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Copyright, 1912, by Edmonston. 
 
 THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 Opposite half-title 
 
Champ Clark 
 
HAMP CLARK 
 
 By 
 
 W, L. WEBB ' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 1912 
 

 Copyright, 1912, by 
 The Neale Publishing Company 
 
 C^C!.A::^1482^ 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 11. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancestry 11 
 
 Childhood 22 
 
 The Plowboy School-teacher 29 
 
 University and College 38 
 
 Seeking a Location 44 
 
 Ten Eventful Years in Pike 49 
 
 Member op the Thirty-fifth General 
 
 Assembly 58 
 
 The Contests of Clark and Norton 
 
 FOR Congress 73 
 
 His Tammany Hall Speech 77 
 
 Clark's Interregnum 83 
 
 Champ Clark in the Fifty-fifth Con- 
 gress 90 
 
 Clark, the Epoch-Maker 93 
 
 His Friendships 107 
 
 Mrs. Clark 124 
 
 "Square to the Four Winds that 
 
 Blow" 132 
 
 Sparks from Clark's Anvil 138 
 
 Reminiscent 145 
 
 Various Opinions 158 
 
 Excerpts from Clark's Speeches and 
 
 Lectures 176 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Speaker of the House of Representatives 
 
 Facing half-title 
 
 Champ Clark Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 
 
 Bennett Champ Clark 37 
 
 Mrs. Genevieve Bennett Clark 124 
 
 Honey Shuck (Mr. Clark's Home in Bowling 
 
 Green, Pike County, Missouri) 150 
 
 Miss Genevieve Clark 154} 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Champ Clark has been my friend for twenty-five years, 
 'n 1889 we were associates in the Thirty-ninth General 
 (Assembly of Missouri. He was connected with the Lower, 
 '. with the Upper branch of the Legislature. Since that 
 ime our lives have often touched. 
 
 Champ Clark is a typical Missourian, an ideal American. 
 He possesses high character, distinctive ability, unusual 
 courage and statesmanship. 
 
 Champ Clark is a progressive but not a demagogue. 
 He is a safe and sane statesman. He is a progressive 
 without being a radical, a conservative without being a 
 moss-back. He is an Abe Lincoln sort of a man in the 
 constructive forces that make for greatness — honesty, 
 originality, brains, and backbone. Lincoln and Clark were 
 bom in Kentucky, early in life they turned their faces 
 westward, Lincoln toward Illinois, Clark toward Missouii. 
 Lincoln and Clark were both endowed with brawny bodies, 
 determinant wills, keen senses of humor, story telling 
 gifts, and aspirations to achieve along lines of public 
 service. 
 
 Champ Clark is absolutely fair. While his birth, pre- 
 dilection, and training have been with and for the common 
 people, yet his keen sense of justice and his RECORD 
 demonstrate that he would not do a wrong to any legiti- 
 mate industry, however large or small. 
 
 Champ Clark is a peacemaker and unifier of his party. 
 
He is a diplomat, and a bom leader of men. His long 
 consistent public career, his achieving experience and ef- 
 ficient leadership qualify him for the Presidency. 
 
 Following his success in the Speakership, to assume the 
 duties of the Presidency would be as natural as stepping 
 from one room to another. 
 
 William McKinley owed much of his success in the 
 White House to his sixteen years in Congress, to the 
 knowledge gained and the friendships formed there. 
 When he recommended legislation to Congress, he was 
 suggesting it to his old friends and associates. Speaker 
 Clark has served eighteen years in the House, and has 
 reached the highest place in a body where every man 
 sooner or later gravitates Inevitably into the place for 
 which he is fitted by nature and training. 
 
 I believe in Champ Clark. 
 
 Kansas City, Mo., May 27, 1912. 
 
Champ Clark 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Ancestry 
 
 Adrial Clark, the grandfather of Champ Clark, lived 
 at Egg Harbor, N. J. He was a man of great wealth, 
 and was the owner of many seagoing vessels. He lost his 
 first wife and afterward married a popular Quaker maid. 
 Miss Elizabeth Archer. A son of the first marriage was 
 the captain of one of the Clark vessels that went down at 
 sea, and he perished with his ship. The name of this 
 captain was given to the youngest child of the second 
 marriage, the thirteenth of the Clark children, John Hamp- 
 ton Clark, the father of Champ Clark. 
 
 Adrial Clark died. His ships were all lost, and the re- 
 mainder of the fortune, being invested in factories that 
 manufactured glass, was dissipated by the surviving part- 
 ner. The Quaker mother was reduced from opulence to 
 poverty. Unable to educate her children or to provide 
 for them, she bound out her youngest child, John Hamp- 
 ton Clark, as an apprentice to a carriage and wagon- 
 maker. 
 
 The boy went to the task as to a penance. Nature 
 had endowed him with talents and an aspiring mind. He 
 
 11 
 
12 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 longed for an education and for intellectual employment; 
 but with grim loyalty, reflected to this day in his distin- 
 guished son, he continued with the wagon-maker until he 
 was twenty-one years old. Then, without a word of fare- 
 well to his mother or other relatives, he left liis native 
 place, never to return. He had heard of the free and mighty 
 West; many of the carriages and wagons made by him 
 had doubtless gone in that direction. He followed their 
 tracks and went to Kentucky. But what could he da 
 there.'* His education Avas but rudimentary. He could 
 make wagons and carriages, and of necessity he turned 
 to his trade. 
 
 This robust wagon-maker, with the heart of a Roman 
 in him, inhented from his father some of the untamed 
 nature of the Vikings or of the Norse sea-kings, and from 
 his gentle Quaker mother sweetness of temper and musical 
 talent. He became a singing-master. In a frontier region 
 where the fiddle was the only instrument of music, the 
 singing-master was justly esteemed a man of accomplish- 
 ments ; and he was always a leader in the rude society of 
 the countryside. 
 
 John Hampton Clark also took up the practice of 
 dentistry, and this, with his singing-schools, led him 
 from place to place, and brought him in contact with 
 people. He was a good conversationalist — and contro- 
 versiahst; he delighted in discussions of politics and re- 
 ligion. He traveled on horseback over four or Rye counties 
 carrying a huge pair of saddle-bags, one end of which 
 
ANCESTRY IS 
 
 was filled with dental instruments, the other with the Bible 
 and with the speeches of Stephen A. Douglas, John C. 
 Breckinridge, and other great Democrats of the times. His 
 convictions concerning politics and religion were strong, 
 and his prejudices were equally so. He was a thorough 
 Democrat in his political faith; Thomas Jefferson and 
 Andrew Jackson were his poHtical idols. 
 
 Champ Clark describes his father as "handsome, highly 
 intellectual, uneducated in a technical sense, though ex- 
 traordinarily well informed, not a public speaker, but skil- 
 ful at arguing in private conversation and in telling an 
 anecdote, an enthusiastic amateur Democratic politician 
 with no desire to hold office, with a twenty-four-inch head, 
 most of it in front of his ears, absolutely honest, without 
 ambition for money and accumulating none, seemingly 
 intended by nature for one of the learned professions, with 
 a consuming desire to have his children well educated." 
 
 He stood six feet, in his prime weighed one hundred and 
 sixty-five pounds, and hved to be nearly ninety. His hair 
 was dark brown in midlife, and inclined to be curly. His 
 oddly colored eyes were full of fire; one was blue, the other 
 brown. 
 
 Drawing his homely but forceful illustrations from 
 daily Kfe, when he lectured on the village comer people 
 stood patiently to hear him to the end, no matter how 
 long it took. The farmer came from his furrow, the black- 
 smith left his anvil, the wife her kitchen, and loungers the 
 tavern, to listen, open-mouthed, to this strange man — 
 
U CHAMP CLARK 
 
 often to mock him and to dispute with him and to be in- ^ 
 tensely delighted when he fought back like a catamount. 
 His tongue was as sharp as a briar. He delighted to 
 sting the scoffers with his rude sarcasm, and to call down 
 upon their heads the wrath of God for their doubts and 
 gibes. 
 
 His energetic teaching, his profound interest in young 
 folks, his unwearying patience in imparting useful 
 knowledge, and his shrewd worldly sagacity — these quali- 
 ties gave to John Hampton Clark the power to measure 
 and to master men. And his good work lives after him. 
 Thus he passed through the Kentucky backwoods country 
 singing psalms, organizing children's classes in Bible 
 study, and now and then practicing dentistry. Little 
 Champ, who went along, grew up in this atmosphere of 
 argumentative turbulence, and by hundreds of examples 
 learned readiness in debate, the proper cutting word, the 
 biting retort. In the years to come Champ, like his 
 father, in turn was to "sharpen liis knife on a brickbat" 
 and dispute for what he held to be the truth. 
 
 From "Hours With Famous Americans" is the follow- 
 ing accurate and eloquent dissertation : 
 
 "If one wishes thoroughly to understand Champ Clark, 
 attention must be paid to the outworkings of heredity and 
 environment. Champ Clark is as kind to friends as he is 
 relentless to political foes, and in this he is true to his 
 race. The Clarks are all born fighters for what they be- 
 lieve to be true. John Hampton Clark upheld the Bible 
 
ANCESTRY 15 
 
 against all scoffers, and could expound it with the faith 
 of one of the twelve Apostles. . . . It is doubtful 
 if at any one time in all his life he was worth five hundred 
 dollars. But in his little circle he was beloved, and was long 
 remembered for his many kindly services. . . . He 
 was a sort of modern Socrates, who lived solely to counsel 
 men and to indulge a life's grand passion to impart knowl- 
 edge. His son is also much the same, to this hour, though 
 in another day and generation, and with completely 
 changed surroundings. 
 
 "While the elder Clark, as far as pecuniary reward goes, 
 talked for nothing except to gratify his heart's desire, 
 let me point a finger at the unfolding of destiny. The 
 former little boy, who went along and heard the battles 
 for the Bible, now spends his own summers, when Congress 
 is not in session, lecturing under Chautauqua management 
 at a thousand dollars a week — more than the father saw 
 in the whole eighty-seven years of his life. 
 
 "Years later, when Champ Clark had become famous 
 and his speeches were in all the newspapers, the old gen- 
 tleman read secretly every word, and, although fairly 
 bursting with pride, never spoke a word of praise to his 
 son. 
 
 "'W^en Champ Clark became a father and was obliged 
 to formulate rules of his own, he grew foolishly fond, 
 excusing everything that his children did and making un- 
 usual concessions to them. And when his small son died 
 this tender, starved love of the earlier time blossomed into 
 
16 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 full flower; and Champ Clark did sometliing never known 
 before nor since In national public life ; he wrote a fleeting 
 line to 'Little Champ' in the formal, prosy, dull 'Red 
 Book' of Congress. It was the strong man's own idea. 
 Those that were with him at that time say that he did not 
 shed a tear, and for days they observed him go about as in 
 a dream, with no show of conventional grief, although they 
 knew that his heart was broken. 
 
 "And if from this simple incident you do not under- 
 stand at least one phase of big Champ Clark, you will 
 never know him from anything that I shall be able to 
 tell you." 
 
 Aletha Jane Beauchamp was the maiden name of 
 Champ Clark's mother. Her father, James T. Beau- 
 champ, was a lawyer and rose to prominence in his pro^ 
 fession. He married Miss Elizabeth Jett, renowned for 
 her beauty and accomplishments, a member of one of Ken- 
 tucky's most honored families. They both died young, 
 leaving three children, who lived with their grandmother, 
 Mrs. Jett. 
 
 "Aletha. was sixteen years old when she went to live 
 with her grandmother. She was beautiful, well educated, 
 and a musician of more than ordinary ability. She became 
 a Christian early in her teens, and was ever true and! 
 devoted — the sunshine of her adopted home. How those 
 old people loved her! Many were made young again by 
 her warm and loving heart. 
 
 "In Louisville there lived a wealthy relative of hers^ 
 
ANCESTRY 17 
 
 Mrs. Miller, the wife of the celebrated Dr. Miller, author 
 of medical works, who offered to educate her in any col- 
 lege of her choice, and to introduce her into society, but 
 she declined in these words: 'My grandmother has been 
 kind to me ; she needs me now, and I cannot go.' 
 
 "The neighbors marveled at the noble traits evinced In 
 this young girl, whose early life might have been one con- 
 tinual round of pleasure. She won all hearts ; she softened 
 the hardest and infused light and warmth into the coldest. 
 She did not care for wealth ; she could have married rich 
 and good men, but she said: 'We want but little here 
 below, nor want that little long,' in the words of a familiar 
 quotation, which she constantly used. It seemed that the 
 Spirit of God was whispering to her that her days were 
 numbered." 
 
 The following incidents are told In Champ Clark's biog- 
 raphy in "Five Famous Missourians" : 
 
 "Before she was twenty Aletha Jane Beauchamp met 
 the handsome John Hampton Clark, and they were mar- 
 i*ied. Their children were Elizabeth, Margaret, and 
 Champ. The mother died at the age of twenty-seven, 
 when her little boy was less than four years old. She was 
 a devoted mother, and she loved her children with all the 
 devotion of her ardent and loyal nature. As she lay upon 
 her death-bed she drew her only son to her side again 
 and again and said, 'I want this little head filled with 
 wisdom.' 
 
 "The devotion of little Champ to his mother was won- 
 
18 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 derful even for one of his precocity. Although not four 
 years old, he refused to leave her bedside. And when com- 
 pelled to do so, he wept so bitterly that the attendants 
 were forced to take him to her. Just after the burial and 
 while relatives were leaving the cemetery, a shower of rain 
 came up. Little Champ eluded his relatives and ran back 
 and sat upon the grave, saying, 'I will not leave my 
 mamma in the rain.' Force was necessary to get the little 
 fellow to the house. The nervous excitement and grief 
 over the loss of his mother brought on brain-fever, and 
 the child hovered between life and death for weeks. But 
 the kindly ministrations of his grandmother and of his 
 aunt, Margaret Beauchamp, restored him to health. His 
 attachment, formed at this time for these two kinswomen, 
 was never effaced. The father at last deemed it best to 
 take the children away from the old scenes of sorrow." 
 
 Champ Clark's birthplace was sixty miles south of 
 Louisville. It was an humble farm cottage, among the 
 cliffs along the Kentucky River. The cottage was a small 
 affair, with low ceilings, and was constructed of rough 
 clapboards — a characteristic pioneer home of the period. 
 There were three rooms, the bedroom, the living-room, 
 and the kitchen, the latter being also the dining-room. At 
 the time of Champ Clark's birth there were no railroads 
 in this part of the country, and the farmers rode on horse- 
 back to the nearest grocery for supplies and for their 
 mail. 
 
 His mother, who had been educated in a convent, lived 
 
ANCESTRY 19 
 
 only seven years after her marriage. The oldest child, 
 Margaret Louise, died in infancy. At the time of his 
 wife's death, John Hampton Clark was in ill health, and 
 how to bring up the two children — James Beauchamp and 
 Elizabeth — was a problem. He found an elderly and 
 childless couple in an adjoining county, who, under his 
 supervision, undertook the care of Champ and his sister. 
 The children lived with them until Champ was eleven years 
 old, when they both went to live with John Call. 
 
 Champ Clark's mother named him James Beauchamp. 
 This was the name of a famous French historian, who 
 flourished at the beginning of the last century, and who in 
 the troublesome times of Napoleon was often in prison 
 for a too free use of his pen. The Beauchamps were 
 transplanted from France to the wilds of America, and 
 were among the earlier settlers of Kentucky. They were 
 refined people and were very popular. 
 
 Everybody pronounced the name "Bowchamp," whereas 
 the immemorial pronunciation in England is "Beecham." 
 This offensive mispronunciation led Mr. Clark to a recon- 
 struction of his name. He dropped the first name entirely 
 and the first half of the middle name, retaining the single 
 last syllable Champ, and since then he has been Champ 
 Clark and nothing else. "If thy right hand offend thee, 
 cut it off." Mr. Clark literally applied this injunction of 
 Scripture to the treatment of his name. 
 
 Harvey Middleton, in the Columbian Magazine, gives 
 
^0 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 this interesting account of the origin of the now famous 
 name "Champ": 
 
 "There is nothing ordinary about him except his last 
 name, but he did not have the making of that; if he had, 
 it would smack of the remarkable individuality of the man. 
 The first name, Champ, was made of unpromising mate- 
 rial. When he was in his salad days and was receiving 
 scented notes daintily addressed to Mr. James B. Clark, 
 another James B. Clark, who had forgotten that he him- 
 self was ever in love, used to get the letters by mistake, 
 open them, see that they were intended for another, and 
 throw them away. This annoyed Clark, so he proceeded 
 to trim his name to his liking. His m-other was a Ken- 
 tucky Beauchamp, from the English pioneers of Virginia 
 and Kentucky. She had named her first-boni James 
 Beauchamp Clark, for his grandfather, who was a member 
 of the Kentucky Legislature. He, with reverent but un- 
 sparing hand, sliced the name in two and took the latter 
 half; the rest went into the discard." 
 
 "It is probable that the career of no man of this gen- 
 eration is more typically American than that of the pres- 
 ent Speaker of the House. He unites within himself the 
 strength and virtues of the stern, unbending Puritans and 
 of the brilliant Cavaliers. His father was bom in New 
 Jersey and his paternal grandfather in Connecticut. On 
 his mother's side all his ancestors, the Beauchamps, the 
 Robertsons, the Jetts, were Virginians and Kentuckians. 
 
ANCESTRY 21 
 
 His grandfather Beauchamp was a member of the Ken- 
 tucky Legislature, and his second cousin, George Rob- 
 ertson, was a Representative in Congress, and is ranked 
 among the greatest Chief Justices of Kentucky." — C. H, 
 Tavenner. 
 
 Analyzing the ancestry of Champ Clark and noting 
 with special thoughtfulness the characteristics of his 
 father and mother, we can hardly mai-vel at the prominence 
 of their son. He is the logical result of antecedent forces. 
 We see pronounced in Mr. Clark the traits of his father 
 rather than those of his mother, and this may be attrib- 
 uted to the early training received from his father. He 
 inherits from his mother a loyal nature, an affectionate 
 heart, and a tenacity of purpose ; from his father, oratory, 
 a taste for literature, and political instincts which have 
 developed into statesmanship. From both he inherits rev- 
 erence for religion and a love of learning. 'J]^oJhese nat- 
 ural gifts and endowments M r. Clark h asJbroughQ^jgiest 
 f orT ard w ork and an unflagging desire forself^iniprpve-i 
 
 est- -- 
 
 IS 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Childhood 
 
 The elder Clark's life had been cruelly hampered by 
 an insufficient education, a misfortune largely overcome 
 by self-improvement, and that, too, without the offensive 
 egotism often displayed by self-made men. He instilled 
 into the mind of his young son the necessity for a thor- 
 ough education. It is not of record that he ever attempted 
 to implant in the boy's mind the love of money or the 
 desire for a money-making career; his own aspirations 
 from childhood had been in the direction of scholarly pur- 
 suits, and now he would live his life over again in his son. 
 Never did good seed fall into better soil; the harvest has 
 been an hundredfold. 
 
 John Hampton Clark believed that man has a soul 
 and a hereafter, and that his spirituality, not less than 
 his intellectuality, requires nurture. He loved the Bible 
 and he taught its sublime truths to his little son ; and the 
 son profited by the father's teachings. Champ Clark is 
 the most competent and thorough Bible student in public 
 life to-day. His speeches, orations, and lectures are 
 replete with accurate and apropos Bible quotations. Mr. 
 Clark recounts the manner in which he was led to study 
 the Bible in the following vivid paragraphs: 
 
 "When I was a boy my father wished me to study the 
 
 22 
 
CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 Bible, and I would not do so very much. So he ran across 
 a small book, a sort of vest-pocket volume, containing the 
 Declaration of Independence, the old Articles of Confed- 
 eration, the Constitution of the United States, and Wash- 
 ington's Farewell Address, which he gave me with these 
 words: 'My son, as you will not read your Bible, here is 
 the next best book ; study it.' 
 
 "I followed his advice. 'You can lead a horse to the 
 trough, but you can't make him drink.' So while my 
 father made me go to church, he could not force me to 
 study theology. We attended worship at a log meeting- 
 house called 'Glen's Creek,' in Washington County, Ken- 
 tucky. Near the center was a huge square post to hold 
 up the roof. When the sermon did not interest me I would 
 curl myself up behind that post, get out my 'political 
 Bible,' and go to work on it. I kept that up until I knew 
 by heart the Declaration of Independence, the old Articles 
 of Confederation, the Constitution, and Washington's 
 Farewell Address — not an unhealthy mental exercise by 
 any manner of means. 
 
 "I am not certain that I would have ever studied the 
 Bible except for an accident. My father was bitterly 
 opposed to my reading novels. He kept me from it as 
 long as he could control me. That I made up for lost 
 time In that regard goes without saying. He was always 
 buying and borrowing histories and biographies for me 
 to read — and thus formed in me a habit that abides to 
 this day. 
 
M CHAMP CLARK 
 
 "Once, however, he came across the most fascinating 
 romance ever written. It was published in the guise 
 of a biography, and was William Wirt's 'Life of Patrick 
 Henry.' Neither good Sir Walter Scott nor Rider 
 Haggard ever drew on his imagination more than did 
 William Wirt in the preparation of that book. Father 
 brought it home and I read it, as old man Harper of 
 Kentucky ran his horses, 'from eend to eend.' It con- 
 tained Patrick's great lyric speech before the Virginia 
 House of Burgesses, precipitating the Revolution, which 
 still stirs the heart like strains of martial music. Of 
 course, it completely fascinated me. But the sentence 
 that took most thorough possession of my mind was this, 
 'The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the 
 strong.' I pondered that paradox wonderingly in my 
 heart. 
 
 "I told my father what a great speech it was, and 
 what a magnificent sentence that was. He took my 
 breath away by saying: 'My son. King Solomon, and not 
 Patrick Henry, wrote that sentence that you admire so 
 much. Read your Bible as eagerly as you do your his- 
 tories and biographies, and you will find hundreds of 
 others fully as magnificent.' I was much sui'prised, but 
 I took him at his word, and have be^n reading the Bible 
 ever since, with constantly increasing profit and delight. 
 To say nothing of its religious value, it is the best 
 book in the world to quote from. Whatever knowledge 
 I have of it dates from the day that my father placed 
 
CHILDHOOD 26 
 
 William Wirt's *Life of Patrick Henry' in my hands." 
 When Champ Clark was a child he was remarkable for 
 a large head poised on a small neck. His father feared 
 that he had a weak constitution — a weakness which the 
 father proposed to overcome by prompt attention and 
 treatment, just as he proposed to meet and subdue every 
 form of weakness that might develop in the boy as he 
 grew to manhood. Champ was promptly set to work 
 practicing the art of chinning poles, exercising with hand- 
 swings, and other atliletic pastimes and sports, for the 
 purpose of developing the neck and chest. When a little 
 older he was sent to the farm owned by Clark Montgom- 
 ery — a poor, hilly, rock-encumbered farm — where he grew 
 to manhood, almost to gianthood. That boy of thin neck 
 and narrow chest now wears a collar of eighteen inches 
 and a coat of forty-four inches chest measurement. 
 Champ Clark once lifted a weight of a thousand pounds ; 
 this feat caused the blood to ooze from beneath his finger- 
 nails. 
 
