Title: The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox
Author: Morris, Charles E. (Charles Eugene)
Language: English
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THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY OF JAMES M. COX

by Charles E. Morris
Secretary to Governor Cox



CHAPTER I

THE NEED FOR A DOER


There come times in the affairs of men which call for "not a
forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work."  Such a time is at
hand.  A great war, the most devastating in history, has been
concluded.  Its moral lesson has been taught by its master minds
and learned in penitence, we may hope, by the erring and wrongly
willful.  But the fruits of victory are ungathered and the
beneficence of peace is not yet attained.  The call arises for a
"doer of the work."

Two great political parties in the United States, both with
splendid accomplishments behind them and both with grave
mistakes as well, have attempted to respond to this call, and
America, whose proudest boast is that it has always found a man
for every great occasion, chooses between them.  It is a solemn
and serious hour.  For it has been America's special fortune that
its great teachers and leaders and doers have been found at just
the proper time.

This knowledge of the certain right decision of our country is,
we might almost say, a part of its very fiber abiding with the
persistency of a fixed idea, a part of the heritage of the
nation, scarcely needing to be taught in the schools, obvious
even to the casual student from an alien land.  For our
historical records glow with the stories of the appearance of
_the_ man; and the thought of a friendly destiny seems not easy
to banish.  Time has given so often either the inspired teacher
of the word or the doer of the work that there is more than a
faith and a hope, nay almost a conviction, that it cannot fail
now when the agonized appeal of the world beckons America to
complete her high mission to humanity upon which she embarked
when she threw her power and might on the scales in war.

Those who insist that the fulfillment of that mission lies in
keeping the solemn promises make in France, accepted by friend
and foe alike, for a League of Nations to end war, to see that
retribution becomes not blind vengeance, to set the tribes of
the earth again on their forward journey, present as their
leader James Monroe Cox, Governor of Ohio.

A party of traditions, a party that has directed in every
critical period save one since the Republic began, has said that
he meets the requirements of the time.  That party chose him
because of his record for doing, because there was an inner
conviction that he could enter upon a still larger field with a
growing, an ever-expanding capacity.

This, too, furnishes a fitter chapter in the history of country
and party.  For the wise selection of men, even obscure men, has
been the tower of our national strength.  America had her Thomas
Jefferson to expound for all the world the real underlying truth
of her Revolution.  The equality of rights and duties spread from
a dream of philosophers to be the doctrine of warriors for
freedom.  There was her George Washington to hold together the
tenuous bands of freedom.  She found her James Monroe to lay the
foundations of the doctrine that stern moral precepts forbid the
violation of sovereign rights of the nations.  She brought forth
her Andrew Jackson to make the country in his time safe for
democracy, and to establish for all time that no single money
baron, nor yet any collection of them, is superior to the power
of all the people.

In later time she had her Abraham Lincoln, now in the judgment
of the succeeding generations but little beneath the Savior of
men, preserver of the Union for its larger duties.  She had in
this day her Woodrow Wilson, builder of the newer policy of
world union and recognized spokesman of freedom in the death
struggle with military autocracy.  It is of history that Lincoln
and Wilson both were stricken down with their work incomplete.
After Lincoln there was no doer of the work to finish his task
and the evil of those who perverted the exalted purpose of the
Civil War continues even unto this day.

Coming into the arena of national affairs when even America
seems to doubt and when the selfish motive of fear threatens to
palsy the nation's hand, Governor Cox became the man to
vindicate the statements and the pledges given before all the
world.  His introduction to the conscience and intellect of the
country was a demand that the faith be kept.

Out of the night of war, the League of Nations has long been a
supreme issue with Governor Cox and he was chosen to carry the
standard because he had expressed the sentiment most strongly,
most clearly and with greatest emphasis.

Doers have ever been practical men, and such is Governor Cox.
But practicality need not, and does not, imply a lack of vision.
There is such a thing as ideality in vision and a practical hand
to make good the picture of the mind.  The combined qualities are
considered as essentials to the adequate man of the times, for a
vision of a new world order is the rarest gift of the century,
but the man with the dynamic force and the cunning skill to make
this new dream come true has been wanting.

History--political history--was changed profoundly when
President Woodrow Wilson was stricken.  Men were slow in rallying
to his cause, there were even clouds of doubt, ominous and
disturbing, when the party he led to two victories prepared in
the late June and the early July days of the year 1920 to state
its position, its hope and its aspirations.

In the state in which Governor Cox held leadership there was no
doubt.  His own Ohio knew long ago that at the Democratic
National Convention in San Francisco its chosen spokesmen would
communicate but two mandates on behalf of the vast majority of
the people.  One was that Ohio could do no less than be faithful
to its greatest executive and the other was that the nation's
faith and honor must be kept stainless.

Through Governor Cox that message has been sent to the length
and breadth of the land.  As seen by him, the appeal to the
American people is one which began with the first plea to the
world powers for such a concert as would banish the continual
threat of war.  This plea was made to warring powers when the
World War began in 1914 and it was renewed at each favorable
opportunity during the years when America hoped that the war
might be brought to an end before the last great neutral power
was drawn into it.  Heeded by the Allies, the voice of reason was
rejected by the Central Empires, and from that hour there came
the conviction among the earnest lovers of peace that only the
imposition of peace would furnish a new basis for world concord.

Few men were more downcast than this same man when long and
vexatious delays in the United States Senate ended at last in
the recalcitrant refusal of the masters of the majority to
ratify the Treaty of Versailles.  It is but a fair and truthful
statement to observe that, although his judgment of the mind of
the people told him that the party which went before the country
to vindicate the sacrifices of the men in the trenches would
have a most compelling issue, he had no wish for such partisan
advantage.  As a Democrat, history will tell that he sought only
fair compromise on the treaty, even suggesting any honest
settlement that would hasten America's entrance into the League.

In his address of acceptance, then, Governor Cox stepped to the
fore with the tersest of utterances as to his position on the
League, compressing it all into "I favor going in."

If this question is not answered now and affirmatively, Governor
Cox believes that there may be delay until nations once more
have borne their crosses on Calvary and until further blood and
treasure are wasted.  And so he says now:  "I favor going in."



CHAPTER II

COX THE MAN


Men of great versatility are most difficult to picture
comprehensively.  Perhaps this is the reason that no pen-portrait
of Theodore Roosevelt ever seemed quite complete.  There was in
every single sketch something that seemed to be left unsaid, a
point made by one was certain to be omitted by another.  Cox is a
man after the Roosevelt type.  They were fast friends and they
had many ideas in common.  They often exchanged views upon
progressive issues and found themselves largely in accord.
Neither was static in mental processes and their dynamics were
often of the same sort.

But while Governor Cox's intimates compare him often with
Roosevelt, they prefer to liken him to Andrew Jackson.  For Cox
is the true Twentieth Century Jacksonian, they say.  Like Andrew
Jackson, Governor Cox can improvise the organization of a
political campaign better than any man of his time, save Colonel
Roosevelt, and the masterful Colonel won only when he had great
resources at his command.  Cox seems to have reached back into
history and grasped the idea of the manner in which Jackson's
men worked with resources so small that they had to pass
newspapers of their faith from hand to hand.

Largely, it seems, because no war came along when he was free of
family responsibilities Governor Cox has no martial record.  He
might have been a soldier of the Roosevelt type had he lived in
other circumstances but his youth was spent in the drudgery of
toil and there was no chance for education in a military
academy.

Still they call him "fighting Jimmy," and those who have been
through a campaign with him know what they mean.  As a boy there
was never need to drive him forward to personal combat and in
the man the juvenile tendency continued until he was well past
the forty-five-year mark of middle age.

If one were to inventory his external features there would
appear a compact, muscular individual of about five feet six
inches in height and of one hundred and seventy pounds in
weight, every ounce keyed up to the efficiency of successful
performance. motions indicate a man of quick decision, a
tendency to suddenness that many older than he have sought to
check in his earlier years.  It is a proverb among those who know
him best that when Governor Cox makes an instant decision he may
be mistaken but that when he thinks it over for a single night
he is never wrong.  As the years in a varied experience have
passed this disposition to think everything over has grown and
grown until snap judgments no longer are taken.  This may be the
reason why men say that he has improved as an executive from
year to year and why his later acts and deeds have the rounded
out and complete aspect that is lacking in the earlier.  The
nature of Cox himself is for "action," even when it seems to
take the form of experiment.  In simple justice it must be said
that he has never been an adventurer, but he is willing to
tackle problems before other would seize hold of them.  His first
administration, he thinks, was his best, for much more was done,
but his last is his best, Ohio judgment has decided, because it
repressed tendencies to go the wrong way, taking perhaps the
Gladstone view that a statesman deserves more credit for
defeating unwise legislation than for securing the enactment of
good.  As Governor, Cox has been willing to risk defeat for
principle.

A trait of character is told in the story of school and taxation
legislation.  He was warned that progressive steps would
encompass his defeat.  If a composite answer could be formed to
all the suggestions of this sort, it would be something like
this:  "There is need for improving our schools.  Time will
vindicate it."

Something else of character may be learned from the manner in
which Governor Cox redeems pledges.  When he was sorely beset by
his political foes in 1914, it was represented to him that the
liquor interests might be made to do service if licenses were
withheld until after the election.  And the answer given was
something like this:  "The pledge was given that the license
system shall not be prostituted to partisanship.  That pledge
will be redeemed."

The forebodings of the worldly wise were not disappointed.  The
liquor interests contributed heavily to the opposition candidate
and supported him so well that he won the election.

Cox hates war even if he made a remarkable record as war
Governor.  But he likes the smoke and fury of political contest,
and he thrives on campaigns.  He has a fashion of leading his
party organization and making it do his will, and like all men
or this sort, he has been accused of being dictatorial.  Yet none
denies that he gives a fair hearing and is open to conviction on
disputed issues.

He has a power of expression in a few words, portraying a whole
field of action.  Tending to go into great detail in public
matters, he comes to the heart of an issue with a laconic
expression that tells all there is to be told.  "I favor going
in"--on the League of Nations is one.  Assuring his supporters
that the proposal for separate peace with Germany was "opening
their front lines," he drew a word sketch of a gigantic contest
in which he as a general had sensed a rift in the opposition
ranks and had broken through a whole army.

Associates of Governor Cox say that he is daring because of his
strong sense of justice.  The question is frequently asked by him
as to whether a proposition is fair to all sides.  Readiness to
trust in him as an arbitrator has brought many issues to his
desk that are not part of a Governor's official duties.  Disputes
between interests and differences among organizations, no less
than capital and labor disagreements have been left to his
decision.  It is an evidence of the trust in the sense of justice
in the man.

There is a notable habit in him of picking men quickly for
tasks.  It is not claimed for him that he has never made mistakes
in his estimate of men, but they are comparatively rare.

Governor Cox is the only man ever nominated for President who
owns wealth--real wealth.  His personal fortune is handsome.  That
was a point of criticism when he began to get acquainted with
the country, but it is no longer.  The reason is to be found in
the fact that he has a natural appeal that makes his associates
forget money.  Nor is the charge ever seriously made that his
broad sympathy is affected.  When he is best known, the wealth he
owns is least often mentioned.

They do not refer to a wealthy man whose possessions are an
outstanding attribute as "Jim" or "Jimmy."  Cox, the man of
affairs, is overshadowed by "Jimmy Cox."

As with all powerful leaders, no sketch would be complete if it
did not allude to a certain imperiousness that is in the man.
This quality has made foes but that was inevitable.  One who has
risen by his own efforts has had the pushing impulse, of course.

It tells something of the Cox character that he has become a
forceful speaker only in the last ten years.  When he first
entered public life in 1908 his style in speaking lacked force
and his manner was hesitating and uncertain.  A course of self-
discipline and training led to constant improvement, and while
there has never been a pretense of oratorical flight, issues and
questions are discussed plainly and effectively.  There is a
penchant for reducing statements to simple and understandable
terms and for stating his conviction with a measure of
aggressiveness that carries conviction.

As a candidate he has always believed that the people are
entitled to the fullest information possible and to see and hear
those who seek their suffrage.

Like Roosevelt, the more strenuous sports and recreations
attract him far more that does the swinging of the golf stick.
He is an expert marksman and has astonished military men on the
rifle range by what he can do with a gun.  His ancestors were
squirrel-hunters, and his sure eye was an inheritance from them.
The Governor likes to rough it in the Northern Canadian woods,
spending at leisure a couple of weeks with only his son, James
M. Jr., now a boy of 18, for his companion.  He prides himself
upon his ability to cook a fish after it is caught, and to
plunge in the lake as an evidence of his swimming ability.  When
in Columbus his form of exercise is walking, and younger men of
sedentary pursuits find that he can tire them.

Quitting school at an early age, Cox's education has been
acquired through much private study.  He knows no language except
English.  His range of reading covers a wide variety of topics,
the favorite of which are the political sciences, and outdoor
life.  He does not lay claim to literary excellence or perfection
of style, and is a man of serious bent of mind, speaking only
when he thinks he has a message to carry.

The name under which he has been known to the country, James
Middleton Cox, seems to be an error which only lately his
friends have corrected.  In the old family Bible the name of
James Monroe Cox appears, indicative of a family admiration.  The
name which appears signed to all official documents is James M.
Cox.  The Middleton seems to have had its origin in a bit of
journalistic levity, probably having reference to Middletown,
Ohio, the city in which he got his early training as a newspaper
reporter.

The Governor's family consists of his wife, a little daughter,
Anne, who is slightly less than a year old, a married daughter,
Mrs. Daniel J. Mahoney of Dayton, and two sons, James M. Jr.,
and John, age ten.

While the Governor's devotion to the equal suffrage cause has
been of many years' standing, the interests of Mrs. Cox are of a
domestic nature.  The time not devoted to her baby daughter is
spent in the outdoors, he hobby being her garden.



