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Champ Clark's Washington Letter.
Hon. Champ Clark, member of Congress for the Ninth Missouri district,
was born in Kentucky in 1850, and for twenty-two years held the record for
being the youngest college president In the United States. In his varied ca
reer he worked as a farm hand, clerked in a country store, edited a country
weekly and practiced law. He was permanent chairman of the National
Democratic Convention at St. Louis in 1904. He is now serving his sixth
term as a member of Congress.
The Reed Smoot Case a Farce—Re
publican Factions in Bitter
Warfare—Knives Out all
Around—Shively of
Indiana—Our Wa
terways.
(Special Washington Letter.)
There is at least one senator of
the United States who is no doubt
thankful for the Brownsville negro
soldier episode, and that is Reed
Smoot, of Utah. It comes to Reed
in the nature of a reprieve, not that
he is or ever was in the slightest
danger of being separated from his
curule chair by his fellow senators.
If he had been a Democrat he would
have been bounced long ago; but, be
ing a Republican, he has been all the
time safe as a bug in a rug by rea
son of the modus vivendi entered in
to several years ago by the Mormon
hierarchy and the Republican big
wigs. The reason why Smoot is
grateful for the Brownsville imbrog
lio is that it gives him a rest from
the dreary stream of senatorial t*lk
about himself. He may be thick
skinned, but even he must have grown
weary of that solemn drivel. Os all
the farces ever put on the boards,
the Smoot investigation heads the
list. If he is not entitled to his seat,
he ought to have been fired long ago.
If he is entitled to it, his title ought
to have been confirmed before the
middle of his term. The Smoot case
is a stench in the nostrils of decent
folk.
•e
Republican Feudists.
The G. 0. P. is rent with feuds.
Senator Joseph Benson Foraker is
after President Roosevelt with a
sharp stick about the wholesale dis
charge of the colored troops. Gover
nor Albert B. Cummins and Mr. Sec
retary Shaw head the two Republi
can factions in lowa which are fight
ino' each other to the death—God be
©
praised! In Missouri the Kerens and
Niedringhaus wings are not flopping
together. Quite the contrary. In
New York the 11 regulars,” now out
in the cold, are watching Governor
Hughes and the “reformers” with
knives up their sleeves. In Indiana
Vice-president Fairbanks and his
friends are trying to unhorse Senator
Albert J. Beveridge and his friends.
On dit that the Fairbanks crowd have
gobbled nine of the state committee
and have left poor Beveridge with
only four. Consequently the Bever
idge crowd is sore—sore as was the
man of Uz when he was afflicted
with boils and when his wife coun
seled him to “curse God .and die.”
It’s a pretty kettle of fish. What’s
the matter with these snarling,
wrangling, biting, scratching, cater
wauling patriots? Spoils and the di
vision thereof, public pap and its lad
ling out. When the office-seekers
THE WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
were pestering President Lincoln al
most to death, he pathetically re
marked as to the paucity of teats
and the surplus of pigs. It’s the
same now. They have all the federal
offices in the land and most of the
state and county offices, but there
are not enough to go round; hence
wars and rumors of war; hence this
hair-pulling and knifing. Just why
Vice-president Fairbanks wants to
oust the soulful Beveridge from his
curule chair is not clear to an out
sider, but that such is the case seems
the only conclusion to be drawn
from Indianapolis dispatches. Per
haps the senator is incubating a pres
idential boom of his own which the
vice-president thinks or fears may
collide with his own boom. So he
proposes to squelch the brilliant and
ambitious Beveridge at once and for
ever. If they will closely scan the
Hoosier election returns in 1906, they
may discover that a bitter quarrel be
tween them might mean a Democratic
Indiana once more.
•6
Sees Breakers Ahead.
Mr. iSfuyvesant Fish, lately presi
dent of the Illinois Central Railroad
Company, has assumed the role of
Cassandra and tells his countrymen
certain things which they do not like
to hear. Pope says:
All seems infected that the infected
spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced
eye.
It may be—who knows?—that the
fact that Mr. Fish was recently and
forcibly separated from a nice juicy
job, causes him to take a pessimistic
view of things. However that may
be, he begins a lengthy article in
the Journal of Commerce with this
disquieting sentence: “In point of
time a great industrial crisis is due,
and there are many indications of its
being imminent.” With that for a
starter he discourses on earthquakes,
famine, cliques, etc., in extenso. One
of his sentences will surprise most
folks. It is this: “We are still a
debtor nation.”
We have been boasting so much
lately about our unprecedented in
crease in wealth, about being the
richest nation on the globe and about
being a world power, which we have
been since April 30, 1803, that it
stuns us to be informed that we are
still a debtor nation. Toward the
close of his article Mr. Fish dips into
politics and intimates that a business
depression betwixt now and 1908
would cause the discontented to flock
to the banner of Mr. Bryan or Mr.
