--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Anderson, Edward H. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 10 number: 6 published: 1907-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Anderson, Edward H., "Events and Comments," *Improvement Era* 10, no. 6 (April 1907): 477–480.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera106unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera106unse start_page: 477 end_page: 480 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1907-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera106unse publication_year: 1907 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1907, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Events and Comments EVENTS AND COMMENTS. BY EDWARD H. ANDERSON. The Case of Senator Smoot.—Since the Senate decided, on the 20th of February, that Senator Reed Smoot is entitled to his seat, there has been a complete change of front in the newspapers in regard tc his case, and the national sentiment appears to be greatly in his favor, many of the leading eastern and southern papers declaring strongly for him. In doing so, they also give credit to the Latter- day Saints as a people who are declared not nearly so bad as they have heretofore been held out to be. After the speech of Senator Knox, the venerable chaplain of the United States Senate, Rev. Edward Everett Hale,voiced tne sentiments of many who have spoken after him, when he said of Knox's speech: "I listened with great interest, and thanked him for having made it. It presented the issue in proper form, and I agree with what h 3 said. It is my opinion that an erroneous impres- sion of the Smoot case has gone abroad, and that many good people have wrong ideas of it. I am glad Senator Knox corrected these mistaken ideas." Senator Foraker said of Senator Smoot: "No case whatever has been made that will justify us in either declaring the seat vacant or expelling the Senator from Utah. Reed Smoot has proved a better character than any other Senator here has a right to claim. He is so good a man that I almost doubt him. He has no vices. He does not drink, smoke, chew or swear, and he is not a polygamist." It is generally conceded that the memorials, petitions and applications hurled at the Senate were wretchedly out of place. For the years that the fight has been going on, thousands of women waxed furious against Senator Smoot for no other reason than that he was a "Mormon." Their petitions to the Senate can be called little less than a criminal contempt of the court, for it was only as a court that the Senate could consider the charges. Among the many favorable notices for the Senator, containing biting sarcasm for these misguided, but perhaps in many cases, excellent women, this from a cor- respondent of the Atlanta Georgian is characteristic and must suffice. Among other things he says : It probably has never dawned upon those good yet misguided citizens whose religious intolerance and zeal would aid in burning latter-day Cranmers and Lati- mers at the stake, that they have overdone the thing in their reckless handling of Reed Smoot. 478 IMPROVEMENT ERA. When these ultra-zealous defenders of the true faith started out on the war path to take the political scalp of the senior Senator from Utah, the impression very generally prevailed that Smoot, being a Mormon, was a believer in and prac- ticed polygamy in open defiance of the law, and v as as such offender against both the moral and statute law, unfit to retain his seat in the Senate. It will astound many to know that not only has Reed Smoot never entered into or advocated the plural marriage relation, but that the Senate committeeon privi- leges and elections has expressly decided that such charge has not even the flim- siest foundation, in fact, but that on the contrary, the personal character and private life of the Senator ' 'are above criticism and beyond reproach, and that not a line of evidence was submitted to the committee to substantiate the charge of polygamy. ' ' Those who in good faith, but without first familiarizing themselves with the facts, have joined in the hue and cry against Smoot will accept the situ- ation gracefully, but it was a fearful jolt to the bigots and intolerants when the Senate refused to expel the Senator. He closes with the following poetic effusion : Many women wi*h the teachers of Sunday Schools and preachers, Have been making things unpleasant for Reed Smoot; Facts and logic don't affect 'em, you cannot disconnect 'em From the idea that a Mormon is a brute. They declare that his admission to the Senate's a condition That no Christian country ever faced before ; Constitutional objections they meet with genuflections, Prayers, petitions, and round-robins by the score. With a zeal that's so profound they concede no middle ground, And no redeeming feature they will see ; Smoot's a Mormon, self-confessed' That's enough, they guess the rest, He must pull his freight from Washington, D. C. I don't court the indignation of the Gentiles in this nation By taking issue with their zeal in any way, Yet it seems that they ignore in their eagerness to score, Every principle of justice and fair play. Those seeking to disgrace him and from public life efface him, Have left unturned no stone to find a flaw; Every secret has been bared, and his private life been aired As surely never mortal's was before! Yet their efforts so laborious met with a doom inglorious, And the character they've ventured to disparage, Though by bitter tongues traduced, still no line of proofs produced That he practiced or defended plural marriage. When the clamor and confusion did subside, the same conclusion Was then reached, that no religious view, Church doctrine, creed or tenet forfeits right to seat in Senate, Whether held by Dunkard, Mormon, by Catholic or Jew. Following is the vote in detail on the Burrows amendment as to Senator Smoot not being entitled to his seat: Yeas—Bacon, Berry, Burrows, Carmack, Clapp (Ark.), Clay, Culberson, Du- EVENTS AND COMMENTS. 