CHAPTER III

WHY COX IS A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT


James M. Cox is a candidate for President because he hopes to be
the instrument of divine Providence in a great accomplishment.
He knows that the man who secures America's adherence to the
League of Nations is as certain of a permanent place in the
scrolls of fame as those who laid the foundations of freedom or
those who preserved it in the days of fiery trial.  To a famous
correspondent, Mr. Herbert Corey, who put the question, "Why do
you wish to be President?" The Governor has answered:  "It
affords an opportunity to take hold of a knotty situation (the
League) by the back of the neck and seat of the pants and shake
a result out of it."

The answer rings true to the man.  The candidate has called it an
issue of supreme faith, elaborating his views in a recent
communication to the "Christian Herald," in which he has said:

"'Fighting the good fight of faith'--these words from the
epistle to Timothy might well be our text for this campaign
before the American people, which, within the limits of our
strength, has been carried to every fireside in this broad land
of ours.  Ours is a fight of faith--faith with a world that
accepted our statement of unselfish purpose, faith with fathers
and mothers, wives and loved ones, who gave their sons, husbands
and brothers to war upon war, faith with those who made
sacrifice in homes, faith with those who toiled, faith with the
living and faith with the dead.

"If there were in this contest nothing but the question of
whether one or the other of two editors should sit in the seat
of power, nothing but whether one organization or another should
taste the sweets of office, we could not insist that there is
involved a fight of faith.  There is, indeed, an issue between
two views of government, one looking forward and the other
backward.  But temporary control by one side or the other for a
brief period of four years is not necessarily a supreme matter
of faith.  We might try one or we might, in a spirit of
experiment, try another.

"In speaking of this we would have our personal fortunes
forgotten.  They are of transient interest to ourselves and we
might say of less interest to others.  To hold the exalted office
of President of the United States, to occupy the place of
Washington, of Jefferson, of Lincoln, to be looked to for
leadership in public questions, to be the first citizen in this
great land is not a trifling but a gigantic ambition, worthy of
all honest striving but involving, in the ordinary sense, no
supreme issue.  So if personal reasons only animated us, we could
not muster the temerity to state our case with the ardent zeal
that controls us.

"But the motives that guide us are of greater import.  As leader
of a great organization which has had its part in interpreting
the aspirations of the American people, and in shaping
Americanism through the generations we have been invested with a
sacred commission, a mandate sanctified by the reckless bravery
of our sons and ennobled by the heart impulses of our daughters.
Through circumstances not of our own choosing we have become the
custodians of the honor of the nation, we have been called to
fight the good fight of faith.

"We as a party willed otherwise.  In the face of bigoted denials
of our good faith we sought only concord of all our people in
the tasks of American in the world.  There was glory enough for
all and we never advanced the claim that it was a partisan matter
until the fact had been established through long and weary
months of purposeful misunderstanding and unconscionable
intrigue for party advantage by our opponents.  There is in this
no suggestion of unkind sentiments toward our leading
adversaries.  We can utter the sentiment voiced on the hill above
Jerusalem and when America has come to understand we stand ready
to blot out a dark chapter of our national life and to pronounce
a pardon upon a course of conduct charitably covered by 'they
know not what they do.'

"There ought to be in this a special appeal to believers in the
living faith.  Its purpose to give to all the universal benefits
only a share of which it claims for itself, its conception of
the Golden Rule as the practical basis for dealings with the
world, its high plan to save the weak and feeble from the power
and will of the mighty--these things, we say, are of the very
essence of the true faith.

"It is not a subject for marvel then that practically every
denominational and interdenominational gathering of religious
men that has been held since the Versailles covenant was adopted
has included an endorsement of that great document.  Aloof from
the contentions of partisans, freed from the bigotry engendered
by factionalism, looking upon national questions through the
windows of light and truth, the banded followers of the Man of
Nazareth have seen the question that is presented shorn of false
claims.  In a word, Christians, speaking organically, with a
voice that could not be misunderstood have stated that they wish
the League of Nations.

"For such a League, for the only league now in existence or
which has a fair chance of coming into existence, we are
contending.  Could the question be lifted from the arena of
partisanship and could the referendum which we have invoked be
by direct ballot, there would be no opposition.  Unfortunately,
our system of government has not provided a choice so direct,
nor a manner of expression that would leave so small doubt as to
the sentiment of America.  We say this from a field of personal
experience for like the certain rich young man of Biblical
story, we, too, have seen the type of uncompromising partisan
who 'turned away sorrowfully' for party seemed more important
than duty or honor.

"It matters little whether we say that we feel deeply for those
across the seas in their troubles when we fail to act in their
behalf.  The successful issue of the war left a duty on our
hands, a duty like that which we performed in Cuba nearly a
generation ago and like that which has been brought close to
completion in the Philippines.  We faced a Christian duty toward
our associates and even toward the people of enemy lands.  It was
our obligation to bind up the wounds of the war and to show by
example the fulfillment of high ideals voiced by the leaders of
the world thought.

"There came to us the divine opportunity to act quickly and with
high Christian purposes.  We might with one stroke have become
the counselor and friend of all humanity, its guarantor that all
the forces of morality would be enlisted upon the side of peace.
But the precious moments were wasted in fruitless discussion, in
idle bickerings, in invention of fancied situations, purposely
forgetting that the great purpose of the League of Nations was
to band the world together in a great brotherhood against war.
We were to lead the nations back to peaceful ways but through
our own wavering we actually, by reason or a small coterie of
men, we think wrongly advised, have drenched Europe and Asia
with new wars.

"The great heart of America has always been right upon this
great issue.  There has never been a time when associations of
men and women, independent of partisanship, have turned from the
League proposal.  America gave freely in alms to every war-torn
nation in the world.  She sent her devoted bands of workers to
relieve distress.  She sent her nurses to heal the sick.  She sent
her contributions to feed the hungry.  She opened her warehouses
to clothe the naked.  She willingly gave her talent, through
private auspices, to help bring life back to normal.  Her men of
finance gave counsel; they offered credit and we applauded.  We
were touched by the works of associations and individuals to
lessen war's terrors and to refound the wrecked civilization.
But foolish men, vain men, envious men forbade our government to
do in larger form the same sort of acts which, done by private
auspices, we applauded as evidence of Christian purpose.

"And the good that we sought to do was lost in our larger
neglect.  Weak fears that in helping the world, fantastic
forebodings that in taking our stand for peace everlasting,
imaginary perils that in service we might be surrendering our
birthright of independence restrained our more noble impulses.
While famine stalked and the world cried to heaven for our help
we debated selfish questions.  Our nation became a silent but
effective partner in undermining Christian civilization, causing
the despairing peoples of Europe, friend and enemy alike, to
turn in every agony to those who denied the fundamental precepts
upon which our society rests.

"Some one has called this black despair, 'Satanism,' the belief
that the laws and deeds of God and men are set against the
victim.  And we, through the perversity of a few men, have been
silent enemies of Christian faith and allies, indeed, or this
newer scourge of mankind.  There are happiness and satisfaction
in the thought that we have not this fault to bear.  It is not
strange to us that those who permitted narrow views and
ungenerous purpose to thwart our nation in its duty rest
uncomfortably under the accusations of the American conscience.
If temporary success is to be won at such sacrifice we cannot
think it worth the price.

"Nor can the blame be shifted.  So far as was humanly possible,
objections were met.  Reservations stating our complete
compliance with the fundamental organic law, needless as they
were in a strictly legal sense, were proposed.  Others were
accepted where they seemed to be animated by proper motives, but
good faith prevented acceptance of those which proposed to
withdraw the pledge in the same document in which it was
plighted.  As was observed in the address accepting the
designation as champion of the party, every boy in our schools
knows that war may be declared only by act of Congress and that
the American Constitution rises superior to all treaties.  Still,
every friend of the Covenant was ready to acquiesce in proposals
that would state these propositions, and more, if that would
prove a solution.

"Failing in this effort, the resolution was formed that the only
other method lay in submitting the matter in a solemn referendum
to the conscience of America.  In that great judgment we now are.
Men are but instrumentalities of the Divine Will, worked out, we
pray, in the nations.  Few things are of smaller importance than
the temporal fortunes of men; no things of greater importance
than the destiny of mankind.  Willingly would we undergo crushing
defeat to save the principle for which we strive, guiltily would
we assume power won by appeal to baser motives and selfish
fears.

"There is in this year, for the causes here outlined, a
militancy as of the Crusaders, marching over mountains and
deserts to wrest the Holy Places from unworthy hands.  There is a
sacred fire in the countenances of those who speak the message,
there is a joy in proclaiming the tidings, there is a zeal in
spreading the word.  We are preachers this year of national
righteousness, of honor, of faith and of high purpose.

"We scorn to think of our mission in ordinary terms.  We disdain
to look upon the early days of November as a test of rival
organizations in their power to muster votes.  We have no mind to
compete in lavish outlay, we have no purpose to resort to
sinister methods of electrical appeal.  If we are to be chosen,
it is to be because we have won the conscience of the nation,
and God helping us, we will appeal to nothing else.

"We turn from the external duties of the country to its
internal.  Promises with respect to these matters must of every
necessity be in general terms largely because the problems are
vast and must adjust themselves to all parts of the country,
harmonizing with conditions that vary widely.  Back of all
legislation, back of statute and executive policy worth while,
there lies one unvarying hope and purpose--to right wrong, to
secure justice and to give equal opportunity.  All measures must
be tested by these great principles and on them rest securely if
at all.

"Past performances--the record--furnish the best indication of a
man's mind, and the executive acts and legislative
recommendations of the Governor of Ohio during the past six
years have been studied with great care.  That they have won
approval is a source of gratification and satisfaction that will
endure.  We are in this country face to face with gigantic
problems.  They cannot be left unsolved.  That would be blindness.
They cannot be considered in the gathering darkness of reaction,
they must be viewed in the brightening dawn of a new day.

"Before us we have the examples of restrained liberties and of
unfulfilled desires.  It is dangerous to trust reactionary forces
with power.  It may become a little short of menacing to the
stability of our institutions and to the orderly processes of
development.  It is well to sound a word of warning, calmly but
ever seriously.

"As has been observed, actions furnish the basis of
determination of fitness for further service.  What better
guarantee of cordial and sound industrial relations between
employee and employer than legislation which follows the lines
of the Ohio workmen's compensation law?  Under its influence,
industrial conditions have improved, life and limb have been
conserved, the workmen's families are happy in their security
and a new era has dawned for millions of people.  It was enacted
when legislation of this sort was an experiment in America.  If
every state in this Union had a law of this sort our nation
would have solved half of its industrial problems.  Our courts
are free from the vexatious litigation that fosters criticism
and they are trusted as never before in history.  It has been a
factor of no small importance that enabled our state to uphold
the sovereignty of the law without repressive measures directed
against freedom of speech and pen.

"Educational activities have been quickened and rural life has
been regenerated through modem school legislation.  To the boys
and girls of our rural districts there are coming schools which
will be second to none in our most progressive cities, and one
of the reasons for draining of the country districts of
population will be checked.  It has given an impetus to church
and community life that is of greatest importance.

"These things are cited not because there is any disposition to
urge that there should be encroachment by the federal government
on local control.  It is the healthful, reasonable individualism
of American national life that has enabled the people of this
country to think for themselves.  We have no will to impair their
independence.  The central government can assist and give
encouragement to state movements if the men called to high
positions are in sympathy with progress.  A reactionary central
government can demonstrate likewise that it has no sympathy with
men of vision who ever have difficult tasks in bringing about
the taking of forward steps.

"The details of these instances, which might be greatly
expanded, have been touched in order to form a setting as for a
picture.  Our view is toward to-morrow.  The opposition, and I
assume that they are sincere in it, stands in the skyline of the
setting sun, looking backward, backward to the old days of
reaction."



CHAPTER IV

COX AND THE LEAGUE--"I FAVOR GOING IN"


"And I do earnestly urge that all the people of this great and
enlightened state assemble at their respective places of worship
and invoke Almighty God to enlighten the Rulers of the world to
the end that they may see the folly of war and speedily
terminate it; that in our homes and about our hearthstones we
implore the Divine Spirit in behalf of the people of the
stricken nations, whose miseries are beyond our comprehension--
people who have been plunged into the depths of war through no
fault of their own.

"And I do further recommend and urge that in all the schools of
the State of Ohio the afternoon of Friday, October 2nd, 1914, be
set aside for exercises, having for their purpose to instill
into the minds of children and into their hearts the great
blessing that will come to them and to the world when war is no
more."

The quoted sentences from Governor Cox's proclamation for a day
of prayer on October 4, 1914, a period at which the horrors of
the great world war had but begun, disclose that Governor Cox is
not a recent convert to the central thought and purpose of the
conception of the League of Nations.

Through the numerous official proclamations and the many
addresses which he made during the period of the war the central
thought repeatedly emphasized was that the fruit of war must be
an everlasting peace.  In accordance with the proclamation of the
President, establishing June 5, 1917, as the "call-to-the-
colors" day of the young men of the Country, the Governor said:

"It is probably the most trying hour the world has ever known,
and the policies of government, purified and preserved by those
who live now, will determine the civilization under which our
children and our children's children shall live in the future.
What greater guarantee of their peace and happiness can be given
them than a democracy that envelops all nations--a democracy
sanctified by an endearing memory of what was unselfishly given
to make it possible?"

In his proclamation calling for a State convention to perfect
the organization of an Ohio branch of the League to Enforce
Peace, the Governor emphasized as the second of its objects "to
keep the world safe by a League of Nations," and he said that
the purpose of the organization would be "to confirm opposition
to a premature peace and sustain the determination of our people
to fight until Prussian militarism is destroyed and the way may
be open for securing permanent peace by a League of Nations."
When hostilities were concluded Governor Cox had the faith that
"this peace brings the dawn of a new day of consecration," and
in his official proclamation he said:  "A world is reborn.  Our
Nation has brought success to a righteous cause.  Our State has
given with full heart to the achievement of the glorious end."

