirmation Direct Election of the desirability of such a change, and upon few subjects are the people of the United States so nearly agreed. On a question of this kind the one set of men wholly incapable of expressing a wise or valuable judgment are the Senators themselves, who are the beneficiaries of the existing system. The members of the other House, on the other hand, have no reason for expressing a biased judgment; and when they vote, as they have done, with entire, or practical, unanimity, in favor of an amendment to the Constitution allowing the States to elect their Senators by popular vote, nothing could be in more shockingly bad taste than the determination of Senators themselves to prevent the question from coming before the States for an expression of final judgment. It is not necessary, of course, to change the existing system in those States which prefer to keep it; but liberty ought to be given to every State to elect its Senators by direct vote, as it elects its governor, if it so chooses. Delaware remains today without any representation in the Senate at

PRESIDENTS all, as the result of a legislative deadlock pro

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UNCLE SAM: "I'guess I can 'get ready for Thanksgiving now."-From the Inquirer (Philadelphia) November 8.

duced by the aggressive determination of one rich man to fight his way into the Upper House of Congress.

Party Issue.

In many States it has become plain As a Possible that the legislatures are rendered less fit instruments for their important lawmaking, financial, and administrative duties by reason of the fact that in at least two out of every three of their biennial sessions they must subordinate all other business to the struggle for the choice of a United States Senator. If the Republican party will not respond willingly to what is not merely a popular whim, but an intelligent and profound conviction, the Democrats will do well to make a party issue out of this question of the election of Senators. They have already done it nominally, and they should follow up the proposition as a distinctive party tenet. In their last national party platform they declared in favor of "an amendment to the federal Constitution providing for the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people." The Republicans, on the other hand, omitted all refer

ence to the question in their platform. We hear from the Democrats many references in terms of glittering generality to their party principles, and it is not always easy to find out just what they really have in mind as fundamentally distinguishing them from the Republican party. But we think they might fairly claim a higher faith than the party now in power in the good sense and wisdom of the plain people, and particularly in the superior usefulness of a direct resort to the ballot box.

The States

Another difficult problem that relates and Their to the United States Senate has to do Senate Seats. with the equal representation of growingly unequal States. As a condition upon which to get the Constitution adopted at all it was necessary, in the convention of 1787, to remove the opposition of small States by recognizing the principle of equal State sovereignty. And so the Senate was shaped somewhat on the analogy of a congress of ambassadors. However true it may have been that the Union as originally formed was a federation of separate States, it is far less true of the country as it stands to-day. Two-thirds of the existing States never had any rights at all of separate sovereignty, but were parts of the common national domain, rather carelessly and unscientifically divided off into administrative provinces called by us Territories, and then singly or in groups erected into States, and admitted on equal terms to participation in the federal Government. The earlier admissions have almost invariably been justified by subsequent results, this being particularly true of the great series of States lying in the Mississippi Valley. Texas and California were above ordinary rules. Each was an imperial acquisition, and there could be no question about prompt admission to statehood, and about the moral, as well as the legal, title of each to equal rank in the United States Senate.

Recent

to the Union.

But the later admission of a number Admissions of States lying on either side of the Rocky Mountain zone was imprudent, because experimental. There was a chance, to be sure, that these great areas would acquire population rapidly, and become the actual equals of Mississippi Valley and Eastern States. But since the scattered inhabitants of these areas were comfortable and well off under their territorial governments, there was no proper reason for making haste to admit them to the Union. Most of the undue and undignified precipitancy that was shown was the result of supposed political necessity and sheer moral weakness in the Republican party. The party had its lesson

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Comparisons.

There were ample reasons of a difSome Useful ferent sort why Utah should not have been admitted with its present boundaries seven years ago; yet its deficiency of population alone gave reason enough why it should have been kept on the waiting list for a good while to come, inasmuch as it has not even at this moment one-sixth of the average population of the forty-five States of the Union. To put it differently, the average citizen of the United States, in admitting a State like Utah, so far as the Senate is concerned, waives in favor of the Rocky Mountain man five-sixths of his own representation. Montana still has population enough for only one member of the House

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Hon. De Forest Richards, of Wyoming.

Hon. Frank White,
of North Dakota.

