Newspapers / The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, … / Jan. 11, 1911, edition 1 / Page 2
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ITHE CHARLOTTE NEWS, JANUARY II 1911 - "Pm Going to Be The First Real Speaker The House Has Had In 50 Years^’-Clark (W. s. Couch in New York World.) “Undo .Toe vras our Czar. What are you goinsT to be?” I aaked Champ Ciark. of M.issoiirt, who will hold the jrrivol over the next honse, which will bo a democratic honsc. ‘ I aai going to be the first real ppoaker the house has had for fifty vj-ars,” Champ Clark said. “Ttic^ are bo many kinds of demo* orn.t.B,”T suergrf'sted. “Bryan democrats iind Clc'veland demofratf. h'Th tAilfC ilo!;iociratfl and low tariff deirocrats, Ka.stem and Western and Pouthern dojiiocrata—af lorr^t Rcoordini? to the iir"t!p;;jH')rs. \\nial r-ort of democrat MT y:>ii, Mr. Cli^rlf?" “ \ doraoorat,” d^awlod Cliamp Clark, 1h u maa who believes in doniocratic inclplea nnd who vet os ihe ciomocrat- io tiokat. That Is tlie only kind of uo.MOcrat there Is.” Then be toid his » y. ■ Poople bother mo a good deal diir- ; f I'o flrdt Bryan presidenti-il cam- : ' h • said, “ah'un^s aMoiit tiio .. : r«'Ut kii.dn of d'!'.;ocrnts who were .eii deinocrats : silvo’- dt»niociots. and Palnior and j;,’i:\nv. r .i:.d ".as wh;it uot >: '! ^rTa.tH. So 1 I’stnl i.; tell 'oni about I » t (;t);uimaa’tf do;;. ’ -M,. tiawi;.' Divk 1 t.' iiv. ■j'-' one-fom’«h on**- . V; \'.V( ;i ;t:;u Ti'v -i.h^r L’alf is • '■ >; A.:' lil.o tli.if dOi.. - j ■ ;/■ ds inoi'rat. : f • ‘'-.I ; ; .f • ■•HOC'.- I aiii.' I'l • rc-p icpu .etv's'aiis ui the ■ 'f," I !;intd, '‘t '.n-o to !.o having .1 ■ : ; f i'l!” ('Vi--' tho ‘’fin i'rojk Fair which they Insist is sure to follow I democratic control of it. Is there any I reabcm why the democrats can’t t'un I the house, and legislature?” "Certainly not,” said Chnmp Clark, I with emphasis. “That sort of talk is just republican whistling to keep up tiio party courage in this dark time. The democratic party has had no basic difference since the silver ques tion. and that Is settled. The demo crats are more thoroughly united to day than they have been at any time since the noils closed In 1892. The re- . publicans are worse split up now than we were in 1896. and they will be long er in recovering. 1 "The ho\:se demccrata are united. I If we sel/.e our opportunity and meet the re.^iK)n:^ibility with courage, wis dom and j atriotism, we ought to have a long lease of power, and I am satis- fled that \ve shall, j “Of course, if we fall to do so it’s ‘ back to the wilderness for us!” j He Knows "the Man at the Fork of the Creek.” i The coming election of Champ Clark as speaker to the second place of pow er aiui autliority in the government will crown a career of brave struggle thai began in haitlshii) and poverty and iuis aclileved national political leadership. Clark’s story is the tradl- tioral ATn.''ncnu 'poor-boy-who-be- canie-fanioiis“ tale. Teachers in coun- ny sclmol hou.es will tel! the story of . C lark tiiis winter to i>rove tha; all American boyr> are siill equal anu ta'h has a chance to be president. It aiil that the precocious pupils in r W .fc ^ : h>.c.:~:crs a mother. J.A tLo ^rciigth of her i^ntp.ro i.i dsinrnclo.c^at ,*?uch times, crA it l3 neccGsary tiat her system Lr thoroughly prepared for the event, ia cruc” i.nm lier fce.-vlth preserved lutraro yenrs. Mother’s Friend 'r"C2.;pji'3 sr./r-.t i« is s. iTiO^icin? lor external .;re, composed of oils • ; other inTr-'J/:*nUi which assist natoro la all Mcessary imysical changes of e : r'igiilar U30 before the coiixir-g of hahy prepares the muscles . o ‘o;>. * v- fcr t ..o ntrain, etids ia expanding tho skin and flesh fibres, 1. me-.: li'.'’and tisVv*??. Z'lottor’a Filead lessens the pain - ■ ;x j- ' ■ . -I"!. i Q-. -n L«.r recjv-xy is Glv.