In an address in Toronto, Canada, November, 1918, Governor Cox
said:  "We consign to posterity an example and inspiration and
idealism as lofty as ever stirred the hearts of men.  And then,
turning away from the past, we face the sunrise of to-morrow
with faith and resolution to make a better world than that of
yesterday, and to demonstrate that our heroic defenders have not
died in vain.  These are dangerous times to permit the inventive
genius of man to go unchecked in matters of armament.  The
unspeakable horrors of the war just ended make us instinctively
turn our faces away from the possibility of a half-century from
now, if our thought is to be turned intensively to the
production of things destructive to home life.  With the sea
fairly alive with submarines, the air filled with squadrons of
flying machines, and the mysteries of nature unfolding before
the sustained labor of chemists--cities and states and nations
could be quickly depopulated.  The Prussian conspiracy would not
have been possible if the international affairs of the earth had
been assigned to a League of Nations.  The play may seem to be
altruistic, if not fantastic, but the skeptic is moved by the
idea that nations cannot forget selfishness.  If that be true,
then the world lacks the fundamental fibers of character to
build an enduring civilization."

In welcoming the returned soldiers of the 166th Infantry in New
York in may, 1919, Governor Cox said:  "If peace is to endure, it
must be by means of institutions of government whose strength in
the right must inspire public confidence.  We solemnly give the
pledge of our state that the faith will be kept."

Economic effects of the defeat of the Treaty of Peace were
discussed by Governor Cox at Henderson, Kentucky, in April,
1920.  He said:  "Some of you may not know the effect of the
defeat of the Treaty.  While at Mayfield (Ky.) I saw an old
farmer who told me he was offered twenty and ten dollars for his
tobacco before Christmas, but was forced to sell at six and
three dollars.  The tumbling of the foreign exchange and the
inability of Italy and other Continental European countries to
purchase their tobacco is the cause of Western Kentucky farmers
losing millions of dollars.  This resulted from the Republican
Senate's refusal to ratify the peace treaty.  While the
Republican dictators of the Senate set the stage for political
triumph, they do not care how much tobacco growers or the people
at large suffer.

Turning to the patriotic issue of the present campaign, he said
at the same time:  "It will be with infinite pleasure that we
shall ask the Republican spellbinders if they have kept the
faith with the boys who sleep overseas."

During all the progress of the early part of the campaign the
Governor denounced those who "are seeking to set up racial lines
and create a prejudice among the foreign elements in our midst."
He said:  "While other powers are doing everything possible to
hold the loose ends of civilization together, these leaders are
deliberately conspiring to mislead the great bulk of Americans
with assertions that are, when analyzed, nothing more than
demagoguery of the crudest kind."  Earlier in the year, in
speaking before the Jefferson Club of Marion, Indiana, the
Governor said:  "The plot to multiply the woes of mankind, in
order that confusion multiplied might be charged to President
Wilson's insistence on principle and international good faith,
is now passing through the process of public thought, and we
have confidence in an intelligent verdict.  The winning of the
war, in less time than the formalizing of peace carries a
contrast that needs no comment."

During the period for the selection of delegates to the
Democratic Convention at San Francisco, Governor Cox gave a
signed interview to the New York Times, in which he reviewed the
controversy concerning the League of Nations and outlined two
reservations which he believed would satisfy every reasonable
objection.  In part, he said:

"If public opinion in the country is the same as it is in Ohio,
then there can be no doubt but that the people want a League of
Nations because it seems to offer the surest guarantee against
war.  I am convinced that the San Francisco Convention will
endorse in its vital principles the League adopted at
Versailles.

"There can be no doubt but that some senators have been
conscientious in their desire to clarify the provisions of the
treaty.  Two things apparently have disturbed them.  First, they
wanted to make sure that the League was not to be an alliance,
and that its basic purpose was peace and not controversy.
Second, they wanted the other powers signing the instrument to
understand our constitutional limitations beyond which the
treaty-making power cannot go.

"Dealing with these two questions in order, it has always seemed
to me that the interpretation of the function of the League
might have been stated in these words:

"'In giving its assent to this treaty, the Senate has in mind
the fact that the League of Nations which it embodies was
devised for the sole purpose of maintaining peace and comity
among the nations of the earth and preventing the recurrence of
such destructive conflicts as that through which the world has
just passed.  The co-operation of the United States with the
League and its continuance as a member thereof, will naturally
depend upon the adherence of the League to that fundamental
purpose.'

"Such a declaration would at least express the view of the
United States and justify the course which our nation would
unquestionably follow if the basic purpose of the League were at
any time distorted.  It would also appear to be a simple matter
to provide against any misunderstanding in the future and at the
same time to meet the objections of those who believe that we
might be inviting a controversy over our constitutional rights,
by making a senatorial addition on words something like these:

"'It will of course be understood that in carrying out the
purpose of the League, the government of the United States must
at all times act in strict harmony with the terms and intent of
the United States Constitution, which cannot in any way be
altered by the treaty-making power.'

"Some people doubt the enduring quality of this general
international scheme.  Whether this be true or not, the fact
remains that it will justify itself if it does no more than
prevent the nations of the earth from arming themselves to the
teeth and wasting resource which is necessary to repair the
losses of the war.  No one contends that it is a perfect
document, but it is a step in the right direction.  It would put
the loose ends of civilization together now and do more toward
the restoration of normal conditions in six months' time than
can the powers of the earth, acting independently, in ten years'
time.  The Republican senatorial cabal insists that the treaty be
Americanized.  Suppose that Italy asked that it be Italianized--
France that it be Frenchized--Britain that it be Britainized,
and so on down the line.  The whole thing would result in a
perfect travesty.

"The important thing now is to enable the world to go to work,
but the beginning must not be on the soft sands of an unsound
plan.  If this question passes to the next administration, there
should be no fetich developed over past differences.  Yet at the
same time there must be no surrender of vital principles.  It may
be necessary if partitions and reparation require changing, to
assemble representatives of the people making up the nations of
the League, in which event revision may not be so much an affair
of diplomats.  But I repeat the pressing task is getting started,
being careful however that we are starting with an instrument
worth while, and not a mere shadow."

To an extent to which very few public men favoring the League of
Nations have gone, Governor Cox has expressed the firm
conviction that the League will enable the people of Ireland to
bring their contention and claims before a world tribunal.  It
was his statement before an audience in Cincinnati that the
League would be the means by which the Irish case could be heard
in the highest court in the world, and he stated that thus far
it had never been heard even in a magistrate's court.  Sentiments
on the question of self-determination were also expressed in his
article in the New York Times.  In this the Governor said:

"We are a composite people in the United States and the belief
of students of government in years past that our democracy would
not endure was based entirely upon the idea that we could not
build a nation from the blood of many races which had old
inherited prejudices.  It is very important, particularly at this
time when racial impulses and emotions have been stirred world-
wide as never before, that we make the utmost effort to prevent
division along these lines.  In this connection it is well to
bear in mind that the armistice which preceded the peace was
based upon fourteen cardinal points; one of the most, if not the
most, important of which was the right of self-determination.

"Wars in the past have resulted largely from dispute over
territory and imposed restraints of racial aspirations.
Governmental entities are more apt to last and to live
harmoniously with others if groups are bounded by racial
homogeneity rather than by the physical characteristics of the
earth in the form of mountains, rivers, etc.  Individual
aspiration is a God-given element and distinct ambitions possess
the soul of racial unity.  In harmony with this theory, the San
Francisco convention should emphasize the Democratic belief in
the principle of self-determination in government.  Our citizens
will not deny to any race of people the right to hold the
emotions which stirred the founders of our Republic."

The Governor's position on the League was amplified in his
Address of Acceptance at Dayton on August 7th, 1920, in which he
said:

"We are in a time which calls for straight thinking, straight
talking and straight acting.  This is no time for wobbling.  Never
in all our history has more been done for government.  Never was
sacrifice more sublime.  The most precious things of heart and
home were given up in a spirit which guarantees the perpetuity
of our institutions--if the faith is kept with those who served
and suffered.  The altar of our republic is drenched in blood and
tears, and he who turns away from the tragedies and obligations
of the war, not consecrated to a sense of honor and of duty
which resists every base suggestion of personal or political
expediency, is unworthy of the esteem of his countrymen.

"The men and women who by expressed policy at the San Francisco
Convention charted our course in the open seas of the future
sensed the spirit of the hour and phrased it with clarity and
courage.  It is not necessary to read and reread the Democratic
platform to know its meaning.  It is a document clear in its
analysis of conditions and plain in the pledge of service made
to the public.  It carries honesty of word and intent.  Proud of
the leadership and achievement of the party in war, Democracy
faces unafraid the problems of peace.  Indeed, its pronouncement
has but to be read along with the platform framed by Republican
leaders in order that both spirit and purpose as they dominate
the opposing organizations may be contrasted.  On the one hand we
see pride expressed in the nation's glory and a promise of
service easily understood.  On the other a captious, unhappy
spirit and the treatment of subjects vital to the present and
the future, in terms that have completely confused the public
mind.  It was clear that the senatorial oligarchy had been given
its own way in the selection of the presidential candidate, but
it was surprising that it was able to fasten into the party
platform the creed of hate and bitterness and the vacillating
policy that possesses it.

"In the midst of war the present senatorial cabal, led by
Senators Lodge, Penrose and Smoot, was formed.  Superficial
evidence of loyalty to the President was deliberate in order
that the great rank and file of their party, faithful and
patriotic to the very core, might not be offended.  But
underneath this misleading exterior, conspirators planned and
plotted, with bigoted zeal.  With victory to our arms they
delayed and obstructed the works of peace.  If deemed useful to
the work in hand no artifice for interfering with our
constitutional peace-making authority was rejected.  Before the
country knew, yes, before these men themselves knew the details
of the composite plan, formed at the peace table, they declared
their opposition to it.  Before the treaty was submitted to the
senate in the manner the Constitution provides, they violated
every custom and every consideration of decency by presenting a
copy of the document, procured unblushingly from enemy hands,
and passed it into the printed record of senatorial proceedings.
From that hour dated the enterprise of throwing the whole
subject into a technical discussion, in order that the public
might be confused.  The plan has never changed in its objective,
but the method has.  At the outset there was the careful
insistence that there was no desire to interfere with the
principle evolved and formalized at Versailles.  Later, it was
the form and not the substance that professedly inspired attack.
But pretense was futile when proposals later came forth that
clearly emasculated the basic principle of the whole peace plan.
It is not necessary to recall the details of the controversy in
the senate.  Senator Lodge finally crystallized his ideas into
what were known as the Lodge reservations, and when congress
adjourned these reservations held the support of the so-called
regular Republican leaders.

"From that time the processes have been interesting.  Political
expediency in its truest sense dwarfed every consideration
either of the public interest or of the maintenance of the honor
of a great political party.  The exclusive question was how to
avoid a rupture in the Republican organization.  The country
received with interest, to say the least, the announcement from
Chicago, where the national convention was assembled, that a
platform plank dealing with the subject of world peace, had been
drawn leaving out the Lodge reservations, and yet remaining
agreeable to all interests, meaning thereby, the Lodge
reservationists, the mild reservationists and the group of
Republican senators that openly opposed the League of Nations in
any form.

"As the platform made no definite committal of policy and was,
in fact, so artfully phrased as to make almost any deduction
possible, it passed through the convention with practical
unanimity.  Senator Johnson, however, whose position has been
consistent and whose opposition to the League in any shape is
well known, withheld his support of the convention's choice
until the candidate had stated the meaning of the platform, and
announced definitely the policy that would be his, if elected.

"The Republican candidate has spoken and his utterance calls
forth the following approval from Senator Johnson:

"'Yesterday in his speech of acceptance Senator Harding
unequivocally took his stand upon the paramount issue in this
campaign--the League of Nations.  The Republican party stands
committed by its platform.  Its standard-bearer has now
accentuated that platform.  There can be no misunderstanding his
words.'

"Senator Harding, as the candidate of the party, and Senator
Johnson are as one on this question, and, as the latter
expresses it, the Republican party is committed both by platform
in the abstract and by its candidate in specification.  The
threatened revolt among leaders of the party is averted, but the
minority position as expressed in the senate prevails as that of
the party.  In short, principle, as avowed in support of the
Lodge reservations, or of the so-called mild reservations, has
been surrendered to expediency.

"Senator Harding makes this new pledge of policy in behalf of
his party:

"'I promise you formal and effective peace so quickly as a
Republican congress can pass its declaration for a Republican
executive to sign.'

"This means but one thing--a separate peace with Germany!

"This would be the most disheartening event in civilization
since the Russians made their separate peace with Germany, and
infinitely more unworthy on our part than it was on that of the
Russians.  They were threatened with starvation and revolution
had swept their country.  Our soldiers fought side by side with
the Allies.  So complete was the coalition of strength and
purpose that General Fochs was given supreme command, and every
soldier in the allied cause, no matter what flag he followed,
recognized him as his chief.  We fought the war together, and now
before the thing is through it is proposed to enter into a
separate peace with Germany!  In good faith we pledged our
strength with our associates for the enforcement of terms upon
offending powers, and now it is suggested that this be
withdrawn.  Suppose Germany, recognizing the first break in the
Allies, proposes something we cannot accept.  Does Senator
Harding intend to send an army to Germany to press her to our
terms?  Certainly the allied army could not be expected to render
aid.  If, on the other hand, Germany should accept the chance we
offered of breaking the bond it would be for the express purpose
of insuring a German-American alliance, recognizing that the
Allies--in fact, no nation in good standing--would have anything
to do with either of us.

