David Graham Phillips, The Treason of the Senate: New York’s Misrepresentatives and Aldrich, The Head of It All. Cosmopolitan, March 1906. From New York’s Misrepresentatives: “Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous; interests that manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up riches for the few; interests whose growth and power can only mean the degradation of the people, of the educated into sycophants, of the masses toward serfdom.”
Excerpt from story:
Politics does not determine prosperity. But in this day of concentrations, politics does determine the distribution of prosperity. Because the people have neglected politics, have not educated themselves out of credulity to flimsily plausible political lies and liars, because they will not realize that it is not enough to work, it is also necessary to think, they remain poor, or deprived of their fair share of the products, though they have produced an incredible prosperity…. The Senate is the most powerful part of our public administration…. The laws it permits or compels, the laws it refuses to permit, the interpreters of laws it permits to be appointed–these factors determine whether the great forces which modern concentration has produced shall operate to distribute prosperity equally or with shameful inequality and cruel and destructive injustice.