\.y3 . ind r-iVirs!. Mother’s Frirud i.' . d dn?fr s' T-'rit*' for our I'rco I-joV. ’.V c.vpr.rt:.:. :rr.thi;r.s. l’iadi I21T: zizGUL. .lo:: CO., A': rr, aa. A TONIC t’i*t B'jilda up the Entire System BR!NG3 NF.W LIFE TO the body in all QJj’lCKLY RESTORES ■‘‘HE APPETITE TO S'EVER. CASES Wwkenad Constitutiona DR^’C;GI5T5, OR roUGERA .New Yorb, the city school study the muckrakers these days and know that the legend about equal opportuity is not so, and that Charles P. Murphy is the real pow^er in the land, and that presidents are turned out ready made, from the ofiace of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. But in the country school houses the old faith in the republic is still taught, without the higher criticism. The na tional strength of Champ Clark comes from his close relations with the coun try school population, and with the constituent whom he is pleased to caU “the man at the fork of the creek.” “1 want to say that the man at the fork of the creek knows more about what is going on than the fellow who lives in town,” Clark once declared. , “He takes a biweekly paper and a daily if he can get it, and an agricul tural paper. He reads these pai^ers line for line—even tlie advertisements. He never holds office; he never expects to hold office. His voting i« a matter of faith. When he comes to believe in him because he thinks the man is right. He doesn’t know anything about politics manipulation; doesn’t v/ant to. Take Bryan and Roosevelr, to illus trate. Those are the kind of men who appeal to the fellow at the fork of the ereelc. And that f-ellow is a stubborn ly faithful constituent, a most comfor table kind of a constituent to have.” To ?ee Champ Clark you simply walk into the committee room assigned to him in the capital and then on into a litle olfice that opens to the right at the far end. Ho has always been approachable and as speaker-to-be, as busy as he will ever be in the chair, he is jtist as easy of access. He prom ises to be a democratis speaker in both senses of the word. Clark has never shown much taste for locked doors or secret conferences, or the many mys teries in which statesmen love to clonk themselves He Can Fight, But he Does not Hunt Trouble. Champ Clark swung into his office a bit behindme on the morning I saw him, swing in with his W’’estern. go- ahead v\'alk, wearing the inevitable black, soft. Western, hat, and a long, loose, dark overcoat—six feet and one inch and some two hundred pounds of man. carrying his weight so easily and with it so well distributed over his big boned frame that the words “stout” and “fat” did not suggest themselves. He grinned a greeting, said “Hello!” and shook hands vigorously. Itiside his little office he pulled his overcoat, slammed up his hat, sat down in his roomy, swivel chair and leaned back with the Involuntary flexing of the muscles and the contented sigh of the healthy man who has just had a good breakfast, is ready to get down to business. a?id is glad of it. Clark has a massive head, topped with thinning gray hair, well poised on a strong neck above big shoulders. His face is a wide, fleshy one, with v.'ell proportioned features, the forehead broad and beep, the gray blue eyes busy and Inquisitive, a straight, plump well shaped nose, an esspressive mouth, neither large nor small, and a good chin. It is the face of a man who can fight but w’ho isn’t hunting for trouble. Talking from his offce chair Clark slouched back in it, let his eyelids drop over his eyes, as he always does when speaking, and slowly swung his right hand in gesture. His drawling. South ern voice is musical in convertation, but on the floor of the house he uses a slow, nasal tone which carry far and, like the snarl of a shell’s flight, it generally precedes a bursting retort that usually demolishes his opponent. James Beauchamp Clark was bom at Ijawrenceburg, Andersonville coun ty, Kentucky, in 1850. He made himself “Champ” Clark. Th^ EJast accepted this as a nickname and the first pu1> llshed unofficial list of congress in which Clark figured made it “Beau champ Clark.” “When I was in law school/’ so Clark complained to a New York re porter, “Judge Hoadley told me a man had as much right to change his name as to have his hair cut. I changed James Beauchamp Cjark to plain Champ. If I had not done this I would have been called, in all probability, ‘Jim Clark,’ and a man might as well be called ‘.John Smith.’ I believe I’ll sue for libel if the unofficial list is not corrected.” But Champ he is and he did not have to use. His mother died in ba byhood ,and his father an itinerant dentist whose hobby was politics, placed his small son and daughter in the hands of John Call, a farmer. At ten or twelve little Champ was do ing a man’s work, or pretty near it. He once told a stoi'y of thirty mules and a blue blue jackass that were but a part of his responsibilities. He dug vrhat education he could from occas ional newspapers and a few tattered books. With this beginning he long held the record of having been the youngest collegie president in the Uni ted States. “I was teaching school before I was 15,” he told me. “Of course I didn’t know much, but it was the only w^ay I had to make money enough to go to coriege. I taught school at intervals until I was 26.” Clark did not say that he had to organize that first school himself, hut it is a fact. He attended Kentucky University for more than three years, teaching school to pay his way, and then, after a final year spent there, was gradu ated from Bethany College, in West Virginia, in June, 187"., with the high est grades any student ever got in Bethany, before or since. The schol ar recc-ived three offers of positions, but he took the presidency of I'larshall College, the State Normal School, at Huntington, W. Va. He was then 23 years old. “i got that position,” Clark explains, “through the friendship of Col. Alexan der Campbell, son of that great preach er, Alexander Campbell.” After a year Clark left .Marshall Col lege for Cincinnati Law School, where he was graduated in April of 1875. He went West after graduation, a& young men were doing in those days, and landed in LiOuisiana, Missouri, where he was principal of the high school for a year. By that time he had a law' practice and a start in politics. Before Clai’k was elected to congress in 1892 he had moved to Bow'ling Green, Mis souri, a town adjoining Louisiana that he married Miss Gene^(^\e Bennett, whose “folks,” Clark is (^reful to ex plain, came froni Kentucky. The Clarks have two children living, a daughter, and Bennett, a son near vot ing age, who In his father’s chum and a college fraternity brother and who wants to have his name changed to Champ. “PoliticB? Oh, yes, I began to med dle with politics right away,” Clark said In answer to interruption of his autobiography. “I was city attorney for Louisiana In 1877, elected^o the legis lature in 1878, and in 1889 I was a presidential elector. In 1892 I v/as first elected to congress.” Clark was beaten for re-election, too, at the end of his first congressional term, beaten by an unknown. It is hard to reconcile Clark today with the Clark pictured in the newspapers of 1892-96. He came east as the defiant champion of the wild, .untamed, unter- rifled and busted w^est to hurl its chal lenge in the teeth of the money pow er. His debut was a sensational Fourth of July speech at a Tammany picnic in New York. The New York papers reports that speech as ungrammatical, and printed weird interviews attribu ted to Clark, in v.'hich he was credited with a story that his first school teach ing had been hindered by a Kentucky feud and that he kept discipline with two guns and a bowie knife. The Washington press gallery took this cue and Clark was pictured as a sort of Individual Hunnish invasion of the capital. What Jerry Simpson and “Joe” Bailey got in those days was mild in comparison. And Clark, not at all dis mayed or Impressed, roared back his denance. “You Can’t Afford to Bear Malice in Politics.’' When Clark returned to congress two years later he was a better bal anced man, with a much more sober tone. He has been acquiring balance ever since. His democratic colleagues predict a successful session of the next house on the ground that Clark is a harmonizer. In this connection ife made two significant remarks to friends recently: “The only wise thing I ever heard Dockery say,” Clark said, “was one time wheni had been damning some body or other in Missouri. ‘Champ,’ sa.