"This plan would not only be a piece of bungling diplomacy, but
plain, unadulterated dishonesty, as well."

"No less an authority than Senator Lodge said, before the heat
of recent controversy, that to make peace except in company with
the Allies would 'brand us everlastingly with dishonor and bring
ruin to us.'

"And then after peace is made with Germany, Senator Harding
would, he says, 'hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of
the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing
participant in the consecration of nations to a new
relationship.'

"In short, America, refusing to enter the League of Nations (now
already established by twenty-nine nations) and bearing and
deserving the contempt of the world, would submit an entirely
new project.  This act would either be regarded as arrant madness
or attempted international bossism.

"The plain truth is, that the Republican leaders, obsessed with
a determination to win the presidential election, have attempted
to satisfy too many divergent views.  Inconsistencies, inevitable
under the circumstances, rise to haunt them on every hand, and
they find themselves arrayed, in public thought at least,
against a great principle.  More than that, their conduct is
opposed to the idealism upon which their party prospered in
other days."

"Illustrating these observations by concrete facts, let it be
remembered that those now inveighing against an interest in
affairs outside of America, criticised President Wilson in
unmeasured terms for not resenting the invasion of Belgium in
1914.  They term the League of Nations a military alliance,
which, except for their opposition, would envelop our country,
when, as a matter of truth, the subject of a League of Nations
has claimed the best thought of America for years, and the
League to Enforce Peace was presided over by so distinguished a
Republican as ex-President Taft, who, before audiences in every
section, advocated the principle and the plan of the present
League.  They charge experimentation, when we have as historical
precedent the Monroe Doctrine, which is the very essence of
Article X of the Versailles covenant.  Skeptics viewed Monroe's
mandate with alarm, predicting recurrent wars in defense of
Central and South American states, whose guardians they alleged
we need not be.  And yet not a shot has been fired in almost one
hundred years in preserving sovereign rights on this hemisphere.
They hypocritically claim that the League of Nations will result
in our boys being drawn into military service, but they fail to
realize that every high-school youngster in the land knows that
no treaty can override our Constitution, which reserves to
Congress, and to Congress alone, the power to declare war.  They
preach Americanism with a meaning of their own invention, and
artfully appeal to a selfish and provincial spirit, forgetting
that Lincoln fought a war over the purely moral question of
slavery, and the McKinley broke the fetters of our boundary
lines, spoke the freedom of Cuba, and carried the torch of
American idealism to the benighted Philippines.  They lose memory
of Garfield's prophecy that America, under the blessings of God-
given opportunity, would by her moral leadership and co-
operation become the Messiah among the nations of the earth.

"These are fateful times.  Organized government has a definite
duty all over the world.  The house of civilization is to be put
in order.  The supreme issue of the century is before us and the
nation that halts and delays is playing with fire.  The finest
impulses of humanity, rising above national lines, merely seek
to make another horrible war impossible.  Under the old order of
international anarchy war came overnight, and the world was on
fire before we knew it.  It sickens our senses to think of
another.  We saw one conflict into which modern science brought
new forms of destruction in great guns, submarines, airships,
and poison gases.  It is no secret that our chemists had
perfected, when the contest came to a precipitate close, gases
so deadly that whole cities could be wiped out, armies
destroyed, and the crews of battleships smothered.  The public
prints are filled with the opinions of military men that in
future wars the method, more effective than gases or bombs, will
be the employment of the germs of disease, carrying pestilence
and destruction.  Any nation prepared under these conditions, as
Germany was equipped in 1914, could conquer the world in a year.

"It is planned now to make this impossible.  A definite plan has
been agreed upon.  The League of Nations is in operation.  A very
important work, under its control, just completed, was
participated in by the Hon. Elihu Root, Secretary of State under
the Roosevelt administration.  At a meeting of the Council of the
League of Nations, February 11, and organizing committee of
twelve of the most eminent jurists in the world was selected.
The duty of this group was to devise a plan for the
establishment of a Permanent Court of International Justice, as
a branch of the League.  This assignment has been concluded by
unanimous action.  This augurs well for world progress.  The
question is whether we shall or shall not join in this practical
and humane movement.  President Wilson, as our representative at
the peace table, entered the League in our name, in so far as
the executive authority permitted.  Senator Harding, as the
Republican candidate for the presidency, proposes in plain words
that we remain out of it.  As the Democratic candidate, I favor
going in.  Let us analyze Senator Harding's plan of making a
German-American peace, and then calling for a 'new relationship
among nations,' assuming for the purpose of argument only, that
the perfidious hand that dealt with Germany would possess the
power or influence to draw twenty-nine nations away from a plan
already at work, and induce them to retrace every step and make
a new beginning.  This would entail our appointing another
commission to assemble with those selected by the other powers.
With the Versailles instrument discarded, the whole subject of
partitions and divisions of territory on new lines would be
reopened.  The difficulties in this regard, as any fair mind
appreciates, would be greater than they were at the peace
session, and we must not attempt to convince ourselves that they
did not try the genius, patience, and diplomacy of statesmen at
that time.  History will say that great as was the Allied triumph
in war, no less a victory was achieved at the peace table.  The
Republican proposal means dishonor, world confusion and delay.
It would keep us in permanent company with Germany, Russia,
Turkey and Mexico.  It would entail, in the ultimate, more real
injury than the war itself.  The Democratic position on the
question, as expressed in platform is:

"'We advocate immediate ratification of the Treaty without
reservations which would impair its essential integrity, but do
no oppose the acceptance of any reservation making clearer or
more specific the obligations of the United States to the League
associates.'

"The first duty of the new administration clearly will be the
ratification of the Treaty.  The matter should be approached
without thought of the bitterness of the past.  The public
verdict will have been rendered, and I am confident that the
friends of world peace as it will be promoted by the League,
will have in numbers the constitutional requisite to favorable
senatorial action.  The captious may say that our platform
reference to reservations is vague and indefinite.  Its meaning,
in brief, is that we shall state our interpretation of the
covenant as a matter of good faith to our associates and as a
precaution against any misunderstanding in the future.  The point
is, that after the people shall have spoken, the League will be
in the hands of its friends in the Senate, and a safe index as
to what they will do is supplied by what reservations they have
proposed in the past.

"Our platform clearly lays no bar against any additions that
will be helpful, but it speaks in a firm resolution to stand
against anything that disturbs the vital principle.  We hear it
said that interpretations are unnecessary.  That may be true, but
they will at least be reassuring to many of our citizens, who
feel that in signing the treaty, there should be no mental
reservations that are not expressed in plain words, as a matter
of good faith to our associates.  Such interpretations possess
the further virtue of supplying a base upon which agreement can
be reached, and agreement, without injury to the covenant, is
now of pressing importance.  It was the desire to get things
started, that prompted some members of the senate to vote for
the Lodge reservations.  Those who conscientiously voted for them
in the final roll calls realized, however, that they acted under
duress, in that a politically bigoted minority was exercising
the arbitrary power of its position to enforce drastic
conditions.  Happily the voters of the republic, under our system
of government, can remedy that situation, and I have the faith
that they will, at the election this fall.  Then organized
government will be enabled to combine impulse and facility in
the making of better world conditions.  The agencies of exchange
will automatically adjust themselves to the opportunities of
commercial freedom.  New life and renewed hope will take hold of
every nation.  Mankind will press a resolute shoulder to the task
of readjustment, and a new era will have dawned upon the earth."

Speaking to the National Guardsmen at the National Rifle Matches
at Camp Perry, Ohio, on August 12, he said:

"I recognize that in a sense you are assembled here for the
purpose of increasing the efficiency of our military strength,
and yet I am convinced that the great mass of our soldiers are
united in purpose and prayer, to prevent wars in the future, if
it can be honorably done.  They know the meaning of modern
warfare.  There was very little romance in the long hours and the
slaughter of the front trench.  The thought that must have run
through the mind of every solder in the midst of it all, was how
such a thing was possible in modern civilization.

"The cost to the United States was more than one million dollars
an hour for over two years.  The total expense of twenty-two
billion dollars was almost equal to the total disbursements of
the United States government from 1791 to 1918.  It was
sufficient to have run the Revolutionary War for more than one
thousand years at the rate of expenditure which that war
involved.  The army expenditures alone, so experts claim, are a
near approach to the volume of gold produced in the United Sates
from the discovery of America up to the outbreak of the European
War, and yet the United States spent only about one-eighth of the
entire cost of the war, and less than one-fifth of the
expenditure of the allied side.

"If civilization has not had its lesson, then there is no hope
for it.  It could not stand such a war again and survive.  The
genius of man, if that is a happy term in discussing the horrors
of conflict, has always made the latest war the most frightful.
When we consider the development in the methods of human
destruction between 1914 and 1918 and apply the problem of
simple proportion, we are staggered even to think of the
possibilities of the sons of men being again brought into
combat.

"There will always be a national guard in the States, if for no
other reason than domestic defense, and the military arm of the
federal government will be maintained, but the hope that vast
expenditures for armaments are a thing of the past, possesses
every home in America, while the common impulse that moves the
great mass of people world-wide is inspired by the vision of
peace and the settlement of controversy by the arbitrament of
reason rather than of force."

At the very beginning of his canvass for the Presidency Governor
Cox has gone upon the theory that the League of Nations needed
simple explanation to the people of the Country.  In his own
phrase, he has talked the ABC's of the League, finding that the
technical discussions had failed to hold the interest of the
people.  Illustrating this policy are two addresses made to state
conventions early in August.  At Wheeling, to the West Virginia
Democratic Convention, he said:

"We resisted a world-wide menace, and we intend now to establish
permanent protection against another menace.  We know how easily
wars came in the past.  We want to make their coming difficult in
the future.  We have a definite plan; the American people
understand it, and after the 4th of March, 1921, it is our
purpose to put it into practical operation, without continuing
months of useless discussion.

"The platform of our party gives us the opportunity to render
moral co-operation in the greatest movement of righteousness in
the history of the world, and at the same time to hold our own
interests free from peril.  Our position is plain.  The
circumstances of the last eighteen months convict the Republican
leadership of attempted trickery with the American people.  Under
one pretext after another they prevented the readjustment of
national conditions.  They proposed certain reservations to the
League of Nations, and then they were abandoned, to be followed
by nothing more definite than the announcement of a 'hope' that
an entirely new arrangement might be made in world affairs.  What
method they have in mind, if it is concretely in anyone's mind,
the people do not know.  No unprejudiced person can deny that the
consequence of abandoning the League and attempting an entirely
new project, will be prolonged delay.  If the voters of the
Republic, without regard to party, desire action, and prompt
action along lines that are now clearly understood, they will
render a verdict so overwhelmingly expressive of public
indignation that scheming politicians for years to come will not
forget.

"In the fact of an efficient leadership during the war, and of
constructive, progressive, economic service in peace, the
Republican leaders developed a smoke screen, behind which they
seek to gain their objective, the spoils of office.  For years
the best thought and the humanitarian impulses of civilized
countries have been applied to the high purpose of making war
practically impossible.  The League of Nations became the
composite agreement, and now the senatorial oligarchy meets it
with the absurd plea that it increases the probability of armed
conflict.  It not only reveals unworthy intent, but a very poor
estimate of American intelligence as well."

Taking the issue to the people, and free from what he termed
strait-jacket restrictions, the Governor said at Columbus, when
he talked to the Ohio Democratic Convention:

"I carefully reviewed the platform adopted at Chicago, and
studied its principles, but I know as much about it now as when
I started to read it.  I gave intensive thought also to the
speech made by the Republican candidate, the purpose of which
was to interpret the meaning of that historic document, and
after long and vigilant labor I found two pronouncements.  What
was the first?  The statement that staggered the sensibilities of
the civilization of the world, the unthinkable, monstrous
proposal, that in the midst of the uncertainty of the hour, a
separate peace ought to be made with Germany.  I want you to go
back with me just a year and a half, to the time when victory
was son; to the time when our boys maintained their vigils on
the banks of the Rhine, standing there in solid formation with
2,000,000 great lads behind them.  Germany signed the peace
document on the dotted line.  What has happened in the united
States Senate to prevent its acceptance by the upper branch of
the American Congress?  I need not recall, because every child
knows about it.  But the soldiers came back home; they were
demobilized; they entered into their several walks of life
believing that their victory had been complete, and that the
offending powers had been brought to terms.  And now, with the
armies disbanded, and now, with our military strength no longer
holding together, it is proposed by the candidate of the
Republican party that he will prove false to the boys who stood
by when that peace was made.  He will destroy the pact and enter
into a new covenant.

"Six hundred thousand French died at Verdun defending the
slogan, 'They shall not pass.'  More than a million English and
Canadians died on the Somme, reforming their ranks, and hurling
back the challenge, 'They shall not pass.'  They were possessed
of the crusading spirit; they were preserving the Democracy of
the world, the very Government of the earth.  And now another
menace is threatened, and it is proposed that some one, acting
in behalf of two millions of soldiers and the one hundred
million people of this Republic, shall perform a perfectly
perfidious act.  Standing at the head of the hosts of the great
army which opposes the hosts of reaction; standing at the head
of the hosts of Democracy, at the head of the hosts of progress;
at the head of the hundreds of thousands of independents of this
Country, I give to you this assurance:  That this dishonorable
deed will not be perpetrated--for two very important reasons.
First, Warren G. Harding will not have a chance to do it; and
second, I will not insult two million soldiers by doing it
myself.

"And then proceeding to the second stage of these proceedings,
the Republican candidate says that after he shall have made a
separate peace with Germany, he will then assemble the
conscience of the civilization of the world and form an entirely
new relationship.  If, for the sake of argument only, we are to
assume that a separate peace with Germany were made, I believe
that the Government of the United States of America would be so
unworthy in the eyes of the nations of the world that none of
them would have anything to do with us at all.