 The first farm work performed by the boy Champ was 
 thinning corn. But the yield of limestone rock exceeded 
 the yield of com, according to Mr. Clark's recollection 
 of the crop. As he grew into lusty youth Farmer Mont- 
 gomery set him to building a rock fence around the farm. 
 He was required to break up the material in the quarry 
 on the hillside with a sledge-hammer, and then to carry 
 it forward and place it in position. The stone wall around 
 the Montgomery farm, still stands and will endure for 
 
26 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 centuries, a monument to Champ's physical prowess. As 
 Lincoln was called the "Rail-Splitter," so Champ Clark 
 would doubtless be known as "Stonewall" Clark but for 
 the fact that the sobriquet has been most appropriately 
 bestowed upon another. Speaking of that stone fence, 
 John H. Greusel says, in "Hours With Famous 
 Americans": "It has solid character, like Champ Clark's 
 own life; that stone fence has individuality, the Champ 
 Clark individuality. It might well be made the symbol 
 of his own career — ^honest and ^square to the four winds 
 that blow.' " 
 
 Champ Clark learned the superlative quality of industry 
 on that farm. The habit then acquired of close applica- 
 tion and hard work has attended him through every task 
 of his life. He was a courageous boy, headstrong and 
 wilful. He was honest and trustworthy, but the unusual 
 forces displayed in him were misunderstood by the good 
 old dames of the neighborhood, who predicted that he 
 would "turn out bad." The father had no such fear, but 
 watched over him with unremitting care, keeping him in 
 school as much as possible. He only feared that his boy 
 would be spoiled by what he called "too much affection 
 and family clannishness on my wife's side, and altogether 
 too much intellectual pride — about nothing. It's not that 
 way with the Clark side of the family. Oh, no! We 
 know and fear God, and scorn the hypocrites of this 
 earth." The old gentleman ever held that the true way 
 to deal with children is to suppress what is called "natural 
 
CHILDHOOD 27 
 
 emotion" and to avoid pampering, and to give them a 
 thrashing now and then for the good of the everlasting 
 soul. 
 
 The father was a strict disciplinarian and kept a care- 
 ful surveillance over the conduct of his son, who was hard 
 to manage. On one occasion Champ ran away from 
 school to attend a preliminary hearing in a justice court 
 at Mackville, Kentucky. The young runaway knew that 
 he was taking a bold step ; he knew what would be the 
 consequences should his father find it out. But there was 
 the promise of too much excitement for the boy to miss 
 it. He had never seen a trial. He wanted to hear the 
 lawyers plead. So when the case was called he was there, 
 intent upon seeing and hearing everything that was said 
 and done. During the progress of the trial he felt that 
 some one was gazing at him ; he looked across the room and 
 there he saw his father. That meant a chastisement, which 
 was duly administered that night. 
 
 But young Clark never regretted what he did that day, 
 notwithstanding the punishment, which was accepted as 
 a matter of course. Perhaps Champ Clark was moved 
 by the premonitions of unconscious genius for public 
 speaking when he ran away from school to hear Proctor 
 Knott address that justice of the peace. The case was 
 educational to him. This preliminary trial in the justice's 
 court was momentous for Champ. It determined his career. 
 He would be a lawyer. 
 
 The interview between father and son, after they re- 
 
28 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 turned that day from the trial, was not the first encounter 
 of the kind — and probably not the last. The treatment 
 of the father was enough to drive the lad from home ; but 
 Champ submitted doggedly — and stayed. He was never a 
 coward and his self-assertion was prominent, even when he 
 was being corrected and subdued by his father. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Plowboy School-teacher 
 
 There was no period in Champ Clark's life that can be 
 set apart as his period of youth — that formative, poetic, 
 and delightful period, intervening, in most lives, between 
 childhood and manhood. He passed at one step from 
 boy's estate to man's. Having determii ^d on the pur- 
 suit of the law, he directed his energies to the acquirement 
 of the means for securing, as a first requisite, the educa- 
 tion which his father had always insisted that he should 
 have, and for which he himself longed. When between 
 fourteen and fifteen years old he began his long career 
 as a school-teacher. 
 
 This boy, fresh from the plow, had become a man 
 with a man's dynamic force. Teaching school at that 
 time in Kentucky was akin to the sers'ice of a 
 soldier; it was a sort of military exercise; it required 
 the skill and courage of a captain. Champ Clark as a 
 youth was as skilful and courageous as a military com- 
 mander. He began teaching at a time and amid sur- 
 roundings that Fate seems to have designed for the pur- 
 pose of evoking every element of strength in his character. 
 The Civil War, then coming to a close, had not softened 
 the manners of the people — rather had it promoted feuds 
 
 29 
 
30 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 and embroilments. Society was turbulent; insubordina- 
 tion reigned. 
 
 This boy scbool-teacber was unafraid. He taught his 
 first school with signal success, and thereby made such a 
 reputation for ability to control unruly pupils that he 
 was besought to come and assume charge of schools where 
 older teachers had failed. 
 
 Another phase of his character is brought out in the 
 following anecdote, related by Harvey Middleton in the 
 Columbian Magazine : 
 
 "When Clark was a small tyke, knocked about from 
 pillar to post, getting up before day to feed the stock on 
 this poor hill farm or that, going to bed both hungry and 
 motherless, there came into his life a good woman who was 
 kind to him — the first kindness he had known since the 
 day they had buried his mother. That woman was Mrs. 
 Young. She is very old now and far spent, and half a 
 century has passed, but little packages and checks still go 
 from the Capitol Building at Washington, and latterly 
 from the beautiful rooms of the Speaker, where the rich 
 carpets, hangings and mahogany, chandeliers and mirrors 
 are worth a goodly fortune, to a lowly little cabin down 
 in Kentucky. And when the withered old hands are folded 
 for their churchyard rest there will be mourning in some 
 high place by a man who doesn't know how to forget. 
 
 "Wait a moment — while he doesn't forget, yet he for- 
 gives. It had almost slipped my mind — the man's name 
 has escaped me, and it is better to forget it, but there 
 
THE PLOWBOY SCHOOL-TEACHER 31 
 
 was a farmer with whom Clark worked as a child who used 
 to beat him, leaving welts and bruises and misery. 
 
 ''Clark hated him with all the strength of liis soul, and 
 time and again in the attic at night he would lie awake, 
 nursing his sore flesh and vowing that if he ever grew 
 big enough he would come back and chastise the brute. 
 Ten years passed. One day a tall, muscular young man 
 came around the bend in the road on foot. He sprang 
 over the stile, strode up the path, and knocked at the door. 
 Entering, he stood before his ancient enemy — towered 
 above him like Saul among his brethren. He looked 
 down at him and the form withered and shrunk away 
 from his gaze of scorn, but as he looked his anger 
 faded and pity came in its place ; the man's wife was dead, 
 his children were dead, and he was ill and alone. He had 
 found retribution indeed. Instead of thrashing him, Clark 
 handed him some money to help him along. That was, 
 and is, Champ Clark." 
 
 Noble impulses have ever dominated Clark's character 
 and actions, and a lofty career, dimly outlined, ever 
 loomed in his boyish mind. The story of Andrew Jackson 
 fascinated him. Perhaps his thoughts of the presidency — 
 thoughts common to all ambitious American boys — were 
 thrust aside as preposterous. His earliest aspirations he 
 knew could be realized; he could get an education and he 
 moved straight to this ambition. There was never the 
 slightest danger that Champ Clark would become a "bad 
 man" ; bad men were plentiful enough in his neighborhood 
 
32 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 to set examples for him; but his character was too well- 
 balanced and he was too level-headed and too big-hearted 
 for such a career. 
 
 Like a blacksmith beating on his anvil, Clark pounded 
 away at the task that he had assigned himself. He must 
 go to college; he must procure the money to pay his 
 expenses. He accepted honest employment of any kind; 
 he was never idle. Between terms of school he labored 
 as a farmhand, when nothing better offered. He devoted 
 all the fragments of his time diligently to his books. 
 
 During one summer he accepted a position as a clerk in 
 a country store. Of his experiences in this employment 
 one was unfortunate for him, inasmuch as it made a serious 
 inroad upon his accumulations for college. The pro- 
 prietor of the store found it necessary to be absent one 
 day from his business ; this was not especially deplorable, 
 as he could depend implicitly upon his clerk. He enjoined 
 Clark to take special care of all money received, as a large 
 sum was expected to come in that day. At closing time 
 Clark took the money from the drawer and hid it where 
 the mice cut the bills to shreds. The clerk was responsible 
 for the money and he had to replace it. The loss was 
 about one hundred dollars — a large sum for the ambitious 
 young school-teacher, looking forward to college. In 
 order to begin earning this sum at once, he returned un- 
 complainingly to farm work. 
 
 Undoubtedly he would have succeeded as a merchant, 
 after developing what the phrenologists would term 
 
THE PLOWBOY SCHOOL-TEACHER 33 
 
 his acquisitive faculty, but his services in a country 
 store were not prompted by ambition for a mer- 
 cantile or business career. He had no such desire. 
 Neither did his service as a farmhand indicate a desire to 
 be a farmer. He was the best farmhand, as well as the 
 best school-teacher, in Anderson County. He could bind 
 more wheat in a day, or cut down more grain with the 
 cradle, than any other man in the field. The last farm work 
 that he ever performed was for a neighboring farmer 
 named Best, who paid him twelve dollars for binding wheat 
 six days. His aptitude for work in the schoolroom put 
 an end to his career on the fann. He was both an in- 
 structor and a disciplinarian. In his first school there 
 were boys larger and older than he — schoolmates of his 
 the year before. These continued to be boys, and they 
 were surprised to find themselves controlled, directed, and 
 taught by their erstwhile playmate; but he forced them 
 to respect him and to obey him. 
 
 School-teacher Clark is described by one writer as "a 
 tall, lank, awkward, green, gawky boy," with goods and 
 chattels limited to one hundred and fifty dollars in cash 
 and a gold watch worth seventy-five dollars — an extrava- 
 gant price for the watch, said the natives, even if he did 
 earn the money himself. But the boy, whether awkward, 
 as writers like to say of their heroes, or whether a Chester- 
 field in manners, made friends. His frank, earnest manner 
 attracted men and inspired confidence. While he was 
 teaching the High School at Camden, Anderson County, 
 
34 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Kentucky, he became active and prominent in the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 He was the superintendent of the Sunday-school, 
 and it was the most successful one that the church had 
 ever had. He introduced new departures. He organized the 
 Sunday-school into a body of coherent and enthusiastic 
 workers. Teachers and pupils found a new zeal, and the at- 
 tendance became large. Mr. Clark systematized the study of 
 the Bible for his classes and taught the uses of concordances 
 and other Biblical works. He introduced the International 
 Sunday-school lessons and other Sunday-school literature. 
 The whole community felt a new fascination in Sunday- 
 school work, and the interest became intense. 
 
 He organized singing classes among both the children 
 and the adults. He introduced and taught the 
 round-note system of singing in that neighborhood, 
 supposed to be too difficult for any one to learn except a 
 professional. With the round-note system came a better 
 grade of song books. He himself had learned to sing and 
 to teach others to sing from his father on their pere- 
 grinations over the country. He inherited a talent for 
 music from both his father and his mother. The young 
 superintendent drew almost the entire community into his 
 Sunday-school by the compelling force of his music and 
 personality. People came for miles to hear the wonderful 
 singing and to be a part of Champ Clark's Sunday-school. 
 
 There lived at Camden a rich old planter by the name 
 of William Stevens, known and loved throughout the 
 
THE PLOWBOY SCHOOL-TEACHER 35 
 
 countryside as "Uncle Billy." Stevens was a devout mem- 
 ber of the Christian Church and a teacher in Champ 
 Clark's Sunday-school. He was a great admirer of Clark's 
 and saw in him the possibilities of a great pulpit orator. 
 He said, "Clark, if you will become a minister in the Chris- 
 tian Church, I will give you a thorough education in any 
 college in the United States or in Europe." But Clark 
 said "No." Those that have heard Mr. Clark utter that 
 word on the floor of Congress know what emphasis he 
 can throw into its utterance. But "Uncle Billy" was not to 
 be turned from his purpose by the hasty though peremp- 
 tory decision of the young man. He felt that he himself 
 could do great service to Almighty God, to the Church, 
 and to humanity, if he could get this young man to come 
 into the ministry. He renewed the oifer time and again. 
 Finally he said: "Clark, if you will accede to my plans 
 I will bequeath to you one-half of my estate. Now, don't 
 be stubborn and frivolous and foolish about it. Go along 
 and do it." Mr. Clark felt that he could not put his 
 whole heart into the work, so he declined irrevocably the 
 kind and generous offer of Mr. Stevens. Mr. Clark above 
 everything else desired to be free and untrammeled as to 
 his future course. He was independent and he proposed 
 to remain so. 
 
 This was the spirited, typical man of the Middle West 
 described so accurately and graphically by Walt Whit- 
 man. 
 
 Mr. Clark continued to teach until he was able to go 
 
36 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 away to school. When his money gave out he returned to 
 teaching. He even taught a few terms after being admit- 
 ted to the bar. 
 
 Mr. Clark was a great favorite at Camden. After he 
 returned from three years in the Kentucky University he 
 was again employed to teach the Camden High School. 
 He had by this time become a proficient Greek scholar, 
 and he h to-day perhaps the finest Greek scholar in public 
 life, and he is equally the master of Latin. Upon his 
 return to Camden he became the teacher of a teacher. 
 A veteran school-teacher sixty-four years old took lessons 
 in Greek with Mr. Clark as private tutor. This elderly 
 school-teacher studied Greek that he might read his New 
 Testament in that ancient language. He used to teach 
 Mr. Clark's classes in the schoolroom for two hours each 
 day in exchange for one hour of instruction from Mr. 
 Clark in Greek. 
 
 Mr. Clark was ardently attached to the vocation of 
 teaching. He once declared that he would rather be at 
 the head of the Missouri University than to be a Repre- 
 sentative in Congress, or Governor of the State, or United 
 States Senator. 
 
 In addressing a teachers' institute Mr. Clark delivered 
 this eloquent passage: 
 
 "In looking back to my career as a teacher I have one 
 abiding consolation and it is this: Wherever my pupils 
 are, on land or sea, and in whatever occupation they are 
 employed, they are my sworn friends. That glory cannot 
 
Copyright, 1912, by Edmonston. 
 
 BENNETT CHAMP CLARK 
 Opposite p. 37 
 
THE PLOWBOY SCHOOL-TEACHER 37 
 
 be taken away from me. I hear one of them preach occa- 
 sionally, and I take pride in the fact that some people 
 say that he speaks like me. When I was in the crisis of 
 my political career another, voluntarily and without being 
 asked, sent me more money than any other three men in 
 the State, and w^ouldn't even take my note as evidence of 
 the debt. Such pupils are a joy forever. 
 
 "I sometimes regret that I ever quit teaching, for while 
 I have succeeded fairly well in both law and politics, a 
 lawyer is not always certain that he has rendered the 
 State a service by acquitting his client, and a Congress- 
 man, through ignorance or inadvertence, may vote in such 
 a way as to affect adversely the fortunes of 93,000,000 
 people; but a teacher knows that he is doing good when 
 teaching the alphabet, the multiplication table, and the 
 rudiments of grammar and geography. It is only when 
 he strikes history that his feet get into the quicksands." 
 
 Mr. Clark is the devoted friend and patron of the 
 Missouri State University, as he is of all the institutions of 
 the State. His son, Bennett Clark, was educated at the 
 University of Missouri. 
 
 One of Mr. Clark's speeches in Congress was on the 
 subject of increasing the salaries of the 1,440 school 
 teachers in the city of Washington. This speech was 
 delivered before the Committee of the Whole, January 24, 
 1905. It reveals not only Mr. Clark's friendship for 
 teachers, but also shows his broad statesmanship. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 University and College 
 
 Champ Clark was rich in varied experiences and strong 
 in self-assertion and self-confidence when, at the youthful 
 age of seventeen, he entered Kentucky University (now 
 Transylvania) at Lexington. By honest toil he had sup- 
 plied himself with a few hundred dollars, which he was 
 now to spend in getting an education. The energy and 
 enterprise called forth in procuring this necessary sum 
 had developed in him a practical and resolute nature, 
 which made him masterful in the preparation of his lessons 
 and in the classroom. His slender purse admonished him 
 to practice economy, and economy in monej^ matters 
 teaches economy in time and opportunities. The practice 
 of it is not inimical to mastering logarithms or learaing 
 triangulation. Young Clark learned to calculate ecKpses 
 while at the university, which some of his classmates, with 
 plenty of money, never learned to do at all. 
 
 ]\Ir. Clark entered Kentucky University in the autumn 
 of 1867, as may be seen from the catalogue of 1868. The 
 catalogues show that he was there again in 1870 and 
 1871. He attended the Kentucky University in all three 
 years and a half. Before the end of his senior year, when 
 he would have graduated, he was expelled for shooting 
 
 at a man named Webb. Mr. Clark's life is an open book. 
 
 38 
 
UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE 39 
 
 This shooting affair is in no way a sealed chapter. Mr. 
 Clark will look 3^ou straight in the e3^e and tell you all 
 about it. The details are unimportant. Mr. Clark, dis- 
 cussing the occurrence, said: 
 
 *'I fired and missed, a friend knocking the pistol upward 
 as I pulled the trigger. Looking back, I feel that I was 
 not censurable." 
 
 Notwithstanding his expenses in the university had not 
 exceeded a hundred dollars a year, when he left at the 
 middle of his last year he was practically without a dollar 
 in the world. This did not appall him. It only delayed 
 him. He knew how to get more money — by working for 
 it. He returned to Camden and resumed teaching. 
 
 Having saved up enough money to maintain him for a 
 year at college, he decided to go to Bethany College, at 
 Bethany, West Virginia, a famous institution under the 
 supervision of the Christian Church — Campbellite Church, 
 as Mr. Clark invariably calls it, and has a right so to call 
 it, inasmuch as he himself is a member of that church, 
 and proudly calls himself a Campbellite. 
 
 He took the junior and senior courses and led all his 
 classes in both for an entire year, and delivered the salu- 
 tatory in Latin at the closing exercises. He was con- 
 fronted by an unusual array of obstructions, one of wliich 
 was the everlasting harassment of economy — perhaps his 
 best friend after all; certainly not a dreadful enemy. He 
 cooked his own meals, wearing a gunny sack for an apron. 
 As he cooked he sang songs in Greek or in German. 
 
40 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Nothing could suppress his cheerfulness and his optimism 
 — always ruling traits in his character. 
 
 At the end of the first month, when the grades were 
 made, he was in the lead; the same thing happened the 
 second month; when he was still ahead in the third month 
 a feud was started. It was now clearly apparent that 
 this young upstart from Kentucky would take all the 
 honors. 
 
 This outlook created two factions, the Clark and 
 the anti-Clark factions. The Clark faction held that the 
 new pupil had a right to all the honors if he could win 
 them, while the anti-Clark faction held that those older 
 pupils, who had plodded slowly and laboriously up from the 
 foundation through years of hard study, and who had 
 been foreordained and predestinated by the faculty to re- 
 ceive the honors, could not be legally nor morally displaced 
 by a late arrival. The faculty was divided; the pupils 
 were divided. The tempest in a teapot extended beyond 
 the college and the campus, and presently the town of 
 Bethany was rent by conflicting opinions concerning the 
 controversy. Mr. Clark, in an interview, said of this con- 
 test: 
 
 "The situation grew hotter and hotter. I was not 
 headed once during the year and walked off with the high- 
 est honors. The man who expected to win appealed the 
 case from the faculty to the curators. The curators, 
 among whom was Alexander Campbell, son of the founder 
 of the Campbellites, sustained the faculty." 
 
UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE 41 
 
 Mr. Clark developed into a good writer and a good 
 debater while at Bethany. He was unsurpassed in college 
 literary exercises, and he contributed somewhat volumi- 
 nously to various religious and political periodicals. For 
 his diversion he translated German songs into English. 
 He was regarded by many as a poet of great promise. 
 His verses in English were published under the nom de 
 pluTtie, "Sans Peur." Sir William Blackstone long hesi- 
 tated as to whether he should be a poet or a lawyer, and 
 when finally he decided in favor of the law he wrote a 
 delightful farewell to his muse. Champ Clark has never 
 been given to indecision, and probably he was not tempted 
 at any time to become a poet, though possessed of the 
 tastes and powers of a poet. His efforts at versification 
 were intended for profitable literary exercise. Thus he 
 gained the literary polish that so distinguishes all his 
 writings. But the mechanical construction of sentences 
 that so delighted him never took the place of logic and 
 sound reasoning. The study of law is the study of the 
 very sum and essence of human reason, and what attracted 
 him most was the province of pure reason, so he chose 
 law as his profession. 
 
 A few days after he was graduated from Bethany, Col. 
 Alexander Campbell, of West Virginia, son of the famous 
 theologian, asked Clark what he intended to do in the 
 future. He replied that he was going to teach a year or 
 so and then practice law. He told Clark to write out an 
 application and give it to him — that he thought he could 
 
42 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 secure a college presidency for him. Having no idea that 
 such a thing was possible, Clark wrote an application, 
 which must have taken away the breath of the college 
 curators, and which, it is likely on account of its unique- 
 ness and the confidence expressed, secured him a position. 
 The application read: "I have just graduated from Beth- 
 any College with highest honors; am twenty-three years 
 old, over six feet high, weigh one hundred and seventy 
 pounds, unmarried, am a Kentuckian by birth, a Camp- 
 bellite in religion, a Democrat in politics, and a Master 
 Mason." 
 
 Mr. Clark did not secure the presidency of the school, 
 West Liberty State Normal, for which he had applied, 
 but was surprised a few days later when he was notified 
 that he had been elected, not president of West Liberty, 
 but of Marshall College, the first Normal School of West 
 Virginia, located at Huntington, at a salary of $1,400 
 a year. He was unquestionably the youngest college 
 president in the world. 
 
