"Worst Group of Men"

In the U. S. Senate sit 55 Republicans elected by the people. A majority, they control Senate committees, frame legislation. A Republican vice president sits upon the rostrum. Republican James Eli Watson leads the Senate. These facts did not deter Louis Kroh Liggett, drug tycoon, Republican National Committeeman for Massachusetts, at a G. O. P. clambake at Fall River, in analyzing the Republican defeat in Massachusetts last year as follows:

"In the first place the direct primary must be blamed. It is an outrageous form of government, a deviation from the representative form of government in which the U. S. was founded. The direct primary* was passed because of the influence of Theodore Roosevelt and Senators Borah and Johnson. Among its other results, it has put in the United States Senate the worst group of men we have ever had there in the history of our country. . . ."

Committeeman Liggett failed to elect his Republican candidate Benjamin Loring Young to the Senate last November. Quick to retort was Frank J. Donahue, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee: "Since the direct election of U. S. senators the Senate has become the liberal and progressive branch of the national government. . . . Does Mr. Liggett prefer the Platts, Quays, Penroses and Aldriches of his party to the Borahs, Johnsons, Norrises and Kenyons?" Mr. Donahue succeeded in electing his Democratic candidate, David Ignatius Walsh, to the Senate last November.

*Mr. Liggett, new to politics, meant not the direct primary, a local nominating method, but the popular election of Senators, as provided in the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, approved by Congress May 13, 1912. Mr. Liggett's Massachusetts was the first State to ratify it (May 22, 1912). Its final ratification came May 31, 1913.