lected to perform the duties of the office, and to substitute the idea that the men should be appointed to office for the preservation and enhancement in power of the political leaders. The one, the true one, looks upon appointment to office with a view to the service that can be given to the public. The other, the false one, looks upon appointment to office with a view to what can be gotten out of it.

Gentlemen of the Convention, I appeal to your knowledge of facts. Every one of you knows what I say about the use of patronage under the system of "invisible government" is true. Louis Marshall told us the other day about the appointment of wardens in the Adirondacks-hotel keepers and people living there-to render no service whatever. They were appointed not for the service that they were to render to the state; they were appointed for the service they were to render to promote the power of a political organization.

Mr. Chairman, we all know that the halls of this capitol swarm with men during the session of the legislature on payday. A great number, seldom here, rendering no service, are on the payrolls as a matter of patronage, not of service, but of party patronage. Both parties are alike. All parties are alike. The system extends through all.

Ah, Mr. Chairman, that system finds its opportunity in the division of powers, in a six-headed executive, in which, by the natural workings of human nature, there shall be opposition and discord and the playing of one force against the other, and so when we refuse to make one governor, elected by the people, the real chief executive, we make inevitable the setting up of a chief executive not selected by the people, not acting for the people's interest, but for the selfish interest of the few who control the party, whichever party it may be.

Think for a moment of what this patronage system means. How many of you are there who would be willing to do your private client, or customer, or any private trust, or to a friend or neighbor, what you see being done to the state of New York every year of your lives in the taking of money out of her treasury without service?

We can, when we are in a private station, pass on without much. attention to inveterate abuses. We can say to ourselves, "I know it is wrong. I wish it could be set right, it cannot be set right. I will do nothing." But here, here, we face the duty, we cannot escape it. We are bound to do our work, face to face, in clear recognition of the truth, unpalatable, deplorable as it may be, and the truth is that what the unerring instinct of the democracy of our state has seen in this government is that a different standard of morality is applied to the conduct of affairs of state than that which is applied in private affairs.

I have been told forty times since this convention met that you can't

change it. We can try, can we not? I deny that we cannot change it. I repel that cynical assumption which is born of the lethargy that comes from poisoned air all these years.

I assert that this perversion of democracy, this robbing democracy of its virility, can be changed as truly as the system under which Walpole governed the commons of England, by bribery, as truly as the atmosphere which made the credit mobilier scandal possible in the congress of the United States has been blown away by the force of public opinion.

We cannot change it in a moment, but we can do our share. We can take this one step toward not robbing the people of their part in government, but toward robbing an irresponsible autocracy of its indefensible and unjust and undemocrate control of government and restoring it to the people to be exercised by the men of their choice and their control. Mr. Chairman, this convention is a great event in the life of every man in this room. A body which sits but once in twenty years to deal with the fundamental law of the state deals not only for the present, but for the future, not only by its results, but by its example. Opportunity knocks at the door of every man in this assemblage, an opportunity which will never come again to most of us.

While millions of men are fighting and dying for their countries across the ocean, while government is become serious, sober, almost alarming in its effect upon the happiness of the lives of all that are dearest to us, it is our inestimable privilege to do something here in moving our beloved state along the pathway toward better and purer government, a more pervasive morality and a more effective exercise of the powers of government which preserve the liberty of the people.

When you go back to your homes and recall the record of the summer, you will find in it cause for your children and your children's children, who will review the convention of 1915 as we have been reviewing the work of the preceding convention, to say, "My father, my grandfather, helped to do this work for our state."

Mr. Chairman, there is a plain old house in the Oneida hills, overlooking the valley of the Mohawk, where truth and honor dwelt in my youth. When I go back, as I am about to go, to spend my declining years, I mean to go with the feeling that I have not failed to speak and to act here in accordance with the lessons I learned there from the God of my fathers. God grant that this opportunity for service to our country and our state may not be neglected by any of the men for whom I feel so deep friendship in this convention.

§ 14

THE GLORIES OF DULUTH

By James Proctor Knott

(Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 27, 1871, on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill.)

MR. SPEAKER:-If I could be actuated by any conceivable inducement to betray the sacred trust reposed in me by those to whose generous confidence I am indebted for the honor of a seat on this floor; if I could be influenced by any possible consideration to become instrumental in giving away, in violation of their known wishes, any portion of their interest in the public domain for the mere promotion of any railroad enterprise whatever, I should certainly feel a strong inclination to give this measure my most earnest and hearty support; for I am assured that its success would materially enhance the pecuniary prosperity of the most valued friends I have on earth-friends for whose accommodation I would be willing to make almost any sacrifice not involving my personal honor, or my fidelity as the trustee of an express trust. And that fact of itself would be sufficient to countervail almost any objection I might entertain to the passage of this bill, not inspired by an imperative and inexorable sense of public duty.