 Because of Clark's youth many of the students at Mar- 
 shall, some of whom were older than the president, con- 
 cluded that they could conduct themselves to suit their 
 own fancies, but this conclusion proved an illusion. One 
 incident served to dispel the students' hope of many 
 *'larks" under the Clark regime. Soon after his term 
 began four young men blacked and greased the face of a 
 fellow student while he slept, an act that greatly humili- 
 ated the victim. He made complaint to the young presi- 
 
UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE 43 
 
 dent, who, upon investigation, discovered the guilty ones. 
 Hunting up the perpetrators, he said: "Boys, you did 
 wrong, and you must do the manly thing and apologize 
 at chapel services." Three of them did so cheerfully, but 
 the fourth declared that he would not. President Clark 
 said to him, "One of three things will happen — you will 
 apologize publicly, I will expel you publicly, or I will 
 thrash you within an inch of your life." To this the 
 student replied with the question, "How much time will 
 you give me to reflect upon these propositions.^" "One 
 hour, sir," replied the president. At the expiration of the 
 allotted time the offender returned and said, "I don't 
 want to be expelled; I don't want to fight; I will apolo- 
 gize." He did, and was henceforth one of the president's 
 staunchest friends and most industrious students. There 
 was no more trouble in maintaining discipline. Hazing 
 in ^larshall College was at an end. 
 
 Champ Clark held the presidency of Marshall College 
 but one year, when he resigned to enter the Cincinnati 
 Law School. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Seeking a Location 
 
 Upon completing his legal education at the Cincinnati 
 Law School in 1875, Mr. Clark discerned, as he thought, 
 a field awaiting him in Kansas. At that time the wild 
 ranges of Texas and the Southwest were sending drove 
 after drove of cattle to A^arious new railroad points in 
 Southern Kansas for shipment to the Eastern markets. 
 From Corpus Christi, Texas, to Abilene, Kansas, a broad 
 trail, like a shadow but waterless canal, two hundred 
 yards wide, extended for a thousand miles, and along this 
 dust-beclouded highway innumerable herds, each from one 
 to three miles long, moved slowly northward, each herd 
 accompanied by a band of drovers and ranchmen, the 
 owners of the herds and their employees, known every- 
 where as cowboys. 
 
 This cattle trade had begun in 1867, and was just fairly 
 under way when Mr. Clark arrived in Kansas in 1875. 
 Joseph G. McCoy, who started the movement of cattle 
 from Texas to Abilene, and who was employed in the 
 United States Census Department in 1880 and 1890, is 
 authority for the statement that ten million head of live 
 stock, to the latter date, had been driven from the South 
 and Southwestern cattle ranges to the nearest railroad at 
 vanous points in southern Kansas, including Abilene, 
 
 44 
 
SEEKING A LOCATION 45 
 
 Wichita, Dodge City, and Great Bend. The trade left 
 Abilene as a terminal in 1874, and went to Wichita for 
 two years, and for two years only. Mr. Clark arrived on 
 the scene just at the time when the cattle trade was with- 
 drawing to Great Bend. That was grasshopper year, too. 
 
 The Spanish milled dollars, so current for a while at 
 Wichita, had disappeared. There were no Greasers to be 
 arrested, and brought into court ; no business of any kind. 
 Mr. Clark filed one case at Wichita and departed, after 
 a residence there of eleven weeks. Discussing this episode 
 in his search for a place to settle, Mr. Clark once said: 
 "The grasshoppers drove me out of the Sunflower State. 
 That was the year Governor Hardin prayed them out of 
 Missouri. People can make fun of that performance as 
 much as they please; but I believe that prayers are an- 
 swered, and that the prayers of the Missourians saved the 
 State from devastation by the Rocky Mountain pests. 
 Had I remained in Wichita I might have grown rich ; but 
 I was afraid of the grasshoppers." 
 
 He had been induced to go to Kansas by the eloquent 
 recommendations of his classmate at the Cincinnati Law 
 School, JeiF Hudson. Mr. Clark and Mr. Hudson were 
 among the few Democratic representatives in the law 
 school, and side by side they engaged in forensic tourna- 
 ments with their colleagues, during the days following re- 
 construction in the South, when Phil Sheridan, as Clark 
 picturesquely phrased it, "was pitching a Democratic Leg- 
 islature out of the window with his bayonets down in New 
 
46 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Orleans." After leaving the law school the two did not 
 meet again until they met as members of Congress in Wash- 
 ington, and there they renewed their friendship, and on a 
 wider field again exercised their powers of oratory in behalf 
 of Democracy. 
 
 Mr. Clark spent his last dollar at Wichita. He went to 
 Missouri by instinct. He had no friends nor acquaintances 
 there. 
 
 He went to Moberly, Missouri, looking for a school, the 
 necessity being imperative for him to find immediate em- 
 ployment. Practicing law was simply out of the question 
 for the time being. He was offered a school at the his- 
 toric old town of Renick, near Moberly, and he accepted 
 it at fifty-five dollars a month, explaining that he w^as 
 taking the position through force of circumstances. The 
 school board generously agreed to release him if he could 
 find a position more in keeping with his qualifications. 
 
 The superintendent of schools to whom he went for the 
 necessary teacher's certificate was a native of Pike 
 County, living at Moberly. He was astonished when he 
 saw the diplomas and certificates presented by the beard- 
 less applicant for a certificate to teach school in Randolph 
 County. He said to Clark: "Why don't you go to Pike 
 County and teach the High S-chool in Louisiana? There 
 is a vacancy there. Professor George Osborn has resigned 
 to become president of the State Normal School at War- 
 rensburg. Go down to Louisiana and get that position 
 at a big salary." This was the first invitation Clark ever 
 
SEEKING A LOCATION 47 
 
 received to live in Pike County; he needed no second in- 
 vitation. The name of the man was Rutherford. 
 
 Mr. Clark hastened to Louisiana, in Pike County, Mis- 
 souri, the home of Dave Ball. Professor Clark taught for 
 one year in Louisiana, receiving a good salary. This 
 put him on his feet by relieving his immediate wants. Dur- 
 ing this year he said nothing about being a lawyer. He 
 believed in doing one thing at a time and doing that well. 
 At the close of his school he surprised the town by hang- 
 ing out his shingle as a lawyer. Pike County was famous 
 then as it has ever been for legal talent, and Clark was 
 not overwhelmed with legal work. While waiting for 
 clients he edited a newspaper, and this introduced him 
 to local politics. 
 
 During the summer of 1876 the Tilden-Hayes cam- 
 paign called into action every politician in the country. 
 David A. Ball, the ablest lawyer in northwest Missouri, 
 and Champ Clark made speeches together all over Pike 
 County for the Democratic ticket. In this campaign 
 Mr. Clark showed remarkable political instinct, and es- 
 tablished a local reputation as an able stump-speaker. The 
 people of Pike saw a new light, and with open-hearted 
 hospitality received gladly to their hearts this young 
 favorite. Mr. Ball was so taken with his colleague on 
 this speaking tour that he proposed a partnership. The 
 friendship of the two was that of David and Jonathan over 
 again. Loyalty is a distinguishing quality in the charac- 
 ters of both Clark and Ball. The lasting affection of these 
 
48 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 two men for each other has long been the admiration of the 
 entire country. 
 
 The law partnership of Ball and Clark ended by mutual 
 consent in March, 1878, when Ball entered the race for 
 the oflSce of prosecuting attorney and Clark received the 
 Democratic nomination for the Legislature, but was de- 
 feated at the general election by Enoch Pepper, who 
 received the support of all the Greenbackers and Repub- 
 licans. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Ten Eventful Years in Pike 
 
 Ten years after Mr. Clark's first aspirations for legis- 
 lative honors in 1878, he became a candidate again for 
 the same office, and was elected. This was in 1888, the 
 year that Harrison defeated Cleveland for the presidency. 
 But during that intervening period of ten years Mr. Clark 
 had not been idle, politically or otherwise. He built up a 
 good law practice, participating actively in every political 
 campaign, and while becoming a good lawyer, became also 
 a good politician. 
 
 During this time he met and married Miss Genevieve 
 Bennett. He became a householder and a father. He was 
 now a prosperous Pike County citizen, with prospects 
 ahead that never permitted his ambition to slumber. 
 His wife was a helpmate indeed. They were both 
 students of wide ranges of literature, with a decidec 
 preference for history. Their tastes were nearly identical, 
 as their purposes were; they were devoted to each other, 
 and to their little daughter, whom they named Ann Ham- 
 ilton, and whose loss brought them their first great sorrow. 
 
 Mr. Clark's first notable case in Pike County, and the 
 first notable one in his life, was tried soon after the elec- 
 tion of his old law partner, David A. Ball, to the office of 
 prosecuting attorney, in 1878. The case was the trial of 
 
 49 
 
50 CHAMP TT-ARK 
 
 a negro, Jerrj Hill, for killing one of his own race. Con- 
 viction was thought to be impossible. The community 
 was glad to be nd of the negro that was killed; he was 
 a local terror and a bully; he whipped negi^oes and white 
 men with equal impunity and impartiality. He was a 
 powerful fellow, and without the sense of fear. Negroes 
 and whites alike were afraid of him. A number of persons 
 said that he ought to be killed, and that anybody who 
 would do it would be hailed as a public benefactor. 
 
 Jerry Hill took them at their word and killed the bully. 
 Public sentiment applauded and Jerry's bail was fixed at 
 three hundred dollars, so trifling was the case. Every law- 
 yer in the county had volunteered to defend Jerry, includ- 
 ing David Ball, the new prosecuting attorney, from which 
 fact the court found it necessary to appoint a special 
 prosecutor for this case. As usual the court selected the 
 youngest and least occupied lawyer at the bar. The one 
 indicated by these conditions was Champ Clark. This 
 forlorn case was Mr. Clark's opportunity, and a great 
 one it proved to be ; it established him as an able and com- 
 ing lawyer. He studied the case thoroughly and prepared 
 for the trial with all the zeal of his ardent nature. His 
 address to the jury was so powerful that Jerry was con- 
 victed of murder in the first degree. The sentence of capi- 
 tal punishment was afterward commuted to twenty-five 
 years in the State prison, but the commutation detracted 
 nothing from Clark's speech, which many maintained was 
 the greatest that they had ever heard in a trial case; 
 
TEN EVENTFUL YEARS IN PIKE 51 
 
 rather the commutation showed that the speech had car- 
 ried the jury beyond the previous demand of public senti- 
 ment. 
 
 The conviction of Jerry Hill indicated Clark as the 
 logical successor to Ball in the office of prosecuting attor- 
 ney. Indeed, Mr. Ball put Mr. Clark in training by 
 appointing him deputy prosecutor at Bowling Green, the 
 county-seat of Pike County, and thither the new appointee 
 repaired; and his home has been there from that day to 
 this, first as a bachelor and then as a m_an of family. 
 
 At the conclusion of Mr. Ball's two terms in the office 
 of prosecuting attorney, Mr. Clark was elected and held 
 the office for two terms. At the conclusion of his second 
 term he was elected to the Legislature, in which he began 
 his career as a lawmaker. The Missouri Legislature was 
 a stepping-stone on the way to Congress. 
 
 As prosecuting attorney Mr. Clark made a memorable 
 record. He was the teiTor of law-breakers. Mr. Clark 
 brought to the office of prosecuting attorney of Pike 
 County the same zeal that he brings to every task of life. 
 He tried over 2,000 criminal cases, a record most remark- 
 able for celerity in the dispatch of business. "The law's 
 delay" found no abiding place in the cases coming under 
 his supervision. He tried all kinds of cases, from horse- 
 stealing to murder in the first degree. The weak cases as 
 well as the strong received his earnest attention ; the sen- 
 sational as well as the prosaic. Mr. Clark's aptitude for 
 public service was conspicuous during his four years as 
 
52 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 prosecuting attorney. This was his first office involving 
 large public trusts, and his faithfulness, industry, and 
 good judgment were evident in every case. He worked 
 hard. Reviewing his efforts soon after retiring from the 
 office and becoming a member of the Legislature, he said : 
 "The office of prosecuting attorney brings out the best in 
 a man. It tests his energy and ability, if he has any pride 
 in the success of his work." 
 
 A most remarkable story is told in Pike County of the 
 manner in which Mr. Clark was brought into the race for 
 the Legislature. Perhaps no other man, living or dead, 
 can claim the distinction that marked the last year of his 
 career as prosecuting attorney. The Pike County grand 
 jury nominated Mr. Clark for the Legislature. The 
 grand jury was in session in March, 1888, and at the close 
 of its session the foreman asked Mr. Clark if he would like 
 to go to the Legislature. Mr. Clark was not sure that 
 he wanted the office. He had wanted it ten years before 
 that, but he now looked forward to a good law business. 
 However, the foreman of the grand jury put the ques- 
 tion, "All those in favor of Mr. Clark's going to the 
 Legislature say *Aye' ; those opposed, 'No.' " The vote 
 was unanimous for Clark, who looked upon the perform- 
 ance as inconsequential. But the jurors were in earnest, 
 and presently the Clark boom was under full headway. 
 Three or four candidates withdrew in Clark's favor. 
 When the Democratic county convention met Mr. Clark 
 
TEN EVENTFUL YEARS IN PIKE 53 
 
 became the regular nominee for the Legislature and was 
 elected. 
 
 Mr. Clark's earliest biographers,* Wilfred R. Hollister 
 and Harry Norman, in "Five Famous Missourians," relate 
 the following occurrence, illustrating Clark's fearless 
 character and his faithful adherence to his duty : 
 
 "During the time that he held the office of prosecuting 
 attorney a man named Latimer shot and killed a man 
 named Griffith. Latimer was a popular citizen, while the 
 murdered man was decidedly unpopular. The evidence 
 against Latimer was circumstantial, and scarce at that, 
 but when the tim.e came for the case to be argued, Clark 
 prepared to make a tremendous effort to sway not only 
 public opinion, but the jury also, by a strong speech 
 prosecuting Latimer. The court-house was filled on the 
 closing day of the trial, probably five hundred or six hun- 
 dred persons being there. 
 
 "Of this number perhaps not more than two or three 
 were in sympathy with the prosecution, the remainder 
 wanting Latimer set at liberty. Clark arose to 
 close for the State. He saw plainly that he was 
 contending against heavy odds, yet began to make 
 a vigorous denunciation of Latimer in a crowd composed 
 
 *Mr. Clark's first biography in book form was written and pub- 
 lished by Wilfred R. Hollister and Harry Norman in 1900. The title 
 of the book was "Five Famous Missourians." The book was a small 
 volume, but very creditable, and contained the biographical sketches 
 of Samuel L. Clemens, Richard P. Bland, Champ Clark, James M. 
 Greenwood, and Joseph O. Shelby. 
 
54 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 of the accused man's friends. To illustrate the power of 
 his eloquence, he had been speaking scarcely half an hour 
 before the crowd of Latimer partisans broke into pro- 
 longed applause at one of Clark's lightning-hke argu- 
 ments directed against the head of Latimer. The court 
 became angry at this display of lack of court etiquette 
 on the part of the crowd, and severely rebuked the ap- 
 plause. Clark waited for the excitement to subside, then, 
 after talking twenty minutes, he reached the climax of his 
 arraignment, at which the crowd shouted terrifically, 
 fairly shaking the building with the thunderous applause, 
 for few such speeches had ever been heard in the court- 
 room of Pike County. Despairingly the court gave up 
 the attempt, and made no effort to restrain the great dem- 
 onstration. Despite this masterful speechmaking effort of 
 Clark's the jury cleared Latimer because of insufficient 
 proof." 
 
 No man ever had better training for leadership than 
 Mr. Clark had in his early days with vexatious and nerve- 
 racking political experiences in Pike County and the 
 "Bloody Ninth," as the Pike County district was called, 
 but which has been rechristened under Clark's leadership 
 as the "Peaceful Ninth." Mr. Clark began in the Pike 
 County political kindergarten and went through all the 
 various grades, including a thorough postgraduate 
 course. 
 
 His first office was that of city attorney of Louisiana. 
 He resigned this office after two years of faithful 
 
TEN EVENTFUL YEARS IN PIKE 55 
 
 serv'ice, because the prosecution of persons for petty 
 offenses was disagreeable to him. He held the office 
 of city attorney also in Bowling Green. These offices 
 gave him insight into the working of municipal and ward 
 politics. From the time he left the schoolroom in Louisi- 
 ana and entered upon the practice of law, he has never 
 failed to be active in every campaign. As prosecuting 
 attorney and as deputy under Ball he canvassed Pike 
 County four times ; since then he has done the same thing 
 without fail every two years. He was always a delegate 
 in those early days to all State conventions, where he 
 always made speeches and never a poor one. He took 
 conspicuous part in the Congressional contests of his dis- 
 trict before he himself ever entered the race for Congress. 
 In 1888 David R. Francis was the Democratic nominee 
 for Governor of Missouri. Clark and Francis canvassed 
 the entire State together. Francis was elected Governor 
 and Clark went to the Legislature. The year 1888 wit- 
 nessed the advent of Richard H. Norton into the Pike 
 County Congressional district campaign. Judge Elijah 
 Robinson came into the field against Norton. These two 
 men were native Missourians and they stood high as law- 
 yers. Judge Robinson had served as circuit judge, and 
 was recognized as a very able man. Primary elections 
 were unknown in those days in Missouri. All nominations 
 from constable to Congressman were made in convention. 
 Norton and Robinson came into the Congressional conven- 
 tion with the delegates equally divided between them. 
 
56 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 The deadlock persisted until the friends of both 
 candidates agreed to toss up a penny to decide which 
 should withdraw. Norton won and Robinson withdrew. 
 This scene disgusted Mr. Clark, and that winter, as a 
 member of the Legislature, he became a strong advocate 
 of primary elections. During that session of the Legisla- 
 ture a resolution passed demanding the election of United 
 States Senators by direct vote, and Mr. Clark supported 
 the resolution. The Australian secret ballot system was 
 inaugurated that winter, and the Robinson-Norton episode 
 no doubt stimulated Mr. Clark to a more strenuous sup- 
 port of the measure. 
 
 Mr. Norton went to Congress on the toss of a penny. 
 But he perceived on the horizon the well-defined outlines 
 of a mighty figure, ominous, threatening — the figure of 
 Champ Clark. The sound of a new voice came over from 
 the legislative halls of Jefferson City. The people knew 
 Champ Clark to be absolutely honest, the sworn, outspoken 
 enemy of all political chicanery. His ability was recog- 
 nized wherever he was known. Those who knew him best 
 said that he possessed all the elements of a great man. 
 Carlyle says the world knows not well at any time what 
 to do with a great man when he appears on earth, but 
 Pike County is wiser than the world was as Carlyle saw it. 
 It knew almost from the first what to do with Champ 
 Clark. 
 
 If Pike County has been loyal to Clark, so also has he 
 been loyal to Pike. He is always a self-constituted com- 
 
TEN EVENTFUL YEARS IN PIKE 57 
 
 mittee of one to sound the praises of Pike County and of 
 Missouri, and of the entire West. 
 
 In a speech before an "old settlers" meeting in Mis- 
 souri he recounted at length the notables of his State, 
 coming to a close with those of his own Congressional dis- 
 trict. Said he: 
 
 "One of my constituents, Thomas Jefferson Jackson 
 See, a graduate of the University of Missouri, has recently 
 set the scientific world agog with his works on astronomy. 
 He is the coming man among the stars, and bids fair to 
 rival the fame of Kepler, Copernicus, and Lord Herschel. 
 
 "James Newton Basket, of Mexico, has written the best 
 book about birds since Audubon. 
 
 "Strangest of all, Charles Emerson, of Pike County, 
 became king of one of the South Pacific islands." 
 
 The election in Pike County in 1888 started Mr. Clark 
 on his career as a lawmaker. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Member of the Thirty-fifth General Assembly 
 
 Mr. Clark signalized his advent into the Missouri Leg- 
 islature by a brilliant speech in the Democratic caucus, 
 nominating the Rev. J. B. Trone, of Henry County, for 
 chaplain of the House. Discussing this speech afterward 
 in a private conversation, Mr. Clark said in substance : "I 
 had always injected humor into my speeches, but when I 
 was elected to the Legislature, I determined to suppress 
 all tendency to humor whatsoever and to conform all my 
 speeches to models of earnestness, with no frivolity. My 
 new resolve was to be carried out for the first time in pre- 
 senting Brother Trone for the caucus nomination, but 
 despite my good intentions the House was in an uproar 
 of laughter throughout the speech. I then gave it up. 
 I discovered that humor was a part of my nature, and I 
 gave up all attempts to suppress it." 
 
 This speech was a splendid introduction for Mr. Clark. 
 It gave him standing at once as a speaker and as a man 
 of influence in the Legislature. Many of the members had 
 never heard him make a speech. Indeed, many never had 
 heard his name. The speech was a fine introduction of him 
 not only to the members of the Legislature, but also to the 
 people of the State, as it was given wide circulation in the 
 newspapers throughout the country, and was the founda- 
 
 58 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 69 
 
 tion of the speaker's national fame. No doubt it led to 
 his invitation to appear in Tammany Hall a few years 
 later. In this speech, as in aU his speeches, he captured 
 the audience with his opening sentence. His voice, loud 
 and commanding, rang over the Hall of Representatives, 
 and the audience was his from first to last. His opening 
 words were: 
 
 "Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Caucus, I have 
 the honor to nominate a shouting Methodist for chaplain, 
 and one who has not only shouted for the religion of 
 Christ, but for the Southern Confederacy as well." The 
 applause which greeted this opening passage continued 
 from time to time to the very end of the address. The 
 closing paragraph, outlining the life and character of Mr. 
 Trone, is a fascinating piece of word painting and happily 
 displays the speaker's ability accurately to estimate a 
 man's worth. He said: 
 
 "Bom on the soil of Virginia, he was brought by his par- 
 ents as a babe in arms to Missouri, when it was still the 
 habitat of the red Indian and the wild beast, and he has 
 done his full part in laying the broad foundation of this 
 mighty State. He was a pioneer farmer and a frontier 
 blacksmith, a leonine soldier of Joe Shelby, the bosom friend 
 of Major Edwards, honored and beloved by all who ever 
 looked into his honest eyes. At the close of the war he 
 returned to his little farm as poor as Lazarus, to find his 
 home in ashes and his wife and children in a negro cabin. 
 He didn't whine. He doesn't belong to that school of sol- 
 
60 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 diers. He spent no time crying over spilt rrilk ; he had too 
 much sense for that. Bravely and resolutely he took up the 
 burdens of life without vain regrets on account of the inev- 
 itable. Early and late upon his anvil he celebrated the 
 jubilee of peace. Industriously he tickled with the hoe 
 the rich face of a Henry County farm, and it smiled with 
 abundant harvest. Joyfully and liberally obeying the 
 Scriptural injunction to 'multiply and replenish the earth,' 
 he has the honor to be the proud and happy father of 
 eleven Missouri Democrats. 
 
