one. The instruction under which that man went was that he should prosecute every guilty person, no matter what position in life he held, whether of high or low standing; and the man he sent was eminently successful. After successfully prosecuting those land frauds, he went to San Francisco and continued in the same work with equally great credit and distinction; so that in introducing him to you I am introducing the best-known, the ablest and strongest, apostle of clean citizenship in the United States, a man who stands for a square deal, and who believes in what is best and highest and truest and cleanest and purest in American citizenship. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honor and privilege of introducing to you that conserver of clean citizenship, who will address you on the subject of "Safeguarding the Property of the People," Honorable Francis J. Heney, of California.

[Great and prolonged applause and cheers. Voices: "What's the matter with Heney?" "He's all right!"]

Mr HENEY (after asking an attendant to remove the water pitcher)-Mr Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: As I never take water, I have requested that it be moved over to another table before I commence. (Laughter)

The efficiency of a democracy must ultimately depend on the intelligence of its voters. It was the recognition of that idea which caused the Fathers of this Republic to advocate so strongly the establishment of a public school system in this country. Any effort on the part of any public servant to prevent the voters of this country from having full knowledge of all its public affairs is, therefore, a species of treason, and any failure on the part of any citizen to acquaint himself as fully as possible with our National affairs is a failure to perform one of the duties and obligations which are imposed upon every member of a democracy. (Applause)

Public opinion, it is said, rules the Nation. It might better be said (because it would be more accurate) that public opinion in a democracy should rule the Nation; and it might further be said that if we had a real democracy, and a real representative government, public opinion would rule the Nation (applause). There are some evidences, however, that public opinion in this country does not have a free chance to operate. I need not mention many instances to convince you. Ninety percent of the people of the United States were opposed to men being permitted to make a profit by poisoning a people; they wanted a pure-food law, and yet it was locked up on the high shelf in Congress for sixteen years until Theodore Roosevelt, with the Big Stick, forced it out (great applause). What public opinion failed to do the Big Stick accomplished. (Renewed applause)

Now, my friends, public opinion should be intelligent; and that requires accurate information. A friend of mine, riding on a streetcar in the city of Washington, at a time when the Ballinger-Pinchot investigation was going on, saw two young men, beyond the voting

age, reading the morning newspaper. They had a paper apiece. He was standing close by hanging on to a strap. He heard one of them say to the other, "They are having a great fuss up there in Congress over this Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, aren't they?" "Yes," said the other; "I see that Ballinger has been found three million dollars short in his accounts" (laughter). "Yes, I see that," said the first, "and that they found Pinchot has stolen a million acres of public land" (laughter). Whereupon both of them turned to the sporting column to see whether Johnson or Jeffries was predicted to win (laughter). They seemed to have a pretty accurate knowledge, also, of which club was ahead in the baseball game.

Now, my friends, that sort of misinformation is one of the diseases with which we are afflicted in this Republic, and I again call your attention to the responsibility of citizenship; and in that connection I congratulate myself, and I congratulate the Nation, that so many women are beginning to come to places like this, on occasions like this, to learn something about our National affairs (applause), because the future of this country is in the hands of the boys who are now growing up, and, perchance, the girls-who knows what may become of woman suffrage in the next generation? (Applause) Therefore, the more information the mothers have the better opportunity the Nation has of getting intelligent action from

the voters.

The subject of my text today is "Safeguarding the Property of the People." Well, my friends, there are just two ways in which the property of the people may be safeguarded: one is by the Legislative arm of the Government, to whom the Constitution of the United States has entrusted the power of disposing of, regulating, and controlling public property; the other is the Executive arm of the Government, to which, under the Constitution, the power is entrusted of enforcing the laws which have been provided by the Legislative body.

Now, it must be apparent to any one that the most efficient Executive must fail in safeguarding the property of the people if the laws provided for that purpose by the Legislative body are loose, inaccurate, or unfitted to conditions. I want to make the charge plainly and unequivocally that, when we come (as we shall in a moment) to inquire into the safeguarding of the property of this Nation, we will find that all the despoiling of the Nation is directly chargeable upon the Legislative branch of the Government, the Congress of the United States, to whom, under the Constitution, we gave the power of trustees.

In the first place, if unfortunately our representatives in the United States Senate—and I use the word "our" figuratively-if the representatives in the United States Senate from each State, respectively, are there in the interest of specially privileged classes instead of in the interest of the average, common man, it will follow that

the Executive arm of the Government will be inefficient; and I have discovered that it is inefficient in the greater part of the West, where the greater part of the public property of the Nation lies-the Executive arm of the Government is, and since the Civil War has been the greater part of the time, utterly inefficient to safeguard the property of the people (applause). But I would be failing in my performance of duty if I failed to tell you why: It is because, while we have entrusted to the President of the United States the appointing of the United States attorneys for the different districts throughout the United States, a rule has grown up in the Senate of the United States which has in effect robbed the Executive of any real power in that respect, and has placed the appointing of such officials in the hands of the United States Senators from the respective States in which those districts lie. (Applause)

What is the result? The result is that if the lumber interests in a particular district are strong, because of having already succeeded in despoiling the people of a large part of their timber interests, they are apt to dominate the election of a United States Senator; and those lumber interests are also liable to dictate, through that United States Senator, the appointment of the United States officials whose duty it will be to enforce the laws of the United States against their benefactors. (Applause)