"This one question will remain in the public mind.  After all
this is the crux of the whole situation.  The Republican
candidate and the reactionaries now in control of the Republican
party, promise you nothing whatsoever except a proposal which at
is best will involve months and probably years of delay.  On the
other hand, we promise you this, that after the 4th of March,
1921, with the least amount of conversation possible, we will
enter the League of Nations of the world.  Our Democratic
platform adopted at San Francisco gives us full license and
opportunity to enter the League upon terms which will need no
defense.  Our position is not unbending; it is not captious.  We
proclaim that we will accept any conditions that interpret, that
call attention to the limitations of our Constitution; that
serve full notice now upon the powers of the earth that we can
go so far and no further.

"In other words we have the opportunity of concluding this, the
greatest movement for righteousness in all the history of the
world, and then the loose ends of civilization will be put
together.  The opportunity for exchange will have been restored.
America will proceed upon an era of prosperity and peace without
precedent.

"I shall address no audience in America this year without
puncturing the smoke screen of hypocrisy and insincerity which
has been raised, in order that the reactionaries might creep in
behind it and claim their main objective, the spoils of office.
That smoke screen now is the statement that the League of
Nations increases the probabilities of war.  It would have been
just as absurd to have said to the boys at the time our fathers
won their freedom, that if you proclaim your independence you are
going to have war, because you will have to fight to retain it.
Every school boy in Ohio understands there are three branches of
Government, Judicial, Legislative and Executive, and when war
has been brought to an end, the head of the Executive
Department, the President of the United States, makes the treaty
with the power with which we have been at war, and then we find
that limitation of power.  The President can go no further.  He
submits it to the Senate for ratification.  The President of the
United States has very definite power, and there are also very
specific powers reserved to the Congress of the United States.
The Congress can do nothing contrary to the Constitution; the
President can do nothing contrary to the Constitution.  The
Constitution provides that war can be declared by Congress, and
Congress only.  In order to give point and truth to what the
reactionary leaders are now contending for, it would be
necessary to change the Constitution of the United States.  This
would require a two-thirds' vote of the House and Senate, and
then a three-fourths' vote of the states of the Union.  Our
machinery was so adjusted that no matter who might be the
Executive Officer of this Republic, he did not possess the power
to declare war.  The power was placed as near to the people as it
was possible to place it.  It was placed with their
Representatives in Congress.

"Now--the Republican leaders in contending that four or five
potentates, four or five distinguished statesmen over seas,
sitting in the council of the League of Nations, can order our
soldiers anywhere, are speaking a deliberate and a willful
untruth.  Presidential proprieties require that I do not
characterize it in stronger language.  You know it is very hard
to please the opposition, although we are under great debt to
them for having made the gauge of battle in this campaign.  The
proposition to disgrace America by making a separate peace with
Germany was simply opening their front lines.  I have already
entered that opening with the hosts of Democracy around me.

"About three months ago a well-meaning Republican business man
was driving through Clark county.  His soldier boy was at the
wheel, and he looked over into a field and saw a hundred trucks
lying there; and he seized upon the circumstance to attack the
Administration at Washington.  The son had heard enough of it,
and he stopped the car and said:  'Father, you have got to stop
talking that way.  When we were in the front trench we had warm
food, no matter whether we were in the midst of hell's fire or
not.  We had all the ammunition we needed.  It was ten times
better to have more trucks than we needed than to have fewer
trucks than we needed.'  And then there is another reason for it
all.  Need we be reminded that the opposition said that it would
require Secretary Baker and President Wilson eighteen months to
take 600,000 soldiers over seas, and, recognizing that it would
require in all probability more than 2,000,000 soldiers to win
the war, that the war would then last, under this Democratic
Administration, four times eighteen months.  Any child in this
country can have the facts presented to him and he will have the
mentality to grasp these outstanding circumstances:  President
Wilson and Secretary Baker, at the head of the military forces
of the nation did not send 600,000 soldiers over in eighteen
months' time.  They sent 2,000,000 soldiers over in eighteen
months' time, and won the war without the loss of a single troop
ship."



CHAPTER V

HOW HE HAS DEALT WITH LABOR TROUBLES


No subject furnishes so good an index to the entire record of an
executive as the manner in which he has handled the affairs
growing out of industrial disputes.  Touching, as they often do,
a zone of disputed claims, and involving, as they often do, the
social rights of workers no less than the rights of property,
and entailing, as they frequently have, the duty of maintaining
public order, the conflicts between capital and labor test to
the utmost the abilities of the Executive Officer of a great
industrial state like Ohio.  Within its borders are toilers from
every land and every clime.  In her cities dwell as laborers men
and women from every known country and representative of every
race--a modern Babel of tongues with a greater variety, were it
possible, than those upon whom fell confusion of speech in the
ages gone.

And the period during which Governor Cox has held away has been
one of profound upheavals.  There have been strikes brought forth
by "hard times," strikes occasioned by efforts at organization
of workers, and strikes whose distant origin lay in the economic
overturn incident to war inflation with its topsy-turvy of
values and its jumble of the normal status.  These conditions,
then, supply a complete and ample test of the effectiveness of
the policy which has been followed.  The results of this policy
are told in a brief statement by Mr. Oscar W. Newman, Associate
Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.  He said:  "Not a soldier was
brought to the scene of a single strike (although they were in
readiness for emergency); person and property were preserved;
and above all, the dignity of the law was maintained."

Nor has capital been offended by the methods pursued.  This fact
is attested by statements of those who speak for invested
industrial wealth.  Thus, W. S. Thomas, of Springfield, says that
the policies pursued have made "Ohio an oasis in the widespread
area of industrial turmoil during and since the great war."

There are cited, too, the conclusions reached by Thomas J.
Donnelly, Secretary of the Ohio Federation of labor, who has
written:

"Labor has confidence in James M. Cox because the laboring
people feel that he understands their needs and is in hearty
sympathy with the progressive aspirations of those who earn
their bread by the sweat of their brows.  As governor, he
accomplished more in the interest of the laboring people of Ohio
and is held in higher esteem by them than any other governor in
the state's history.

"He has done much to avoid and to settle labor troubles.  He
believes that more can be accomplished through reason and common
sense than through force and intimidation; and whenever called
upon to send the militia to deal with striking workmen, he
always found a way to prevent violence and preserve order
without using soldiers for that purpose.  During the big steel
strike when violence and disorder were rampant in some states
where the right peaceably to assemble had been denied to the
striking workers, in Ohio, where there were equally as many
strikers involved, there was no sign of violence, and the right
of workers peaceably to assembled was not interfered with.  If
his policy had been followed by other public officials
throughout the nation, there would be less unrest and the people
would have more confidence in the fairness of government
authorities."

It is only necessary to get a comprehensive view of Governor
Cox's record with respect to labor troubles to tell the plain
story of what he has done.  He had scarce taken hold as Governor
in 1913 when a strike broke out in the great rubber plants of
Akron.  It seemed to have been fomented by members of the
Industrial Workers of the World, but it drew in its train
thousands upon thousands of other workers until the great plants
were practically idle.  In Akron, where a heterogenous collection
of industrial workers dwell, idleness was a potent factor in
fomenting disorder.  The normal course of affairs would have been
an attempt to operate the plants with strike breakers under
guard, provocative acts upon both sides, and finally, recourse
to an armed militia to quell the disorder after the inevitable
bloodshed had ensued.  Although new in executive experience,
Governor Cox took another course.  He sent trained and trusted
investigators to Akron who learned the facts and reported to him
accurately upon the situation, including also the grievances of
the toilers.  At the same time he gave warning to the local
authorities that they preserve a strict neutrality in their
dealing with the contending forces, and he uttered a solemn
warning that the laws must be respected, assuring those of both
contending factions that public opinion within the city would
speedily ascertain the right and wrong of the controversy.  And
so it proved to be.  But learning there were abuses in the plants
that needed correction the Governor gave his assent to an
investigation by a legislative committee through the helpful
publicity of which all interests were induced to redress certain
grievances.  It gave an object lesson not only to Akron but to
all the state.  It taught even the turbulent element that only
harm could come through infraction of the law and through
disrespect for rights of person and property.  The remainder of
the  story is that I. W. W. disturbers have more sterile soil in
Ohio to cultivate than in any of the states about it.

A startling comparison two years later at East Youngstown,
during the administration of Governor Cox's successor, disclosed
by contrast the value of the peaceful plan.  Through a policy of
uncertainty and wavering, a riot was allowed to start and
military were needed to put down the disorder, life being lost
in the process.

The details of the incidents of similar nature to that of Akron
need not be recounted here, but the invariable policy pursued
was the collection of all the facts, so far as possible, by a
representative of capital and one of labor.  Of this course, the
simple statement can be made that it was eminently successful.

This recital has been made as a preliminary to the narrative of
the great steel strike of 1919 on which the Governor's fame as
an administrator in troubled times largely rests.  The same
policy of investigation and research was pursued.  Solemn warning
was given that freedom of speech and assembly must be respected
rigidly but that neither must become the instrument of license
nor of subversive speech or conduct.  At the time when the
situation reached a critical stage the Governor issued this
statement:

"To the Mayors of municipalities and County Sheriffs of Ohio:

"I am impressed with the importance of a statement to the mayors
and sheriffs as to a policy which should serve as a guide to
government, both state and local, in the matter of turbulent
conditions which have developed in many communities, from
pending industrial disputes.

"We have inquiry at the executive office from local officials
clearly indicating that no rule of action has been developed in
the face of present emergencies and further that none is in
prospect.  The constitution imposes upon the Governor the very
definite responsibility of law enforcement.  While it is the duty
of the mayor of a municipality and the sheriff of the county to
execute the laws, the founders of our charter of government gave
to the state executive, not only the right to keep vigilant eye
on conditions in every community, but his oath imposes the
obligation so to do.  Therefore, in no part of the state must a
public officer permit the violation of the law.  The mayors and
sheriffs seem to have proper concept of their duty in the
abstract.  The purpose of this statement is to deal with
specifications.

"The sections of the state which give the greatest concern have
large masses of alien residents.  Thousands of them do not speak
the language.  They are not familiar with our laws but it is safe
to assume that the individual conscience tells every man that
violence is both a moral and a legal wrong.

"Officers of companies whose manufacturing plants are closed by
strike or other cause have expressed to me the intention to
resume operations.  At the same time they have asked for
'protection.'  Inquiry develops this fact--that some employers
believe it the duty of government to transport their employees
into and out of the plants in question.  This is not a function
of government.  Throughout the years, the policy has been not to
make use of soldiers nor policemen to man street cars, for
instance, nor in any way to make of them the instruments to
bring a strike to an end.  If either state or local officers
provided safe conveyance of workmen into or out of a
manufacturing institution, then government would be making of
itself the agent of one of the parties to the dispute.  If,
however, the plant resumes, and disorder of any sort ensues as
the result of employees going into or out of the factory, then
that becomes an affair of governmental concern and the mayor of
the municipality or the sheriff of the county, as location
within or without the municipality largely determines, must
suppress violence and arrest those who violate the law.  I shall
exact this from all local officers.

"Picketing as we understand it is neither prohibited by law nor
condemned by public sentiment, but it must go no further than
moral persuasion.  Organized society cannot continue without
government, and government will not live unless the laws are
respected.  They not only express what experience has taught us,
but they are the official mandate of the will of the majority,
and after all, that is a fundamental principle in a republic.

"All officers must act with care.  It will be found that trouble
can often be avoided by an open, frank and firm contact of
public officers with both the representatives of the employers
and employees.  No call that I have ever made upon either side of
these controversies has ever gone unheeded.

"We are in the midst of unprecedented conditions, but if we
devote ourselves to the single thought of making government the
agency of justice and the instrument of bringing swift
punishment to those who violate the laws of this commonwealth,
we will pass through the storm safely.

"No man must be permitted to define the rules of his individual
conduct.  The law is supreme.  I shall expect its enforcement by
local officers.  When they have rendered their utmost effort and
failed to meet conditions, then the state will act promptly."

In every city in Ohio, save one, this warning was sufficient,
but in Canton it became necessary for the Governor to remove the
mayor.  His successor speedily re-established the peace.



CHAPTER VI

HOW HE HAS DEALT WITH INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS


The story of the result of Governor Cox's treatment of
industrial issues is told in his parallel of statements from
Thomas J. Donnelly, Secretary of the Ohio Federation of Labor,
and W. S. Thomas, a leading manufacturer.

Statement by Donnelly:

"Before Ohio had a Workmen's Compensation Law, only twenty per
cent of the injured workers, or the widows and children of
deceased workers, were paid any compensation or damages.  Eighty
per cent got nothing whatever.  When Cox was first elected
governor, about five per cent of the workers of Ohio were
covered under an optional Workmen's Compensation Law.  His first
move as governor was to insist upon the passage of a Workmen's
Compensation Law that would benefit all the workers.  In this he
met with powerful and bitter opposition.  But through his
determined efforts the opposition was overcome and the law was
passed.  To-day the Ohio State Insurance Fund is the largest
carrier of workmen's compensation insurance, public or private,
in the world.  More than a million dollars a month is being
collected by this fund, all of which is paid out for
compensation and medical treatment for the injured workers or
the dependents of those who are killed in the course of
employment.  This law supplied such an urgent need in the state
that the employers and the laboring people of Ohio now look upon
it as an accomplishment that outshines any other achievement in
the state's history.

"The report of the legislative agents of the Ohio State
Federation of Labor show that fifty-six laws in behalf of
laboring people were passed during Cox's three terms as
governor.  Among these were laws forbidding the exploitation of
women and children and limiting their hours of labor, providing
for mothers' pensions, providing for safety codes to protect
life, limb and health and numerous other beneficent measures."

