Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

2 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