Champagne for the Lobby, Despair for the Farmers

The Helm-Morgan railroad rate bill has been killed in the state Senate, the corporations having gained enough votes contrary to general expectation. The farmers and organized labor worked shoulder to shoulder for its passage; corporations and scab labor were as solidly arrayed against it. The result is a temporary victory for wrong and an emphatic justification of the popular belief that the Senate is an institution to defeat the people's will. The senators who voted against the Morgan bill thereby signed their political death warrant; the taint of corporation influence is upon them.

No doubt there was a great popping of champagne corks by the corporation lobbyists and their agents in the state Senate last night over the defeat of the freight rate bill. The few were merry over the shattered hopes of the many, for the defeat of the rate bill will carry disappointment into thousands of homes and despair to the hearts of hundreds. The rate bill passed the House by an overwhelming vote. It then went to the Senate, and there the vote was reversed and it was defeated by nearly 3 to 1. Why this suspicious difference? For the reason, and no other reason, that the railroad lobbyists kept their hands off the members of the House. The members there were left free to voice their honest convictions. There was no bribery, no bulldozing, no cajolery by smooth-tongued hirelings of the corporations. The railroads had no more need of the House than they had of the city council of Spokane. But the Senate was different. If the Senate passed the bill it would become a law, and the people would secure relief. It was in the Senate that the lobbyists did their work.