Newspaper Page Text
PAGE SIX
Tacts on 'Bryan's Position as to Confederate Veterans
('Reprinted by Request.)
New York City, July 15, 1908.
Hon. Thos. E. Watson, Thomson, Ga.
Mr. Dear Sir: As to the surpris
ing position taken by Mr. Bryan, of
Nebraska, in the speakership fight of
JS9I, and the equally surprising
reason he assigned for it, I possess
a very clear memory. My recollec
tions of the business are much less
confused, I fancy, than are Mr.
Bryan’s own —judging from what the
papers today report of him. Not that
any dimness on Mr. Bryan’s part in
this connection excites my wonder.
I was in Washington as the corres
pondent of a newspaper; Mr. Bryan
was there as a politician. Newspaper
men are trained to remember, their
trade is to recollect; politicians are
trained to forget, and to hope that
others will forget. Wherefore it now
happens that while the affair in its
details has slipped somewhat from
Mr. Bryan, it remains firmly by me
in every feature, standing out as
sharply clear as any cameo. Nor
shall I mention at this crisis any
interest that might move Mr. Bryan
to blur or warp the story, nor submit
the absence of such interest in my
self. The one would be dragging
discussion into corners unbecoming a
candidate and a gentleman, while the
other for reasons no less cogent
might find conviction as bad taste.
Concerning Mr. Bryan’s wasted
vote, of which I shall presently speak,
ones curious as to such waste are re
ferred to the caucus rolls, and to the
newspapers of that day. Tn what
follows I give a brief relation of the
matter:
Mr. Bryan came to Washington in
November, 1891, and aligned himself
with the Democrats. Before Con
gress convened, the Democrats held
a caucus to select a candidate for
speaker. That fight for a speakership
was supposed to be a fight for a Pres
idency, a tariff policy, and much else
tremendous in Government. There
were Messrs. Mills of Texas, Crisp of
Georgia, McMillan of Tennessee,
Hatch of Missouri, and Springer of
Illinois in the scramble. Mr. Mills
was the Cleveland candidate, Mr.
Crisp the Gorman candidate. Mr.
Cleveland and Mr. Gorman were ri
vals for a White House nomination,
and the possession of the House was
thought by each to be important.
The battle began, Mr. Bryan vot
ing for Mr. Springer. The war stag
gered on for hours; there came ballot
on the heels of ballot. Mr. Hatch
withdrew, and went into the caucus
to vote for Mr. Crisp. Mr. Springer
withdrew, and went into the caucus
to vote for Mr. Crisp. Mr. Crisp won
in the last of it by the merest frag
ment of a majority—two votes, I
think.
As related, Mr. Bryan voted
from the first for Mr. Springer.
When Mr. Springer withdrew, he
still voted for Mr. Springer. That
gentleman was himself voting for Mr.
Crisp; he had withdrawn his name;
he was no longer a candidate. Yet to
a final roll call, which gave victory
by a brace of votes to Mr. Crisp, Mr.
Bryan went shooting his lonely ar
row in the useless air for Mr. Sprin
ger. In brief, he threw away his
voice in a struggle where thrones and
scepters were the prizes contended
for.
It was two months later, I should
say, when I one day asked Mr. Bry
an why he thus threw himself away.
He was not so old as he is now, and
hadn’t—-as he has since—carried the
great art of forgetting to sublimest
heights.
“Did you ever stop to think,” de
manded Mr. Bryan, and his look was
deep and foxy; “did you ever stop to
think that both Mills and Crisp were
ex-Confederates ? ’ ’
“What difference should that
make?” I urged.
“It might make a deal of differ
ence,” said Mr. Bryan, “in the coun
try I come from. For myself, I
shouldn’t care to go back and face an
ojd soldier element along the Platte
with the record of having voted for
an ex-Confederate.” „
There was more. I remember I
congratulated Mr. Bryan upon a pru
dence that kept his prospects of poli
tics so carefully in mind, and com
pared it with the purblind reckless
ness of such as Messrs. Andrews and
Hoar and Williams of Massachusetts,
Cummings of New’ York, Holman and
Shively of Indiana, Cable of Illinois,
to say naught of his own candidate,
Mr. Springer, one and all of whom,
while as much surrounded by an
“old-soldier element” at home as was
he himself, had not hesitated to be for
either Mr. Mills or Mr. Crisp. There
our discussion ceased. No, I do not
scruple to give it word for wdTd. It
was in nn sort confidential, and I put
most of it in print at the time.
Upon being elevated to the speak
ership, Mr. Crisp named Mr. Bryan
on the Ways and Means —an import
ant assignment. This struck me as
strange, considering how Mr. Bry
an hand’t voted for Mr. Crisp,
and that dozens who had were eager
applicants for the place.
The mystery of that Ways and
Means appointment was laid bare to
me by General O’Ferrell of Virginia,
one of Mr. Crisp’s lieutenants in the
caucus war. It was privately under
stood, he said, that in event of a tie
between Mr. Crisp and Mr. Mills, Mr.
Bryan would take a chance on that
“old-soldier element” and vote for
Mr. Crisp. Unless he were abso
lutely needed, however, be preferred
to keep his record pure and free of
every ex-Confederate taint.
“And,” as General O’Ferrell con
vincingly put it in conclusion, “of
course the great thing after all was
to keep him from going to Mr. Mills.