 "In naming him, placid and majestic Northeast Mis- 
 souri sends hearty greeting to the glowing and gorgeous 
 Southwest; the old and historic county of Pike clasps 
 hands with the young and ambitious county of Henry; 
 the kid Democrats bow their profoundest acknowledg- 
 ments to the veterans of the Old Guard ; the running-water 
 Campbellite backs the shouting Methodist. I present for 
 your suffrages the name of J. B. Trone." 
 
 Amid the shouts of applause and laughter that greeted 
 the conclusion of this speech, Mr. Trone was made the 
 nominee of the caucus by unanimous vote. 
 
 The Hon. J. J. Russell, of Mississippi County, was 
 Speaker of the Lower House of the Thirty-fifth General 
 Assembly. Mr. Russell has been a member of Congress 
 for a number of years, and he is a staunch supporter of 
 his colleague Clark for the presidency. The author has 
 the following letter from Mr. Russell on "Champ Clark in 
 the Missouri Legislature": 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 61 
 
 "Champ Clark was elected to the Thirty -fifth General 
 Assembly from Pike County at the general election in 
 1888. Prior to that time he had held no office, except that 
 of city attorney of Louisiana and Bowling Green and 
 prosecuting attorney of Pike County, but his ability and 
 his powers as a stump-speaker were already well-known in 
 Northeast and Central Missouri, where his services had 
 been sought in Democratic campaigns. 
 
 "When he reached the State Capitol to begin his ser- 
 vices in the Legislature, he found a contest going on for 
 the Speakership. The Hon. Waller Young, the Hon. 
 Nick Thurmond, and I were the avowed and active candi- 
 dates. Mr. Clark came promptly to my headquarters and 
 promised me his support, and assured me of my success 
 in the caucus, which was a true prophecy, as the other 
 candidates soon afterward all withdrew, and I was nomi- 
 nated by acclamation. After my nomination and election 
 were made certain by the withdrawal of the other candi- 
 dates, Mr. Clark came to me and in his peculiar, but natural 
 and plain, style said, 'Russell, I want to make reputation 
 enough in this session to go to Congress, and as I have 
 been prosecuting attorney of Pike County I know more 
 about criminal law than anything else, and would like to 
 be chairman of the Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.' 
 
 "I told him that I would consider his request, and would 
 do the best I could for him, but reminded him that he was 
 a new member, and that there were other members who 
 had served upon that committee that desired the chair- 
 
62 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 manship. I at that time asked him to place me in nomi- 
 nation for Speaker in the House, which he did in one of 
 his happy and appropriate speeches. 
 
 "When arranging the committees of the House I was 
 strongly urged to follow precedent and to appoint the 
 ranking Dem.ocrat of the Criminal Jurisprudence Com- 
 mittee as chairman, but I rem_embered the earnestness of 
 my friend Champ Clark ; I knew he was a big man, and 
 I believed he was one with a future brilliant career. I 
 deliberately concluded that I could afford to make an ex- 
 ception in his case, and so determined to, and did, give 
 him the chairmanship that he desired. 
 
 "As chairman of that com.mittee and as a mem.ber of the 
 House, he worked with the sam.e industry, the same zeal, 
 with the sam.e devotion to principle, and with the sam.e 
 fidelity to the cause of the people that have always since 
 characterized his services in the National House of Rep- 
 resentatives. 
 
 "During that session, on the 30th day of April, 1889, 
 the centennial anniversary of our National Constitutional 
 Government, Mr. Clark was selected by the House to de- 
 liver an oration, which he did in a pleasing, an appropriate, 
 and a masterly way. This speech was published in full in 
 some of the papers of the State, and attracted attention to 
 him as a scholar, a student of history, a statesman, and 
 a brilliant man of great promise. 
 
 "Mr. Clark was by common consent the Democratic 
 leader of the House, and whenever any discussion assumed 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 63 
 
 a political aspect he was the ready and willing spokesman 
 of the Democratic party, and his chief opponent on the 
 Republican side was John H. Flanigan, who, because of the 
 extravagance of his language, and the exuberance of his 
 enthusiasm, became generally known as *Fire-Alarm' 
 Flanigan. Many hot tilts were witnessed between them, 
 but, to the credit of both, they continued to be warm 
 personal friends. 
 
 "After the session was ended Mr. Flanigan was indicted 
 for some alleged offense, and Champ Clark, his recent 
 antagonist in many a hot contest in the State Legislature, 
 promptly volunteered his services to assist, and did assist, 
 in his defense. 
 
 "This at the time, to many of Mr. Clark's friends, 
 seemed to be an unpopular, if not an improper, thing for 
 him to do, but true to his natural fondness for, and his 
 loyalty to, his personal friends, and to the credit of his 
 heart, he did not consider that phase of the matter, but 
 went to the distant home of his former political foe and 
 made for him one of the hardest legal fights of his life. 
 
 "During the session of the Legislature and prior to its 
 meeting much complaint was made against the administra- 
 tion of Dr. S. S. Laws as president of the State University 
 at Columbia, and threats were frequently made by un- 
 friendly members of their determination to try to defeat 
 any appropriation bill for that institution in which Dr. 
 Laws might possibly share. 
 
 "Finally the Hon. W. L. Webb, of Jackson County, 
 
64 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 introduced a joint and concurrent resolution providing 
 for the appointment of a joint committee by the House 
 and Senate to make an investigation of the charges. Mr. 
 Clark offered a substitute for this resolution, which was 
 adopted. Accordingly, as Speaker, I appointed Mr. 
 Clark, the Hon. W. L. Webb, the Hon. George Houck, 
 and J. Brooks as members of the committee. The Senate 
 members were W. P. Sheldon and T. W. Sebree. I ap- 
 pointed Mr. Clark as chairman, for two reasons. First, 
 his substitute was adopted, which, by the rule of precedent, 
 entitled him to the chairmanship; and, second, because I 
 had been a student in the State University, felt an inter- 
 est in its welfare, and wanted the job well done. 
 
 "This committee worked diligently, investigating all the 
 facts, and made a report adverse to Dr. Laws. When 
 it was considered in the House Mr. Clark made, I think, 
 the most eloquent, forceful, and effective speech of any 
 that I have ever heard him make, and I have heard him 
 make many, and it was pronounced at the time as the most 
 powerful prosecution ever heard by the entire membership 
 of the House. 
 
 "The report was adopted, both in the House and in the 
 Senate, making it necessary for Dr. Laws to resign, or to 
 sever his connection with the State University. 
 
 "It was understood at the time that Dr. Laws was very 
 much embittered against Champ Clark, and I heard that 
 he said that his strong prosecution of him was prompted 
 by a desire to make a reputation that would send him to 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 65 
 
 Congress; but that was a mistake, as I personally know 
 that Mr. Clark was afraid that, on account of the prox- 
 imity of his district to Columbia, and because of the many 
 friends of Dr. Laws in that district, his prosecution of him 
 would be hurtful to his political prospects. But his efforts 
 in that investigation were, as have been all his labors as 
 a servant of the people, inspired by his desire to do what 
 he believed to be right, and by his devotion to his public 
 duty. 
 
 "Since I have been in Congress I had a pleasant expe- 
 rience that is not only apropos in this connection, but is 
 worthy of mention as indicating the generosity that we 
 often witness in the lives and hearts of men, and the for- 
 giving spirit that often pervades our beings as 'Time 
 drags its weary length along,' and as we grow older and 
 approach nearer the end of our earthly careers. 
 
 "Mr. Clark came to me in the House and said: 'Dr. S. 
 S. Laws is in the gallery and is going to take lunch with 
 me, and I would like to have you take lunch with us.' He 
 added that Dr. Laws had forgiven him and was then his 
 good friend, and suggested that, as I had appointed him 
 chairman of the committee that brought about the differ- 
 ences between them, he would be glad to have me dine 
 with them, which I did. I found Dr. Laws was glad 
 to meet me again, and I was glad to find that he was a 
 very warm friend of Mr. Clark, and that he was delighted 
 to know that he had achieved such great success and had 
 become a national character of such good repute. 
 
66 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 "Having served with Champ Clark in the State Legis- 
 lature, I feel great pride in the reputation that he has 
 made and the honors that he has won and deserved in the 
 American Congress, and the greatest pleasure that comes 
 to me as a Member of Congress is the fact that I now 
 occupy a seat in the House over which my good friend 
 of years ago presides with such ability, grace, and fair- 
 ness, and with the universal popular approval of the entire 
 membership." 
 
 Representative Webb's resolution contemplated an in- 
 vestigation of the Agricultural College. When the resolu- 
 tion was read Mr. Clark asked that it be permitted to go 
 over until the following morning, as he desired to offer a 
 substitute. He said that he had been contemplating such 
 a resolution. Accordingly, the substitute prevailed the 
 next morning. Mr. Clark offered a joint and concurrent 
 resolution which empowered the committee to send for per- 
 sons and papers, to employ a stenographer, to administer 
 the oath to witnesses, and required the committee to go to 
 Columbia and make a full investigation into both the 
 Agricultural College and the University proper. The 
 committee spent ten days at Columbia, holding session 
 day and night, and in that time examined a large number 
 of witnesses. 
 
 Mr. Clark's greatest speech in the Missouri Legislature 
 — perhaps the greatest he has ever made anywhere — ^was 
 the one against Dr. Laws. 
 
 Mr. Clark once alluded to the committee report, the oc- 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 67 
 
 casion of the speech, as "doing good for the human race." 
 The speech was a powerful presentation of the case against 
 Dr. Laws. It was a regular Philippic. The investigating 
 committee could not agree on a report, and so two reports 
 were made. The House was divided, a small minority sup- 
 porting the minority report. Mr. Clark was ably aided in 
 his advocacy of the majority report by Capt. James H. 
 Kneisley, of Boone County. Capt. Kneisley had been a 
 cannoneer in the Confederate army, and his oratory re- 
 minded the hearer of a man in command of a battery dur- 
 ing a siege. The committee delayed its report until some 
 impatient member introduced a resolution, which was 
 adopted, calling for a report at once. Mr. Clark, as chair- 
 man of the committee, brought in the report then and 
 there — a voluminous document. Those that have seen 
 Mr. Clark during the few minutes preceding one of his im- 
 passioned speeches can readily imagine his nervous activity 
 as he brought together the papers that it was necessary 
 for him to have in his hands in making the report to the 
 House. His eyes flashed, and he resembled the war horse 
 described in the Book of Job. Had Dr. Laws seen the 
 expression on Mr. Clark's face, he would have thought 
 it baleful. Dr. Laws had failed in a mighty trust — intol- 
 erable to Mr. Clark, whose love of duty is almost a pas- 
 sion; who holds to public duty as he holds to honor. 
 His feelings were high on this occasion, as they are on 
 all great occasions, but his words were moderate. He 
 knew Dr. Laws to be a great, strong, scholarly man — and 
 
68 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Clark has ever honored such men. Entertaining, therefore, | 
 the highest possible regard for Dr. Laws, yet regarding 
 him as unfit by temperament for the exalted position of 
 educator of the youth of the land, he made this speech as 
 a patriot performing a painful but necessary duty. He 
 always insisted that Dr. Laws was one of the most intel- 
 lectual and scholarly men in America. Here is a passage 
 from his speech: 
 
 "I know what a school-teacher and college president 
 should be. I understand in what relation the teacher 
 should stand to the pupil. He should stand loco pa- 
 rentis. The best judges of a teacher's merits are his 
 grown-up pupils. I am willing to be tried by that test. 
 Who that is worthy will shrink from it? I rejoice this 
 day to think that my pupils, wherever they may be, on 
 land or sea, are my sworn friends." 
 
 Mr. Clark was a most conscientious investigator at 
 Columbia. He secured evidence in every possible way. 
 Sometimes he took a long walk out on the country roads 
 of Boone County. He invariably accosted any man he met 
 and engaged in conversation about Dr. Laws and the man- 
 agement of the University, and about the management of 
 the State Farm and the Agricultural College. He reported 
 his excursions to the conmtiittee, in order that each mem- 
 ber might have all the infomiation that he possessed. 
 
 Many of the students in the State University were sum- 
 moned before the investigating committee, among them a 
 young graduate of that year, Thomas Jefferson Jackson 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY §0 
 
 See, who even then was displaying remarkable insight into 
 the science of astronomy. He was an enthusiastic witness 
 against Dr. Laws. His evidence had unmistakable weight 
 with the committee. His evidence, corroborated by other 
 witnesses among the students, gave Mr. Clark strong 
 argument in his speech. Mr. Clark and Dr. See, "the 
 statesman and the scientist," date their friendship from 
 the committee room in Columbia. They have watched 
 each other and admired each other from that day to this, 
 utterly divergent though their careers have been. 
 
 Mr. See came to the State University from his father's 
 farm in Montgomery County, Missouri, where he was 
 bom. After graduating from the Missouri University he 
 went to the University of Berlin, where in due time he 
 graduated with high honors. His graduating theme was 
 "Binary Stars," an amplification of his graduating sub- 
 ject at the Missouri University. He was recognized as a 
 man of extraordinary powers as an astronomer. He has 
 gone from one achievement to another, making discoveries 
 and writing voluminous works on various astronomical 
 subjects. His Capture theory of the formation of the 
 solar system has supei^seded the Laplace theory, and is 
 now accepted by astronomers the world over as the true 
 theory. His theory of the causes of earthquakes, recently 
 announced, is undoubtedly the true theory, while his "De- 
 termination of the Depth of the Milky Way" is another 
 of his most astounding triumphs in astronomy. Champ 
 Clark denominates Prof. See "The American Herschel." 
 
70 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Mr. Clark was a conscientious and broad-gauged legis- 
 lator in the Missouri General Assembly. He left his im- 
 print upon every important measure enacted during that 
 long session (Revising Session). He spoke on important 
 measures only. He was an industrious committee worker^ 
 and was never absent from the House sessions except upon 
 important legislative work. He was the ablest debater 
 on the floor, and one of the most influential members. He 
 was a dangerous man to attack ; he always met any chance 
 opponent who assailed him with the delivery of an unex- 
 pected and crushing blow. 
 
 The Thirty-fifth General Assembly was in session during 
 the long winter of 1889. Socially the winter was a bril- 
 liant one at the State Capital. David R. Francis was 
 the newly installed Governor. The receptions given by 
 Governor Francis and Mrs. Francis at the Mansion were 
 frequent and brilliant. Mrs. Clark spent the winter with 
 Mr. Clark at Jeff'erson City. She was very popular, and 
 so was her charming, winsome child, a sweet little golden- 
 haired daughter, Ann Hamilton Clark, who did not live 
 beyond four years of age. She was a lovable child, known 
 at the State Capital as the "Belle of Pike." 
 
 The regular session of the Thirty-fifth General Assem- 
 bly was characterized by many important new laws, among 
 them the reform of the ballot by the Australian system for 
 cities of 5,000 inhabitants and over, since extended to all 
 precincts In the State. Mr. Clark was one of the ablest 
 champions of the new system. He introduced and carried 
 
MEMBER OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY 71 
 
 through the bill assessing express companies two per cent, 
 of their gross earnings. The constitutionality of this law 
 was tested and sustained in the courts. 
 
 During the Thirty-fifth General Assembly a resolution 
 was introduced and passed advocating the popular election 
 of United States Senators, and Mr. Clark voted for it. The 
 records of the other States are not at hand, but it is safe 
 to say that Missouri was among the first, if not the very 
 first, to go on record as favoring this reform, which has 
 become almost universal. 
 
 A large majority of the members of the Thirty-fifth 
 General Assembly belonged to the legal profession. This 
 Assembly was an able body of men. A number of its mem- 
 bers have since served in Congress ; others have distin- 
 guished themselves in various walks of life, while one com- 
 mitted suicide and one was hanged for murder. Major 
 John N. Edwards died during that winter while on a visit 
 to the State Capital. One of Major Edwards' editorials, 
 published in the Kansas City Times , February 26, 1889, 
 a few weeks before his death, refers in these glowing terms 
 to Champ Clark: 
 
 "Representative Democrats from all parts of the State 
 have just met in St. Louis to consider the ways and means 
 of a practical and thorough reorganization of the party. 
 Any political caucus or convention which the Hon. Champ 
 Clark, of Pike County, presides over and addresses com- 
 wiends itself at once not only to the confidence of but also 
 to the active support of the entire Democracy of Missouri. 
 
72 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Young as he is, he is possessed of that kind of progressive 
 ardor and all-pervading faith that removes mountains. 
 In the Lares and Penates of his political household there 
 are only the gods of his fathers." 
 
 Mr. Clark knew less about parliamentary law in the 
 Thirty-fifth Missouri General Assembly than he knows now 
 in the Sixty-third Congress. That session of the Missouri 
 Legislature was composed largely of lawyers, some of 
 whom knew more parliamentary law than any other kind 
 of law, and who delighted in the intricacies of the parlia- 
 mentary game. Points of order and counter motions often 
 arose to harass the House and to delay business. Mr. 
 Clark offered a resolution one morning which provoked 
 an onslaught from the parliamentary experts on the floor. 
 Mr. Clark lost all patience when he discovered that the 
 tactics were not of honest purpose. He arose and made 
 a talk after this fashion: "Mr. Speaker, I don't know a 
 thing about parliamentary law, and I don't care much 
 about it. I know what I want in this resolution, and I 
 know that it is right." There was applause and for a 
 moment there was open rebellion against parliamentary 
 finesse. The House adopted his resolution with enthusiasm 
 and without further cross-firing. That incident shows 
 the fundamental principle of Clark's character, the key- 
 note of which is direct and unequivocal methods. 
 
CHAPTER Vni 
 
 The Contests of Claek and Norton for Congress 
 
 With his legislative honors thick upon him, Mr. Clark 
 returned to his home in Pike County, at the close of the 
 Thirty-fifth General Assembly, with the fully developed 
 purpose of entering the race for Congress the following 
 year. Richard H. Norton, then serving his first term in 
 Congress, was a native of the Pike County district, and 
 had been educated in the St. Louis University and the 
 Washington University at St. Louis. He was, therefore, 
 a home product, a favorite son, and a very popular young 
 man. According to Democratic usage, he was entitled to 
 a second term. But Mr. Clark had witnessed the nomina- 
 tion of Norton against Judge Elijah Robinson by the 
 toss of a penny, and he had no consuming respect for a 
 nomination so won. He had supported Norton upon that 
 nomination and had made speeches for him, but he was not 
 in sympathy with that kind of politics. Precedent had 
 no power over him. He saw no reason for giving a man 
 a second tenn when the first one was probably a mistake. 
 These arguments were more often used by Clark's friends 
 than by himself. He sought the nomination because he 
 wanted it, and felt his ability to get it. He began early 
 to organize for the nomination of his party, to be 
 made in the summer of 1890. The campaign that he and 
 
 73 
 
74 ' CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Norton made during the summer became a political feud — 
 a feud that reached to the boundaries of the State. Greek 
 met Greek, and the tug of war was in the "Bloody Ninth." 
 Judge Robinson did not re-enter the contest, which he 
 might have done with the valid claims upon the support 
 of the district; he stood aside for his young friend and 
 supporter, Champ Clark. Everybody else also stood aside, 
 while Clark and Norton fought it out. They struggled 
 for the mastery in every county of the district. Toward 
 the close of the race it developed that the contestants had 
 each won in half of the districts outside of Audrain 
 County, which now became pivotal. The two newspapers 
 at Mexico, in Audrain County, heretofore divided on all 
 political issues, were now united for Norton. This coali- 
 tion threw Clark into a disadvantage. The State Commit- 
 tee, in the interest of party harmony, ordered a primary 
 election in Audrain. Fortune stiU smiled on Norton and 
 he carried the county by the slim margin of eighty-seven 
 votes. That margin was enough to give him the nomina- 
 tion for his second term, but was not enough to save him 
 from a bitter contest and defeat at the next election. The 
 "Bloody Ninth" knew by this time that Mr. Clark had 
 the tenacity and fighting qualities of a bulldog, and that 
 he was a young man of extraordinary qualities. Every- 
 body knew beforehand that Mr. Clark would be up and 
 at his antagonist again in 1892. That was a foregone 
 conclusion. Mr. Clark never accepts defeat as anything 
 but a temporary inconvenience to be overcome at the next 
 
THE CONTESTS FOR CONGRESS 75 
 
 opportunity. Defeat worked no malice in his soul. His 
 motto in defeat is, "Pick your flint and try again." 
 
 Mr. Clark returned to the practice of law, omitting no 
 opportunity of getting himself before the public. He had 
 then, as he has yet, the consummate skill of holding the 
 respect and good-will of those opposed to him. Mr. Clark 
 can rob his opponent of every advantage, of every inch of 
 ground that he stands on, without creating bitter resent- 
 ment. This faculty is the fruit of a broad, generous, and 
 kindly nature. 
 
 During the year 1891 Mr. Clark distinguished himself 
 as a delegate in the Trans-Mississippi Congress, which met 
 that year in Denver. Mr. Clark is at home among West- 
 em men. He loves the West as Benton loved it. He 
 believes in the West as Benton believed in it, and he knows 
 the West as Benton never knew it. The Trans-Mississippi 
 Congress was then in its youth, but Mr. Clark saw the pos- 
 sibilities of these annual gatherings of the wisest and best 
 men of the great West. Mr. Clark's speech at Denver 
 was concerning Western economics, his favorite subject. 
 
 When the campaign of 1892 opened, Mr. Clark and 
 Mr. Norton, like two gladiators, again came into the arena. 
 The contest meant the political annihilation of Mr. Norton 
 if he met defeat ; for such men as Clark defeat is not anni- 
 hilation. The battle was Titanic. The contestants were 
 so equally matched in the nominating convention that the 
 whole situation devolved upon a single delegation, and a 
 contest over that delegation divided the convention, as 
 
76 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 was divided the Charleston National Convention in 1860. 
 The Clark delegates and the Norton delegates separated 
 and held two conventions, so that both men were nomi- 
 nated. The State Committee again ordered a primary, 
 in which Clark won by a decided and undisputed majority. 
 
 Mr. Clark's election followed almost as a matter of 
 course after his nomination. He has had no Democratic 
 opponent since, but has received each recurring nomina- 
 tion by acclamation. 
 
 Clark thus describes his opponent: "Dick Norton, who 
 defeated me once and whom I defeated once, is a fine law- 
 yer and a very handsome man, just about my size and a 
 year older than I am. He is a splendid campaigner. 
 When we fought each other for Congress in 1890 and 
 1892 we were in our prime, and two men stronger physi- 
 cally never contended with each other for Congress. 
 Whenever he wants a certificate that he is tough game to 
 go up against, I will cheerfully give it. I know by experi- 
 ence that he is." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 His Tammany Hall Speech 
 
 Mr. Clark's speeches seemed to travel on the wings of 
 the morning long before he appeared in Congress. Men 
 that heard him remembered and talked about his speeches 
 long after the occasion of their delivery had been forgot- 
 ten ; newspapers copied them from one another ; the patent 
 insides of weeklies gave them extensive circulation to the 
 remotest nooks and comers of rural communities; while 
 the metropolitan papers not only printed his speeches in 
 their news columns, but also commented vigorously upon 
 them editorially. A new voice is always hailed with de- 
 light. Discriminating persons believed that they heard 
 in Mr. Clark a new voice, and they vaguely guessed and 
 hoped that what they heard would grow in volume until it 
 should engage the attention of the whole country. 
 
