3. Would you follow the usual practice of giving appointments primarily to those who had engaged in political service in your behalf, or had contributed in other ways to your success?

4. Would you under any circumstances go outside your party in making Cabinet or other important appointments?

In this connection, please clearly define your attitude toward partisan politics and party responsibility.

5. Are you satisfied with the present convention method of making presidential nominations? If not, to what better way would you commit your administration?

At this point, I invite your attention to a plan of convention reform suggested in the last Searchlight, briefly as follows:

It should be understood, once and for all, that

The selection of presidential candidates ought not to be the perquisite of self-seeking professional politicians, nor the special privilege of predatory organizations, but the most important public duty of the people.

Accordingly, there must be

Public sponsorship and auspices from beginning to end. Public payment of all necessary and legitimate expenses. A presidential preference primary for the election of delegates.

A legally established procedure for conventions which will enable the majority to prevail in all controversies respecting issues and individuals.

In compliance with these principles, the Congress and the States, working in harmony, should enact legislation which will provide that:

1. On a fixed date every four years, in all states, there shall be held a presidential primary for the election of delegates to all party conventions.

2. From each state where a party polled a majority or plurality of votes in the last preceding gubernatorial election, the number of its delegates shall equal the number of Senators and Congressmen from such state; from each other state the number of its delegates shall be prorated according to the percentage of votes cast for that party's gubernatorial nominee in the last preceding election.

3. Any citizen of the United States who is a qualified elector shall be eligible for election as a delegate to a national convention, excepting those holding public office or political position in a party organization.

4. To be eligible for the nomination, each candidate for President and Vice President shall file a notice of his candidacy in all states, with a statement of his platform, not exceeding 1,000 words.

5. In addition to voting for the delegates committed to a certain candidate, the electors shall be required to register second and third choices, which shall be binding upon the delegates to be elected.

6. All national conventions shall be held in the chamber of the House of Representatives at Washington.

7. The public shall be excluded, the galleries being reserved for representatives of the press.

8. When assembled in convention, the Vice President shall be nominated first, the President second, and the platform then adopted, which shall contain the declarations made by the successful candidate.

9. On the first ballot for President, each candidate receiving less than five per cent of the votes of delegates shall be dropped from the list, and on each succeeding ballot the lowest candidate shall be dropped, until a nomination is made by majority vote.

10. The same procedure shall apply to the nomination of Vice President.

11. All necessary expenses of candidates and delegates in connection with primaries and conventions, and of the election itself, shall be paid out of the national Treasury.

6. Do you approve the principles underlying these suggested changes? If not, why? If they have your approval, would you, as President, seek to put them into full effect?

7. Will you stand for, and seek to enact into law, the basic, fundamental principle that every election, from that of the President down, should be considered solely as a public matter (as opposed to the present practice of political control and objectives), to be conducted and paid for publicly?

8. Do you favor, or disapprove, the Norris amendment, which seeks to abolish the electoral college and to provide for the direct election of the President? 9. What is your remedy for all the abuses and perversions of patronage? Would you continue the present practices in this field? In making appointments which principle would guide your choice, that of building an effective party machine as a means, of dictating a renomination, or that of promoting the highest, most independent and efficient public service?

10. What would you do, if anything, to give minorities representation and influence in governmental affairs? Or would you prefer only a two-party system, with the ultimately inevitable consequences of predominant and exclusive political objectives for both?

THE

The President and Publicity

HERE is no middle ground with respect to publicity throughout our public life. Either government is public business, and not for politics or special privilege, or it is for the few and against the many. If officials, both elected and appointed, are servants of the people, it follows that secrecy at any point is abhorrent and utterly indefensible.

Let us begin this group of questions, then, with one that will crucially test your attitude and inclinations:

11. Do you favor, and would you provide for, open meetings of your Cabinet, with duly accredited representatives of the press always present to report all that is said and done?

12. Do you favor, and would you as President demand, easy public access to all the records of all government branches, departments, commissions and bureaus?

13. Do you favor, and would you seek to secure, publicity of all income tax and internal revenue matters?

14. Do you favor, and would you insist upon, without camouflage of any kind, publicity of all campaign contributions and campaign "deals," including those pertaining to post-election deficits?

(Of course, if all legitimate and necessary primary and election funds were publicly provided, as they should be, there would be no campaign corruption to be safeguarded by publicity.)

15. Do you favor, and would you stand for, publicity with respect to indorsements for all appointments by yourself and your subordinates, impar

tially recording and revealing both those for and against?

16. Do you believe in, and would you have your administration seek to bring about, the complete abolition of the executive session practices of Senate and House, and all their subordinate bodies?