But, independent of the seductive influences of private friendship, to which I admit I am, perhaps, as susceptible as any of the gentlemen I see around me, the intrinsic merits of the measure itself are of such an extraordinary character as to commend it most strongly to the favorable consideration of every member of this House-myself not excepted-notwithstanding my constituents, in whose behalf alone I am acting here, would not be benefited by its passage one particle more than they would be by a project to cultivate an orange grove on the bleakest summit of Greenland's icy mountains.

Now, sir, as to those great trunk lines of railway, spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, I confess my mind has never been fully made up. It is true they may afford some trifling advantages to local traffic, and they may even in time become the channels of a more extended commerce. Yet I have never been thoroughly satisfied either

JAMES PROCTOR KNOTT. Born at Lebanon, Ky., August 29, 1830; member of Congress in 1866-1870, 1875-1883; Governor of Kentucky, 1883 to 1887; Professor of Law and Dean of the Law Faculty of Center College, Kentucky, 1894-1901. Died June 18, 1911.

of the necessity or expediency of projects promising such meager results to the great body of our people. But with regard to the transcendent. merits of the gigantic enterprise contemplated in this bill I never entertained the shadow of a doubt.

Years ago, when I first heard there was somewhere in the vast terra incognita, somewhere in the bleak regions of the great Northwest, a stream of water known to the nomadic inhabitants of the neighborhood as the River St. Croix, I became satisfied that the construction of a railroad from that raging torrent to some point in the civilized world was essential to the happiness and prosperity of the American people, if not absolutely indispensable to the perpetuity of republican institutions on this continent. I felt instinctively that the boundless resources of that prolific region of sand and pine shrubbery would never be fully developed without a railroad constructed and equipped at the expense of the Government-and perhaps not then. I had an abiding presentiment that some day or other the people of this whole country, irrespective of party affiliations, regardless of sectional prejudices, and "without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," would rise in their majesty and demand an outlet for the enormous agricultural productions of those vast and fertile pine barrens, drained in the rainy season by the surging waters of the turbid St. Croix.

These impressions, derived simply and solely from the "eternal fitness of things," were not only strengthened by the interesting and eloquent debate on this bill, to which I listened with so much pleasure the other day, but intensified, if possible, as I read over this morning the lively colloquy which took place on that occasion, as I find it reported in last Friday's Globe. I will ask the indulgence of the House while I read a few short passages, which are sufficient, in my judgment, to place the merits of the great enterprise contemplated in the measure now under discussion beyond all possible controversy.

The honorable gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Wilson], who, I believe, is managing this bill, in speaking of the character of the country through which this railroad is to pass, says this:

"We want to have the timber brought to us as cheaply as possible. Now, if you tie up the lands in this way so that no title can be obtained to themfor no settler will go on these lands, for he cannot make a living-you deprive us of the benefit of that timber."

Now, sir, I would not have it by any means inferred from this that the gentleman from Minnesota would insinuate that the people out in his section desire this timber merely for the purpose of fencing up their farms so that their stock may not wander off and die of starvation

among the bleak hills of the St. Croix. I read it for no such purpose,, sir, and make no such comment on it myself. In corroboration of this this statement of the gentleman from Minnesota, I find this testimony given by the honorable gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Washburn]. Speaking of these same lands he says:

"Under the bill, as amended by my friend from Minnesota, nine-tenths of the land is open to actual settlers at $2.50 per acre; the remaining onetenth is pine-timbered land that is not fit for settlement, and never will be settled upon; but the timber will be cut off. I admit that it is the most valuable portion of the grant, for most of the grant is not valuable. It is quite valueless; and if you put in this amendment of the gentleman from Indiana you may as well just kill the bill, for no man and no company will take the grant and build the road."

I simply pause here to ask some gentleman better versed in the science of mathematics than I am to tell me if the timbered lands are in fact the most valuable portion of that section of the country, and they would be entirely valuless without the timber that is on them, what the remainder of the land is worth which has no timber on it at all.

But further on I find a most entertaining and instructive interchange of views between the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Rogers], the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Washburn], and the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Peters], upon the subject of pine lands generally, which I tax the patience of the House to read:

Mr. Rogers-Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question?
Mr. Washburn, of Wisconsin-Certainly.

Mr. Rogers-Are these pine lands entirely worthless except for timber? Mr. Washburn, of Wisconsin-They are generally worthless for any other purpose. I am perfectly familiar with that subject. These lands are not valuable for purposes of settlement.

Mr. Farnsworth-They will be after the timber is taken off.

Mr. Washburn, of Wisconsin-No, sir.

Mr. Rogers-I want to know the character of these pine lands.

Mr. Washburn, of Wisconsin-They are generally sandy, barren lands. My friend from the Green Bay district [Mr. Sawyer] is himself perfectly familiar with this question, and he will bear me out in what I say, that these pine-timber lands are not adapted to settlement.

Mr. Rogers-The pine lands to which I am accustomed are generally very good. What I want to know is, what is the difference between our pine lands and your pine lands.

Mr. Washburn, of Wisconsin-The pine timber of Wisconsin generally grows upon barren, sandy land. The gentleman from Maine [Mr. Peters],