 Arriving in New York July 3, 1893, Mr. Clark went 
 to an unpretentious hotel of his own selecting and repaired 
 to his room; he threw off his coat and stretched himself 
 upon the bed, with the manuscript of his speech in his 
 hand. The speech had been written out with elaborate 
 care. He was engaged in committing it to memory when 
 two or three Tammanyites rapped on his door. They had 
 been searching for liim. He invited them to sit down while 
 he read them his speech. At its conclusion they told him 
 
 77 
 
78 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 that what they wanted was one of his rousing Missouri 
 speechts, the kind they sometimes read in the public press, 
 an extemporaneous, breezy speech, fresh from the West, 
 wafting oTer the audience the perfume of the wild flowers 
 of the prairies — limited to ten minutes. Mr. Clark threw 
 the manuscript into his suitcase, and that speech has 
 never yet been delivered, though he gave them the most 
 striking passages of it from memory. He arose at once 
 to accompany his visitors to better quarters, as their 
 guest. 
 
 Mr. Clark's speech was an astonishment to the New 
 Yorkers, but they liked the orator from the West. His 
 speech took in the whole field of national politics, and all 
 subjects of current issue, and the greatness of Missouri. 
 He captivated New York by his wit, his blunt statement 
 of facts never before heard in Tammany Hall, his quaint, 
 vigorous sentences, his side-splitting stories new to New 
 York, and by his prophetic analysis of the political situa- 
 tion, soon after discovered to be all too true. This big, 
 deep-voiced Missourian gave Tammany something to pon- 
 der over for jesiTs after, and Tammany has not yet for- 
 gotten Mr. Clark. 
 
 An admirer of Mr. Clark wrote some j^ears after the 
 Tammany Hall speech : "Mr. Clark was not in New York 
 to cater to New York tastes, nor there to pay homage to 
 the powers of the metropolis, but to speak his thoughts 
 and opinions in a style which amazed men accustomed to 
 mildness and equivocation. Yet New York, who thought 
 
HIS TAMMANY HALL SPEECH 79 
 
 herself amused because Clark tore away the veil that shaded 
 the powers of the West from New York eyes, has since 
 grasped the meaning of his words, and has looked where 
 he bade her look. 
 |f "New York's representatives in Congress have lived to 
 respect and admire the Congressman whom they once re- 
 garded as unique. Champ Clark the wit, at Tammany 
 Hall, has since been supplanted by Champ Clark the stu- 
 dent, the man of national affairs, the scholar, the man of 
 letters. New York's first judgment of a coming man was 
 faulty, but not for the first time in her history." 
 
 In that speech Mr. Clark called upon the nation to look 
 at "imperial Missouri," his own expression. He predicted 
 that both he and his hearers would live to see the day when 
 the American Democracy would move its capital to Mis- 
 souri. From the day of that speech Mr. Clark has counted 
 friends in New York by the hundreds. 
 
 All the New York papers reported his speech either in 
 full or by copious extracts, and all commented at length 
 editorially upon the speaker and his address. The New 
 York World headed its story of the Tammany celebration 
 in big letters, "Hark to Champ Clark!" and then con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "Tammany Hall celebrated Independence Day with be- 
 coming zeal and patriotism. A genuine Missouri Piker 
 was with them to assist in doing honor to the glorious 
 occasion, to himself, his fellow-Pikers, the State of Mis- 
 souri, and the boundless and untrammeled West. It was 
 
80 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 a great day for Tammany, and a truly memorable one for 
 Pikers. 
 
 "Congressman Champ Clark was the Piker. He made 
 an undeniable hit. He was down on the Fourth of July 
 program for a short talk, but he made a long one. Pikers 
 never make short talks. 
 
 "Clark is a new Congressman. He comes from the town 
 of Bowling Green, in Pike County, in his State. The Tam- 
 many celebrants hailed the Congressional representative 
 of the Pikers with enthusiasm and listened to him with 
 astonishment and awe. 
 
 "He told the braves that Missouri was the hope of De- 
 mocracy, and of the country, and that in half a century 
 it would be the center of civilization, of wealth, and of 
 population. One astounded Tammany man managed to 
 gasp, 'What's the matter with New York?' 
 
 " *0h, I'll say something about New York in a minute,' 
 said the Piker nonchalantly. 
 
 "The Congressman is gray-haired, but young and 
 active-looking. He is rather over middle height, sturdily 
 built, and was well dressed in a gray suit. The coat was 
 of the shad-belly cut. Champ Clark's face is clean-shaven. 
 He used to have a mustache, but sacrificed it before com- 
 ing to New York. The removal of his mustache has 
 brought to view a firm upper lip and a generous mouth." 
 
 After devoting four columns to Mr. Clark's speech and 
 some of his inimitable stories, with profuse illustrations 
 
HIS TAMMANY HALL SPEECH 81 
 
 (seven cuts with double-column picture of Clark on the 
 front page), the World said: 
 
 "The brazen Vikings that stand at either end of the 
 Tammany Hall stage wobbled on their pedestals as Champ 
 Clark went to his seat. The Vikings had heard a good 
 many speeches, but they were unaccustomed to the auda- 
 cious oratory of a Piker. When the audience recovered its 
 equanimity it applauded Congressman Clark. The other 
 features of the celebration were tame compared with the 
 outburst of Missouri's fiery son. 
 
 "For many other reasons than Congressman Champ 
 Clark's first appearance in New York, and the receipt of 
 many letters of public interest, Tammany's one-hundred- 
 and-seventeenth celebration was remarkable." 
 
 When Mr. Clark arrived in Washington to take his seat 
 at the extra session, wliich convened in August, 1893, his 
 fame as an orator had preceded him. His Tammany Hall 
 speech had not ceased to be a matter of discussion in the 
 newspapers of the country. The older members of Con- 
 gress were glad enough to welcome among them a young 
 man of such promise, while the new members, and these 
 were many, were pleased to open their careers in company 
 with such a brilliant beginner. All were anxious to hear 
 Mr. Clark's first speech. Would he maintain himself at 
 the standard, recognized as high, which he had set for 
 himself July 4 in New York.? The newspapers and the 
 reading public were on the qui vive for his first great 
 utterance. The country had not long to wait. 
 
82 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Richard Bland, "Silver Dick Bland," whose district lay 
 alongside of Mr. Clark's, had been in Congress for twenty 
 years, and was the leader there of the free silver forces, 
 as he was the chief exponent of thought in the West, and 
 especially in Missouri. That Mr. Clark would standi 
 valiantly with Mr. Bland had been definitely foreshadowed 
 in all his campaign and other speeches up to the time that 
 he came to Congress. His first speech was delivered on 
 this subject August 19, 1893, within two weeks after 
 Congress convened. The subject was not new to Mr. 
 Clark, nor to the country. The Congressional Record of 
 the extra session is a dreary waste of free silver speeches, 
 made up sometimes of brain-racking and misleading statis- 
 tics. Mr. Clark's speech is an oasis in a desert. 
 
 Grover Cleveland had been returned to the presidency 
 and with his return to the head of the government both 
 the Senate and the House of Representatives had become 
 Democratic. Charles F. Crisp was again chosen Speaker. 
 On the floor of the House were many very strong men. 
 Among Mr. Clark's colleagues of the Fifty-third Congress 
 were William J. Bryan, W. Bourke Cockran, Charles H. 
 Grosvenor, Sereno E. Payne, Tom L. Johnson, Joseph E. 
 Sibley, Joseph W. Bailey, David B. Culberson, Amos J. 
 Cummins, Thomas B. Reed, Nelson Dingley, Jr., William 
 J. Springer, Joseph G. Cannon, William P. Hepburn, 
 Jonathan P. Dolliver, and — Jerry Simpson. These are 
 but a few of the very able members of the Fifty-third 
 Congress. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Clark's Interregnum 
 
 Toward the close of the Fifty-third Congress Treloar, 
 who had defeated Clark in the election of 1894, visited 
 Washington. Mr. Clark, with characteristic urbanity, met 
 his successor and accompanied him through the Capitol, 
 introducing him to governmental officials and Members of 
 Congress. Mr. Treloar, now a resident of Kansas City, 
 entertains warm personal feeling for Mr, Clark and speaks 
 of him in terms of admiration. 
 
 With two years of private life ahead of him Mr. Clark 
 returned to his home in Bowling Green upon the dissolution 
 of the Fifty-third Congress, March 3, 1895. When King 
 Pyrrhus was driven from Italy after the battle of Bene- 
 ventum, he exclaimed, "What a magnificent battlefield I 
 leave for Rome and Carthage!" Mr. Clark might have 
 exclaimed in paraphrase, "What a magnificent battlefield 
 I leave for Congress and President Cleveland!" Almost 
 the entire Missouri delegation, heretofore Democratic, 
 retired to private life. Even "Silver Dick" Bland went 
 home for a rest of two years, yielding his seat as grace- 
 fully as possible to Dr. Hubbard. Judge Tarsney, of 
 Kansas City, was unseated in a contest which gave his seat 
 toward the close of the term to the veteran Republican, 
 
 83 
 
84 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Col. R. T. Van Horn, leaving in the House only A. 1M.I 
 Dockery, De Armond, Cobb, and U. S. Hall, to represent 
 the erstwhile triumphant Democratic party of Missouri.! 
 
 PoHtically the Congress stood : Senate, 43 Republicans, 
 39 Democrats, 6 Populists ; House, 248 Republicans, 104i 
 Democrats, 7 Populists, one vacancy. The House organ-i 
 ized by electing Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, as Speaker to 
 succeed Charles F. Crisp. Tliis was not Mr. Reed's first 
 term as Speaker, nor was it his last. During this term, 
 however, the rules of the House were changed for the pur- 
 pose of giving the majority almost unobstructed power in 
 the conduct of legislation. The Speaker was relieved from 
 the ancient custom of regarding as present only those 
 who answered to their names on roll-call. The new Reed 
 rules empowered the Speaker to count as present those 
 members brought in by the Sergeant-at-Arms, or other- 
 wise known to be present, whether or not they saw fit to 
 declare themselves present by response when their names 
 were called. The rules w^ere otherwise amended and 
 changed from time to time in succeeding Congresses until 
 the Democrats had ample ground for their contention, re- 
 peatedly made, that the House had ceased to be a delibera- 
 tive body. 
 
 The Committee on Rules and Order of Business subse- 
 quently became, under Speaker Cannon, and in his hands, 
 the most powerful legislative tool ever wielded in a free 
 country. Champ Clark was one of the most persistent 
 and tireless advocates of a complete change of the rules, 
 
CLARK'S INTERREGNUM 85 
 
 a reform destined to be brought about under his own 
 leadership. The Fifty-fourth Congress was not especially 
 notable. President Cleveland defended the Monroe Doc- 
 trine in the Venezuelan Boundary Dispute with Great 
 Britain. The Cuban Insurrection, which had broken out 
 in 1894, attracted attention throughout the country, as 
 well as in both branches of Congress. The President dis- 
 played his usual firmness in dealing with this subject, 
 which, however, did not reach the acute stage until the 
 Fifty-fifth Congress. 
 
 Mr. Clark returned to his home and fine library. Bowl- 
 ing Green has been the county-seat of Pike County since 
 1823, and is near the center of the county, twelve miles 
 from the Mississippi River. It is a typical Missouri 
 inland town of about 3,000 happy, well-to-do and well- 
 informed people. The town was founded in 1819, and was 
 named for Bowling Green, Kentucky. In those territorial 
 and pioneer days Pike County was the largest county in 
 the whole world, and was a paradise for Kentuckians ; 
 it Is yet paradisiacal to their descendants. Bowling Green 
 is a monum.ent in name to the loyalty of the Kentuckian 
 to his native State, a monument of patriotism. Bowling 
 Green has two railroads, the Chicago and Alton and the 
 St. Louis and Hannibal. It is the seat of Pike College, 
 and it also has a graded public school and a school for 
 colored children. It has a substantial court-house, six 
 or eight churches, three banks, three hotels, flour-mill, brick 
 and tile works, tobacco pipe factory and other manufac- 
 
86 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 turing enterprises, two newspapers, and famous health- 
 giving mineral springs nearby. Should it become the 
 pleasant duty of Alton B. Parker to visit Clark at Bowl- 
 ing Green, in return for Clark's visit to Esopus in 1904, 
 he will be delighted with the Arcadian scenery, with the 
 town, and with the people. Should Judge Parker be 
 chosen to notify Mr. Clark of his nomination for the presi- 
 dency, he may expect to meet the largest part of the 
 citizens of Pike County. These good people dropped in 
 one at a time to condole with Mr. Clark in 1895 on the 
 occasion of his retirement to private life; they will come 
 en masse to congratulate him in 1912. On such an occa- 
 sion Judge Parker and those accompanying him would be 
 greeted with Missouri hospitality commingling with Ken- 
 tucky chivalry. Mr. Clark would receive the notifying 
 delegation In his modest home, "Honey Shuck," a typical 
 home of the average American. 
 
 Mr. Clark quietly resumed the practice of his profes- 
 sion at Bowling Green in 1895. He threw his whole power 
 into every case. As a lawyer Mr. Clark never resorted to 
 technicalities nor to questionable methods. He depended 
 upon a laborious preparation of his cases and upon a 
 powerful presentation of the facts to the court and 
 jury. During his two years of private life he was em- 
 ployed as counsel in some very important cases, one of 
 the most famous of which was the State of Missouri vs. 
 Dr. J. C. Heame, charged with the murder of Amos Still- 
 well, of Hannibal, Mo. Mr. Clark added greatly to his 
 
CLARK'S INTERREGNUM 87 
 
 fame as a lawyer and as an advocate at the bar by his 
 vigorous and able prosecution of this case. He was as con- 
 scientious in the practice of law as he is clean in politics. 
 
 During his enforced retirement from Congress Mr. Clark 
 began his career as a lecturer, in which field he has been 
 employed extensively ever since. During the time he was 
 an ex-Member of Congress he delivered an address before 
 the Trans-Mississippi Congress at its meeting in Denver. 
 This Congress, which meets annually, is composed of the 
 ablest and most progressive men of the West, who discuss 
 economic subjects of peculiar interest to that section of 
 our common country, such as irrigation, conservation, 
 transportation, freight rates, mining, agriculture, horti- 
 culture, Panama Canal, etc. 
 
 Mr. Clark believes in the West as Benton believed in it 
 and as Daniel Webster did not believe in it. Benton, in 
 one of his great Missouri speeches, pointed to the West 
 and said, "There is the East." Mr. Clark has advocated 
 and defended the West on the floor of the House as ably 
 and as valiantly as Benton did in the Senate two-thirds 
 of a century ago. Mr. Clark's speech in Denver was 
 Bentonian in scope, logic, and eloquence. 
 
 During IMr. Clark's interregnum he made many ad- 
 dresses on various occasions, being extensively in demand 
 wherever m^eetings of any kind were held. Although in re- 
 tirement he w^as constantly conspicuous in the public eye. 
 In his subconsciousness he knew that his public career 
 would presently be resumed. 
 
88 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 The Democratic national convention met in Chicago 
 July 7, 1896, and adopted a free silver coinage platform, 
 with W. J. Bryan at the head of the ticket. The Populist 
 party in convention assembled endorsed Mr. Bryan. 
 Palmer and Buckner were made the leaders of the "Na- 
 tional Democratic Party." The Republicans nominated 
 Mr. McKinley for President, and elected him on a plat- 
 form that declared for a protective tariif and against free 
 coinage, except by international agreement. I 
 
 The campaign that ensued upon these nominations was 
 noted for widespread discussion of the money question. 
 The Democrats, led by Mr. Bryan, contended that pros- 
 perity could not return until a larger volume of money was 
 provided for the use of the country. They contended 
 that the free and unlimited coinage of silver was the 
 remedy for the deficient currency. The economic sound- 
 ness of this contention has been fairly established by the 
 return of prosp-^rity simultaneously with the increase of. 
 the volume of money from twenty dollars to thirty-four 
 dollars per capita, as the result of the fortuitous gold dis- 
 coveries in various parts of the world since 1896. 
 
 The Bryan campaign of 1896 revived Democratic en- 
 thusiasm, especially in the West, where the free silver 
 argument prevailed to the practical exclusion of every 
 other issue. Mr. Clark made a splendid canvass of his 
 district and was triumphantly elected. Mr. Treloar was 
 his Republican opponent. 
 
 Mr. Clark has been returned to Congress at every 
 
CLARK'S INTERREGNUM 89 
 
 recurring election since 1896. The history of his long 
 service in Congress would be a fair outline history of the 
 country for that period in all its relations, domestic and 
 foreign. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Champ Clark in the Fifty-fifth Congress 
 
 When Mr. Clark took his seat in the Fifty-fifth Con- 
 gress he found that the ever-shifting tides in the political 
 affairs of men had changed every department of the gov- 
 ernment. The House which he had known in the Fifty- 
 third Congress, presided over by Charles F. Crisp, was 
 overwhelmingly Democratic. The Fifty-fifth Congress 
 was equally overwhelmingly Republican. The House was 
 presided over by Thomas B. Reed. In the House there 
 were 206 Republicans and 134 Democrats. Instead of the 
 robust, pugnacious Cleveland, quick to defend the Monroe 
 Doctrine, in perfect harmony with his party as to the 
 impending Cuban troubles, the gentle, uncombativd 
 McKinley held the presidency. The only feature to remindl 
 him of his first term was the strong silver sentiment in the 
 Senate, but the Senate was Republican, in unison with the 
 Republican sentiment of the Government. 
 
 Although the paramount issue of the campaign of 1896 
 was free coinage of silver, under the leadership of W. J. i 
 Bryan, the new President conceived that his special mis- ' 
 sion was to replace the Wilson tariff measure with the old 
 McKinley bill or some other protective measure. Accord- 
 ingly he convened Congress in extraordinary session 
 March 15, 1897. 
 
 90 
 
IN THE FIFTY-FIFTH CONGRESS 91 
 
 Mr. Clark thus began both his first and second terms in 
 special session, the first, under Cleveland, to consider the 
 money question, the second, under McKinley, to consider 
 the tariff. Mr. Clark was a conspicuous force in the con- 
 sideration of both subjects. 
 
 The DIngley tariff bill was promptly introduced and 
 promptly enacted into law. This DIngley law continued 
 in force and effect until superseded by the Payne- Aldrich 
 tariff measure — the longest life of any tariff law in the 
 history of the country. 
 
 Speaker Reed, the very prince of the Republican party, 
 thought to put a quietus on the prince of Democrats, and 
 so remove as far as possible an arch-enemy to his policies, 
 by appointing Mr. Clark to membership on the Committee 
 on Foreign Relations. That appointment was water on 
 Clark's wheel ; the mill of the gods began at once to grind. 
 The war with Spain could not be averted, although the 
 President was loath to plunge the country into hostilities. 
 Public sentiment demanded a correction of the Intolerable 
 condition prevailing in Cuba. Mr. Clark was the head 
 and front of the war movement in Congress. The pressure 
 on the administration became irresistible. After war was 
 declared Mr. Clark said in his picturesque, sarcastic, and 
 tantalizing manner that the Democratic party in Congress, 
 though in the minority, "took the administration by the 
 scruff of the neck and threw It into the war with Spain." 
 
 Questions of foreign policy pressed rapidly to the front. 
 The war revenue act, the Hawaiian annexation, the Philip- 
 
92 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 pine Islands situation, and our colonial policy, with its 
 long train of debates in Congress, gave Clark innumerable 
 opportunities to exercise his talents as an orator, as a 
 ready and forceful debater, and as a statesman of the first 
 order. One of his speeches on the Cuban situation was 
 translated into the foreign languages and published all 
 over Europe — a rare distinction. The speech of Mr. Hitt 
 was likewise translated and published in Europe alongside 
 of Mr. Clark's, the two speeches being recognized the world 
 over as setting forth the two American views of the war 
 with Spain, the Democratic and Republican views. 
 
 Mr. Clark has steadily gained in popular esteem by his 
 untiring zeal and his great ability in shaping legislation 
 on all matters coming before Congress. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Clark, the Epoch-Maker 
 
 The overthrow of Cannonism, so-called, was the consum- 
 mation of one of Clark's most ardent purposes, wherein he 
 served his country and his party. The change of the rules 
 of the House under the leadership of Clark marks the final 
 transition of legislative methods from the Hamil- 
 tonian zone of centralized power back to the realm 
 of Jeffersonian freedom and self-government. Thought- 
 less persons have said that there is little difference be- 
 tween the two old parties, but never again can that be said 
 by any one who contemplates the vast gulf that separates 
 the rules of the Republican party from the rules of the 
 Democratic party on the floor of Congress. Under the 
 old Republican rules representative government and free 
 speech had been destroyed at the national capital; under 
 the new Democratic rules the nation again finds its voice 
 in giving shape and potency to legislation. 
 
 Years ago, and almost alone, Mr. Clark entered the lists 
 against the interests, which had become well entrenched 
 behind the rules of the House. In the final scenes of the 
 great conflict he was supported by able lieutenants on the 
 floor of the House, who acted under his leadership and 
 were animated by his zeal and inspiration. 
 
 93 
 
94 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 The system of legislative repression known as Cannon- 
 ism, named for Speaker Cannon, though he did not origi- 
 nate it, began its development under Speaker Reed in the 
 Fifty-first Congress. In that Congi^ess the Democratic 
 minority engaged in a relentless parliamentary warfare 
 against the arrogant Republican majority. One of the 
 Democratic maneuvers was to refrain from answering on 
 roll-call, thus often breaking a quorum and so defeating 
 obnoxious legislation. The Republican leaders determined 
 to nd themselves of the annoyance of maintaining a 
 quorum of their followers. A revolutionary change of 
 rules was instituted, whereby the Speaker might count and 
 record as present any member seen to be on the floor or 
 known to be near. From time to time new and extraordi- 
 nary powers were given into the hands of the Speaker, 
 until the system of Republican concentration reached its 
 most dangerous and pernicious extreme under Speaker 
 Cannon, a very gentle and likeable man, but one who 
 exercised all the power conferred by the rules. The whole 
 system may be fairly understood by the unconscionable 
 way in which the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill passed the 
 House. That bill came ready-made from the Ways and 
 Means Committee. The bill was deemed perfect by its 
 sponsors, who did not care to have their plans and 
 schemes jeopardized by Democratic amendments, which 
 were accordingly ruled out. The bill was machine-made, 
 and It passed the House by machine methods. 
 
