The New York Times/1918/11/11/Lays Democratic Defeat to Kitchin
LAYS DEMOCRATIC DEFEAT TO KITCHIN
C. J. Post Says Chairman Lost Congress Because of Postal Zone Law.
SOUGHT TO PUNISH CRITICS
Fifty-nine Candidates Who Had Followed Kitchin's Lead, Post Declares, Were Defeated.
In analyzing the Congressional returns in the election last Tuesday, Charles Johnson Post, Director of the Publishers' Advisory Board, in an interview yesterday, stated that the Republican gains were the result of the mistakes and un-American policies—and specifically his opposition to the war and his vicious postal zone law blunders—in Congress of the Democratic majority leader, Congressman Kitchin of North Carolina.
"Mr. Kitchin," said Mr. Post, "at no time since the world war started understood represented the great and fundamental American thought. A chart prepared by the National Security League Congressional Committee shown that seven out of the eight important bills relating to our war activities for the inestable and righteous part that the United States was to play in the establishment of human rights, were opposed by Congressman Kitchin and his vote was recorded against them. Congressman Kitchin voted against the declaration of war with Germany; he even voted against the Kahn amendment by which our army was to be raised after the war was declared. Mr. Kitchin was not an ordinary member of Congress giving expression to his individual views of personal pacifism or personal righteousness; he was the responsible leader of the majorsity party representing the Administration on the floor of Congress.
"This incredible style of leadership and thought laid the foundation for Congressional Democratic defeat. And the first opportunity registered the protest of the people against Kitchin and Kitchin methods in Congress. It is Mr. Kitchin himself who has defeated the Democratic Party by persistent dullness and lack of vision.
"Mr. Kitchin's incapacity for leadership—which a mere seniority thrust upon him—is proven by the manner in which he used the War Revenue act of 1917 as a means of punishing all the publishers, and their millions of readers, of the United States because they denounced him for his opposition to this war and his attempt to hamstring President Wilson's Administration by voting against war with criminal Germany and opposing the draft that gave us our splendid American army. To illustrate:
"The War Revenue Act of last year dealt solely with the means of raising war revenues to train our armies and support them in the field. Yet into this purely war revenue measure Congressman Kitchin injected a postal amendment which he himself admitted, on the floor of Congress, was not war legislation but permanent postal legislation. As postal legislation such a bill would have properly been referred to the Committee on Postoffices; but by virtue of his power as majority leader of Congress Mr. Kitchin, as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, had this amendment introduced into the War Revenue Act and through his own Committee denied the opportunity for discussion and hearings.
What Postal Zones Did.
"Moreover, this proposition, known as the postal zone amendment, after full hearings and investigation, had been twice defeated in the United States Senate at the same session of Congress. This law resurrected a postal zone system that was abolished by President Lincoln; a zone system that has been denounced by every United States Postal Commission since then. Mr. Kitchin forced this destructive, vicious, and un-American postal law into the War Revenue act, and went to the Senate Conference Committee and compelled its acceptance. Since this emergency Wat Revenue bill could not be delayed, it was thus that the vicious zone system was successfully jammed in by Mr. Kitchin.
"This destructive and un-American zone law divided the country into postal zones, with progressive and heavy increases of postage on periodical reading matter, according to the accidental remoteness of American citizens from the zone of publication. It meant that the great farming districts of the West, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, and California, had to pay a heavy penalty postage upon their periodicals when that identical periodical was charged less postage to other American readers, accidentally closer to the point of publication. So unpopular did this law immediately become, that all over the United States boards of trade, chambers of commerce, granges and agricultural associations, civic bodies, libraries, cultural and educational institutions, religions organizations, to the number of almost seven hundred, began registering emphatic protests against this absurd zone law and demanded its repeal. Congress was deluged with petitions and letters of protest, which Mr. Kitchin ignored in framing the new War Revenue Bill which is now pending.
"The Congressmen, outside of the solid South, that had blindly followed his lead came mainly from the Middle Weat, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio, and it is in these States that there is perhaps the greatest number of readers of periodicals. Twenty-four colleges of Illinois at a Joint meeting demanded that Mr. Kitchin's destructive postal zone law be repealed. The National Educational Press Association, with headquarters in Nebraska, at its convention promptly did the same.
Fifty-nine Defeated.
"That this postal zone law was an important factor in this Congressional election is clearly shown by the Congressional returns—particularly in these States above named. Fifty-nine Congressmen who voted for the unfair postal zone law were defeated for re-election, as returns to date show.
In California three pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Illinois three pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Indiana four pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Iowa two pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Kansas five pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Missouri four pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Nebraska four pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
In Ohio six pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated.
"In other States the number of pro-zone-law Congressmen who were defeated was rarely over one. The nonpartisan character of the returns in these significant States is clearly shown by the fact that five Republican pro-zone-law Congressmen were defeated and twenty-three pro-zone-law Democratic Congressmen. The greater number of Democrats suffering defeat is easily accounted for by Mr. Kitchin's lining them up to serve his reactionary and unvisioned leadership."
This comparison speaks for itself. The recent Congressional elections were no repudiation of President Wilson's Administration; it was a rebuke to the jumble of wartime legislation expressed by the reactionary Mr. Kitchin of Bootland Neck—of nearly 2,000 population. Mr. Kitchin sought to punish publishers and to do this he was willing to penalize every American home. He only succeeded in hacking his party and hamstringing President Wilson. Mr. Kitchin took no political risk in attempting hamstringing tactics, since he represents one of those Southern districts that would return a Democrat under any circumatanons. But Mr. Kitchin and his dimlit Kitchenism have received the humiliating rebuke of public condemnation."