Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/131

Charles Byron Bellinger

I would be glad to think when I am dead that some one would say of me: He was a kindly man. He loved Justice. He hated oppression. He was sympathetic. He was charitable to the erring. Such a man was Judge Bellinger. A brilliant lawyer, an able and upright judge. A genial friend with a large sense of humor and a large store of pity. And yet his greatest quality as judge and as a man was his sympathy with all men. All men to him were brothers. He was a rare man.

Frenzied Finance

That "Frenzied Finance" is not suicidally frenzied the following from the New York American will show:

"Several years ago the National City Bank bought the old custom house from Lyman J. Gage, Secretary of the Treasury. The price to be paid was over $3,000,000. Only $.50,000 has been paid. The balance was placed to the credit of the United States, but the money remained in the City Bank. The Government always has millions in that bank.

The Government became a renter. It paid to the bank every year $132,000 rent.

Yesterday Mr. Sulzer made a fight to have the rent stopped. He called for a vote, and IT WAS A TIE. Tellers were called for, and the motion went through.

But while the bank charged the Government rent, when the New York tax assessor tried to put the custom house on the tax books the bank said the building belonged to the Government. It saved $75,000 in city taxes by this claim.

The point is, though, that this is one of the finest examples of fine finance. The bank got the property and never let but $50,000 slip out of its treasury for it. It passed the re- mainder to the credit of the Government. It has an average of, say, $15,000,000 of Gov- ernment deposits. It can lend this money at a rate of 5 per cent. The interest it gets for its Government deposits is more than the price offered for the building."

Lyman Gage is now president of one of the "Frenzied Finance" banks. He is an honest man. Given such power as our political system gives to our governing class, and we shall continually be exploited by honest officials and robbed by dishonest ones.

Oregon Land Frauds

Whatever be the result of these trials, the people of Oregon should remember these things:

They really ought not to be so greatly surprised.

The evil is in the theory which lodges in our so-called representatives supreme power over our public domain.

The Senate does not represent the people, but special interests purchase seats there, as if it were a stock exchange.

The House of Representatives does not represent the people, but certain political organizations or machines which work at politics as a business. The people are really nowhere represented.

There are two evils which have always worked a fraud on the general rights, and always will: (1) A power of disposal of the public lands, unqualified and unconditional, which ought not to be conceded to any body of men; (2) the body of men represents really a special shrewd governing class, not the rather ignorant mass of plain people. Not till the ignorant mass perceives the evil and the remedy will the remedy come. The remedy is, I think, less and less governmental power.

A view of Portland's upper harbor, showing one of the largest lumber mills in the city.