 Mr. Cannon defended this system of legislation by de- 
 
CLARK, THE EPOCH-MAKER 95 
 
 daring that "ours is a government by majorities." Those 
 who endorsed and maintained this doctrine held that the 
 Republican party was charged with the full responsibility 
 of legislation, and therefore the duty of settling the fate 
 of all measures in the councils of the party (the caucus) 
 was clearly imperative. 
 
 The sources of power in the Speaker's hands were his 
 undisputed right to name all committees, and his further 
 uncontested discretion in recognizing members on the floor 
 of the House. He was chairman of the Committee on 
 Rules and was virtually the whole committee, as he ap- 
 pointed the other four members — two Democrats and two 
 Republicans. The Committee on Rules could report a 
 new rule at any time, which the Republican House adopted, 
 automatically. The Speaker had the appointing of all 
 employees about the House. At no time in the history 
 of our country have the advocates of a centralized govern- 
 ment so nearly approached their ideal as they did under 
 Speaker Cannon. The weakness of the system consisted in 
 its very strength. The majority of the Republican party 
 controlled and shaped all legislation, heedless of the Re- 
 publican minority, which finally rebelled against the over- 
 weening and arrogant ma j ority . As a matter of practical 
 government, Mr. Cannon's theory was erroneous. The rule 
 of the majority as construed by him and his associates was 
 the rule of the majority of the Republican party, in reality 
 a minority in the House. 
 
 The fortuitous advancement of Mr. Clark through com- 
 
96 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 mittee services up to the minority leadership on the Ways 
 and Means Committee, where he was in a position to | 
 combat and overthrow Cannonism, is a most remarkable 
 chapter in the history of Congress. 
 
 In the Fifty-fifth Congress Mr. Speaker Reed gave Mr. 
 Clark a place on the Committee of Foreign Relations. 
 Immediately afterward the war with Spain was forced upon 
 the unwilling McKinley administration. Mr. Clark dis- 
 played such remarkable powers of statesmanship on this 
 committee that his colleagues unanimously selected him to 
 be Minority Leader when John Sharp Williams left the 
 House for the Senate. His minority leadership sounded 
 the knell to Cannonism. 
 
 In 1909 it was foreseen that the Democrats would in all 
 probability win the House at the next election. This 
 would make Mr. Clark Speaker. Three prominent Repub- 
 lican "insurgents" called on Mr. Clark and laid before him : 
 a most astonishing proposition. They desired to join 
 forces with the Democrats for the overthrow of the Cannon 
 rules. Mr. Clark readily agreed to such a coalition of 
 forces, although a change of the rules would take from 
 him the power exercised by the Speaker when he should 
 come to that office. 
 
 This agreement of Mr. Clark and the leading "insurg- 
 ents" was only the first alignment of the forces in a great i 
 battle. Mr. Clark discovered that many of his own party ' 
 were now in favor of enduring the Cannon rules through 
 the extra session, so that revenge might be taken after the 
 
CLARK, THE EPOCH-MAKER 97 
 
 next election. The Democrats met In caucus, but they had 
 been so long in the minority, where each was a sort of a 
 free lance, that no sort of party discipline remained. The 
 caucus meeting, called to consider the "insurgent" proposi- 
 tion made to Mr. Clark, was utterly devoid of all unitj^ 
 of purpose or of action. Heretofore they had not had 
 a leader, nor had they needed one. Mr. Clark's superla- 
 tive qualities as a leader now became evident. When he 
 perceived that disunion and disintegration impended, he 
 diplomatically secured an adjournment. Three times was 
 it found necessary to adjourn the Democratic caucus 
 without action in order to prevent an utter disruption of 
 the Democratic party in Congress. But Mr. Clark saw 
 that patience would win, and he was patient. Finally the 
 right moment arrived in the caucus. Mr. Clark made the 
 greatest speech of his life, pronounced ro by able critics 
 who were present. The result of Mr. Clark's effort was 
 a compact Democratic phalanx. As one member expressed 
 it, "Every Democrat toed the mark that night and every 
 one has toed it ever since" — a most wonderful tribute to 
 Clark's leadership. 
 
 At no period of Mr. Clark's career has he displayed such 
 remarkable prowess, such mastery over his colleagues as in 
 this caucus meeting. 
 
 Mr. Borland, of Missouri, thus described the final scene 
 of the great drama: 
 
 "When I entered the Sixty-first Congress the Demo- 
 cratic minority leader was a battle-scarred veteran from 
 
98 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 my own State of Missouri. The Democrats had been in. 
 the minority so long that they had fallen into a discour- 
 aged state — every Democrat looked only to the interest 
 of himself and of his own district. They indulged in a 
 sort of guerilla warfare against the intrenched Repub- 
 lican majority. Every Democrat fired from behind the 
 nearest tree or bush, without harmony or concerted action 
 or organized plan of attack. With the new leadership 
 came the magnetism which a successful commander infuses 
 into disorganized troops. The first declaration I ever 
 heard the floor leader make was that the time had come for 
 Democracy to have a policy of constructive statesman- 
 ship. 
 
 "The first test of strength came in March, 1909, at 
 the special session of the Republican Congi^ess, presided 
 over by Uncle Joe Cannon. A change was proposed to 
 liberalize the rules, and to restore representative govern- 
 ment to the American people. A large number of 'insur- 
 gent' Republicans were in favor of the reform. It was 
 brought up hurriedly on the very first day of the session, 
 when the Democrats had no fair opportunity to caucus 
 upon it, and the result was that while we gained a few 
 'insurgent' votes from the Republicans, we lost an equal 
 number of Democratic votes, and were thrown into help- 
 less rout by the organized forces of Cannon. Now mark 
 the change! One year later, In March, 1910, another 
 battle occuiTed over a reform In the rules. This time the 
 Democrats were well organized and harmonious, and had 
 
CLARK, THE EPOCH-MAKER 99 
 
 for their allies enough 'insurgent' votes to overthrow the 
 Republican majority of the House. For three days and 
 three nights the House was in almost continuous session. 
 
 "The country witnessed the unique case in American 
 political history of a great national party, with an elected 
 majority in both Houses of Congress, backed by the whole 
 power of the administration, filibustering against a Demo- 
 cratic minority, backed by an aroused public opinion. 
 When the third day came and roll-call after roll-call had 
 failed to shake the forces of the allies, the final test of 
 strength came. As Uncle Joe Cannon looked down from 
 his place on the Speaker's rostrum and saw that his forces 
 were being routed, as name after name was called and 
 every Democrat was in line and every 'insurgent' remained 
 firm to his convictions, he saw that the Old Guard was 
 facing its Waterloo. As his glance wandered half way 
 up the aisle of the Democratic side of the House it must 
 have rested upon the strong face and shaggy head of the 
 Old Lion of the Democracy, the leader of the Democratic 
 minority. Then he knew that the Republican power had 
 met its match at last and that match was the present 
 Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Hon. Champ 
 Clark, of Missouri." 
 
 When the Congressional campaign of 1910 opened, the 
 issue dividing the two parties was Cannonism and anti- 
 Cannonism, with the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill as a con- 
 spicuous object lesson. In every Congressional district 
 of the nation the orators of both parties emphasized the 
 
100 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 fact that if the Republicans won, Mr. Cannon would con-j 
 tinue to be Speaker; but if the Democrats won, Mr. Clarki 
 would be Speaker. The issue was favorable to Mr. Clark, 
 who is the first Speaker ever endorsed by a popular elec- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Clark was chosen Speaker of the Sixty-second Con- 
 gress by the unanimous choice of his colleagues in 
 Congress. He is the only Democratic Speaker ever unani- 
 mously nominated for his first term in the Speakership. > 
 
 [Addbess of the Speaker-Elect 
 (April 4, 1911) 
 
 The Speaker-Elect — Gentlemen of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives: Election to the high position of Speaker is 
 an exceptional honor, for which you have my profoundest 
 gi'atitude. To be a Member of the House, to represent 
 two hundred thousand American citizens in the more nu- 
 merous branch of the greatest legislative body on earth, 
 is a distinction to which, in the nature of things, compara- 
 tively few men may attain. To be chosen by the 
 Representatives of 93,000,000 people to preside over 
 your deliberations is a signal mark of your favor, for 
 which the best return is to discharge the onerous and im- 
 portant duties of the station to which you have assigned 
 me with such impartiality, constancy, industry, courtesy. 
 
I 
 
 CLARK, THE EPOCH-MAKER 101 
 
 and good temper as to expedite the public business, thereby 
 promoting the public weal. 
 
 The pleasure of being elected Speaker Is much enhanced 
 by the perfect unanimity with which it is conferred by my 
 party fellows and the universal good-will with which it is 
 accepted by our co-laborers of the minority. [Applause.] 
 
 Coming into the Speakership under these fortunate cir- 
 cumstances, the hearty co-operation of all Members of 
 whatever political persuasion is hereby earnestly invoked in 
 maintaining order and decorum and in placing upon the 
 statute books laws for the good of the country and the 
 whole country, working out promptly, patiently, courag- 
 eously, wisely, and patriotically those measures necessary 
 for the betterment of governmental methods and for the 
 amelioration of the conditions under which we live. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 My Democratic brethren, coupled with the joy of once 
 more seeing a House a large majority of which is of my 
 own political faith, is a keen sense of our responsibility to 
 our countr^^ and our kind. It is an old adage worthy of 
 acceptation that where much is given much is required. 
 
 After sixteen years of exclusion from power in the House 
 and fourteen years of exclusion from power in every 
 depaii:ment of government, we are restored to power in the 
 House of Representatives and in that alone. We are this 
 day put upon trial, and the duty devolves upon us to 
 demonstrate, not so much by fine phrases as by good works, 
 that we are worthy of the confidence imposed in us by the 
 
102 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 voters of the land, and that we are also worthy of their" 
 wider confidence. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 We could not if we would, and we would not if we could, i 
 escape this severe test. We will not shirk our duty. We 
 shrink not from the responsibility. That we will prove 
 equal to the situation in which we find ourselves placed 
 through our own efforts and by our own desires there 
 can be no doubt, and the way to accomplish that is to 
 fulfil with courage, intelligence, and patriotism the prom- 
 ises made before election in order to win the election. [Ap- 
 plause on the Democratic side.] By discharging our 
 duty thoroughly and well, subordinating personal desires 
 to principle and personal ambition to an exalted love of 
 country, we will not only receive the endorsement of the 
 people, but, what is far better, we will deserve their 
 endorsement. 
 
 Chief among these promises were: 
 
 1. An honest, intelligent revision of the tariff downward, 
 in order to give every American citizen an equal chance in 
 the race of life, and to pamper none by special favor or 
 special privilege ; to reduce the cost of living by eradicat- 
 ing the enormities and cruelties of the present tariff bill; 
 and to raise the necessary revenue to support the govern- 
 ment. Bills are already far advanced in preparation look- 
 ing to the accomplishment of these beneficent ends. [Ap- 
 plause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 2. The passage of a resolution submitting to the States 
 for ratification a constitutional amendment providing for 
 
CLARK, THE EPOCH-MAKER 103 
 
 the election of United States Senators by the popular vote. 
 This resolution has already been introduced and will soon 
 be passed by the House. Let us hope that we will send 
 it to the Senate by the unanimous vote of the House, 
 thereby giving to our action the maximum of force. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 3. Such changes in the rules of the House as are neces- 
 sary for the thorough and intelligent consideration of 
 measures for the public good, several of which changes 
 are accomplished facts ; if other changes are deemed wise, 
 they will be promptly made. 
 
 I congratulate the House and the country, and particu- 
 larly do I congratulate the members of the Committee 
 on Ways and Means, upon the success of the important 
 and far-reaching experiment of selecting committees 
 through the instrumentality of a committee, an experi- 
 ment touching which dire predictions were made and con- 
 cerning the operation of which grave doubts were enter- 
 tained, even by some honest reformers. 
 
 4. "Economy in the public expense that labor may be 
 lightly burdened." The literal fulfilment of that promise, 
 which so nearly affects the comfort and happiness of mil- 
 lions, we have begun — and we began at the proper place — 
 by cutting down the running expenses of the House by 
 more than $188,000 per annum. Economy, like charity, 
 should begin at home. That is where we began. We cannot 
 with straight faces and clear consciences reform expenses 
 elsewhere unless we reform them here at the fountain head. 
 
104. CHAMP CLARK 
 
 The Democratic caucus deserves well of the country for 
 taking this long and important step in the direction of 
 economy all along the line. 
 
 The Constitution gives the House the practical control 
 of the purse strings of the country, and the House should 
 Insist, resolutely and firmly, on exercising that control to 
 the end that the appropriation bills may be reduced to the 
 needs of the government economically and effectively ad- 
 ministered. It Is our duty to provide every dollar needed 
 for the proper and economical conduct of the government, 
 but it is equally our duty to prevent waste and extrava- 
 gance in public expenditures, for we should never forget 
 that It Is a difficult task for millions of families to live 
 now In decency and comfort. Surely it Is the part of wis- 
 dom, statesmanship, humanltarlanism, and patriotism to 
 legislate so as to reduce their burdens to the minimum. 
 The resuscitation of the Holman rule will help along In 
 this matter. No good citizen desires to cripple the govern- 
 ment In any legitimate function, but no good citizen desires 
 that the people be loaded down wdth unnecessary taxes. 
 
 5. The publication of campaign contributions and dis- 
 bursements before the election. The bill to accomplish 
 that desired reform has been prepared and Introduced. It 
 will be speedily passed by the House. The average citizen, 
 whatever his politics, Is absolutely honest. He demands 
 honesty and cleanliness in politics; he believes that too 
 much money Is spent in election matters ; and he proposes 
 to put an end to It. As the representatives of the average 
 
 ] 
 
p 
 
 CLARK, THE EPOCH-MAKER 105 
 
 man, it is our duty to carry out his patriotic wishes in that 
 regard to the end that all men desirous of serving the 
 public may have a fair chance in politics, and to the end 
 that this puissant Republic, the political hope of the 
 world, may not be destroyed by corruption in elections. 
 
 6. The admission of both Arizona and New Mexico as 
 States. [Applause.] I violate no confidence in stating 
 that so far as the House is concerned, they will be speedily 
 admitted and they will be admitted together. [Applause.] 
 
 These are a few of the things which we promised. We 
 are not only going to accomplish them, we have already 
 begun the great task. What we have done is only an 
 earnest of what we will do. We this day report progress 
 to the American people. The rest will follow in due course. 
 
 No man is fit to be a lawgiver for a mighty people who 
 yields to the demands and solicitations of the few having 
 access to his ear, but is forgetful of that vast multitude 
 who may never hear his voice nor look into his face. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 I suggest to my fellow-members on both sides of the big 
 aisle — which is the line of demarcation betwixt us as politi- 
 cal partisans, but not as American citizens or American 
 Representatives — that he serves his party best who serves 
 his country best. [Applause.] 
 
 I am now ready to take the oath, and ask that it be ad- 
 ministered by Mr. Talbott, of Maryland. 
 
 The oath of oflice was administered to the Speaker by 
 Mr. Talbott, of Maryland. 
 
106 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Mr. Clark's election was the final and irretrievable over- 
 throw of Cannonism. Let us hope that centralization has 
 gone forever from our government. 
 
 As Mr. Clark and every one else foresaw, the change of 
 the rules deprives him of vast power. Under the new regime 
 the House elects its committees, instead of empowering the 
 Speaker to appoint them. The power of recognition is 
 also regulated by rules prescribed by the House for its 
 own government. 
 
 Just as our forefathers wrote the Constitution of the 
 United States with a view of correcting the conspicuous 
 evils of the British government, so the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, guiding its feet by the lamp of experience, has 
 gone far away from the evils of Cannonism. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great reduction of power of the 
 Speakership, Speaker Clark yet possesses as much 
 authority as should be exercised by any one man over the 
 actions of others in a free government. The fairness with 
 which he discharges the duties of his office has not been 
 questioned by any member of Congress. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 His Friendships 
 
 The most disinterested and the most fortunate friend- 
 ship that Mr. Clark ever made had its inception in the 
 Ways and Means Committee. When Mr. Clark became a 
 member of this committee Senator John Sharp Williams, 
 of Mississippi, was the Democratic spokesman on the 
 Ways and Means Committee, and by virtue of the pre- 
 eminence was Minority Leader on the floor of the House. 
 Mr. Williams looked to Mr. Clark as his first lieutenant 
 in the consideration of all tariff measures, and In all party 
 contests on the floor of the House. Nature conferred on 
 ]Mr. Clark remarkable aptitude in the mastery of economic 
 subjects, an instinct for the comprehension of laws of 
 trade and commerce. Hence the consideration of tariff 
 legislation Is a congenial occupation for him. He and Mr. 
 Williams agreed upon every essential feature of tariff 
 legislation, and upon the modus operandi of conducting 
 maneuvers on the floor of the House. Seldom have two 
 men In Congress possessed such unity of purposes and con- 
 victions. Together they laid out their lines of battle and 
 marshalled their forces, and fought together every contest 
 for popular rights. They became close personal friends. 
 
 When Mr. Williams left the House to take his seat In 
 
 107 
 
108 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 the American "House of Lords," there was but one man 
 perfectly fitted by nature and by training to succeed 
 him as Minority Leader, and that man was Champ Clark. 
 Mr. Williams made the noblest speech of his life when he 
 stood up in the Democratic caucus and presented in glow- 
 ing terms of eulogy his friend and successor, Mr. Clark. 
 It was an act of friendship, born of patriotism no less 
 than of personal affection and regard. The speech could 
 not have been stronger had Mr. Williams known that he I 
 was sending his friend on the way to the White House. 
 In the light of history the scene was dramatic. Mr. Wil- 
 liams stepped out of the path leading to the nation's 
 highest honor and gave the roadway to Mr. Clark. 
 
 The speech made by Mr. Clark on that dramatic occa- 
 sion is published elsewhere in this volume. Mr. Clark had 
 already eulogized Mr. Williams on the floor of the House, 
 in a speech which reveals the human kindness in Mr. Clark's 
 nature. In the light of history that speech is also highly 
 dramatic. The occasion was the presentation of a loving 
 cup to Mr. Williams by the Democrats of the Fifty-eighth 
 Congress. In the same speech Mr. Clark's magnanimity 
 was emphasized by his eulogistic remarks about Speaker 
 Cannon. The cup was presented to Mr. Williams March 4, 
 1905. Mr. Clark said: 
 
 "We give it to him because of his great capacity, which 
 all men admire; because of his courage, characteristic of 
 his race ; because of his tact, which has served us and the 
 country well ; because of his scholarship, which delights all 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 109 
 
 who hear him ; and above all, greater than all, because of 
 our great personal affection for him. 
 
 "We have in our midst two fine samples of the Svell- 
 beloved' in the persons of John Sharp Williams, of Mis- 
 sissippi, and of Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois. In fact, 
 both of them run the risk of having applied to them the 
 Scriptural warning, 'Woe unto you when all men speak 
 well of jou.' 
 
 If "The historians of our times will record the fact that 
 the Fifty-eighth Congress was celebrated above all its 
 predecessors for the extraordinary kindliness of feeling 
 which prevailed among its members. . . . This 
 happy state of affairs is due largely to the unfailing kind- 
 ness of 'Uncle Joe' and of John Sharp Williams, and to 
 the genial humor with which they have enlivened the pro- 
 ceedings of the House. 
 
 "When at last the inevitable turn in the Congressional 
 lane comes and John Sharp Williams ascends the Speaker's 
 stand to wield the gavel, Mr. Speaker Cannon, with the 
 gallantry of Marshal Ney, will descend to be the floor 
 leader of the thin line of the Republican minority, and 
 will fight every inch of ground with the stubborn courage 
 of the English squares at Waterloo. 
 
 "May happiness, prosperity, and length of days be the 
 portion of these two conspicuous gentlemen — in fact, of 
 us all." 
 
 Mr. Cannon was reduced to the ranks as predicted by 
 Mr. Clark, but Mr. Clark himself succeeded Mr. Cannon. 
 
110 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 On Mr. Clark's birthday, March 7, 1912, Mr. Cannon 
 stood up in his place on the floor of the House and returned | 
 the compliment, saying among other things: 
 
 "While we have had sharp contests in the past and in 
 the present, and no doubt will have in the future, I am 
 glad to say, after many years of service, that while the 
 present Speaker has always been a virile partisan, recog- 
 nizing that it is a government speaking through majori- 
 ties, and while as a former Speaker of the House and on the 
 floor I have had sharp contests with him and at times felt 
 his opposition keenly, yet I must say, and take pleasure in 
 saying at this time, that he has made manly contests, 
 striking above the belt. . . . The present Speaker is 
 a prospective candidate for that great office of President. 
 You will not consult me in the Baltimore Convention, but 
 I am quite sure that it would be agreeable to this side of 
 the House if you should nominate your colleague and our 
 colleague, the present Speaker, as your standard-bearer. 
 For your policies I can think of no one that would be more 
 forceful, and in nominating and electing to that great 
 office the present Speaker, I think there is no man within 
 the sound of my voice but that would feel that he would be 
 persona grata if he desired a hearing touching the public 
 business so far as it was within his power. 
 
 "We congratulate our friends from time to time on the 
 anniversary of their birth, but I sometimes wonder whether 
 it is a subject for congratulation that another mile-stone 
 is behind us. Yet it is always agreeable to congratulate 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 111 
 
 and to be congratulated; and as we cannot turn back the 
 hands upon the dial, I will express the wish and the hope 
 that the Speaker's birthday anniversary may reach the 
 hundredth anniversary, and that I may be there to see it." 
 Mr. Clark has an extraordinary and phenomenal ca- 
 pacity for friendship. He is a philanthropist and is so 
 recognized and accepted by all men. His power of bind- 
 ing friends to him by hoops of steel is innate and is not 
 the outgrowth of the necessity of the life and pursuits of 
 a public career. He made friends while he was yet a child 
 on the farm, and in school, as a teacher, as a student in 
 college, and in the law school, as college president, as a 
 neighbor at Bowling Green, as a newspaper man, as prose- 
 cuting attorney of Pike County, as a lawmaker in the 
 Missouri Legislature, as a candidate for Congress in a 
 bitter contest, and as a member of Congress. Perhaps no 
 man in public life has ever enjoyed a larger number of 
 personal friends than has Mr. Clark throughout a busy and 
 a varied life. 
 