I would not dare to make such serious charges if I did not speak from absolute experience (applause). When I reached Oregon I found that situation existing in Oregon-indeed, I found on investigation before a grand jury that the then United States attorney was protecting certain men, who belonged to the higher-up class, from indictment, and that he had entered into a corrupt conspiracy with both the United States Senators from that State, by which they had agreed to have him reappointed United States attorney upon condition that these men should not be prosecuted (applause). Moreover, I found that when the first stealing of timber commenced in Oregon and men were arrested for it, a man representing a big and influential timber company had taken to the railroad train about twenty-five men at Portland and carried them up to Salem and had them file openly on contiguous timber claims, each one swearing falsely that he was taking the timber for his own use; and when the matter was exposed immediately and the United States attorney took the matter before a grand jury and indicted the leaders who had instigated those men to go up and make the filings, influential State officials appealed to the United States Senators from Oregon to interfere, and appeals were sent to the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior, so that finally the indictments were dismissed. Shortly thereafter about one hundred men filed on timber claims, under a contract to turn them over as soon as they were acquired, and again the influence of politicians and big business men brought about a failure of justice through an

assistant United States attorney, who was the brother of the attorney representing the big interests who had hired these men to make the filings. Case after case of that kind came to my knowledge in Oregon; case after case of that kind has been brought to my attention in four or five other States. All of it can be traced back to the system under which we have been electing our United States Senators. (Applause)

Professor Hadley has well said that the fundamental divisions of power in the Constitution of the United States are between the voters on the one hand and the property owners on the other. That is the fight. That always has been the fight. That always will be the fight in this country. You heard, probably, all of you, that great address by the greatest citizen of the world, made in this hall the other day (applause), in which he outlined those conditions.

Now let us come back, for I want to show you wherein our trouble lies; and I want to show that great genius in railroad building (who is a citizen of your State, and who talked to you yesterday afternoon)—I want to show you and him who is responsible for the "extravagance and waste" of the great natural resources of this country. (Applause)

I have pointed out to you how big business controlled the execution of the laws in practically every place in the West-except, of course, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota; in the early days when there was timber here none of these evils existed because these conditions didn't exist; your timber lands were not stolen in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan; you didn't have United States attorneys suggested by United States Senators who had been selected by owners of large timber tracts or railroads. Some States in the Union have suffered from that, but you never had any such thing come home to you (laughter). I congratulate you (renewed laughter). The Nation has had in its possession, owned in common by all of us and our forefathers, 1,800,000,000 acres of land. That is some property (laughter); that is more than either you or I possess today (laughter). And that included all of the present Rockefeller oil possessions, it included all of the Northern Pacific's land-grant possessions, it included all of the great anthracite companies' coal possessions, it comprised all of the millions of acres of timber land throughout the United States, including what there was in Minnesota. It belonged to you and me and our fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. We were pretty rich at that time. We could have held on to it and developed it, because I can't believe that if we had offered to pay a patriotic citizen like James J. Hill the sum of $50,000 a year to build a railroad for us from Lake Superior to Puget Sound and to furnish him the money with which to build it, that he would have refused the job (applause); even had he considered it inadequate compensation for his great ability, his patriotic love of the people of the United States would have led him to do it. (Great

applause and cheers) In talking with a banker the other night—one of the Big Four of New York-I asked him if in his opinion Mr Harriman, in the gigantic operations performed by him, was influenced by love of money and the desire to gain filthy lucre, or whether he was influenced by the great gratification of achievement, and he said undoubtedly by the latter; that Mr Harriman would have combined all these railroads for the people of the United States on a salary of $50 a month, if we didn't want to give him any more, just for the pleasure of doing it. (Laughter and applause) But we have received misinformation, and are receiving it yet, to the effect that there are no patriots in the United States; that no man is willing to develop our coal or our oil or our iron or our water-power or anything else that is left unless we give him everything in sight. (Laughter and applause)

My friends, the way the people of the United States have been treated in regard to this vast property which we owned reminds me of a story I heard about a man down South—a white man. He was going along the river in flood time in the back country, and the river was full of floating logs and refuse and all sorts of timber, and he saw a nigger sitting on the bank-and will you pardon me for using the word "nigger" instead of "colored man," because I have just been making a visit down in Virginia and I suppose I fell into it (laughter); it is not meant as a term of reproach, nor is it used as such there or here-and seeing this negro sitting on the bank, he said to him, "Sam, what are you doing?" "Nothin', Suh." "Whose boat is that?" "That's mine, Suh." "Well, Sam, let me tell you what I'll do; you take your boat and go and haul those logs out of the river there, and I'll give you half of all shore." (Laughter)

you get on

It took a little while for that to sink in (laughter). It has taken you forty years to let this railroad proposition sink in. (Laughter)

Right while I am on it, while it is fresh in my mind and in yours: Mr Hill says, "We have been extravagant." Why, my friends, do you know what we gave to Mr Hill? I say we "gave" it; as a matter of fact, we weren't consulted (laughter); we didn't have a referendum on it (laughter and great applause). We gave the greatest land-grant ever given to an individual or a corporation in the history of the world-sixty millions of acres; when I say to Mr Hill, of course I mean the Northern Pacific. We gave outright a strip of land 2000 miles long, 20 miles wide in the States and 40 miles wide in the Territories! Worse than that: instead of giving it in a solid body, we gave every even section, so that in timber lands it carried an immense advantage over anybody else coming in from the outside. Now, it is easy to demonstrate, and I hardly believe Mr Hill would care to deny it-and if he does, I'll get the figures and demonstrate it (applause)-that this land-grant was worth, at a fair figure. ten dollars an acre at the very least. That is six hundred million