17. Do you favor, and would you have made, a complete audit and report of all the money that the United States put into the late war?

In this connection, it is pertinent to recall that there has never been such an audit. It is variously estimated that from a third to more than a half of our war funds were wasted or stolen, the truth of which can be revealed only by a complete audit. The necessity for this ought to be one of the biggest issues of the campaign.

18. Do you favor, and would you enforce so far as your authority and influence would reach, a complete report to the public from each of the war agencies of the government, such as the Alien Property Custodian, the Shipping Board, the War Finance Corporation, etc.?

19. Do you favor, and would you continue, the existing secret service (or espionage) system of the various departments of the government?

20. Do you favor, and would you practice completely, both at home and abroad, without the slightest evasion or subterfuge, the principle of open diplomacy?

The President and Executive Reform

YOU, who are successful in this campaign, will be

in command of the most varied and extensive executive organization in the world today. The President of the United States is the mightiest potentate now existing upon the face of the earth, being, personally and politically, directly and indirectly, at least seven-eighths of the American government, with that tendency toward executive domination increasing by leaps and bounds.

"If I were President," said one citizen, "my efforts would be directed to making that office less high and mighty. First of all I would use all the powers of that position to tear down those powers and rebuild them where they belong, upon a solider foundation of democracy."

It is not human nature to expect any such presidential self-sacrifice, however much the country would benefit; but the question of your relation to the component parts of the great machinery of federal administration is just, pertinent and practical. Therefore

21. Do you approve of the present tendency toward greater and greater bureaucratic usurpation of power? Where is the safety line? What is your remedy, if any? How do you propose to apply it? 22. Wherein should the principle of states' rights be applied as a means of correction? and how?

23. Are you satisfied with the present so-called "budget" system? If not, how would you make it

conform to true budget principles? Do you believe, with many students of government, that the fiscal affairs of the nation are become so important as to demand that the Budget Bureau be changed to a Cabinet position?

24. Do you favor, and for what specific purposes, the creation of a Department of Education, with a Cabinet secretary at its head?

(This means a Department of Education solely, not a department in which this supremely important subject is combined with welfare, health or other activities.)

25. What is your attitude toward the Federal Trade Commission? Should that agency be restricted, or given bigger opportunities for the kind of work it has been doing? Specifically, what is your opinion of the investigation of the packers by the Federal Trade Commission? also the Pittsburgh base case? and the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce case? Do you approve, or disapprove, of the Congressional attacks on this commission, through attempts to restrict its appropriations and otherwise? What type of Commissioners should be appointed on this board?

26. What is your attitude toward the "promotive" character of the work of the Department of Commerce? Should it also engage in "regulative" activities?

27. Would you appoint persons on the United States Tariff Commission who are personally and selfishly interested in matters to come before that tribunal?

28. What is your program for the Shipping Board and the Emergency Fleet Corporation? Should the irresponsibility of the latter organization be continued?

29. How would you deal with the bureaucratic powers and practices of the Indian Bureau?

30. Inasmuch as it was solely a war agency, and should long ago have been disbanded, would you at once, if you were President, take steps to wind up the affairs of the Alien Property Custodian, make a full report to the public, secure restitution for such property as may have been stolen, and seek the punishment of all who may have grafted from that source, be they high or low, and regardless of their political or business associations?

The President and Congress

YOUR relations to Congress are vitally important.

The legislative branch of the government is basically at the lowest ebb in all our history. Bossism is rampant. Its procedure is abominable—a disgrace to democracy. The House particularly has almost ceased to function as a deliberative body.

Conditions have grown so generally obnoxious, politically and in a parliamentary sense, that Congress seemingly has lost all perspective as to its own shortcomings: it is utterly beyond reason to expect fundamental reformation of character and conduct to come from within. "The next President," acting

with courage and without compromise, from the one motive of public welfare, should take the lead in bringing about a renovation and reconstruction of the national legislature. There is no other immediate way.

A President, by playing politics with Congress, can add to its depravities. The Chief Executive, on the other hand, may measurably elevate its whole tone by setting an example of open, non-political public service in all matters that require joint attention. Beyond all that, however, is the crying need of fearless, unselfish, statesmanlike leadership in directing the mind of America to an exact realization both of what Congress is and what it ought to be.

A presidential candidate may hesitate to "take a stand" on these questions for fear of alienating the campaign support of powerful Congressional politicians, but the issues are of far-reaching public importance, which fact, I am sure, will influence you to answer fully and frankly.

These most pertinent and practical questions follow:

31. With reference to a reapportionment measure, which the Congress has not passed since the last census, in your opinion should the membership of the House of Representatives be kept as it is, at 435? or decreased? or increased? What size of House will best adapt itself to truly deliberative results?