 A beautiful friendship exists between Mr. Clark and his 
 colleague. Representative Bartholdt, of St. Louis. Mr. 
 Bartholdt is as strong and as uncompromising a Repub- 
 lican as Mr. Clark is a Democrat. Party rivalry between 
 these two men is acute, but nothing of a partisan nature 
 can interrupt their friendship nor disrupt their attachment 
 to each other. On the eve of the presidential election, 
 when the leaders are addressing themselves to the heavy 
 task of promoting their favorites, Mr. Bartholdt, avowedly 
 
112 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 and enthusiastically for the re-election of President Taft,l 
 bears this testimony to Mr. Clark's character: 
 
 "Taft and Clark — these will be the opposing nominees- 
 of the election campaign to follow the conventions ; and if I 
 they are, it will be a campaign between gentlemen — a battle 
 for principles. There will be no injections of personalities. 
 Both men are my warm friends, and I would say on the 
 stump in Missouri or elsewhere that there is no purer,, 
 cleaner man in public life to-day than Speaker Champ 
 Clark. He is as innocent as a child and as pure as ai 
 diamond." 
 
 Another friendship was that between Clark and heroic 
 De Armond. The greatest possible contrast prevailed be- 
 tween these two statesmen. Clark struck with a bludgeon 
 which never produced a mortal hurt ; De Armond wielded 
 a Toledo blade that excited anger. Clark was welcomed 1 
 cheerily into the arena even by those who knew that they 
 must suffer by his presence ; De Armond acted as an irri- 
 tant. These two Missourlans fought many hard battles 
 against the enemies of the Democratic party. 
 
 The long and unbroken friendship between Champ 
 Clark and David A. Ball recalls the famous friendships of 
 history : David and Jonathan, Tennyson and Hallam, Mil- 
 ton and Lycidas (King), Hume and Robertson, Boccaccio 
 and Petrarch, Reynolds and Burke, Johnson and Gold- 
 smith, Beaumont and Fletcher, Erasmus and Sir Thomas 
 More, Montaigne and Charron, Lloyd and Churchill. 
 
 iWhen Clark came to Pike County, without friends or 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 113 
 
 means, he soon met "Dave" Ball, then a young man at 
 the threshold of his career. The two men presently be- 
 came fast friends. Mr. Ball had been admitted to the 
 bar a year or two previously and his practice was small, 
 too small to divide with another; yet he took the briefless 
 Clark into full partnership. For some long time "It was 
 slim picking," as Mr. Clark has said. Both were big- 
 hearted and generous and both were ambitious and full 
 of liope. Every big battle that either has ever fought 
 has been the battle likewise of the other. For nearly forty 
 years they have been loyal to each other. Defeat has 
 sometimes perched on the banner of each, but the clouds 
 of adversity have not obscured the light of friendship. 
 When Ball ran for the office of prosecuting attorney 
 or for the State Senate, Clark helped him to win. When 
 Ball aspired to be Lieutenant Governor Clark made one 
 of the great speeches of his life in the State Convention 
 which uproariously gave Ball the coveted nomination, 
 which was followed by success at the polls. And when Ball 
 aspired to be Governor of the State in 1908 Clark an- 
 nounced that he would rather see his friend in the Gov- 
 ernor's office than to win for himself a seat in the United 
 States Senate. On the other hand when Clark ran for 
 any office, whether he wished to be prosecuting attorney, 
 State Legislator, or Congressman, Mr. Ball has used every 
 effort to win for Clark, and has been unstinted of his 
 means. The friendship of these two men for each other 
 has become proverbial in the political annals of Missouri — 
 
114 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 a friendship as romantic as that of Damon and Pythias ' 
 and as poetic as that of Antonio and Bassanio. Each 
 might have said of the other what was said of Portia: 
 
 "The dearest friend to me, the kindest man, 
 "The best-conditioned and unwearied spirit 
 "In doing courtesies, and one in whom 
 "The ancient Roman honor more appears 
 "Than any that draws breath in Italy." 
 
 They both are acquainted with hard luck. The two men 
 are alike in continuity of purpose. They are also alike in 
 uprightness of purpose, in optimism, and in their politicall 
 affiliations and convictions. In one other respect they 
 resemble each other like twins. They draw humor from 
 the same reservoir and dispense it in speeches with the same 
 unctious prodigality. They borrow jokes from each other. 
 Otherwise the two men are diametrically opposite to each 
 other. Clark is large and of bone and muscle; Ball is 
 small in size. Both have great ambitions along parallel, 
 but not conflicting, lines. They were drawn together by 
 unity of purposes and ideals. They fought each other 
 when professional employment set them against each 
 other. Perhaps their very friendship gave a zest and 
 a keener edge to their rivalry when on opposite sides of 
 a case, as not infrequently happened. The most notable 
 trial wherein they were on opposing sides was the State of 
 Missouri vs. Hearne. This w^as a famous case and has 
 few parallels in the history of criminal jurisprudence of 
 the nation. Dr. J. C. Hearne was charged with the mur- 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 115 
 
 der of Amos Stillwell, of Hannibal, Mo. Mr. Ball, who 
 was Lieutenant Governor of Missouri at the time, con- 
 ducted the defense ; Mr. Clark, then a private citizen after 
 one term in Congress, was employed as special counsel by 
 the prosecution. Following is a pubhshed account of 
 the case: 
 
 "When Lieutenant Governor Ball made his argument 
 in defense of Heame he made an able plea for the de- 
 fendant, weighing the evidence critically. He drew to a 
 climax by summarizing his arguments, punctuating his 
 remarks by defying Clark, who was to follow him, to reply 
 to his arguments and refute his propositions. In the pres- 
 ence of a crowded court-room Ball w^ould pause at the 
 close of some argumentative statement, tap Clark on the 
 head, and bend over him, uttering an audible defiance, 
 j 'Let me hear you answer that, Clark.' Mr. Ball kept this 
 up for some time, much to the annoyance of Mr. Clark, 
 who was sitting, writing out his own speech. Ball was 
 attempting to disconcert him, so finally Clark appealed 
 to the court for protection. Clark rose to reply to Ball 
 while deathlike stillness filled the room. R. P. Giles, one 
 : of Clark's associate counsel, who was afterward elected 
 to Congress, but died before taking his seat, leaned over 
 and whispered to Clark in audible tones, the great audi- 
 ence bending over to catch his words, the group of news- 
 paper coiTespondents reaching over to hear what Giles 
 would say to Clark. 'Remember, Clark, the ejes of Mis- 
 souri are on you, just as the eyes of the nation were on 
 
116 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 you at Tammany Hall. Make the speech of your life.' 
 All eyes were turned toward Clark, who was standing: 
 ready to address the jury, under circumstances seldom 
 witnessed in a court-room, and after hearing from an asso- 
 ciate counsel words seldom heard in a murder trial. After 
 a moment's stillness Clark began one of the most stirring 
 prosecuting speeches ever heard in Missouri. It set the 
 crowded court-room afire, as it were, with excitement, and 
 made the defendant wince under the cutting assaults of 
 Clark, who cast aside mercy, and clung to the rigid lines 
 of cold, harsh, unanswerable justice. His denunciation 
 of Hearne was ringing and vigorous. When he drew to 
 a close with a powerful excoriation of the defendant the 
 great crowd broke into cheers, while Hearne sat and shiv- 
 ered under the hard words of his accuser." 
 
 In this case Mr. Ball saved his client, while Mr. Clark 
 increased his fame as a trial lawyer and as a pleader in 
 court. 
 
 The climax of the Clark-Norton feud came in the cam- 
 paign of 1892. Lieutenant Governor Ball went all over 
 the "Bloody Ninth" for Clark. In Crawford County 
 the delegates were to be chosen at a great mass-meeting 
 at Cuba. Mr. Ball determined to exert every means to 
 carry that mass-meeting for Clark. He went to St. Louis 
 and chartered a special train to be used in bringing 
 Clark's supporters from all pai-ts of the county. This 
 would have been a great and winning scheme had it not 
 been divulged to Norton. When Norton heard of Ball's 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 117 
 
 plan he hastened, almost at the last hour, to St. Louis 
 and chartered two special trains for the use of his sup- 
 porters. The battle was a desperate one, but Ball and 
 Clark fought the contest in every nook and corner, and 
 Mr. Ball had the intense gratification of seeing his friend 
 finally nominated and elected to Congress. 
 
 Mr. Ball relates the following anecdote : 
 
 "When Champ Clark and I were partners in 1877, he 
 kept me from getting an awful thrashing. Clark was an 
 unusually fine specimen of physical manhood in those 
 days, tall, athletic, without a pound of surplus flesh, and 
 with muscles of steel. He was just out of school, where, 
 among other things, he had practiced in gymnasiums for 
 hours daily at every exercise intended to develop strength, 
 including boxing. Like most Kentuckians he was fond 
 of a pistol, and always kept two or three on hand. One 
 day three big, rough fellows, who had taken offense at 
 me about a lawsuit, came into the office and picked a fuss 
 with me. They cursed and abused me for ten minutes, 
 during which time Clark was sitting at his desk, pretend- 
 ing to read a book and apparently taking no interest in 
 the iiimpus. I did not know whether he would help me 
 out or not, consequently I did not talk back to the fellows 
 very much. At last they concluded to give me a beating 
 and advanced toward me. Quick as a flash Clark pulled 
 open the drawer of his table, exposing two glittering pis- 
 tols to the view of my would-be assailants, and yelled, 
 'Hi-yi, you ruffians ! I do the fighting for this firm, and 
 
118 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 I'll give you just three seconds to get out of here, or I'll . 
 throw you out of the window and break your necks.' 
 Witliin the limit he allowed those fellows were going down 
 stairs three steps at a jump. Clark shut up the drawer 
 with a grim smile and resumed his reading. I thought 
 then that he was the handsomest man I ever saw. He 
 has long since given up carrying pistols, but I was glad 
 he had them that day." 
 
 In 1908 Ball ran for the Democratic nomination for 
 Governor in Missouri, and it was hinted that Clark would 
 take the stump for him. Ball's opponents in the bitter 
 fight that ensued turned on Clark and said that they 
 would beat him for Congress if he opened his mouth in 
 the governorship fight. Clark's district has always been 
 one of the closest in the country, but he took up the 
 cudgels for Ball, saying, "I'll not only fight for Ball, but 
 if it will elect him, I'll resign my seat in Congress." The 
 campaign he waged against great odds is one of the most 
 interesting chapters in the political annals of Missouri ; he 
 helped carry the Ball banner to victory in eighty-five ' 
 counties out of one hundred and fourteen. In speaking of 
 Ball he said: 
 
 "Thirty-five years ago Dave Ball took me in when I 
 was penniless and divided his crust with me; it was slim 
 picking, God knows, but such law business as he had he 
 divided with me. Now he asks my aid, and he will get it 
 in Scriptural measure, heaped up, pressed down, and run- 
 ning over." Clark borrowed money to help pay the cam- 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 119 
 
 paign expenses, and besides being a liberal giver, he lent 
 the campaign committee all he could scrape together, and 
 when the fight was over he returned the promissory notes, 
 canceled. This is the way Clark remembered his friends — 
 the friends of his early days. As he often expressed it to 
 his secretary, "Do what this man wants done, and do it the 
 best possible way, for he was my friend when there were 
 very few of them." 
 
 The friendship of Clark and Ball was well portrayed 
 three centuries ago by Abraham Cowley, considered then 
 Shakespeare's equal, in a poem on the death of his friend 
 Harvey : 
 
 "Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights! 
 
 "How oft unwearied have we spent the nights, 
 
 "Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love, 
 
 "Wonder'd at us from above; 
 
 "We spent them not in toys, in lust nor wine, 
 
 "But search of deep philosophy, 
 
 "Wit, eloquence, and poetry; 
 
 "Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine." 
 
 Champ Clark and Thomas B. Reed were kindred spirits, 
 though antipodal in politics. When Mr. Clark first ar- 
 rived in Washington to take his seat in Congress he was 
 duly and formally presented to Speaker Reed. Mr. Clark 
 remarked that he had frequently used the name of Mr. 
 Reed in his Missouri campaign speeches, whereupon Mr. 
 Reed turned a quizzical look upon the new member and 
 exclaimed, "Certainly, but how, Mr. Clark, — how did you 
 
120 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 use my name?" Thus began an acquaintance which in 
 time ripened into a lasting friendship. 
 
 In an interview with James B. Morrow Mr. Clark thus 
 set forth his relations with Mr. Reed: 
 
 "When I came to Congress in 1893 I admired Mr. 
 Reed's ability, or rather his intellectuality, but I disliked 
 him poHtlcally. He had been a czar, and had beaten down 
 my party in the House. Before long I was glad to ac- 
 knowledge to myself that Thomas B. Reed, in pure men- 
 tality, was one of the greatest Americans in history. I 
 was introduced to him early in my services. He was 
 friendly enough, but was not running after new acquaint- 
 ances. 
 
 "Perhaps I did not speak to him again until after I 
 had heard a speech by a man from New Jersey, who had 
 given Oklahoma a bad reputation, saying that it was good 
 for nothing but lizards and snakes. I had spent two of 
 the happiest weeks of my life shooting and fishing in 
 Oklahoma, and the New Jersey man, I knew, had igno- 
 rantly and maliciously distorted one of the finest regions 
 on earth into a hideous physical nightmare. Then some 
 one else, a member from New York, as I remember, put a 
 few more yellow daubs and flourishes on the picture. 
 
 " 'I have a mind to answer those fellows,' I said to 
 Richard P. Bland, the great apostle of free silver, who 
 sat across the aisle. 
 
 "'Go after them; give them thunder! They are noth- 
 ing but damned goldbugs, anyway," replied Bland. 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 121 
 
 "So I opened. Worldn^ round to the theme I like the 
 best of all — the soil and the climate of the Middle West, 
 especially of the State of Missouri — I was stacking it up 
 pretty high, when I happened to look at Reed. He was 
 lolling in his chair, and was evidently enjoying the per- 
 formance, because his enormous face was wrinkled into a 
 tremendous smile, and his eyes twinkled with merriment. 
 'Why, Mr. Speaker,' I said, 'the last time the distin- 
 guished gentleman from Maine was in my district he took 
 up a handful of our soil, and, after smelling it and fondling 
 it and almost tasting it, exclaimed, 'If we had such soil 
 in New England we would put it up in packages and sell 
 it for seed.' 
 
 "The next day Reed whacked me on the back and said, 
 'That was a smart speech you made yesterday.' Later, I 
 prepared two other speeches, giving them as much time 
 and toil as any man, dead or alive, ever devoted to such 
 an undertaking. After that Mr. Reed and I were great 
 friends." 
 
 The Louisville Courier- Journal, in a long article about 
 Mr. Clark, April 22, 1900, said this as to his friendship 
 for Reed : "When Champ Clark came back to the Fifty- 
 fifth Congress, after his defeat, he had mellowed and 
 broadened. He had ideas on a good many subjects that 
 commanded respect, both from political friends and oppo- 
 nents. For one thing, he was a great admirer of Tom 
 Reed, and never hesitated to express admiration for him, 
 even in companies and under conditions where it was not 
 
in CHAMP CLARK 
 
 to his personal advantage to do so. He was fascinated 
 with Reed's force, originality, and wit, and especially by 
 the classic virility of his speech. Champ Clark professes 
 to be a judge of Congressional oratory, and he has said 
 more than once that in his judgment Tom Reed is the 
 best short speechmaker in the United States." 
 
 Among the members of both Houses of Congress none 
 entertains a higher regard for Mr. Clark than does Sen- 
 ator Bailey, of Texas, as witness his glowing introduction 
 to Mr. Clark's biography, published in "Five Famous 
 Missourians" : 
 
 "The subject of this sketch is well entitled to a place 
 among 'Famous Missourians,' and he has earned his right 
 to it by great ability, by fidelity to his principles, and by 
 unswerving honesty. There may be Missourians about 
 whom the public press prints more frequent comments ; but 
 there is not one living to-day, and I very much doubt if 
 one ever lived, whose writings and whose speeches have 
 been so widely copied and read as have those of Champ 
 Clark during the last four years. 
 
 "I have heard his unfriendly critics declare that it was 
 
 the quaintness of his speech and writings that commanded 
 
 such universal attention; but the men who say that have 
 
 not considered the matter carefully. It is true that there 
 
 As a peculiarity all his own, in his way of saying things ; 
 
 / but, apart from all that, what he says is always worth 
 
 I reading, and nearly always worth remembering. At first 
 
 [I was simply entertained by his aphoristic style of speak- 
 
 I 
 
HIS FRIENDSHIPS 123 
 
 ing, but when I examined the matter independently of 
 the manner, I found that there was always meat in his 
 odd sentences ; and after an intimate association with him 
 in Congress for nearly four years, during which time I 
 read or heard everything he has written or spoken, I / 
 regard him as one of the strongest men in the Americaiy 
 Congress. There are others there as strong in speech, and 
 others as strong in thought; but it is rare to find any 
 man either in or out of Congress who is his equal, both in 
 thought and speech. And what is better still than the 
 way he thinks, or the way he speaks, is his rugged hon- 
 esty, which knows 'no variableness, neither shadow of 
 turning.' 
 
 "Not only is Champ Clark entitled to a place among 
 'Famous Missourians,' but I am willing to put myself on 
 record in this print that, if he lives and keeps his health, 
 he is destined to become the most 'Famous Missourian' of 
 his generation." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 Mrs. Claek 
 
 The wife of Speaker Clark is a woman of varied accom- 
 plishments, and of stately presence. Her manner is gra- 
 cious and pleasing. She is very popular in Washington, 
 while in the "Ninth District of Missouri" she is regarded 
 as a better "mixer" than her husband. She loves the 
 country and the ways of country people, but is quite at 
 home in Washington. 
 
 Mrs. Clark is as great a reader as her husband, and 
 their tastes are similar. She is almost, if not quite, her 
 husband's equal as an historian, and she aids him greatly in 
 his work. She has at all times taken the deepest and most 
 intimate interest in Mr. Clark's career, encouraging him 
 and sustaining him in every possible way. 
 
 If she becomes mistress of the White House she will be 
 in all respects the equal, in that position, of her husband 
 in his. As the wife of the Speaker she has discharged all 
 the social duties of her position in a most pleasing manner. 
 Her social accomplishments are equal to any demand. 
 
 Naturally the wife of the Speaker is an important per- 
 sonage, but Mrs. Clark, as the wife of a prominent mem- 
 ber of Congress, during a long residence in Wash- 
 ington, became long ago a general favorite by reason of 
 her graces and personal charm. She, like her husband, 
 
 124 
 
Copyright, 1912, by Edmonston. 
 
 MRS. GENEVIEVE BENNETT CLARK 
 
 opposite p. 124 
 
MRS. CLARK 125 
 
 has always been a favorite with the newspaper fraternity. 
 
 An exquisite narrative of Mrs. Clark is given by John 
 H. Greusel: 
 
 "As Champ Clark is a man in a thousand, Mrs. Clark 
 is a woman in ten thousand, a woman for emergencies, 
 social, political, or on the battlefield. 
 
 "How this excellent lady hates a hypocrite ! How plain 
 her words, when necessity demands ; how frank she can be ; 
 where timid souls shrink and all but die, she rises gloriously 
 to the situation." 
 
 Mrs. Clark's father was a planter and slave-holder in« 
 Calloway County, Missouri. She traces her descent from 
 Huguenot stock. On her father's side the Bennetts came 
 to Maryland with Lord Baltimore; on her mother's side 
 are the McAfees, the first settlers of Kentucky. Mrs. 
 Clark is of fighting stock — Scotch-Irish, English, and 
 French Huguenot, an admixture that makes for independ- 
 ence of character. She is always ready to read her ulti- 
 matum, and often it is as direct and final as an advance 
 taste of the Day of Judgment. 
 
 Once upon a time a well-known editor of a woman's 
 magazine in New York wished Mrs. Clark to write her 
 experiences as the wife of a Congressman. It was to be 
 one of a series, on experiences of wives. The editor prac- 
 tically told her what she ought to say, and Mrs. Clark 
 rephed that he had better, under the circumstances, write 
 it himself, since he knew just what he wanted in advance. 
 
126 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Let me tell you one story — I could tell dozens — of Mrs. 
 Champ Clark. It Is about her lost purse and the hungry 
 man. The episode shows her stern sense of justice, and, 
 too, her quality of mercy. 
 
 She had come out of a store, had walked a block, when 
 she missed her purse; quickly retracing her steps, away 
 down the street she saw a tramp just stooping and picking 
 up something. Her Intuition told her that he had her 
 pocketbook. 
 
 She followed with an outraged sense of justice as you 
 w^ould follow a thief. The man was going through a park 
 in the poorer quarter of Washington, near the markets. 
 
 At the moment that Mrs. Clark came close enough to 
 speak to him he still had something In his hand. 
 
 "Did you find my purse?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Open your hand." 
 
 He slowly obeyed. 
 
 "That's my purse, and my money ; hand it over. I will 
 quote you the Bible on honesty." 
 
 And she started off, indignant. She counted the money 
 and found It all there. But as she walked away, her mood 
 changed. Somehow she recalled, although at the time she 
 hadn't noticed It, that his clothes were shabby, and she 
 thought that he must have been hungry. 
 
 She went on her way home, however ; yet more and more 
 thoughts of the poor man kept Intruding; and presently 
 she felt a twlneje of remorse at what she had said and 
 
MRS. CLARK 127 
 
 done. Then she turned and walked quickly back, seeking 
 the man in order to give him the purse, with a kind word. 
 For hours she searched, and at dusk she went home, still 
 dissatisfied. The next day she started out again. She 
 never found him — and although all this happened long 
 ago, she scarcely ever sees a tramp without eyeing him 
 closely, thinking that he may be the missing man. 
 
 A very satisfactory account of Mrs. Clark was pub- 
 lished in Harper's Bazaar for July, 1911, from which the 
 following extracts are made: 
 
 "Mrs. James Beauchamp Clark, of Bowling Green, 
 Missouri, is the wife of 'Champ' Clark, the new Speaker 
 of the House of Representatives. She is also the mother 
 of INIiss Genevieve Bennett Clark, a debutante of next 
 season, and of a remarkable son, Bennett Clark, who 
 wishes to change his name to 'Champ.' In the last 
 Congressional campaign this young man, who is still in 
 college, challenged his father's opponent to debate and 
 worsted him in argument as thoroughly as his father did 
 at the polls some days later. 
 
 "Mrs. Champ Clark does not appear to be standing in 
 reflected light, but gives one an immediate impression of 
 marked individuality. She has a slow Southern voice, 
 musical in conversation; she has also iron-gray hair, a 
 very earnest manner, and extremely good taste in dress. 
 That she reads much, thinks much, and has views of her 
 own, no one can doubt who talks with her. 
 
128 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 <« i^ 
 
 'I am often asked what influence a politician's wife 
 has on his career,' she said one day. 'I think that depends 
 on the politician and his wife.' Mrs. Clark emphasizes 
 her words with an uplifted, slender forefinger, a gesture 
 that somehow subtly suggests the occasional heavier peda- 
 gogic attitude of Champ Clark in public speaking. 
 
