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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 multimillionaries of Rhode Isl
and are in a deadlock. It may or may
not be broken before this letter is in
print. The matter in controversy is
the election of a United States sena
tor, and two Republican multis want
it. Senator Wetmore has tried the
senatorial poco and wants some more.
Colonel Colt thinks Wetmore has had
a quantum sufficit perhaps more than
a quantum meruit, and wants to taste
it himself. So these two plutocrats
have tapped their barrels, and in Lit
tle Rhody, everything is merry as a
marriage bell. While the two multis
are waging this war of the barrels the
“boys” are having a good time and
would be delighted to see the contest
continue till the roses bloom.
In Rhode Island the people have lit
tle to do with running the government.
If they did it would be Democratic.
Some astute persons have expressed a
doubt as to whether they really have
a Republican form of government n
Rhode Island, such as the federal con
stitution requires. As it is 28 per cent
of the votes elect a majority of both
houses of the legislature—a condition
growing out of the fact that the basis
of representation is about the same
now as a century ago. It is all based
on “towns.” In the lapse of time the
population of some “towns” has grown
so and the population of others dwin
dled so that the thing has come to be
preposterous, but it suits the pluto
crats to a “t.” All they have to do is
to round up the 28 per cent who are
so situated geographically as to con
trol both houses of the legislature.
With the other 72 per cent they need
not bother. The basis of representa
tion is a constitutional provision and
cannot be amended except the legis
lature is willing—which of course it is
not.
*
In Earnest.
Evidently the Roosevelt third term
boomers are in dead earnest, and they
are going at it systematically and with
nerve. They are out in the open fight
ing for their man against all comers.
They are publishing a magazine en
titled Limelight in aid of their
movement. Certainly that paper is
correctly named, for if ever there was
a man who loved to bathe himself in
the limelight it is the Hon. T. R. It is
published in Chicago, the Windy
City—another observance of the pro
prieties. Limelight claims that its idol
is now filling his first term. If that be
true then the idol himself did not know
what he was talking about when he
declared that the present term is his
second. Limelight seems to have a
corps of boomers judiciously located
about the land so as to give to the
third term movement the appearance
of being widely diffused, geographical
ly speaking, and it fills its columns
with more or less heated communica
tions from these boomers. Os course
most of them belong to the “bread and
butter brigade—’’that is, to those hold
ing ofllce under the administration or
those who hope to do so. It ought to
be stated that there are some who are
whooping it up for a third term for
Roosevelt under the delusion that the
country would speedily go to what Mr.
Mantallni was wont to denominate ' s
“the demnltloß bowwows” if Roosevelt
should lose his «rip on the helm. Poor
souls! The government’s life of prog
ress depends on no one man, thank
God! And if all the officeholders in
America were to die today, in a week
or two their places would be filled
with men just as capable. Whatever
else happens in this land of the free
and home of the brave, the breed of
officeholders will not run out.
Ex-Governor Durbin, of Indiana, an
other statesman out of a job and in
hopes of getting one, has been In
Washington lately throwing ice water
on the Fairbanks boom and screeching
for a third term for Roosevelt. The
ex-governor thinks he knows that the
plain people are wild for Roosevelt
and that if he is not given a third
term they will be in the condition of
Rachel mourning for her children and
refusing to be comforted because they
were not. They do say, however, that
the reason why Durbin is against Fair
banks and for Roosevelt is that he Is
ambitious to be V. P. himself. Now,
the gossips who say that may be
wrong, but folks have a habit in this
world of piecing two and two together,
thereby making four. Another notable
feature of the situation seems to be
that Senator Beveridge, of Indiana, is
not tearing his shirt for Fairbanks,
another case of green eyed monster.
Beveridge believes that he is himself
of presidential stature, and he doesn’t
want Fairbanks to get it for fear it
would militate against his own
chances. So far as 1 know, Beveridge
has not openly declared for a third
term, but the chances are that he
would declare in favor of a third,
fourth and fifth if he supposed it
would kill off Fairbanks and let him
self in.
There is still another class scream
ing for a third term for Roosevelt con
sisting of people whose appetites con
stantly crave sensations. They may
not anaptly be termed sensation to
pers. If a man should hapen to be
elected president next time who would
attend strictly to his own business,
pursuing the even tenor of his way
without brass band accompaniment,
these sensation topers would perish
from ennui, for they have been on a
jamboree ever since Roosevelt became
president.
“Atlanta, a Small City.”
The Chicago Post flippantly refers
to Georgia’s capital as “Atlanta, a
small city.” What will happen to the
unthinking mortal who made that un
fortunate fling will be a-plenty and
then some. By the time Colonel Clark
Howell, Colonel John Temple Graves,
Colonel Leonidas Felix Livingston
and the rest of the Atlanta boomers
have polished him off he will be a
spectacle for men and angels. His
grandmother wouldn’t know him if she
met him in the big road, so thoroughly
will they disfigure him. And he deserves
the punishment he is to receive, richly
deserves it. He has almost committed
sacrilege. He exhibited wretched
taste. He will find himself in a “woe
ful plight,” to use Grover Cleveland’s
third best phrase. Measured by num
bers of people, when compared with
Chicago, Atlanta is a small city, but
measured by brains Atlanta looms up
with the best and biggest of them. Chi
cago has many multimillionaires, but
she never produced a Henry W. Grady,
THE WEEKLY jfeFEERSONIAN
and if Georgia had done nothing else
than give Grady to the world she
would deserve well at the hands of
mankind. Atlanta is one of thriftiest
and most progressive cities in Amer
ica. Commercially she holds a splendid
strategic position. Some fine morning
the world will suddenly comprehend
the fact that in the future the growth
of wealth and population in this coun
try will be in the south and southwest.
