Southwest Washington Labor Press

Wheeler Scourge of Corruption

Vice Presidential Candidate
Drove Daugherty
From
Office.

Washington, D. C.—The dominant quality of Senator Burton K. Wheeler is his magnificent courage, blended with personal amiability and guided and directed by a brain of alert intelligence.

Outside of Montana, the public knows little of the story of Wheeler's 2 years of struggle and achievement.

Wheeler was born at Hudson, Mass., a small New England village, on February 27, 1882. His father was the village shoemaker. His mother traced her lineage back through three centuries of distinguished New England ancestry. Wheeler's forbears, in fact, were on American soil before "the Lowells who speak only to Cabots,"

and "the Cabots who speak only to God" had made Massachusetts the scene of their aristocratic and exclusive activities.

Young Wheeler spent no time admiring his family tree. He was ambitious and energetic, and early set out to earn his own way in the world.

The youngest of ten children, he pieced out the meager family income by cultivating a strawberry patch and selling his produce at Hudson. He peddled popcorn and peanuts at baseball games, sold newspapers and managed to support himself by other odd jobs while he finished high school.

Goes West to Study.

He determined to go West to study for the law. He went to Michigan and entered the law school at Ann Arbor.

He had less than $10 in his pocket when he enrolled for the school year and it was necessary for him to wait on students' tables and do stenographic work in order to pay his tuition and his living expenses.

Wheeler entered a law office at Butte, Mont., and after a few years his two-fisted fighting ability won him a big practice. In 1910 he entered politics as a candidate for the legislature and was elected. Thomas J. Walsh, then one of the leading lawyers of Montana, was a candidate for the United States senate at that session of the legislature.

Wheeler led the fight for Walsh.

Through the tense days of that session he stood up manfully, giving blow for blow, and went down fighting when the copper interests finally triumphed.

Later he helped in the campaign for the adoption of a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of United States senators in Montana and had the satisfaction of seeing Walsh elected by a direct vote of the people in 1912.

In 1920 he won the Democratic nomination for governor. Every Republican and Democrat newspaper and most of the weeklies opposed him.

Nevertheless, in the November election he ran 17,000 votes ahead of Governor Cox, the head of the Democratic ticket.

Chosen Senator by Progressives.

In 1922, the Progressives of Montana called upon him to become a candidate for the United States senate.

Early in the session, Wheeler prepared a resolution providing for an investigation of the Department of Justice. He received little encouragement from the members of his own party but the Progressive Republicans gave him their active support and a committee to conduct the inquiry was elected from the senate floor, on motion of Senator LaFollette.

The story of Wheeler's conduct of this case against corruption and malfeasance in the Department of Justice is already well known to the public.

Single-handed, he carried on his fight, pursued every step of the way by spying agents detailed by Daugherty and Burns to "shadow" him and to "get something on him."

"I am a Democrat, but not a Wall street Democrat." In these words, voicing the sentiments of the progressives of his own party, Senator Burton K. Wheeler accepted indorsement as a candidate for vice president on the Independent Progressive ticket.