32. Do you believe in a continuation of the bicameral system? If you approve of it, what are your remedies for the evils of the conference committee?

In December, 1923, The Searchlight outlined the House situation and suggested remedies, as follows:

A real rules reform program must be predicated upon an understanding of the basic causes of the vicious system that now exists, as follows:

1. Partyism is the parent evil in Congress. Party responsibility, a strict party attitude, may assert itself in the higher sense in one case out of a hundred, but the other ninety-nine manifestations of partisanship find expression in such abortions as spoils, seniority, secrecy and selfish organization advantage. Partyism no longer determines legislative policy; it concerns itself with pelf and power. It has long since lost the spirit and purpose of public service. It makes a business, not of public affairs, but of politics. The last election and the next-that is the circle of its interest, and vision. A government of, by and for politicians-that is its goal.

There can be no adequate reconstruction, no real re-Americanization, of the law-making machinery without a complete comprehension of the part end-in-itself politics plays throughout the existing spoils system. The possible good in partisanship is so swallowed up and overshadowed by its viciousness that no compromise is possible.

The House must be organized upon a non-partisan basis. 2. Boss power must be traced to its remotest parliamentary entrenchments, and all those unfair fortifications torn down. It will do no lasting good to deal with the agencies of obstruction; let the causes of obstruction be removed, and upon their foundations be built institutions of parliamentary liberty and justice.

For example, so long as so-called rules reformers fool with remedial devices to compel committee action, failure will be written of their efforts. Instead let them dig out by the roots every abortive boss power that now enables a committee to evade its plain duty, to practice obstructive tactics, to be "a law unto itself."

There should be a simple rule requiring every committee, within a reasonable time limit, to report back all measures placed in its hands.

3. A hopeless congestion of business would result, the Old Guard will answer. Of course. There is a hopeless congestion of business, anyway.

The remedy for that is to confine the work of Congress strictly to matters that are public and national in scope. Probably three-fourths of the time not now given to "privileged" matters is taken up with the consideration of purely local and private bills. In this respect Congress appears more like a municipal council than a national legislature.

At present, for example, if the Court of Claims, supposed to settle such questions, refuses to allow certain claims, in all probability the matter is brought into Congress through the introduction of a bill. It is the same with pensions. What the Pension Bureau regards as too questionable to be acted upon is taken into Congress. In a degradingly petty way, Congress has become the supreme court of plunder and spoils.

The right

All such local "trash" should be eliminated. kind of a budget system would accomplish most of this. In every field where "pork" now prevails, let Congress legislate as to both policy and amount of appropriation, and then leave to responsible executive agencies the apportionment and distribution of the funds.

4. The right kind of a budget system would operate also to curtail the "privileged business" of the House which now contributes so demoralizingly to "log jams." If the so-called budget system were more than a subterfuge, a political football, if it conformed to vital budget principles, all regular bills having to do with both appropriations and revenue would be merged into one administration measure.

5. Congress must be divorced also from the corrupting influence of patronage. No national legislator should have the slightest opportunity, directly or indirectly, to build a personal or party machine through having a hand in appointments. Similarly the "lame duck" evil should be eradicated by making every defeated Congressman and Senator ineligible for a presidential appointment for at least two years after such repudiation by the people.

6. Another vital necessity is to reduce the membership of the House to a workable number. True deliberation is a fundamental necessity in legislation. Deliberation implies that every member shall have equal opportunity to represent his constituents. This ideal condition cannot exist with 435 members.

Keeping in mind all the foregoing outline of basic evils to be corrected, here are the American principles upon which the reformation of the House must be founded:

1. An organization based on efficiency, rather than spoils, which means that partyism shall be shorn of its sustaining plunder.

2. The outlawry of secrecy with respect to all agencies of legislation, including those that are unofficial. No body having anything to do with public business should be permitted to meet in any part of the Capitol or its office buildings unless the public is admitted to see and hear.

3. Restoration of the rights of individual members each to represent his or her constituency and to exercise a deliberative influence upon all measures up for action.

4. Majority rule at every vital point.

5. Elimination of all local and private legislation, confining the work of Congress to matters that are public and national in scope.

6. Establishment of the all-important principle that regular, orderly, routine business shall be the rule and not the exception.

