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Show PORK. A chill was thrown over the meeting at the new Ohio river dam near Cincinnati by President Taft in his speech on "Pork." In view of the warning he gave on his Mississippi river trip last year, by the way, the country would have backed him had he vetoed the last river and harbor bill. The people who say so much about lack of statesmanship in congress con-gress should look at Uncle Sam's grab-bag as one cause of low legislative legis-lative efficiency. A congressman may not be able to lisp a word in public debate, but if he knows the social art of wheedling men into line for an appropriation for Salt Creek in his district he is popular j on election day. He may not know whether Webster was a Whig or a Democrat, or whether England has free silver coinage or gold standard, but if he trades hi3 vote skillfully on big national issues, so as to get a public pub-lic building at Jayville, he i3 immediately pronounced a statesman. If improving a stream merely diverts traffic from Squeedunk to Podunk, making no important saving in transportation, no ground exists for doing it out of taxation. If improvement permits an important section to secure economies of water freightage, and if the economies are considerably more than the interest on the capital invested, the thing is good business. Mr. Taft was particularly strong in asking for system in these undertakings. If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing energetically, energet-ically, so that some section somewhere shall get the benefit now. Where such undertakings are done by contract it would seem as if the contracts should be let out for the entire undertaking, so that better equipped construction companies would feel it worth while to take hold of them and make low bids. , |