Statement by Thomas:

"His strong sense of right and wrong, and the exercise of an
unusual common sense, together with his frankness and courage in
expression, have been the controlling factors in his successful
relationship with the business interests of the state.

"A single example of his wisdom will illustrate this.  For years
organized labor and organized capital in Ohio have met during
the sessions of the general assembly in what seemed to be a
necessary antagonism.  This was evidenced by the opposition of
each to the proposed measures of the other.  The result was ill
feeling and little accomplished for either.  It was Governor
Cox's suggestion that these organizations, represented by the
State Federation of Labor and the Ohio Manufacturers'
Association, through their executive officers, should meet
together and discuss pending legislation relating to the
interest of either.  Finally this plan was adopted, and it is the
testimony of those participating tat it did much to avoid
misunderstandings, and contributed a great deal towards sane and
safe legislation.  There is not known any instance of this plan
being adopted in any other state of the Union.  The fruit of this
sensible procedure is that there are no laws in Ohio that hamper
industry, impede business or endanger property interests, and at
the same time the state is foremost in legislation that promotes
social welfare, gives labor its due, and helps the weak and
needy.

"A man who has occupied this position without interruption
during three administrations would be a failure at the very
outstart if he resorted to devious conduct or political
duplicity.  He has but one master--the people at large.  To reach
this position he had to have courage, be truthful, exercise
sound and practical business judgment, and at the same time have
a vision looking to the betterment of the condition of his
fellow-man."

The cornerstone of the labor legislation is the Workmen's
Compensation Law, the story of which is told in the state
archives, in the messages to the Ohio General Assembly.  At the
beginning of his first term as Governor in 1913, Governor Cox
said:

"It would certainly be common bad faith not to pass a compulsory
Workmen's Compensation Law.  No subject was discussed during the
last campaign with greater elaboration, and it must be stated to
the credit of our citizenship generally that regardless of the
differences of opinion existing for many years, the justice of
the compulsory feature is now admitted.  Much of the criticism of
the courts has been due to the trials of personal injury cases
under the principles of practice which held the fellow-servant
rule, and assumption of risk and contributory negligence to be
grounds of defense.  The layman reaches his conclusion with
respect to justice along the lines of common sense, and the
practice in personal injury cases has been so sharply in
conflict with the plain fundamentals of right, that social
unrest has been much contributed to.  A second phase of this
whole subject which has been noted in the development of the
great industrialism of the day has been the inevitable animosity
between capital and labor through the ceaseless litigation
growing out of these cases.  The individual or the corporation
that employs on a large scale has taken insurance in liability
companies, and, in too many instances, cases which admitted of
little difference of opinion have been carried into the courts.
The third injustice has been the waste occasioned by the system.
The injured workman or the family deprived of its support by
accident is not so circumstanced that the case can be contested
with the corporation to the court of last resort.  The need of
funds compels compromise on a base that is not always equitable.
Human nature many times drives sharp bargains that can hardly be
endorsed by the moral scale.  In the final analysis the cost of
attorney fees is so heavy that the amount which finally accrues
in cases of accident is seriously curtailed before it reaches
the beneficiary.  These three considerations clearly suggest the
lifting of this whole operation out of the courts and the sphere
of legal disputation.  And then there is a broader principle
which must be recognized.  There is no characteristic of our
civilization so marked as the element of interdependence as
between social units.  We are all dependent upon our fellows in
one way or another.  Some occupations, however, are more
hazardous than others and the rule of the past in compelling
those engaged in dangerous activities to bear unaided the burden
of this great risk, is not right.  The Workmen's Compensation Law
in this state, which, however, lacks the compulsory feature, has
made steady growth in popularity.  The heavy decrease in rates
clearly indicates economy and efficiency in the administration
of the state liability board of awards.  The compulsory feature,
however, should at once be added.  I respectfully but very
earnestly urge its adoption amendatory of the present law with
such other changes as experience might dictate.

"The objective to be sought is the fullest measure of protection
to those engaged in dangerous occupations with the least burden
of cost to society, because after all the social organization
must pay for it.  The ultimate result of this law will be the
reduction in death and accident because not only the
humanitarian but the commercial consideration will suggest the
necessity of installing and maintaining with more vigilance
modern safety devices.

"Government as a science must make its improvement along the
same practical lines which develop system, simplification,
classification of kindred activities, and better administrative
direction in the evolution of business.  A private or corporate
enterprise is compelled to promote in the highest degree both
efficiency and economy because its income is subject to the
hazards of business.  Government without this spur of necessity
because its revenue is both regular and certain, does not effect
reorganizations and combine common activities so readily.  One
reason, of course, is that new legislation is required and that
is not easy at all times.  Wherever human energies are now being
directed toward more efficient public service, we find the
consolidation under one administrative unit or bureau of all
departments which deal either in direct or different manner with
the same general subject.  Investigation develops many
duplications in both labor and expense in the departments of the
state.  No business institution would continue such a policy and
recognizing now the importance of conducting the business of the
commonwealth along the same modern and efficient lines of
private and corporate operations, there is submitted herewith to
your honorable body two recommendations which, in my judgment,
are of tremendous importance, namely, the creation of an
Industrial Commission and a Department of Agriculture.  The first
named organization would combine every existing department which
deals with the relation between capital and labor.  It is
certainly a logical observation that the department heads
clothed with the responsibility of details will find it
extremely difficult to rise to the moral vision necessary to
construct and conserve policies dealing with big things.  Besides
duplication of service is a waste of both human energy and state
funds."

In summing up the results of a single year of Workmen's
Compensation Law, the Governor at the beginning of 1915 said:

"The humane results of the Workmen's compensation Law have been
so widespread and the wisdom of the people in changing the
constitution so as to make this plan compulsory has been so
completely demonstrated that manufacturer and employee now join
in praise of the act.  While the liability insurance companies
contend that the State could not administer this trust and that
the cost would run into millions of dollars per year, the
experience of the first twelve months shows the cost of the
administration to be approximately $160,000; and the claims,
running far in excess of 50,000 in number, have been adjudicated
with such promptness as to justify in the fullest measure the
soundness of the State plan.  The balance in the fund December
15, 1914, was $2,418,414.07.  The number of accidents is
diminishing and the cost to the employer is decreasing; so that
both lower rates and larger compensation seem assured.  As one
who passed through the stormy period that led to the passage of
this law, I urge upon you the extreme importance of the highest
manifestations of vigilance, patriotism and humanity in order
that the fundamentals of this beneficent legislation may be
preserved.  Under the pretext of improving the law it can be
easily emasculated.  Ohio assumed the lead in this legislation,
and if the fundamental principle is maintained here, the plan,
by its demonstrated worth, will be adopted elsewhere.  This means
the ultimate loss of ill-gotten millions by potential interests
that have grown rich from the tears, blood and maimed bodies of
our working people.  They will not give it up without a continued
struggle.  Your duty to humanity and to your State calls for
extreme watchfulness.

Though he suffered defeat for re-election in 1914, neither the
Industrial Commission Law nor the Workmen's compensation Law nor
any other major piece of social legislation was disturbed by his
successor.  In reviewing four years of the history of the law at
his re-accession to power in 1917, he said:

"Since the adoption of the law there have been 300,000
industrial accidents and only seventeen suits have been brought
against employers who paid into the state insurance fund.  There
was but one single verdict rendered by the court against the
employer in the list of seventeen and that was for $2000.  Five
cases were settled out of court, four were decided in favor of
the employer, one was dismissed by the employee, one was
dismissed by the court and four are still pending.  More than one
thousand firms carry their own insurance under state consent,
and against these institutions but five suits have been brought.
Against the employers who have reinsured with the liability
insurance companies, eight suits have been instituted, making a
total of thirty law suits from all sources.  These figures are
procured from the official records of the Industrial
Commission."

Two years later, in 1919, a further chapter is given:

"The experience of our state with the Compulsory Workmen's
Compensation Law bears so vitally on the industrial life of our
people that it is deemed proper to report the outstanding
features of the situation.  The amount of money in the fund held
by the State as trustee for the injured workmen and their
dependents, as of date, January 2, 1919, was $15,401,429.74.
So carefully measured has been the cost of human justice that
employers pay a smaller premium-rate in Ohio than elsewhere, and
the injured workmen and their dependents are given larger
compensation.  A dramatic circumstance which bears eloquent
testimony in behalf of this law is here recited:  Not long since
a workman was injured in a factory through which runs the
boundary line between Ohio and Pennsylvania.  The accident
occurred a few feet east of our state, but the poor fellow
crawled back onto the soil of Ohio because he knew the
difference between our law and the law in Pennsylvania.  As a
further evidence of the basic soundness of the law and the
character of its administration, I have directed the Industrial
Commission to have an actuarial audit of the fund in its charge,
with the imposed condition that the Ohio Federation of Labor,
the Ohio Manufacturers' Association and the State Auditor be
consulted in the employment of the most competent actuary,
obtainable outside the state service, to do the work."

This, then, is the story, but not all of it.  Having its genesis
in the meetings between labor and capital, there has been worked
out by the two an elaborate code of safety rules which have been
officially promulgated by the commission and have the binding
effect of law.  To-day capital and labor will demand of his
successor that his heart and mind be in accord with the program
carried to fruition in his six years as Governor.  There are
other points in his service, briefly covered here, in these
lists:


Laws Pertaining to Business

A public utilities law providing property re-valuation as a
basis for rate making.

Provision for court appear from the utilities commission
decision to the court of final jurisdiction, preventing delay
and loss.

Prohibition against injunction on rate hearing without court
investigation.

A uniform accounting system applied to utilities.

A state banking code with close co-operation with the federal
reserve system, bringing all private banks under state
supervision.

State expenditure on a budget system to reduce cost of
government and lessen taxation.

A blue-sky act to encourage proper investment and protect
against fraudulent securities.


Labor Legislation

A State Industrial Commission with powers to handle all
questions affecting capital and labor, with a state mediator as
the keystone.

Complete survey of occupational diseases with recommendation for
health and occupational insurance.

Full switching crew in all railroad yards.

Strengthening the user in the state of railroad safety
appliances.

A full crew law.

Twenty-four foot caboose.

Reduction of consecutive hours of employment for electric
railroad workers.

Obstruction of fixed signals prohibited.

Safeguarding of accidents in mines by proper illumination.

Extra provision for dependents of men killed in mines.

Increased facilities for mine inspector operation.

Protection of miners working toward abandoned mines.

Elimination of sweatshop labor.

Provision for minimum time pay day.

Prohibition of contract labor in workhouses.

Provision for minimum wage and nine-hour working day for women.

Eight-hour working day on all public contracts.

Codification of child laws with establishment of child welfare
department.

Compulsory provision for mothers' pensions.

Verdict by three-fourths jury in civil cases.



CHAPTER VII

THE LEADER OF THE STATE IN WAR--VISION IN
GOVERNMENT IN PEACE TIME


Theodore Roosevelt said that Governor Cox was among the very
foremost of war Governors.  The utterance was made after he
had assessed the things done during the fateful period of
hostilities.  Presenting complicated problems at all time it was
no less true that in war there were major, not minor, obstacles
to be met and surmounted before Ohio might take her traditional
place as one of the very militant states of the Union.  That she
did achieve such place attests the zeal and ardor of the
Governor.  Ohio presented to the country a complete division, the
Thirty-seventh, recruited under the personal supervision of
Governor Cox.  It led the nation, by long odds, in sale of war
saving stamps, an activity stimulated by Governor Cox.  It
preserved good order and set an example in spite of many
conflicting racial antagonisms within its borders by cultivation
of such a spirit as made open or covert disloyalty dangerous to
the disloyal.  Withal there was no untoward incident affecting
peaceful alien enemies.  In the cities, none led those of Ohio in
war gardening, and the tractor campaign for Ohio farms was
adopted and imitated in other states.  The Governor himself was a
dynamo of activity, organizing the first State Council of
Defense and enlisting volunteer aid at no expense to state and
country in quickening all war and related activities.  Every
situation affecting the State's power found him ready for the
emergency.  When an early frost and severe winter in 1917-18
destroyed much of the seed corn, the Governor uncovered
instances of profiteering and immediately stopped it by vigorous
action.  Corn in other districts with similar soil and climate
was brought in and sold at three dollars a bushel.

Soldiers of no state were better supplied with all the comforts
that could be provided than those of Ohio.  While the Thirty-
seventh was in camp in the far South a Christmas train was sent
to it.  Special funds were raised for entertainment of both the
Ohio camps.  In a word, every war activity felt the vigilant care
and sympathetic help of the Governor.

During the war time there were few idle men in Ohio.  Through
proclamation attention of local authorities was directed to an
old law making vagrancy an offense and it was applied
rigorously.

No less in reconstruction than in was activities his energies
were tireless.  The Governor took the lead in securing
legislation to correct the defects found in educational laws and
one of the statutes placed upon the books at his suggestion
provided for an oath of allegiance on the part of teachers.
Referring to disclosures in certain cities, he said:  "We have
had our bitter experiences and love for our children compels us,
in common prudence, to protect them."

Without sympathy for the mischievous spirits who sought to
foment trouble in America, the Governor clearly expressed his
conception of Americanization as a voluntary spiritual, and not
a compulsory, process.  The policy he had in mind was indicated
in an address in Chicago in March, 1920, in which he said:

"There must be no compromise with treason, but the surest death
to Bolshevism is exposure of the germ of the disease itself to
the sunlight of public view.  We must protect ourselves against
extremes in America.  The horrors and tragedies of revolution can
be charged to them.  If government is assailed, its policy must
not become vengeful.  Our fathers in specifying what human
freedom was, and providing guarantees for its preservation,
recognized that among the necessary precautions was the
protection of individual right against governmental abuses.