7. The setting up of a real budget system.

8. The divorcing of pork and patronage from legislation. Getting down more to details, these reconstructive changes are absolutely essential to the reclamation of the House as truly deliberative and representative body:

1. Abolish every standing committee that is not essentially useful. At least half should be eliminated.

2. Next provide for the organization of the remaining committees on a non-partisan basis. There are at present 435 members to be apportioned, say, among twenty-nine committees. For this purpose the country might be divided into fifteen districts, with territory as contiguous as possible, each having twenty-nine representatives. Then have the representatives of each of these fifteen districts meet publicly, with duly recorded proceedings, and elect from their own number one member to each of the twenty-nine committees. This method would not only eliminate partyism in organization, but also the sectionalism that now prevails. In addition it

would reduce the influence of seniority to such an extent that new members would have a voice in legislation.

3. Have each committee elect its own chairman. There can be no argument against that, and it would be a body blow to bossism in Congress.

4. All necessary committee clerks should be employed by the committee for public business rather than by the chairman for his personal political work.

5. It is indefensible and an insult to the public that Congress should have permitted its committees to meet in darkness. Every standing committee should assemble in the open and be required to keep a public record of its proceedings. More than that, a journal of these proceedings should be published at adequate stated times-at least twice a monthin the Congressional Record. The work of its committees is at present far more important to the public than that of the House itself. It follows, therefore, that it should be brought into public view.

6. Each standing committee should be required by the rules to keep such a calendar as would enable everyone interested to know at any time the exact status of its business. In addition, there should be bulletins posted and notices printed in the Congressional Record announcing all meetings and for what purpose.

7. Provide a time limit in each session for the introduction of bills, excepting those of an administrative or emergency nature. The first sixty days would seem to be ample for this purpose.

8. Then require every standing committee, within a reasonable time limit, to report back to the House all measures placed in its hands. If a bill be particularly important and the committee desires further time for its consideration, let the request be made in the open House. Such a rule would shake the foundation forces of the machine. It would absolutely prevent obstruction and obviate all necessity for a "discharge" calendar.

9. Measures so reported should be placed upon two calendars.

The first calendar would include all bills recommended by the committees for passage, later to be taken up in a routine way, without any boss-imposed restrictions which would make a mockery of deliberation.

Bills reported for "indefinite postponement" should be placed upon a second calendar, to safeguard the rights and interests of their authors. It would be only just and reasonable to give each author of an adversely reported bill a reasonable time, say ten days, in which to make a motion for the consideration of his measure. Were his motion defeated, that would end it. Should the House vote for consideration, then the bill in question would go to the first calendar and take its regular course.

The bosses could not exist for a day with their obstructive powers thus eliminated.

10. Provide at once for an electrical voting system, to save the time required for yea and nay roll calls, and to remove the bosses' stock excuse for dodging record votes that the calling of the roll takes too much time.

11. Abolish the Committee of the Whole, which is the House under an assumed name. Or, at least provide that every decision of this body may be of public record.

12. Limit the jurisdiction of the Committee on Rules to proposals having to do with the regular rules of the House, thus taking away its authority over gag rules and investigations.

33. Does the above program meet with your approval? Will you, if elected, give it public endorsement and recommend to Congress that such reconstructive changes be made?

34. What parts of it do you disapprove, if any? and why?

35. Do you favor the Norris amendment to abolish "lame duck" sessions of Congress?

36. Do you believe in, and would you uphold, the right of committees of Congress to investigate executive departments?

This is asked particularly because of the position taken by President Coolidge with reference to a

pending inquiry into some of the affairs of the Treasury by the Couzens committee, in which Mr. Coolidge raised the question of the Senate's right to inquire into matters not pertaining directly to legislation.

37. Would you, on any occasion, employ patronage to influence legislation?

38. In cases where the Supreme Court annuls acts of Congress by declaring their unconstitutionality, would you favor giving Congress power to reenact them through more than a majority vote? or do you favor a continuation of this present power of annullment by the Supreme Court?

39. Do you favor, or disapprove, the idea of making Cabinet Secretaries ex-officio members of Congress, without a vote, but with the privilege of discussing measures pertaining to their departments and being interpolated concerning such legislation? 40. What issues should be made administration measures?

TODA

The President and Foreign Affairs

ODAY the world is in desperate need of reconstructive leadership. America is in the best position to supply that leadership. It may be done in one of three ways: by various forms of coercion; by actual participation in the affairs of Europe; and by the example of good government and economic justice in our own country.

The simplest, safest and probably the most effective influence America could exert is through first setting our own affairs in decent order in conformance with the principles of honest, unselfish, efficient and economical self-government.

In this connection, please answer:

41. Do you believe this government should continue, or retrace, its steps toward imperialism? How would your ideas be applied (a) to the Philippines; (b) to other insular territory?

42. What is your program to lessen the burdens of militarism? How do you propose to bring about disarmament?

43. What steps would you take, if any, to outlaw war?

44. Do you favor a popular referendum on the subject before permitting Congress to declare war, except in cases of threatened or actual invasion?