- Dockery, ‘don’t you know that( you can never afford to bear malice In politics?’ ” And Clark does not, at least in these days. The other comment was after Clark’s struggle to keep his democrat ic minority in hand and patiently wait in the background while he let Norris of Nebraska and the insurgent republicans have the spotlight in the successful fight to amend the Cannon rules. This had to be, and Clark suc ceeded, but he had a hard time. “The hardest work a leader has,” he commented, “is keeping everj^body in good hum*or. It beats all wiiat they will get angry about. You always have to keep rubbing their fur the right way.” There is an undercurrent of quiet talk in Washington now that Clark may yet be a possibility for the dem ocratic presidential nomination in 1912. The coming democratic house can make or break the party’s stand ing in 1912, and Speaker Clark, while he must bear the blame for the blun ders, has a chance to be a popular he ro If the c!3mocratic house strikes the popular chord. “I took up lecturing,” Clark himself told me, “to make money. It was the (Continued on Page 11.) ALCOHOL 3 PER CENT. . AVigetablePreparfibnforAs-i ti i.1 sirailalin^iiieFoo(faRdRcgu!a| 156^13 til© twg Uie Slomachs aalBowels of Promotes Digestion,Qcerfuli ness and Rest.Contaiiisncithn- | Opiinii.Morphinc norMiiiErd. Not Narcotic. £jec^io.fQld.IkS^MlSfUIESL BoBfikh Sesd" uSh:.Siima *• J/i'Oirioiua'S»b* liWmSfid' CtmSki &JTST • l^st^va'TfaKP. Apcrfecr Remedy for CbnsRjia-| tiojn, Sour StoinacIi.DiartteEa Worms.CoiOTilsloTis.Feverish: FacSiinite Si|aiinirc of NEW YOI?K. rantged. imdcr the ngsssndLossoFSlEEP. | Fpr Infants and ChiMrer The Kind You 3 Always Ei Sigiiature For Ore Thirty fears Exact Copy of Wrapper. TMC CENTAUR SOMMNV, MCW YOKR CITY. Hoiel Marlboro' Broadway, 36th and 37th Sts., Herald Square, Nc FAWOUS GERMAN RESTAUR-MTT SW'EENEY-TIERNEY HOTEL COMFAM lif'5 iS Sf IK W iiii'lll ! Only t%vo blocks from «’ . Pennsylvania Railroad Station and the McAdoo, Hoboken and Long Island Subway Stat'/ons, connect ing all railroads, EedaceS Rates far Roonis Cummenclns January 1310 90 Rooms, privilege of bath $1.0P 60 Rooms, with private bath 1.50 ^ 75 Rooms, v/ith privs-to bath 2.00 ‘I SO Roosr.s, with private bath 2 5'' Suites, Parlor, Badroom and bath - • • 3.00 Europ«an Plan 400 Rocms 200 BatKs vr ‘.V CASEY ■ ill r."-n JONES m Commencing at an Early Date there will appear a series of “Casey Jones” Cuts The & B’’ Mules and Coons will sing ^^Casey Jones’’ continually until they can’t sing it and until they get disgusted with it. It Will Be “Casey Jones” and Nothing Else PHONE 211 % B” Coal and Wood R. 0*' ii'* i : ■ uick:e-st D a K- ‘I; troiil ’ r;arl:.r, bli'.flx . tl’i'iarv. ■' ockhfii I’Or !!■( I’! ■'.■•I , 'Ill ni ;i; ‘iC Ihp i-aie .r-'.-lf; ..f S II.‘ '-. in 'N'l'.'iia; ,:i ouinai fi o. P.agcf) Pshin^' ii ('i)uut;., tee. Fornioi sf^nat!. r.- px{ El nute (■] Pa^'ora iudiciaiy to fox r^mei'!.'- .i nd U uid oidc. The s! T’gs a‘fd i-ries pal A mesj the deat 5tiiart, w A v/ies! the sena ready at canva Jlectlon. Senate Mitchell kie town ^bird rea 5d. The c >^nd tow] >111 Inco] 5oro and ind all li ?ood ex] [I'ides foi Jrnment. R’ithout Presid( •■ppointm Moi be Muc Mr, H 1 y. A New G Sea ’rtcee .
The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Jan. 11, 1911, edition 1
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