Hon. Charles N. Herreid,
of South Dakota.
FOUR REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS-ELECT OF NEW NORTHWESTERN STATES.
(All but Mr. Morrison are reëlected.)

of Representatives in the newly elected Con-
gress, while Texas has gained three members in
a decade, and is now to have sixteen seats.
Montana's one Representative for the coming
ten years will meet Texas' sixteen, and New
York's thirty-seven; but Montana counts for
exactly as much in the Senate as Texas or New
York. Experience thus far has not justified
the division of Dakota into two States. If ad-
mitted at all, Dakota should have come in as
one State, although there might have been an
understanding that if it were so desired by the
people themselves, a division into two States
might take effect at that future time when each
State thus to be formed should have the average
population of the other members of the Union.

Areas

Hon. John T. Morrison, of Idaho.

area somewhat less than 300,000 square miles. With its smaller area, Texas gained more than 813,000 people in the last decade, while with their considerably larger area this group of three States-Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho altogether added only 220,000. Little New Jersey alone, meanwhile, had added nearly 440,000 in the same period, while Minnesota had added 450,000. These new Rocky Mountain States have not in rapidity of growth justified those glowing promises made for them at the time of their admission twelve and thirteen years ago. The two Dakotas, Montana, and Washington, were admitted in November, 1889, while Idaho and Wyoming won their statehood in the next year.

Utah as the For example, the two Dakotas, taken

Popedationd, together, have now about 700,000 people. North Dakota has a population equivalent to one-fifth of the average of all the States, and South Dakota's people are about one-fourth as many as those of the average State. Texas, on the other hand, gets along very well as a single State with an area almost twice as great as that of the Dakotas combined. Washington and Oregon might well have been united, -again with the understanding that if they so desired they should constitute two States at such a time in the future as they had reached the average development of their sister commonwealths. Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho should have been kept in the territorial stage for another decade, and then should have been admitted as one large State. Taken together, they have a population of about 500,000 in an area somewhat exceeding 300,000 square miles. Texas already has a population of more than 3,000,000 in an

take.

It is, of course, the merest nonsense Latest Mis- to say that presentation of these plain facts involves any unfriendliness toward the States thus mentioned. The land speculators and ambitious politicians of those Territories, rather than the ordinary citizens, were the people who urged what they called their claims" to statehood, and they are not to be censured for presenting their case to the best of their ability. All fault-finding should be reserved for the statesmen at Washington, who, for immediate party reasons, conferred the irrevocable rank and authority of statehood upon mere casual divisions of the public domain which had scarcely begun to grow into any organic unity as bodies politic. More recently, at the beginning of 1896, the Territory of Utah was admitted. Utah, as a Mormon center, had indeed become a distinct social and political organism; but its population was too far below the average in numbers, and its civilization was too defective in important respects, to justify its

being made one of the system of States. It should have been kept indefinitely in the territorial rank, with a view to annexing it ultimately to Nevada. But the merits of the case were ignored.

The Pending

This whole question of the Territories "Omnibus and their admission now comes up in Bill." the most concrete and urgent form, because the House of Representatives last winter passed an "omnibus bill" to admit to the Union the Territories of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, while the question was only prevented from being acted upon in the Senate by a promise which Senator Quay, of Pennsylvania, was in position to exact, that the measure should be given a leading place on the calendar of the new session, and should be taken up in the very first week of December. Both parties inserted in their last national platforms planks favoring the admission of these three Territories. Undoubt

edly, the Democrats are deliberately committed to the policy. The Dakotas and other new Northwestern States were admitted by the Republicans with distinct reference to the possible need of their electoral votes in the Presidential election of 1892. The Democrats have ever since demanded the admission of Arizona and New Mexico on the theory of party compensation, believing, as they do, that in the long run these Southwestern sisters would be Democratic both in the Senate and in the Electoral College.