"If the alien, ignorant of our laws and customs, cows in fear of
our government, he is very apt to believe that things are much
the same the world over, and he may become and easy convert to
the doctrine of resistance.  The skies will clear but meanwhile
government must be firm, yet judicial, uninfluenced by the
emotionalism that breeds extremes.  The less government we have,
consistent with safety to life and property, the better for both
happiness and morals.  A policeman on every corner would be a bad
index to the citizenship of the community, for it would reflect
a foolish concept of conditions by the municipal officers."

The vision of Governor Cox in legislation is best to be studied
in the statute book of Ohio.  The fact is that he was a pioneer
in some of this, indeed in a large part of it.  Through the years
he has insisted that government must deal with its problem by
evolution lest revolution overtake it.  It was this sentiment
that led him to deal with the industrial injury matter.  When he
heard men inveighing against the courts, a discerning eye knew
something was wrong and he gave his attention to righting that
wrong.  His creed, not recently as a candidate, but in the years
of his public career, has been expressed in this summary:  "Our
view is toward the sunrise of tomorrow with its progress and its
eternal promise of better things."

The expression is found so frequently in his state documents
that it might properly be set forth in the form of a creed.  But
there has been more than what the great Roosevelt called "lip-
service to progress.  The forward steps became a part of the
laws.

In health affairs he asked for the appointment of a commission
to study the need for adequate local administration and he urged
its adoption before the General Assembly so forcefully that Ohio
to-day has what is universally recognized to be the best system
in America.  In placing the state department upon a footing
commensurate with other institutions of government, case was
taken to place it where it cannot be prostituted to
partisanship.  There has been a growing number of governmental
departments under Governor Cox in which partisanship is utterly
forbidden.  They include the Board of Administration, dealing
with the wards of the state, the social agencies, the
educational, and the Fish and Game Department.  An actual census
in all the varied public office activities in Ohio would
disclose that although the Democratic party has been in
possession of the Government for nearly all of the past twelve
years, the number of members of the Republican party on the
public rolls is almost as great as that of the victors.  The
Governor has found that men in the world of business employ, at
larger compensation than the state has afforded, the type of men
he has most often selected for responsible posts.  It is one of
the curious effects of progress in government that it has
touched and awakened progress in business and in civic life.

In social service there has been evolved the cold storage act
which has served as a model for proposed national legislation.
under its provisions a strict limitation of time is placed upon
the storing of food.  With this has gone strict legislation
against adulteration of food and honest enforcement of the laws.

Other states have accepted as a model the social agency
committee now working in effective co-operation with state
departments and bringing into mutual operation all recognized
social agencies.  One of the greatest steps forward was the
establishment of a bureau of juvenile research with Dr. L. H.
Goddard at its head.

Second to no other reform has been that effected in handling of
the prison problem.  Prisoners now earn their freedom through
work in the healthful out-of-doors on highways, in plants for
making road material, and on farms.  There is a system of
compensation to the families for work done as a balance on which
to begin life anew.

Twelve hundred consolidated schools in Ohio attest the
successful workings of the rural school code which was brought
into existence in 1914 after careful study and after the state
in general meetings had carefully studied the plans.  The old
one-room school house is giving way in the country to the modern
centralized school and community life is being remade.  Through
the raising of the country school to the plane of those of the
cities, it will be possible to check the alarming drift to the
cities and depopulation of the countryside.  Governor Cox does
not believe that the federal government should interfere in the
affairs of local communities but he does believe that it "can
inventory the possibilities of progressive education, and in
helpful manner create an enlarged public interest in this
subject."

Along with the improvement of rural schools has gone a most
comprehensive highway programme involving an annual outlay of
millions of dollars.  Gradually as highways are improved they
will, under the state policy shaped in 1913, be taken over by
the state.

The agricultural legislation was in consonance with the other
subjects touched.  Ohio was long a dumping ground for inferior
fertilizers, diseased livestock and impure seed.  Adequate laws
have changed all this.  Still, these are police measures not of
necessity a true index of real vision in agricultural matters.
The boldest step ever taken was the establishment of pure bred
herds of cattle by the state with opportunity afforded through
breeding service at institutional farms to extend these pure
strains to the small farms.  The success attained is reflected in
numerous heard of thorough-bred cattle.



CHAPTER VIII

FIGHTING "SLUSH FUNDS"


Developments of the present campaign have given a peculiar
interest to past history with respect to the record of Governor
Cox in dealing with campaign expenditures.  The Governor's
reports, which have been filed under the Ohio Corrupt Practice
law, show that he has never been an extravagant spender in
campaigns.  In his various races for the Governor's office in
Ohio one of the points which he has claimed is the redemption of
pledges made to the people.  Under one of these pledges he
advocated and secured the enactment of an anti-lobby law,
designed to reduce the evils attendant upon the presence of a
legislative lobby.  He found upon the statute books of Ohio a
corrupt practice act and this was strengthened by laws passed
during his term.  In taking hold as Governor in 1913, he demanded
and secured a rigid lobby law.  Of this he said:

"Conditions not only justify but demand drastic anti-lobby law.
Any person interesting himself in legislation will not, if his
motive and cause be just, object to registering his name,
residence and the matters he is espousing, with the secretary of
state, or some other authority designated by your body.  If his
activities be of such nature that he does not care to reveal
them in the manner indicated, then the public interest is
obviously endangered.  It is no more than a prudent safeguard to
have it known what influences are at work with respect to
legislation.  There ought to be no temporizing with this
situation."

In the first year of his administration he combated an attempt
to annul the workmen's compensation law by an improper
referendum and vigorously cleaned up the situation by causing
the arrest of those who had conspired to falsify names to
petitions.  The Governor followed up his activity for clean
administration of the referendum system by comprehensive laws in
1914, since when no abuses have been discovered.  What he said to
the General Assembly gave a further indication of his policy in
this respect.  He said:

"The underlying spirit of the corrupt practice laws in the state
and nation is the ascertainment of the influences behind
candidates or measures.  We can with profit compel a sworn
itemized statement when the petition is filed showing all money
or things of value paid, given or promised for circulating such
petitions."

In the campaign of 1916, in which Governor Cox was re-elected,
assertions were made of large improper expenditure of money in
defiance of the law.  In the following January at the regular
session of the General Assembly, the Governor indicated his
position by calling for a special legislative inquiry.  The
statements he made furnish an interesting background for the
developments of the year.  At that time he said:

"Let me lay particular emphasis on the necessity of safeguarding
the suffrage thought of the state from the dangers of corrupt
influences.  The sums of money expended for so-called political
purposes are assuming such magnitude as to cause seemingly well-
founded alarm, if not to justify the belief that the legitimate
purpose of campaigning is being exceeded.  Unfettered by law,
this tendency might result in the waters of our free
institutions being poisoned at their very base.  Reduced to
simple terms, the object of a campaign is to inform the voters
on every subject that legitimately and germanely joins to the
issues and the candidates.  Any step beyond this, and any project
opposed to it in motive, cannot but be regarded as dangerous.
Human frailties should not be played upon by vast treasures of
money advanced by men or movements whose huge disbursements can
hardly be looked upon as of patriotic inspiration.  It is not
necessary to expend large amounts of money for the promotion of
a worthy cause, and, inversely, any cause or candidacy having
behind it unprecedented financial support is likely to be
regarded with suspicion.  It may, through legislation, be
necessary to restrain irresponsible organizations whose
existence and activities are born of a hidden design, conceived
by some interest afraid to operate in the open.  I recommend that
a legislative committee of investigation be appointed with the
power to employ counsel, and the authority to summon persons and
papers and to swear witnesses in order that it might be known
just what organizations have been entering into campaign
activities, and how much money they expended and collected--also
the names of the contributors.  This should extend also to
candidates.  The facts as adduced will then be a safe guide as to
the necessity of strengthening the corrupt practices act, or
more rigorously enforcing existing law, or both."

The legislative session had hardly concluded before the war with
Germany broke out and it was deemed unwise at that time to
proceed to any agitation on the subject.  The functions of the
committee were, accordingly never fulfilled.  Early in the year
of 1920, the Governor gave warning of the report that huge funds
were to be raised in this year for election purposes.  At the
very outset of his campaign in addressing the members of
Democratic National Committee at Columbus, the Governor said:

"I hope I do violence to no member of this committee when I
submit to you this proposal:  That we purpose not only to deal
with eminent good faith with the electorate of this nation in
November with reference to platform pledges, but we mean to let
every man and woman understand where every dollar comes from,
and for what purpose it is spent.  We not only urge that as a
matter of high principle, but in order to guarantee the triumph
of our cause which deserves to triumph.  We do not want the
publication of expenditures after the election.  There is no
point in advising the voters what has been done.  We want them to
be fully advised of every circumstance with reference to the
collection and the disbursement of funds in order that from the
circumstances they can gain a correct index, and understand that
when the Democracy is continued in power in Washington, it
assumes its responsibility without a single obligation except to
the conscience that God has given us.

"Therefore, gentlemen, let us make up a budget which will carry
the full details and information--recounting the legitimate
expenses of this campaign, render an accounting daily or weekly,
and the source from which it came.  And more than that, we shall
insist upon the senatorial investigating committee continuing in
session until the ballot has been closed in November.  You know
full well that a campaign fund sufficient in size to stagger the
sensibilities of the nation is now being procured by our
opponents.  If they believe that is correct in principle, God
speed them in the enterprise, It will be one of our chief assets
in this campaign."

This, then is the record.



CHAPTER IX

THE LIFE STORY


Born at Jacksonburg, Ohio, March 31, 1870, son of Gilbert and
Eliza Cox; educated in public schools; reared on farm; worked in
printer's office; taught country school; became newspaper
reporter; secretary to Congressman Sorg, 3d Ohio District;
bought Dayton Daily News, 1898, and Springfield Press Republic,
1903, forming News League of Ohio; member 61st and 62d Congress
(1909-13), 3d Ohio District; Governor of Ohio; elected in 1912,
defeated in 1914, elected in 1916 and 1918; now serving third
term; home, Trailsend, Dayton.

The family of Cox seems to have had its origin in England in the
generations gone, but its Americanism is of two centuries in
duration.  At Freeboard, New Jersey, lived General James Cox, one
of the early speakers of the New Jersey House of Representatives
and later a member of Congress.  Tillers of the soil and
artisans, the closer forbears attained to no distinction in
public life.  To Ohio the family came sometime in the early years
of the last century, and at Jacksonburg the paternal
grandfather, Gilbert Cox, established himself.  On the ancestral
farm of 160 acres, his son, Gilbert, Jr., lived, and on it James
M. Cox first saw the light of day.  His uncles and aunts, for his
father was one of a family of thirteen, were of the people who
migrated westward.  The youngest of a family of seven children,
he learned the routine of tasks of a boy on the farm.  In the
little one-room country school he attended, his teachers found
him an ordinary pupil but with a fondness for newspaper reading.

Cox's first public job was the humble position of janitor in the
United Brethren Church, and even now his favorite reminiscence
is the difficulty he had in making the old wood stove function
properly.  The thrifty farmers in those days were accustomed to
commute part of their dues in cord wood for the church, and
often the quality they supplied was not of the best.  The boy
became a member of the Church, a membership which is still
retained.

At fifteen he left the elementary school to enter the Middletown
High School, living with his sister, Mrs. John Q. Baker, whose
husband was a teacher in the High School and owner of the
Middletown Signal.  Board was paid in working as a printer's
devil until the apprenticeship was served and the county
newspaper business was mastered from both the counting room and
the editorial side.  Upon completion of his high school course,
the young man passed the county examination and obtained a
position as teacher of the school he had in earlier years
attended, but a pedagogical career was not to his liking and he
returned to work on the Signal staff.  He became also the local
correspondent for the Cincinnati Enquirer and attracted the
attention of the main office by a neat scoop which he landed
regarding a railroad wreck.  Graduating into the reportorial
work, he became assistant telegraph and railroad editor of the
Enquirer.  He retired from the newspaper life for a time to
become Secretary to Congressman Sorg, remaining in his capacity
until his 28th year, when he purchased the Dayton News, giving
$12,000 in notes and beginning with a capital of just $80.  The
times were hard enough for the young chap with creditors
constantly upon him.  Once his paper was forced to suspend by
reason of an unpaid bill, and the opposition paper heralded its
death.  The struggling publisher retaliated with an "extra"
announcing its continuance.  Then again there were plenty of
libel suits for the young editor-publisher, setting out to be a
reformer, and the ruling powers in the city strongly disapproved
his methods, but the militant editor brought readers and the
readers brought advertisers, and the venture became a success.
Five years from his first venture he bought the Springfield
Press Republic and the Springfield Democrat, combining the two
in the Evening News.  Each is now housed in its own modern
newspaper building and each is highly prosperous as a business
institution, although the owner's supervision has been of a
general character.

His associates always speak of the "Cox luck" in politics, but
upon analysis it seems that it consists either of seizing or
making the opportunity.  In 1908 his Congressional district,
originally Democratic, had become Republican, but a factional
quarrel breaking out in the opposition camps, the Governor took
the Democratic nomination and won out, again riding to victory
in the great landslide of 1910.  In Congress his career afforded
him no opportunity to attain to high distinction, but he became
a member of the appropriations committee and there became most
deeply impressed with the waste in public funds and the
unbusinesslike methods of arriving at appropriations.  One of his
services was the disclosure that the care of Civil War veterans
in the National Soldiers' Home at Dayton was shattered, and he
won the contest for increased allowances.  The gratitude of the
veterans was expressed in a majority from the Home in his re-
election in 1910, thus breaking an historical precedent.