45. Would you favor a complete, unbiased and final determination of the question of responsibility for the late war as the first requisite in dealing with all the resulting issues of reparations, settlements and treaties of every kind?

46. Would you have this nation enter the League of Nations? Upon what terms?

47. Do you believe this nation should join a World Court? If so, what code and course of conduct would you propose for such a tribunal?

48. Should, or should not, Germany, Russia and all other nations be admitted to membership in the League of Nations and World Court?

tional scale to prove this do not exist, but it is established by common sense, by the known facts of the mortgage burdens which have piled up. If farmers have accumulated any surplus, it has come, not from a profit on the business, but through a rise in the selling price of land due to the settling of the country and the practical ending of opportunity to take up free homesteads.

A fundamental readjustment and rehabilitation of the industry are needed. Just what should be done no one today can safely say, for the reason that the nation has never yet had an adequate survey of agriculture as a basic industry.

The first step toward a permanent bettering of agricultural conditions should be the securing of orderly, well-authenticated statistics and economic facts upon which to predicate sound and comprehensive legislation.

There are now great volumes of Census and Department of Agriculture statistics, near statistics, and estimates; but they do not answer the direct, simple, common sense questions to which we need

answers.

The next President can render no greater service to agriculture than to direct the Federal Trade Commission to make such a survey. The Commission, by reason of its detached position, its organization of economists, and its keen interest in the welfare of the farming population, is best equipped to make an investigation like this. Therefore, as has been suggested

51. If you become President, will you direct the Federal Trade Commission—

First, to prepare, from its own reports and other reliable sources, as soon as possible, such fundamental facts and supporting data as will be essential to the permanent legislative solution of the agricultural problem, including an analysis of available information on the cost of production of leading farm products, and profit or loss;

Second, to survey all available statistics and economic facts relating to all vital phases of the farming industry and report to the Congress a correlated summary of such statistics and facts, together with an analysis of their reliability, and a statement of what essential data are lacking or too infrequently collected, and a recommendation of such instrumentalities and procedure as in its judgment should be authorized to complete, and keep current, the data needed for a thorough understanding of each and every vital phase of the agricultural problem, this survey and report on availability of data to include the facts, or lack of facts, with reference to:

The value of farm lands and itemized valuation of the types of farm property; the value, cost of production and profit or loss of leading farm products; the amount and trend of farm mortgages and the direct and indirect interest burden

borne by farmers; the total freight burden paid by farmers; the monopolies that influence both the selling and buying; taxes paid by agriculture; the farm marketing problem; a comparison of farm selling prices with the prices paid for the same products by the intermediate manufacturing interests and by the ultimate consumer; tenantry; rural credits; responsibilities for and effect of both inflation and deflation during and since the big war; the comparative standards of living of farmers and other classes in the various sections of the country?

During the past several years charge after charge has been made, and considerable evidence from various sources amassed, to show that the Department of Agriculture is functioning more in the interest of organized commerce and the distributors of farm products than in the interest of the producers and the general consuming public.

It is said that the farmer is getting for his products on the average only about one-third of every dollar consumers pay for food-the other two-thirds going to the cost and profit of the distributors. Authorities generally agree that our system of distribution is costing the producer and consumer altogether too much.

The need of a Department of Agriculture really functioning in the interest of the producers and consumers toward the reduction of these excessive transportation and distribution costs and profits, instead of as now seemingly aiding in their increase, is at once apparent. Therefore

52. If elected President, would you name a Secretary of Agriculture who would, with your complete approval and active support, weed out of the Department of Agriculture each and every servitor of special privilege who has been planted or developed therein by speculators and middlemen, replacing them by able, efficient men and women exclusively loyal to the permanent upbuilding of farm life and its interests in relation to the welfare of the whole country?

53. If elected President, what practical steps would you take to relieve and cure the present agricultural depression?

In this please distinguish those for temporary relief and those for permanent cure.

54. As between the Haugen-McNary bill and the Norris farm relief measure (before the last session of Congress), which would you favor? and why?

55. Do you believe in the principle of cooperation among producers? among consumers? between them both? If so, to what extent and specifically in what ways, would you give administration aid and encouragement to that principle?

56. Are you satisfied with the organization, operation and results of the Federal Farm Loan act? Wherein should this law be changed? How? Why? Would you favor a rural credits system based upon postal savings funds, the limit to be taken off the amount individuals could deposit and slightly more interest paid the individual depositor (these to insure ample money for the purpose), and then have the loans made directly to farmers by the govern ment through the post office machinery?