Hearst. He cites as a sample of
“the temper of the people,” the fact
that Charles Evans Hughes, Repub
lican, was elected governor of New
York, while all the rest of the Dem
ocratic candidates were elected, and
then says that this “temper” of the
people “is vastly stronger else
where.” All in all, Mr. Fish’s re
marks are well worthy of considera
tion by those who are plunging and
should be a warning, or, at least, a
cause for study by all those who have
spread out too much under the im
pression that this era of prosperity
will have no end.
It is a 10 to 1 shot, however, that
his suggestions will fall on deaf ears,
just as did Noah’s predicting the
flood. Human nature has been the
same in all ages of the world, and
the rule of conduct for most people
is “sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof,” which, after all, may
be most productive of happiness.
•6
Shively for Vice-President.
There is a rumor in Washington
that Hon. B. F. Shively, of South
Bend, Ind., has announced that he
is willing to accept a nomination for
vice-president, and the rumor ■ has
been received with applause by all
Democrats in Washington who know
the brilliant Hoosier. He could have
been nominated at Kansas City in
1900 if he had been willing. He
served several terms in Congress, re
tiring of his own motion, March 4,
1893. When he first entered the
house he was the youngest member,
and during his entire service was a
distinguished member. He is still
in the prime of his splendid powers,
a lawyer in the front rank, a public
speaker of unusual force. He is a
tall, well knit, prepossessing man—
an advantage in public life not to be
despised or lightly held. Shively is
a favorite son of the Indiana Dem
ocracy, and occupies a geographical
positljon of strategic import
tance. 'Since Indiana quit holding
her state election in October, just a
month in advance of the presidential
election, she is not so much of a
pivotal state, but, nevertheless, in a
larger sense, she is still pivotal. Nor
mally Indiana is close and at the
election in 1906, showed signs of
swinging back to the Democratic col
umn. In this congress her delega
tion stands two Democrats and eleven
Republicans. In the Sixtieth Con
gress she will have four Democrats
to nine Republicans, and two of those
Republicans were elected by the skin
of their teeth, while the majorities
of some others were cut to almost
the vanishing point. Shively made
a famous race in the South Bend
district, reducing the Republican ma
jority from 9,000 to about 200. Mr.
Shively iis happily married to a
daughter of Hon. George A. Jenks, of
Brookville, Pa., who was a promi
ment member of congress, and who
held high office under Grover Cleve
land. ‘ All in all, he would make a
tiptop candidate, and when elected
he would make an ideal presiding
officer of the senate. Should he suc
ceed to the presidency by the death
or resignation of the president he
would make a safe and popular chief
magistrate of the republic. The fact
that a man of his standing is willing
to accept a vice-presidential nomina-
Ition Is another evidence that the
Democrats expect to win in 1908.
River Improvement.
God in his infinite wisdom and
goodness never vouchsafed to any
other people such a magnificent and
extensive system of waterways as
we possess. In the Mississippi valley
alone there are 16,900 miles of naviga
ble rivers capable of bearing upon
their business the commerce of the
world. The failure to properly im
prove them is an inexplicable mystery
and comes within a Georgetown graze
of being a national disgrace. The
dream of the statesmen of every age
has been to improve water transpor
tation. The chances are that if Na
poleon had been left to his own de
vices after the treaty of Aix-1 a-Ch ap
elie he w’ould have connected the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic by
a canal, the building of which is now
proposed, for he spent most of the
time he could snatch from war in
projecting and perfecting those
internal improvements which, next
to his code, are his clear
est titles to imperishable re-
nown. Among the things for which
the present German kaiser will be
most gratefully remembered by fu
ture generations of Germans are the
canals constructed and the rivers im
proved during his reign and under his
guidance and supervision. If rail
roads had never been invented, every
foot of the 16,900 miles of rivers in
the Mississippi valley would now be
navigated safely and profitably, but
with the introduction of the steam
car people seemed to conclude er
roneously and prematurely that they
would have no need for water trans
portation. Now they are waking up
gradually to the fact that “water
transportation is railroad rate regula
tion. ” Even if another pound of
freight or another passenger were
never transported by river, the
money would be well spent in mak
ing rivers navigable in fact as well as
in theory, for the very fact that they
could be navigated safely would drive
the railroads into cheapening rates.
Various propositions are pending
for river improvement. Some urge
the issue of bonds; others say pay
the bills of expense out of the cur
rent revenues, but all agree that a
system for comprehensive and contin
uous improvement should be devised
at once. We are spending vast sums
in constructing the Panama Canal,
which is well, but while doing that
it is supreme folly to neglect the
Mississippi, the Missouri and their
tributaries. If Holland owned the Mis
souri, she would, if necessary to ren
der it navigable, build a granite dike
on both sides of it from Alton to
Fort Benton, and in so doing inci
dentally reclaim from overflow
enough of the richest land in the
world to make a state as large as
Indiana, thereby making homes in
the heart of the continent for sev
eral millions of- American citizens.
The people of the Mississippi valley
should rise up as one man and de
mand in away to command attention
that congress shall do its full duty
in the premises. Systematic action—
a long pull, a strong pull and a pull
together—will accomplish the desir
ed end, and nothing short of that
will suffice. Year in and year out