104 UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



thermore, there is no doubt that some of the senators were under 

 railroad influence.^*^ 



THE RAILROAD AITORNEY BILL 



Some light seems to be thrown upon the railroad influence in the 

 Senate, by the treatment which that body accorded a certain railroad 

 attorney bill in 1886. Senator Beck of Kentucky introduced a bill in 

 that year, imposing a heavy penalty upon any member of Congress 

 who should serve as attorney or agent for a land grant railroad during 

 his term of office. Such a provision as this would seem at the present 

 time only reasonable and proper, yet it was fought by tactics of every 

 kind. Edmunds of Vermont tried to bury it in the Committee on the 

 Judiciary or in the Committee on Finance, and Hawley of Connecticut 

 spoke at length against this "common and nasty defamation of Con- 

 gress." Senator Mitchell of Oregon (later convicted of bribery in con- 

 nection with the Oregon timber land frauds) tried to defeat the bill by 

 adding a most radical amendment, providing a penalty, not only for 

 serving a land grant railroad, but for serving any corporation or firm 

 engaged in the manufacture of any article or product on which a 

 customs duty was levied, or any article or product "in any manner 

 now taxable or subject to taxation by any act of Congress." To make 

 his intent perfectly clear, Mitchell added a final touch of the ridicu- 

 lous by forbidding congressmen to serve any corporation or firm 

 "engaged in raising milch cows or beef cattle or hogs, or in the manu- 

 facture or sale of butter or of the oleo oil from which is manufactured 

 oleomargarine." 



Senator Mitchell's amendment was knocked out, but the bill was 

 later amended so that Senator Beck referred to it as a burlesque, and 

 in this form it finally passed the Senate. 



It would probably be unfair to assume that the opposition to this 

 railroad attorney bill was prompted entirely by sinister motives, or 

 that all the opposition party was composed of railroad attorneys who 

 were just trying to save their hides. It is probably true that some of 

 the opposition was due to a sincere belief that the bill was mere "ful- 

 mination, target practice, firing in the air," as Senator Ingalls of 

 Kansas expressed it. Whether there was much real sincerity behind 



149 See footnotes, "Lumber Industry," I, 244. 



