tor is elected for six years; so that
he has a period of rest between elections, in which he may forget his
constituents in the ardor of his duties.

Within the last few decades a great change has come over the Senate,
over its membership, its attitude towards public questions, and
its relation to the electorate. This has been brought about through
disclosures tending to show the relations on the part of some senators
towards "big business." As early as the Granger revelations of railway
machinations in politics, in the seventies, a popular distrust of the
Senate became pronounced. No suggestion of corruption was implied, but
certain senators were known as "railway senators," and were believed
to use their partizan influence in their friends' behalf. This feeling
increased from year to year, until what was long suspected came suddenly
to light, through an entirely unexpected agency. William Randolph
Hearst, a newspaper owner who had in vain attempted to secure a
nomination for President by the Democrats and to get himself elected
Governor of New York, had organized and financed a party of his own, the
Independence League. While speaking in behalf of his party, in the fall
of 1908, he read extracts from letters written by an official of
the Standard Oil Company to various senators. The letters, it later
appeared, had been purloined from the Company's files by a faithless
employee. They caused a tremendous sensation. The public mind had become
so sensitive that the mere fact that an intimacy existed between the
most notorious of trusts and some few United States senators--the
correspondents called each other "Dear John," "Dear Senator," etc.--was
sufficient to arouse the general wrath. The letters disclosed a keen
interest on the part of the corporation in the details of legislation,
and the public promptly took the Standard Oil Company as a type.
They believed, without demanding tangible proof, that other great
corporations were, in some sinister manner, influencing legislation.
Railroads, insurance companies, great banking concerns, vast industrial
corporations, were associated in the public mind as "the Interests." And
the United States Senate was deemed the stronghold of the interests. A
saturnalia of senatorial muckraking now laid bare the "oligarchy,"
as the small group of powerful veteran Senators who controlled
the senatorial machinery was called. It was disclosed that the
centralization of leadership in the Senat