479 bois, Du Pont, Frazier, Hale, Hansbrough, Hemenway, Kittredge, La Follette, Lat- timer, McCreary, McLaurin, Money, Newlands, Overman, Pettus, Rayner, Sim- mons, Smith, Stone, Tillman 28. Nays—Aldrich, Allee, Ankeny, Beveridge, Blackburn, Brendegee, Bulkeley, Burkett, Burnham, Clark (Mont.), Clark (Wyo.), Crane, Curtis, Daniel, Depew, Dick, Dillingham, Dolliver, Flint, Foraker, Frye. Fukon, Gallinger, Gamble, Hey- burn, Hopkins, Kean, Knox. Lodge, Long, McCumber, Millard, Mulkey, Nelson, Nixon, Penrose, Perkins, Piles. Spooner, Sutherland, Warner, Warren—42. The 18 senators paired as follows: For Smoot, and against the resolution—Allison, Carter, Cullom, Dryden, Elkins, Piatt, Proctor, Scott and Teller. Against Smoot, and for the resolution—Messrs. Bailey, Foster, Mallory, McEnery, Martin, Morgan, Patterson, Taliaferro and Whyte. The Harriman Investigation.—Speaking of the Harriman railroad investi- gation, Harper's Weekly regrets that a man of such exceptional ability and such brilliant capacity for work should have such an unfavorable verdict made against him as the newspapers and men in private talk have rendered. It is that he has shown himself to be unscrupulous, voracious and insatiable beyond even the wont of Wall street operators. Not specially because he cares for money, only as a means to an end, but his play is work, and his use of money is to give him power to do things in the railroad world that in his judgment are crying to be done, and must be done, first or last, in the interest of all the people. But since he has overdone his job, the Weekly further facetiously insists that "He ought to do penance for his misdeeds : and the particular penance we would choose for him would be to build the Panama Canal. If he could be put in charge of that, we would be willing to lend him the key of the United States Treasury, and ask him no more than to leave us the change when the job was done. We think that course would save our taxpayers several hundred million dollars, and the best pos- sible canal would be built, and built in the least possible time. If it should turn out, when the canal was done, that the builder owned the whole of South America and had a blanket mortgage on Mexico and the United States, we would still have in Guam an island suitable for the residence of a man too smart to be left around. But we don't think he would ever have to live in Guam. Give him work enough of the right sort and he would be a safe man, and there is quite a bit of work in that canal." Second Peace and Arbitration Congress.—On June 15, this year, there will assemble at the Hague the second Congress of the World, at which every one of the forty-five nations of the globe will be present. To the first Congress the Czar invited only the twenty-six nations having diplomatic representatives at St. Petersburg, but at this coming conference representatives of all the peoples of the earth will assemble to discuss affairs common to all. It ought to be the greatest political event that has ever taken place. Wnen a federation of the world is once organized, and representative government once recognized among the majority of the nations of the earth, the dawn of Emanuel Kant's 'Eternal Peace" may appear; and the dream of Tennyson, "The Parliament of 480 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Man, The Federation of the World," may come true. But before this, as thought- ful students of the situation have expressed it, the next great step to be taken — the first being the establishment of the Hague conference itself— is an inter- national legislature, so that the world may be politically organized, with power to meet without a call from some sovereign. Until such an organization is effected, there is little use hoping for disarmament, for at present each nation hopes to increase its army and naval strength for the final adjustment. The leading ques- tion before the coming conference, then, will be—How can the next great step be taken toward world organization? This accomplished, the time will be ripe for disarmament. Gift to Education.—Perhaps the greatest single gift ever made for educa- tional purposes was recently made by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who added $32,- 000,000 to the $11,000,000 which he had previously given to the General Educa- tional Board for the benefit of educational institutions in the United States. Subscriptions have already been made to eighteen colleges in twelve states from the income of Mr. Rockefeller's earlier gifts. These subscriptions were all con- ditional. One-third of the new gift is to be added to the permament endowment of the General Educational Board; two-thirds is to be applied to such objects as Mr. Rockefeller or his son may direct from time to time : and any remainder not designated, is to be added, when they die, to the permanent endowment. The members of the Board who will administer this great gift includes some of the best known educators and financiers of the country, who are continually engaged in the study of educational conditions. The usual method which they adopt in distributing the money is to make the gifts conditional upon the raising of certain sums by the friends of the schools benefited. Among the Utah institutions which will make an effort to obtain the use of some of these funds is the Latter-day Saints University, which, during the latter part of February, appointed a committee to look into the matter of securing some of these funds for educational purposes in Utah. Panama Canal.—The canal will not be built under general contract; the engineering work will be taken up by three army engineers, Majors George W. Goethols, David Du B. Gaillrad and William L. Sibert. John F. Stevens, chief engineer in charge, like his predecessor, resigned to accept a more lucrative private position. All bids submitted under the recent advertisement were re- jected. Resignation of Senator Spooner.—Senator John C. Spooner of Wiscon- sin, one of the administion's ablest advocates in Congress, and as far as consti- tutional law is concerned by far the ablest disputant on the Republican side, has resigned his seat—the resignation to take effect May 1. For sixteen years he has been in the Senate and he had two years yet to serve. He was a man of re- markable power of mind and character. He resigns in order to devote himself to the practice of his profession —law. It is a striking comment on his honesty that at the age of 64, he must resign his seat in the Senate that he may practice law and make money enough to provide for his wife and children.