Atlanta understands that fact now,
and she is preparing to reap a rich, re
ward. No city has more diversified
manufacturing interests, and diversity
of such interests as enables a city to
weather the storm when panics come,
as they will come till the end of time.
Naturally the region south of the Poto
mac and the Ohio, including Missouri
and the southwest, is the richest under
heaven, which fact will sooner or later
be apparent even to those dullest cf
vision. What’s more, the southern and
southwestern people are beginning to
develop their marvelous resources, and
Atlanta is doing her full share in that
great work.
A Terse Paragraph.
I have in these letters frequently re
ferred to and quoted most excellent
and illuminating excerpts from the
rural press. The opinions of country
editors are not so widely read as the
editorials of the big metropolitan pa
pers, but in the end the sum total of
*.he influence of country papers is
greater than that of the great dailies.
Out at Fulton, in my district, is a
young editor, Mr. Ovid Bell, who con
ducts the Fulton Gazette, a tiptop pa
per. He is a thoroughgoing Demo
crat. At one time he served as secre
tary to Hon. Richard Parks Bland,
which in itself was a liberal education
in Democracy. Bell has been a mem
ber of the state committee; also its
secretary. Recently that paper con
tained this editorial paragraph, which
should be an eye opener to his readers.
Mr. Bell says:
“The Kansas state senate, composed
of thirty-seven Republicans and three
Democrats, passed a resolution the
other day instructing the Kansas dele
gation in congress to ‘use all honora
ble means’ to revise the tariff on steel
and lumber. Twenty-one Republicans
voted for hte resolution and one of them
debating it, said, ‘No wife buys a dish
pan and no farmer a nail or piece of
barbed wife that does not pay tribute
to the steel trust.’ The funny part <>f
the performance is the admission of
the fact that the tariff is responsible
for the trusts. Ordinarily a Republi
can politician does not admit the rela
tion of the tariff to the trusts. Any
of them will agree that the buying
public pays tribute to the steel and
lumber trusts, and they go further and
agree that the beef trust, the leather
trust, the farm machinery trust, the
woolen goods trust and the cotton
goods trust levy tribute from the peo
ple, but somehow they fail to connect
cause with effect. Light seems to be
breaking on Kansas Republicanism,
however.”
De Armond’s Remedy.
Judge David A. De Armond, of Mis
souri, the most sarcastic of mortals as
well as one of the ablest members of
the house, has turned his mind to the
exactions of the Dingley tariff bill and
from his inner consciousness has evolv
ed a most excellent plan to educate
people on that subject—if he could
only get it into operation. But there
is the rub, not only with De Armond’s
scheme, but with any other looking
toward Improving our condition. His
plan is simplicity itself. It’s nothing
more or less than to pass a law re
quiring that the amount of tariff on
any article shall be placed on that ar
ticle in plain words and figures when
it is offered for sale. That would be
fair to all concerned —to manufacturer,
seller and buyer; also to Uncle Sam —
but because it is fair is precisely the
reason that the ways and means com
mittee as now organized will not touch
it with a forty foot pole. What the
tariff barons and their supple tools
most dread is a fair deal on the tariff.
The tariff gong could not drum up
one-tenth of the votes of the United
States if De Armond’s bill were enact
ed into law. Once a lawyer told his
client that he should have justice,
whereupon the astonished client yelled
“That’s exactly what I do not want!”
So with the stand patters. The last
thing they desire is fairness, justice or
an even chance. The law has made
them rich by enabling them to fleece
their victims. If De Armond doesn’t
look a little out, he will render himself
persona non grata to the barons, but
he doesn’t seem to care a baubee
about that. Queer sort of man, isn’t
he? Others think they are sitting in
heavenly places when the tariff barons
smile on them, but Missourians are
an independent race and generally do
and say what they please.
Increase of Salary.
Florida has only three representa
tives in the house, but they are all
strong men —Sparkman, lamar, and
Clark. There are always so many
Clarks in congress that they are usu
ally called by their Christian names
more frequently than others except the
Smiths, Joneses, Browns, Andersons
and Williamsons. So the Florida mem
ber is always Frank Clark to his fel
low members. He is a handsome, ca
pable man without fear. What’s in
his mind he says, and he says it with
force. He has a clear, bell-like voice,
a great advantage in such a large and
tumultuous assembly as is the house or
representatives. Whether a person
agrees with Frank Clark or not, he
must admire his courage. He was
once United States district attorney
and holds up his end of the hand spike
in the house, to use an old time ex
pression familiar to the ears of those
reared in the timber regions. When
the question of increasing congres
sional salaries came up, Frank Clark
came out boldly in favor of it and
made a speech which convulsed the
house and galleries and which was
largely exploited in the papers.
Enough voted for the proposition to
pass it, but few spoke in favor of it,
and most of those who did spoke apolo
getically. Not so with my namesake
from Florida. He put it on grounds of
justice and manfully stood by his
guns.
He has a tender heart. Some per
sons conveyed to him the information
that the lunatics in St. Elizabeth’s
asylum are malterated. He promptly
introduced a resolution of investiga
tion and forced it to its passage. He
was placed on the committee on inves
tigate and has put in a vast deal of
work on that subject. All sorts of
tactics were resorted to to prevent the
Investigation, but Clark, of Florida
swung on like a bulldog till he got it.
n
No Extra Session.
There is talk of an extra session of
congress, but there’s no extra session
going to be held. Os course the Wash
ington people want it, because it helps
the town, but senators and representa
tives do not want it, and President
Roosevelt dislikes to have congress on