Two years later he became the champion of the constitutional
amendments proposed by the Fourth Constitutional Convention of
Ohio, then sitting, and as such was unanimously nominated by his
party for Governor, on a platform which demanded a "new order"
of things in Ohio.  As soon as he was nominated he took the
platform before the people for the adoption of the
constitutional amendments in a special September election.  These
amendments included one providing for the initiative and
referendum of which he had been an advocate for years, and one
for the removal of officials failing to enforce the laws, giving
the Governor the weapon with which he established his law-
enforcement record.  There was very little to the campaign in
that year, the historical Republican party splitting in two upon
the issue of progressiveness, and he was elected by an enormous
plurality.  Facing the tasks imposed by the new constitution, the
Governor insisted upon legislative fulfillment of each popular
mandate, and in a busy session of three months he accomplished
his programme.

Aside from the legislation suggested by the amendments, his
greatest constructive step was the enactment of a budget system,
which sought to place the financial affairs of Ohio upon a
businesslike basis.  Its worth as a saver of money and promoter
of efficiency has never been challenged.  The previous Ohio
fiscal system had grown grossly archaic.  Appropriations were
made by the Legislature to the departments in lump sums or in
the form of granting all receipts and balances, some of the
departments being maintained by the fees from interests they
regulated.  Of the departments having receipts of their own, many
had deposits of their own in banks and their own checking
accounts, so that their funds never passed through the State
Treasury or through the hands of the State Auditor.  Other
departments got much or little from the Legislature, depending
upon whether they had a gifted representative to appear for them
before the legislative finance committee.  Institutions vied with
each other in providing the best entertainment to these
committees as they made their week-end junket trips over the
State during legislative sessions.

All this was changed in one sweeping stroke in the first
administration of Governor Cox.  All receipts of all departments
now go into the State Treasury and none leave the treasury until
it is appropriated in specific sums for specific purposes within
specific departments.  The state auditor has a check on every
expenditure.

The Ohio budget department is composed of one commissioner
appointed by the Governor, an assistant and a clerk.  All
departmental requests for funds desired of the next succeeding
Legislature are filed with the Budget Commissioner, to be
brought before the Governor.  He investigates all items,
ascertains the reasons for any increases that are asked, and
fixes the sums he deems proper.  Also, he estimates what the
State revenues during the next biennium will be and prunes the
budget to come within the total of expected revenues.  The budget
as prepared by the commissioner is submitted to the Governor,
who frequently makes changes of his own after advising with
department heads.

The Governor then presents the budget to the Legislature, which
refers it to the finance committees of the two houses.  The
committees, and, in turn, the Legislature, have full authority
to make any alterations, increases or decreases, desired, but
the spellbinding by department representatives and wire-pulling
by lobbyists are reduced to a minimum because the Budget
Commissioner sits as the agent of the Governor at all sessions
of the finance committees and at all times is prepared to defend
the allowance he thinks a department should have.

The first budgetary appropriation bill repealed an existing
appropriation law.  It reduced appropriations aggregating
$9,709,288 to $8,762,664, a saving of $946,624.  Since that time
the Ohio budget system has effected savings of millions, not, of
course, in the sense that expenditures of the State government
now are less than in 1913--for they have increased as
governmental activities have enlarged--but in the sense that
expenditures each year have been vastly less than they would
have been without the budget plan of pruning and scaling down
demands of existing State departments with a view both to
general economy and avoidance of deficits.

The Ohio Budget and consequently its appropriation law
classifies expenditures in two divisions: (1) Operating expenses
and (2) Capital outlay (or permanent improvements).

Operating expenses are subdivided into personal service and
maintenance.  Personal service in turn is divided into salaries
and wages, and maintenance into supplies, materials, equipment,
contract or open order service, and fixed charges and
contributions.

Elasticity of funds within departments is afforded by periodical
meetings of a board of control, composed of the Governor (who
may be and usually is represented by the Budget commissioner),
the State Auditor, the Attorney-General, and the chairmen of the
two legislative finance committees.  If any new need develops
within departments, funds for the purpose may be provided by a
four-fifths vote of the board of control.  Effort first is made
to transfer the needed funds from one classification to another
within the department.  If no fund within the department has a
surplus, and the need is great enough, relief may be granted by
the emergency board, having the same membership as the board of
control, which has at its disposal an emergency fund for
contingencies arising between legislative sessions.  Perfection
never has been claimed for the Ohio system.  Governor Cox himself
realizes certain weaknesses in it and is making a fight now for
strengthening features, which, however, necessitate a change in
the constitution.  One defect is that, regardless of probable
income, the Legislature may increase items in the budget (or
rather the appropriation bill based on the budget), and it may
make other appropriations in separate bills as it sees fit
without regard to prospective revenues.

In his 1919 message to the General Assembly, a Republican body,
the Governor urged submission to the people of an amendment to
the constitution providing that the Legislature shall have the
right to diminish any item in the executive budget by majority
vote or to strike out any item:  that, however, it shall not be
privileged to increase any item or to add a new one unless it
makes legislative provision for sufficient revenue to meet the
added cost.  Such an amendment was not submitted.  Unless it is
done by an early legislature, adherents of Cox in Ohio say it
may be undertaken by initiative petition.


Good Roads

Another notable achievement of Governor Cox is the advance of
the Ohio highway system.  Roads were in deplorable shape when he
became Governor.  There was no hope for rural counties with small
tax duplicates, the ones in greatest need of good roads never
being able to lift themselves out of the mud except through
liberal state aid.

One of the Governor's first acts was a survey of road
conditions.  A complete network of 10,000 miles of inter-county
roads was mapped out.  It connected the eighty-eight county
seats.  Of the 10,000 miles of inter-county highways, 3000 miles,
connecting the larger cities, were designated as main market
roads.  The scheme of financing called for improvement of the
main market roads entirely at state expense, which the remainder
of the system was to be built on a fifty-fifty basis, the state
furnishing half the funds, and the county in which the road
lies, the other half.

All road improvement under the Cox administration has been given
such an impetus that the State, county and township programmes
to-day call for an expenditure of $30,000,000 annually,
including federal aid.  Popular demand for highway improvement is
greater than the State Highway department and county
commissioners are able to meet.


Revitalizing the Schools

As a pupil in a one-room country school and as a teacher, he had
first knowledge of the shortcomings and possibilities of the
Ohio educational system.  It was his firm conviction that the
country boy and girl should be given the same educational
advantages that accrued to those of the city.

The purpose of the Governor's school programme was to give Ohio
a co-ordinates system of State, county and district supervision,
to require normal or college training of all teachers, and,
above all, to pave the way for speedier centralization and
consolidation of the one-room district school.  Results have been
beyond the expectations of school men, every breath and
opposition to the system has blown away, and it may truthfully
be said that it has become an idol of the people of the state.
The re-organization has stimulated interest in education in all
respects and has made possible a more recent establishment of a
state-wide teachers' pensions system and a complete revamping of
financial support of schools through a State and county aid
plan.  Salaries of teachers have been increased the last six
years from a minimum of $40 a month to a statutory minimum of
$800 a school year.  The teacher shortage occasioned by the war
will be solved without much delay in Ohio, as county and state
normal schools report prospective increases in attendance of
fifty to one hundred per cent or even greater for next year.

The time had come in 1913 when the little district school with
its narrow curriculum and crude methods of instruction did not
meet the needs and purposes of modern industrial and social life
in Ohio.  It had not kept step with rural economic progress.  In
the whole State it was the one evidence of retardation, an
institution of bygone days which had deteriorated instead of
having improved.  The right of every child to educational
opportunities for development to the fullest extent of his
possibilities was not recognized by the State in the school
system as it existed at that time.  Governor Cox, in his first
message to the general assembly in January, 1913, recommended
that a complete school survey be made.  A survey commission was
created.  To acquaint school patrons with the object of the
survey in progress and to get them to discuss in their own
communities the defects and the needs of the schools, November
14, 1913, was set apart as "School survey day" and a light
burned in every school building in the State that night.
Delegates were appointed to attend a state-wide educational
congress the next month, and in January, 1914, the Governor
called a special session to enact the rural school code.

The survey report disclosed that not half of the teachers of the
State ever had attended high school, nor had normal training.
Rural schools were mere stepping stones for young teachers
before securing positions in village and city schools,
agriculture was scarcely taught, schools were without equipment,
three-fourths of the buildings were twenty years old or older,
unsanitary, poorly lighted, without ventilation and
insufficiently heated.

With one stroke the new school code created county supervision
districts under the control of county boards, elected by the
presidents of village and township boards; provided for county
superintendents and supervisors over smaller districts within
the county; required academic and professional training of all
new teachers henceforth, and gave communities wider powers to
centralize and consolidate schools.

At present ninety-five per cent of the elementary teachers have
had professional training, and high school teachers are required
to be college graduates or have equivalent scholastic
attainment.  The most common faults of class-room instruction
have been to a great extent eliminated.  Standard methods of
presentation are being practices in an attempt to give to each
child opportunity for development of his possibilities.

A great stimulation of public school sentiment is manifested by
a closer co-operation and correlation of the school and the
home, resulting in boys' and girls' club work, achievement
courses, home projects and other school extension and community
activities; a growth of the feeling of responsibility to the
community on the part of the teacher; an attitude of greater
interest and responsibility of the boards of education toward
the school; a willingness of the people to vote money for new
school plants and enterprises; a growing demand for
consolidation and centralization; a better trained class of
teachers, increased school attendance, especially in high
schools where it has increased from fifty to one hundred per
cent.

School administration is much more efficient as is demonstrated
by a uniform course of study for elementary and high schools,
vitalized by its articulation with the industrial activities of
the community, county uniformity of textbooks, selection and
correlation of textbook material and its adaptation to the
varying interests and needs of childhood, uniform system of
reports and records, and the like.

School centers have been made to coincide with social and
business centers.  Convenient districts have been formed around
centers of population. village and surrounding rural districts
have been united in accordance with the trend of the community
interests and activities.  Weak districts have been eliminated by
the transfer of their territory to other districts, thereby
strengthening property valuations.

A centralized school in Ohio was almost a novelty in 1914.  A
year ago there were 310 centralized (township) schools and 599
consolidated (embracing several contiguous districts) schools,
and the number has been materially swelled during the year.
Seventy of the eighty-eight counties now have such schools and
the trend is toward them throughout the State.  One such school
replaces, on the average, eight one-room schools.  They have
brought to the rural pupils trained teachers, well-equipped
buildings, courses of study related to the interests of the farm
and home by being well-balanced between the cultural and
vocational.  They have made it possible for the country boy who
remains on the farm to obtain a high school education in his own
community that is directly related to his needs.  Scientific
agriculture under trained instructors is taught in all of these
schools.  The possibilities of the farm and of rural life are
thus revealed to the boy and he will be equipped with knowledge
necessary to the scientific performance of his work.  From the
farm instead of the law office and the counting room will come
those who know what the needs and interests of the farmer are
and who will be qualified to represent those interests.

While the system still may be said to be in its infancy, the
progress of transformation of Ohio schools under it has been
nothing short of wonderful, and unending results may be expected
of it.

This extensive legislation had aroused many prejudices
particularly, in the rural sections, of which his opponent,
Congressman Frank B. Willis, took advantage.  The bold challenge
of the Governor to his opponent was stated by him on the
platform in many parts of Ohio "Which law will you repeal?"  The
question was never answered, but the tide of opposition to the
changes swept Governor Cox out of office, although he ran many
thousands ahead of his associates.  In the succeeding sessions of
the General Assembly popular sentiment began once more to swing
to Governor Cox and two years later he was re-elected by a small
plurality.  Improvement in the various laws was sought during his
next term, but the shadow of the world war was already beginning
to fall, and the greater part of his efforts were devoted to
preparation for Ohio's part.

In general administration the Governor's supporters are fond of
saying that he met successfully

      In his first term a flood,
      In his second term a war,
      In his third term reconstruction.

The flood story was the one that really introduced him first to
the country at large.  Ohio was hit by a calamity greater than
any that had befallen a state.  Columbus, Dayton, Marietta,
Hamilton and other cities were under water for days, many
villages were almost washed off the map, and hundreds of lives
and untold millions of property were lost.  Bridges everywhere
were washed out and transportation was practically at a
standstill.  The eyes of the State and Country were on the then
untried Governor Cox.  He met the situation in a manner that will
never be forgotten in Ohio.  The Ohio National Guard was called
out, stricken communities were placed under martial law,
civilian relief armies under the command of mayors and other
designated leaders organized everywhere, Ohio's motor truck,
automobile and other facilities commandeered, and the work of
feeding, clothing, cleaning up and rehabilitation carried on
from the beginning with astounding efficiency.

The New York World at that time said of him:

"The man who has dominated the situation in Ohio is Governor
Cox.  He has been not only chief magistrate and commander-in-
chief, but the head of the life-saving service, the greatest
provider of food and clothing the State has ever known, the
principal health officer, the sanest counselor, the severest
disciplinarian, the kindest philanthropist and best reporter.  He
has performed incredible labors in all these fields, and his
illuminating dispatches to the World at the close of the heart-
breaking days have given a clearer vision of conditions than
could be had from any other source.  Reared on a farm, educated
in the public schools, a printer by trade, a successful
publisher and editor of newspapers, a great Governor and a
reported who gets his story into the first edition, James M. Cox
excites and is herewith offered assurance of the World's most
distinguished consideration."

The flood revealed the necessity for conservancy legislation and
the measure recommended by the Governor was enacted to give
local communities the right to protect themselves.

The time has gone by when in Ohio the major things in the
programme of Governor Cox can be attacked successfully before
the people of the State.  He does not claim perfection.
Suggestion as to improvement has found him ready to listen.
There is still a short time for him to serve, but the public
judgment has been made up, and Buckeye citizens, without regard
to party affiliation, says that he has been a "good Governor."





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