Yol. LXXII., No. 4227 
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 
WEEKLY $1.00 PER YEAR. 
CONNECTICUT FARMERS’ ASSOCIATION. 
Inside Works of the Legislature. 
The first thing a new member of the Connecticut 
Legislature from a small country town—which 
means a member of the House of Representatives— 
does when he gets to Hartford at the beginning of 
tlie session is inquire about the Farmers’ Associa¬ 
tion, where it meets and how soon it will organize so 
he can sign the roll as a member. Before he at¬ 
tends to any other of the many matters a member 
must attend to on the opening of a session he puts 
himself in touch with the farmers’ forum, which so 
largely dominates the affairs of the Connecticut 
General Assembly. 
lie may not himself register as a farmer; some¬ 
times he is a country doctor or merchant or a town 
official; but if he comes from a rural constituency 
and can sign the roll and consistently subscribe to 
the qualifications for membership, that is all that is 
necessary. To be in sympathy with its object quali¬ 
fies him, and that ob¬ 
ject is "to foster the 
agricultural interests of 
the State and to discuss 
from time to time such 
matters coming before 
the General Assembly as 
have a bearing on the 
public welfare.” 
Originally the asso¬ 
ciation’s constitu¬ 
tion barred from mem¬ 
bership any legislator 
having interests in con¬ 
flict with its purposes, 
which were declared to 
be “to promote agricul¬ 
tural interests and the 
mutual benefit and im¬ 
provement of farmers; 
to maintain inviolate the 
laws of thij State and 
of the United States; 
to influence for good the 
action of both political 
parties; to watch and 
work to promote good 
measures ' which may 
come before the General 
Assembly; and to try to 
put down bribery, corruption and trickery in all 
forms.” That it is a new organization each session, 
and in each a law unto itself like the Legislature of 
which it is so important a part, is accountable for 
the change to a shorter wording in the constitution, 
but there has been no change in the spirit of the or¬ 
ganization, and it would lie of no use for anyone 
to try gaining membership in the hope of swaying 
its judgment in any direction. This has been tried, 
but it didn’t work. 
For interests to “get” an influential member and 
for him to try to swing the organization has also 
been tried, but that didn’t work—as a man who 
seemed to have a bright political future before him 
lound to his dismay. He changed over night and 
uaule a strong speech in exact opposition to the 
declared judgment of the association the day before, 
and he has never been heard from politically since, 
even in his own town. 
It isn't that the Farmers’ Association takes defin¬ 
ite votes and tries thus to bind or gag its members, 
either; far from that. Its first thought is to get 
some speaker to come before it who can open the 
subject by throwing the brightest possible light upon 
it. Men of the first prominence address it at these 
morning meetings, railroad presidents, governors and 
ex-governors (of Connecticut and other States), 
State officials of every grade, college presidents, 
leading lawyers, officials from the departments at 
Washington, congressmen and senators and eminent 
authorities on the various subjects. Many a man 
who wouldn't think of going before a legislative 
committee is glad to come to speak to the Farmers’ 
Association. Any man who has a pet hobby before 
the Legislature, or who is vitally interested in pro¬ 
posed legislation, no matter what the interest, may 
talk to the association if he wishes, but he stands 
in a fierce white light when he does if. and must 
be prepared to stand the sharpest catechism— so that 
lobbyists don't take up much of its time. 
\\ ith the subject thus opened, the association goes 
on to gain such further information as it may. Per¬ 
haps some member thinks of some avenue of knowl¬ 
edge not dreamed of previously; maybe a commit¬ 
tee is appointed to investigate some phase of the 
matter: possibly the subject is in transitory con¬ 
dition in one house or the other, and must arrive 
at a definite point before the association can make 
up its mind. When the time comes that is what it 
does; make up its mind. Very rarely is a definite 
vote taken to bind the members; its attitude is de¬ 
termined more by way of a gentlemen * agreement. 
Perhaps there is discussion of the subject, as it de¬ 
velops. morning after morning—just short discus¬ 
sions in which somebody brings forward some new 
thought—in any case, it is thrashed out thoroughly 
and during that thrashing out the general feeling 
of the organization is arrived at by the give and 
take process—and then the members stick to the at¬ 
titude which has come to exist. It doesn't take 
much thought to realize what a force the Farmers’ 
Association is on this basis. 
Another thing which adds to its value is that in 
Connecticut only those members from the farthest 
corners of the State, who couldn’t get back and 
forth each legislative day, remain in Hartford over 
night; 95 per cent of the legislators go home every 
night and return the next morning. The result is 
ample opportunity to discuss the live issues with 
the men who are going to be affected by the legisla¬ 
tion at home. In other States constituents must go 
to the State capitol to see their member or await 
his occasional visits home; in Connecticut they can 
keep in closest touch with him constantly, and this 
makes for better legislation as well as freshness of 
view in the Farmers’ Association’s discussions. 
The Farmers’ Association was the outgrowth of a 
great need. From the beginning** of the common¬ 
wealth, when Connecticut gave the first written 
constitution to the world, the government of the 
colony first, and since the State, has been 
founded on the principle of assembling a number 
of communities—which later became towns—in one 
jurisdiction to be governed by representatives of 
.each. The towns were equal in authority and pow¬ 
er. and must have equal voice in the making laws 
affecting all. Despite what has been said of Con¬ 
necticut's “rotten borough” system, the principle 
holds perfectly good today, and the soundest think¬ 
ers recognizes it as the bulwark of soundness, sub¬ 
stance and sanity, and 
of equity in legislation; 
but of course, as the 
cities have grown to 
utterly overbalance the 
smaller towns, there 
have been frequent at¬ 
tacks on the principle. 
Periodically these at¬ 
tacks have had to be 
met with a constitu¬ 
tional convention. The 
last was that of 1902, 
and It seemed for a 
time as though the 
towns would have to 
yield something to the 
cities. Unquestionably 
the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives, then with 
255 members and now 
with 258 (because three 
of tlie towns with a 
single representative 
have since grown 
enough to have two 
apiece), was and is un¬ 
wieldy and, though it 
represented only the 
working out of the prin¬ 
ciple involved, for a time it looked as though the 
towns must yield something. The proposition of 
one representative to a town and increasing the 
Senate from 24 to 60 members seemed likely to pre¬ 
vail. 
In those troublous times there came into being 
the Litchfield County meeting, an offensive and de¬ 
fensive gathering of delegates—one to a town—from 
the only county which has no cities and the largest 
number of hill towns, and this developed into the 
Farmers’ Alliance, the crystallization of the realized 
need for tlie small towns to stand together. Prom¬ 
inent in it was George M. Clark, who was long a 
well-known figure at Republican conventions. In 
the end the constitutional convention didn’t change 
the House at all and enlarged the Senate to 35 
members, readjusting the districts according to pop¬ 
ulation changes and giving the cities greatly in¬ 
creased representation in it. This robbed the House 
of no whit of its preponderance of weight in any 
matter of legislation of State-wide bearing and, if 
anything, made its members more truly representa¬ 
tives of their constituents than they had been before 
in comparison with the senators. 