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part of the old Indian Territory, through the extinction of Indian titles and the successive opening up of several tribal reservations. Oklahoma has an area of 38,958 square miles. This includes 5,000 or 6,000 square miles of the long, narrow "No-man's Land" strip, which ought to be added to Texas, as a glance at the map will readily enough show. With that strip detached, and the 31,000 square miles of the present Indian Territory added, Oklahoma would have permanent and scientific boundaries, and a suitable size and shape. It should remain, by all means, in the territorial condition until the process of opening up what remains of the Indian Territory shall have been completed. Oklahoma, as it now exists, merely represents a temporary internal division of the Indian Territory made for the purpose of providing a way to govern that portion which was fully opened up to white settlement. When the full dimensions of the old Indian Territory are restored, the whole region thrown open, and all conditions duly and deliberately considered, the time will have come for taking up seriously the question of admission under the name of Oklahoma, or any other name that the people may choose and Congress may accept. The facts are too plain to be denied,

Consider

Future.

To admit Oklahoma now, with its Oklahoma's irregular and accidental boundaries, -and its area only half that of the neighboring States of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas, would be a scandalously unstatesmanlike thing for ('ongress to do. With all party considerations laid aside, and with patient, intelligent, and honest study given to the question, C'ongress could not possibly at this time admit Oklahoma. Furthermore, the best people of Oklahoma know that this is true, and that the present statehood movement is one of boomers and politicians for merely local and temporary ends. The admission of new States to our federal Union is one that involves history of an important sense for centuries to come. Shame upon alleged statesmen at Washington who will not allow such a question to come up for dignified and mature consideration, but who try to settle it upon snap votes, in utter disregard of all the motives that should actuate the national lawmaking body. Oklahoma is making admirable progress as a farmi

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MAP TO SHOW OKLAHOMA'S ABSURD BOUNDARIES.

community. Its people are quite like the people of the farming States lying to the north and east of it, and when its boundaries have been fixed as they ought to be, with the opening of the Indian country completed, it will be welcomed by everybody as a splendid accession to the Union, a State which will soon take fine rank, and rapidly forge ahead to a position where it will have almost or quite the average population of the rest of the Union.

Let the President

If Congress shall vote to admit it Consider His now, in the wrong shape and at the Geography. wrong time, let us hope that President Roosevelt will intervene with a prompt veto. Such an action would be commended by the whole country; for every sensible citizen would appreciate the reasons, and no man would believe in his heart that the President was in the slightest degree affected by the question whether or not Oklahoma, at the next Presidential election, would stand in the Republican or the Democratic column. If participating in the Presidential election, it would in all probability give its vote for Roosevelt; but that is an argument that cannot properly be taken into account. It is a question of our permanent political geography, and of Oklahoma's own best destiny and true glory as a State.

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square miles, and New Mexico nearly 123,000. Taken together, however, they are considerably smaller than Texas, and they have nothing like the prospect of population growth that Oklahoma possesses. At the last census Arizona had nearly 123,000 people, and New Mexico just over 195,000. At its present rate of growth it will take New Mexico several hundred years to catch up with the average population of the existing States. Arizona has only a little more than half the population of an ordinary Congressional district. Oklahoma, with its boundaries properly extended to include the whole of the Indian Territory, would have already a good deal more than twice the population of

both Arizona and New Mexico. According to the latest available statistics, Arizona has 16,500 pupils enrolled in common schools, as against more than 1,200,000 in the State of New York, and more than 1,150,000 in the State of Pennsylvania. Yet Senator Quay, of Pennsylvania, proposes to give the adjacent States of Arizona and New Mexico the same voting power in the United States Senate as that which is held by the adjacent States of New York and Pennsylvania. We have no reason to underestimate all that is excellent in the Spanish-speaking element which forms so large a part of the population of New Mexico; but no one will pretend that this population, largely illiterate and scarcely at all acquainted with our principles and methods of government, is at present fit for statehood.

Conditions.

Of all the States and Territories in Population the Union, New Mexico and Arizona have the largest proportion of inhabitants who cannot speak English. The current language of the masses in New Mexico is Spanish, and even the children who learn English in the schools revert to the parent language in later years. New Mexico, also, leads the list of States and Territories, by a large percentage, as respects the proportion of illiteracy among the native white population. Furthermore, in all the inhabited spots of Arizona and New Mexico male population is greatly in excess of female, showing wholly unsettled conditions of society. It

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(Outside of the shaded areas, the two Territories are practically without population. These inhabited parts have the low average of only from two to six per square mile, excepting the more heavily-shaded districts around the capitals, Phœnix and Santa Fé, in which the population averages, according to the census, from six to eighteen per square mile.)

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