That, with the added understanding
that his vote was to be Crisp’s,
should it be necessary in order to
name him, was everything we could
ask. Practically, it was the same as
though he were one of us; and so,
when Mr. Springer at the time he
came over spoke of him (Bryan) for
a place on the Ways and Means, we
3effersonian
didn’t hesitate to make the trade.”
All of which displays the acumen
of Mr. Bryan, w r ho was able to be for
a man while not appearing to sup
port him and earn a high House po
sition without seeming to work for it.
So victorious a chicane would have
illumined a Mazarin, adorned a Rich
elieu! At one fell of duplex swoop,
Mr. Bryan escapes that damaging
“record” of “having voted for an
ex-Confederate” and leaves naught
save his transcendent merit to ac
count for a House eminence to which
he is triumphantly boosted.
Were one disposed to severity one
might urge that, in what Mr. Bryan
is quoted by the papers as saying,
our slippery gentleman shows neither
ingenuous nor frank. He states that
he “voted for Mr. Crisp as speaker.”
He did, when the formal vote was
taken in the House. Every Democrat
present on that House occasion voted
for Mr. Crisp, if you except the dis
gruntled Mr. Mills, who maintained a
sore and sulky silence.
Mr. Bryan says he “voted for Mr.
Crisp in caucus.” He did, but it
was in the caucus held in 1893. Mr.
Crisp was speaker twice. At the sec
ond caucus called just before Con
gress convened in 1893 —it was the
extra session ordered by Mr. Cleve
land—there existed no opposition to
Mr. Crisp. His was the only name;
his selection took place by acclama
tion. Also, in that second caucus,
either because there was no roll call
to make “a record,” or his fears of
“an old-soldier element” had measur
ably subsided, Mr. Bryan did vote
for Mr. Crisp.
But in the first caucus —the caucus
of 1891—the caucus in which upon a
final roll call Mr. Crisp defeated Mr.
Mills, Mr. Bryan from beginning to
end gave his vote for Mr. Springer.
Albeit, the latter amiable gentleman,
during the last of it, had withdrawn
his candidacy, and was himself upon
the floor, red carnation and all, vot
ing hard for Mr. Crisp.
Mr. Bryan is one who, finding him
self unable to buck the center, seeks
to go ’round the ends. But if the pa
pers, putting questions, bear the
above in mind and trim the sail of
inquiry to match therewith, he will
confess —for he must so confess—that
in the Mills-Crisp caucus fight of 1891
he was at especial pains to fire noth
ing but blank cartridges. Many who
rode foremost in that war are dead
and under the grasses—Crisp, Sprin
ger, Hatch, Cummings, O’Ferrell,
Wheeler, Kilgore, English, Culber
son, Herbert, Holman, the roll is
long. But many remain—Bailey, Ca
ble, Catchings, Tucker, Tarsney, Mc-
Gann, DeArmand —any and all of
whom should be able to correct Mr.
Bryan in case his memory takes to
crippling down. And then, too, as
I’ve said, there are those caucus rolls
and newspaper files.
When the papers have brought Mr.
Bryan to admit that, as above
described, he threw away his caucus
vote in 1891, should he still succeed
in forgetting that such throwing
away was because he feared to ‘ 1 go
back to an old-soldier element along
the Platte with the record of having
yoted for an ex-Confederate,” they
must ask him: What then was the
reason ? He threw his vote away;
that, at least, is sure. And folk don’t
throw their votes away, in a contest
over a speakership, in any spirit of
facetiousness or chance-blown ca
price. Why, then, did Mr. Bryan so
play the caucus prodigal? If “an
old-soldier element” and an “ex-Con
federate,” in terrifying conjunction,
were not the argument, what was?
Also, if Mr. Bryan, in answering the
latter, can frame a reply that shall
so much as even resemble the reason
able, I pledge myself to admit with
fullest apoogy that it is my memory,
not his, which has blundered and
failed miserably to keep its feet.
ALFRED HENRY LEWIS.
THE STRING.
There is a string to every propo
sition, and it behooves you to look
out for the string before acceding to
the requests that are made of you.
When a stranger comes to you and
offers to do things for you to let you
in on the ground floor, or assures you
that he is working for your interest,
you may be sure there is a sting to
his proposition, and the string is that,
as a matter of fact, it is himself in
stead of you he is looking out for.
Don’t bite at the chance that is
offered you to get something for noth
ing. The biggest kind of a string is
always in such a proposition.
Remember this, that people are
selfish. Each man looks out for his
own interest, and even if he is pro
tecting your interest, it is because his
own interest will be better conserved
by looking out for yours.
Don’t decide on important matters
too quickly. Don’t get tied up in big
contracts with strangers until you
have found every stand of the string.
Don’t be too suspicious, but hunt
for the string. It pays to be very
conservative on all matters in which
others are interested.
Sometimes the string in the prop
osition is legitimate and the other fel
low may be more interested than you
are, but it certainly behooves you to
see what this string is and to under
stand exactly where the end of the
string is tied.
Don’t draw up in your shell and
look upon every man with a proposi
tion as trying to take advantage of
you, but put down this as a truth —
there is a string to every proposition,
and you must find that string before
you close the deal.—Woodbury Geor
gian.
FOLLOWING HIS LEAD.
Mother— “What! Fighting again?
such a black eye! if you’d only fol
low the lead of the minister’s little
boy— ’ ’
Tommy—“Aw, I did try ter follow
his lead, but he led again wid his
left an’ dat’s where he biffed M.”—
Philadelphia Press,