 " 'Public opinion,' she went on, 'is inclined to overrate 
 the wife's influence, if she is clever; and even if she is 
 stupid, she is held to account for many things for which 
 she is not responsible. More than any other woman, the 
 politician's wife must be mindful of public opinion. As 
 his field enlarges, her horizon must broaden. She must not 
 only love her neighbor as herself, but she must love her 
 husband better than he loves himself.' 
 
 "Somewhere it is written, 'Women who have lived their 
 lives bravely and well, seldom cry after they are forty.' 
 One recalls that saying when looking at Mrs. Clark. Her 
 fine, strong face speaks so eloquently of a brave life and 
 of a character built above the thousand and one worries 
 which will force their way into the career of the wife of a 
 man of public aff'airs. Moreover, she has the saving grace 
 of humor. As she talks there comes at times an almost 
 boyish twinkle in her dark, rather tragic eyes, and a 
 ^^PPy star seems shining there as she speaks of her girl- 
 hood and early married life. One little incident throws 
 a significant light on her present-day philosophy. 
 
 "She was the youngest of seven children born to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Joel Davis Bennett on a farm out in Calloway 
 
MRS. CLARK 129 
 
 County, Missouri, and she was proportionately as much 
 in the limelight as the baby of this household as she is 
 now as the wife of the Speaker. It was a momentous step 
 when the family circle decided that her fifth birthday 
 should mark her departure to the little neighborhood 
 schoolhouse, where her eldest sister was teacher. Thrilled 
 with the importance of an event that marked her 'grown 
 up,' she rushed to her room in the top of the house and 
 jumped up and down for joy. 
 
 " 'It was perhaps the first and last time that I can 
 remember being glad that I was old, but as I looked out 
 of the window I noticed that the tree-tops seemed to be 
 jumping up and down with me in my happiness. I noticed 
 it then and I have noticed the same thing since. If one's 
 heart jumps up and down hard enough, the rest of the 
 world seems to keep time. It works even in politics. 
 
 " 'When I first met Mr. Clark I found that he had set 
 his heart on a political career. Politics were as much out- 
 side of my experience then as aeroplaning is now, and well- 
 meaning friends made gloomy predictions over the idea 
 of the marriage of an impractical, rather bookish young 
 woman and a struggling politician. But w^e had fallen in 
 love, so we were married, and lived happy ever afterward. 
 I gave him the best I had always, and never allowed any 
 ordinary matter of business or society to keep me at home 
 when he invited me to accompany him on his political 
 trips, long or short, over the country.' 
 
 "During the Washington season Wednesday afternoons 
 
130 . CHAMP CLARK 
 
 the wife of the Speaker holds her receptions. These are 
 attended not only by the wives of other members of Con- 
 gress, and by the wives of Senators, but by whatever pro- 
 portion of the general public that feels itself inspired to 
 call and accept hospitality and tea. Mrs. Clark will prove 
 an adequate hostess on these occasions. 
 
 "Under her gracious manner lies the ready adaptability 
 of the trained politician, and deeper still, that character- 
 istic without which no hostess in public life may hope 
 really to succeed — the genuine and instinctive apprecia- 
 tion of the 'good there is in us.' An old Missouri cam- 
 paigner said, 'For purposes of coaxing a feud district into 
 good nature, Champ Clark and his wife can't be equaled; 
 and it's my opinion that she makes friends even quicker 
 than he does.' 
 
 "Above the fireplace in the library of Mrs. Clark's 
 apartment in Washington is a framed autographed pic- 
 ture of Mark Twain, and close beside it is an illuminated 
 motto of his, 'To be good is noble, but to teach others 
 to be good is nobler, and less trouble.' Mrs. Clark's 
 smile toward both picture and text expresses the same 
 whimsical kindlhiess that shines in the writings of the 
 humorist. With Mark Twain Mrs. Clark had a beautiful 
 and intimate friendship, dating from her girlhood. They 
 were 'born and raised,' to speak Missouri, in adjoining 
 counties. 
 
 "Mrs. Clark speaks with serious feeling of the lasting 
 good of the religious instruction given in the isolated 
 
MRS. CLARK 131^ 
 
 homes of the old-time Presbyterian community. 'There 
 were no fancy brands of rehgion on the farm.' And the 
 strict Sabbath and the well-learned Catechism established 
 principles not supposed to predominate in the political 
 world. So the eifort to establish the ways of 'Continental 
 Sunday' entertaining in Washington will receive scant 
 encouragement from the wife of the present Speaker. 
 
 " 'I couldn't get my own consent to it,' she said simply, 
 when asked whether it was her husband's engagements 
 that prevented their attendance at an important dinner 
 given on a Sunday night. 
 
 "Convention at the capital prescribes that the hostess 
 in the Speaker's home need not return calls, but Mrs. 
 Clark intends to follow the admirable example of Miss 
 Cannon, who, during her father's rule as Speaker, made a 
 conscientious effort to find every one 'who thought 
 enough of her to leave a card.' 
 
 "Mrs, Clark will have no social secretary." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 "Square to the Four Winds that Blow" 
 
 Mr. Clark believe? with Jefferson that the whole art of 
 government consist^ in being honest and in a realization 
 of the Golden Rule. It is a simple creed and as sublime 
 as the religion of our Savior. Jefferson's patriotism, up- 
 rightness, and philanthropy cannot be doubted, and these 
 are conspicuous qualities in Clark's character. Hildreth, 
 whose splendid ability as an historian was too often used 
 to defame Jefferson, admitted ungrudgingly that the 
 author of the Declaration of Independence was a philan- 
 thropist. No two men in our history are more alike than 
 Clark and Jefferson in many respects, or more dissimilar 
 in others. They resemblei each other in immovableness of 
 purpose and in strength of will, in their love of classical 
 learning and in scholarship, in exalted patriotism and 
 abiding faith in man's ability to govern himself, and in 
 their advocacy of popular rights. 
 
 Jefferson was no orator, though with his pen he was the 
 master of the art of expression in pure English. He ruled 
 the masses about him from the council-board, or with the 
 power of his. pen; Clark leads by fellowship with his fol- 
 lowers. He is a man of action and his military instincts 
 account for his mastery over men. Clark is both Jackson 
 and Jefferson in one. He has. Jackson's executive force 
 
 133 
 
"SQUARE TO THE FOUR WINDS" 133 
 
 and Jefferson's depth of perception and strength of 
 thought. He has Intense warmth of feeling, and this 
 accounts for his frequent displays of zeal and enthusiasm ; 
 but he is unsweiTlngly steadfast, unstampedable, unshaken 
 by any breeze, standing Indeed "four square to the winds 
 that blow." 
 
 Jefferson had his faults, as Hildreth bears cheerful wit- 
 ness ; Jackson had faults and flaws of character which he 
 never thought necessary to conceal nor excuse. Clark has 
 none of Jefferson's and Jackson's delinquencies — his faults 
 are his own — and he would not conceal nor minimize one 
 of them. 
 
 Clark pitiejti a weak man in a high place; he hates \ 
 hypocrisy anywhere ; he detests^' and abhors a political j 
 party that is untrue to its pledges, platforms, and preten-/ 
 sions; he (has for years denounced corruptionlsts in public 
 office and the plundering Instincts of the human wolves 
 congregating about the national capital seeking govern- 
 mental advantage or aid in their nefarious designs, and 
 when he encounters such a person on the floor of Congress 
 his wraJthJsLJLmhat-tled.,and his_indignation never subsides. 
 l^'Mr. Clark made a speech In Congress once on "Speech- ■ 
 stealers and Speech-stealing." He had suffered from these 
 /Yandals, but his speech on this occasion was not the vent- 
 ing of personal pique, but was directed to the pitiful and 
 piratical practice of weak men, who appropriate for their/ 
 ^pwn. uses men's mental property and mental produces. 
 Mr. Clark's fervid admiration — almost adoration — of men 
 
134 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 gifted with literary powers and his love of fair dealing 
 account for his Intolerance of that vulgarity described 
 by the word "plagiarism." That speech shows us how 
 "square" Mr. Clark is in mental honesty — the highest 
 fonn of that virtue. Mr. Clark has mental honesty in an 
 exalted degree. He is" absolutely unswervingly true and 
 loyal to his own mental convictions and conceptions. He 
 would go unflinchingly to oblivion rather than controvert 
 his own mental convictions. "One oTlTie finest" tribtrfceS^lo 
 Clark's character is contained in this paragraph from 
 
 V Greusel : 
 / "Clever writers of the Smart Aleck School of 
 
 /Journalism have long and fraudulently pictured Champ 
 
 ' Clark as a blunt provincial, overlooking the man's rugged 
 honesty, the brilliancy of this famous orator's mind, his 
 solid common sense, his knowledge of music, literature, 
 and art, his storehouse of reading and research, his intui- 
 tions of men's ways. His has been among the picturesque 
 careers of our times, and his honest denunciation of fraud 
 has dictated epoch-making national legislation for nearly 
 
 \^ a generation past. His influence will abide." 
 
 The Congressional Record fairly scintillates with his 
 irony, his sarcasm, his Olympian thunders directed at the 
 shows, frauds, trickery, and the high-handed and whole- 
 sale pilferlngs of those who loot in the name of patriotism. 
 A splendid chapter In any biography of Mr. Clark could 
 be compiled from his speeches on this ver}^ subject. A 
 small volume — indeed a large volume — could be collated 
 
"SQUARE TO THE FOUR WINDS" 135 
 
 from the Congressional Record by review of all his 
 speeches dealing with human obliquity. Yet Mr. Clark 
 is more noted for his good humor, for his abounding faith 
 in the rectitude of man, than for his discoveries of 
 obliquities. 
 
 Mr. Clark himself has met the supreme test as to 
 solidity of character in becoming Speaker of the House. 
 The Speakership is the hardest office in the world to fill, 
 and the hardest to get. Sometimes a man of indifferent 
 ability may be elected to Congress, or even to the Presi- 
 dency, but no mediocre can ever be elected Speaker of the 
 House of Representatives. He is always chosen from the 
 membership, though this is not required by law. The- 
 oretically our Congi-ess is composed of the ablest men in 
 the nation, and practically the House is not far below the 
 theoretical standard. A majority of the members of the 
 House choose one of their number as the presiding officer, 
 and intrust into his hands vast powers over legislation 
 and over the conduct of public business. Any Speaker 
 could make a million by a mere connivance, but no Speaker 
 ever has been recreant to his mighty trust, for all have 
 entered the office poor and have left it as poor as when they 
 entered it — with only rare exceptions. 
 
 Mr. Clark was practically elected Speaker by the popu- 
 lar voice of the American people. During the Congres- 
 sional campaign of 1910 the issue was squarely made 
 between Champ Clark and Speaker Cannon in every dis- 
 trict in the Union. In every Congressional district of the 
 
136 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 nation the public speakers informed the voters that a Re- 
 publican victory would re-elect Cannon to the Speaker- 
 ship, and that a Democratic victory would result in the 
 elevation of Mr. Clark to the Speakership. The vote of 
 the nation was favorable to Clark. The Democratic can- 
 didates for Congress all over the nation pledged themselves 
 thus in advance to make Clark Speaker, a pledge willingly 
 and voluntarily made; they had long recognized him as 
 the most capable and masterful spirit among them. They 
 knew him to be able, impartial, and incorruptible; they 
 knew to a certainty that he would not abuse, nor in any 
 way misuse, the power thus given to him. Not a q.omplaint 
 has been made against the present Speaker by any member 
 of his own party or of the Republican party. 
 
 On the occasion of the anniversary of his birthday, 
 March 7, 1912, Representative Austin paid an eloquent 
 tribute to Mr. Clark. Mr. Austin is a Republican, and 
 his speech was one of several, all attesting Mr. Clark's 
 staunchness of character. Subjoined is a verbatim reprint ^ 
 from the Congressional Record: 
 
 i 
 
 Mr. Austin — Mr. Chairman, I ask for two minutes in 
 which to address the Committee of the Whole. ^ 
 
 Several Members — Make it five. I 
 
 Mr. Austin — Five minutes. 
 
 The Chairman — The gentleman from Tennessee asks 
 unanimous consent to proceed for five minutes. Is there 
 objection.'* 
 
"SQUARE TO THE FOUR WINDS" 137 
 
 There was no objection. 
 
 Mr. Austin — Mr. Chairman, the honorable presiding 
 officer of this House is not only your Speaker, but he is 
 our Speaker. [Applause.] No man who could have been 
 selected on that side of the House for that high and ex- 
 alted office could have met with a warmer approval or 
 endorsement on this side of the House than the Hon. 
 Champ Clark. [Applause.] In the administration of 
 that office he has been kind, considerate, and absolutely 
 just and impartial. [Applause.] 
 
 I wish not only to congratulate him upon his birthday, 
 but I congratulate his party on the wisdom of his selection 
 as their leader in this House. [Applause.] I desire also, 
 Mr. Chairman, on behalf of myself and colleagues on this 
 side, to congratulate the Republican party in having such 
 a man to preside over this Democratic House. [Ap- 
 plause.] I congratulate the American people because we 
 have a typical American in that high place. [Applause.] 
 And, gentlemen, I congratulate you upon your opportu- 
 nity to make him the standard-bearer of the "unterrified" 
 Democracy. [Applause.] He would make, if he had the 
 opportunity, a wise Executive of the American people, 
 one who would have their welfare and interest always up- 
 permost in his mind in the administration of that great 
 office. [Applause.] If we are to have a Democrat, we 
 would all prefer him, but we are going to have a Repub- 
 lican President. 
 
CHAPTER XVI I 
 
 Sparks from Clark's Anvil 
 
 f 
 
 The American mind is so rigged up that it makes no 
 difference how many issues are stated in the platform, the ^ 
 people will settle down to one or two. i 
 
 1 
 
 I am against repealing the Sherman law, but I favor ' 
 amending it so as to make it perfectly clear, if it is not so 
 now, and then enforcing it vigorously. 
 
 When I was a boy down in Kentucky the farmers used 
 to say, "You shouldn't grease a fat hog." And let me tell 
 you the American Woolen Company doesn't need any 
 greasing. 
 
 ^ Taft is the last standpat President of the United 
 States. 
 
 The average citizen believes there's been entirely too 
 y much money spent in politics in the last few years. And 
 he has made up his mind to stop it. 
 
 I believe the people ought to be treated fairly, honestly, 
 candidly, and courageously. They are entitled to that 
 
 138 
 
SPARKS FROM CLARK'S ANVIL 139 
 
 square deal of which we hear so much and see so little. 
 The promises made to carry an election ought to be car- 
 ried out religiously after the election is won. No other 
 rule of political conduct will do to live by. That's all the 
 politics I know. 
 
 When Taft went to Winona, Minn., on a certain mem- 
 orable occasion, it was the most unfortunate trip ever 
 made by a President of the United States, for this reason : 
 Mr. Taft made the statement on that occasion that the 
 Payne-Aldrich tariff bill was the best tariff ever had by 
 the people of the United States. 
 
 Individually, I would rather be accused of horse-stealing 
 than of winning on one platform and then jumping on an- 
 other after I am in. 
 
 Once a horse-thief was captured and hanged in Mon- 
 tana. One of the lynchers pinned a card on the dead 
 thief's back, and on the card was written: "This man 
 was a very bad man in some respects, and a whole lot 
 worse in others." That is the best description of the 
 Payne-Aldrich bill ever made. 
 
 The standpat Republicans say the tariff should be re- 
 vised by its friends — I suppose by the same logic the 
 trusts should be prosecuted by their friends. 
 
140 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 There are hundreds of witty yarns in circulation, used 
 on platforms, pulpits, college halls, and in campaigns, 
 that originated in the fertile brain of Champ Clark. 
 Everything "reminds" him of something, and he straight- 
 way proceeds to draw on his large sense of historical com- 
 parison, for jest or earnest, the result being a story or a 
 parable that flashes like a steel-blue diamond. 
 
 On one occasion Clark replied to a Republican that had 
 called him into encounter, concluding in this characteristic 
 way: 
 
 Mr. Chairman, a few years ago a tenderfoot went out 
 West looking for a grizzly. He was all togged out in the 
 latest style of hunting-suit, and dawned like an incredible 
 vision on the astonished inhabitants west of the Missouri. 
 He asked them where he could find a grizzly, and they 
 told him reverently that at a certain place not far from 
 there grizzlies were numerous, and would come if you 
 whistled. Light-heartedly he took his way to the place 
 indicated, and two days later they buried his mangled re^ 
 mains in the local cemetery. Over his innocent young 
 head they erected a tombstone, whereon they rudely carved 
 this epitaph : "He whistled for the grizzly, and the grizzly 
 came." 
 
 Human nature has not changed one jot nor tittle since 
 Adam walked with Eve amid the glories of Paradise. 
 
 > It is easy to be liberal, even lavish, with other people's 
 money. 
 
SPARKS FROM CLARK'S ANVIL 141 
 
 I want to say this to my Republican friends: In the 
 heat of debate we are all liable to make a good many 
 violent statements. I believe this is true about Repub- 
 licans and about Democrats, too — individually they want 
 to do what is right; that is, the bulk of them do. Take 
 the Republicans one at a time and they are very clever 
 sort of gentlemen, but take them en masse and they will 
 not do to tie to by a jugful. 
 
 It is safe to say that were every Bible now printed in 
 all the languages spoken by the children of men suddenly 
 burned by the public hangman, it might be completely 
 reproduced from the literature and memory of the world. 
 
 Every library is adorned with books purporting to be 
 "Gems of Shakespeare, Byron, or Milton," "Beauties of 
 Pope, Longfellow, or Shelley." Did anybody ever see a 
 book entitled the "Gems of Job," or "Beauties of Paul".? 
 I have not, and why not.^^ For the all-sufficient reason 
 that Job is all gems and Paul is all beauty. 
 
 I have such implicit faith in the proposition that truth 
 is mighty and will prevail, that if I were as rich as John l. 
 D. Rockefeller, I would publish a popular edition of 
 Thomas Jefferson's works, and put a copy in the hands of 
 every voter in the United States, absolutely certain that 
 it would make this country Democratic for all time to 
 come. 
 
\ 
 
 U2 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 In the main human nature is brave, gentle, sympathetic, 
 charitable, and generous. And politicians are only an in- 
 finitesimal portion of the great pulsing race of Adam. 
 
 We reverse the dictum of Mark Anthony and say : "The 
 good that men do lives after them." 
 
 Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold were angels of light 
 when compared with the man who, for gold, lets the 
 Trojan horse of corruption into the fortress of American 
 liberty. 
 
 The mark of vagabondage placed upon the first mur- 
 derer's brow was a badge of honor beside that which 
 should mar the countenance of him who would tamper with 
 a free ballot, the Palladium of human rights. 
 
 The worst enemies of our race are those who debauch 
 public opinion. 
 
 It is written that a man cannot successfully serve God 
 and Mammon. Neither can he become a shameless broker 
 of offices and still remain a patriot. 
 
 When I was a boy attending the law school in Cincin- 
 nati I heard George H. Pendleton say in the Grand Opera 
 ]> House there that "the sweetest incense that ever greeted 
 the nostrils of a public man was the applause of the 
 people." 
 
SPARKS FROM CLARK'S ANVIL 143 
 
 Mr. Chairman, here we are in this ridiculous position: 
 We pay policemen to crack people's skulls more than 
 we pay teachers to improve the inside of their skulls. 
 
 In an earlier day out in Kansas the cashier of a bank 
 stole all the money there was in the bank and blew it in on 
 No. 2 wheat. The depositors caught him and were pro- 
 ceeding to hang him. He said he wanted to make a few 
 remarks and they let him down. He declared that he 
 wanted to make a proposition; that he had no money to 
 give them, because that was all gone, but that he did not 
 want to die an ignominious death by hanging. So he pro- 
 posed to them that they might cut him to pieces, and 
 each one take the piece that suited him best. One old 
 chap on the outside of the crowd yelled out, "The rest of 
 you fellows take what you please, but give me that feller's 
 gall." Now that is what I want. If it ever comes to pass 
 that my friend from Ohio (Grosvenor) is dissected, the 
 rest of you take what you please, but give me his gall. 
 
 I want it written on my tombstone when I am dead that 
 I was one of thirty-five men in this House, out of three 
 hundred and fifty-seven, that had the nerve, the courage, 
 the patriotism, and the good sense to vote against paying 
 Spain $20,000,000 for the Philippines, even after the 
 Senate had ratified the treaty. 
 
 Even Thomas Jefferson himself, who divides with King 
 
144 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Solomon and Lord Bacon the honor of being the wisest 
 man that ever lived, had no adequate conception of the 
 vast importance and far-reaching influence on human 
 affairs of the wondrous bargain in real estate which he 
 secured from the martial Corsican. One of the strangest 
 omissions in all literature was made bj him, when, having 
 sounded all the shoals and depths of honor, he failed to 
 refer in any way to the great Louisiana Purchase in the 
 famous epitaph which he prepared for his own monument, 
 and which runs in this wise: 
 
 "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for 
 religious freedom, and father of the University of Vir- 
 ginia." 
 
 These were magnificent achievements — each ample to 
 give him imperishable renown — for which we are all his 
 debtors forever and forever; but, if he could have com- 
 prehended the full and mar\'elous effects of his unequaled 
 trade with the First Consul, he would have added to that 
 epitaph a fourth claim to the eternal admiration and 
 gratitude of his countrymen, and to undying fame, "the 
 author of the Louisiana Purchase," which alone of itself 
 entitles him to first place among American statesmen. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Reminiscent 
 The Blue Jackass 
 
 Mr. Clark thus discussed his own childhood: 
 "When I was ten years old I went to live with John 
 Call, that I might attend school in the village of Mack- 
 ville. Although Call could neither read nor write, he was 
 a cracking good farmer, and a worthy man. His wife 
 was a motherly woman, and my little sister and I had 
 a good home. I paid for my board by feeding stock and 
 cutting wood. Paii; of my duty morning and evening 
 was to feed thirty head of mules and a blue jackass. One 
 morning I gave the jackass all the com intended for the 
 thirty mules, and went into the house for breakfast. Was 
 absent-minded, you know. My recollection was that I 
 was thinking about my lessons. 
 
 "John Call never knew why I nearly broke my neck 
 getting out of the house before I was fairly seated at the 
 breakfast table. However, I saved the life of the jackass. 
 As it was, he had eaten about fifteen ears of com before 
 I succeeded in clubbing him out of the stable. If the 
 jackass had died, my father, with pockets empty, would 
 have had to pay John Call, and my sister and I would 
 probably have lost a comfortable home. Indeed, I feel 
 
 145 
 
146 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 kind of shaky to this day whenever I think of that greedy 
 blue jackass and my very narrow escape from having his 
 untimely and irregular death laid to my criminal careless- 
 
 TUENED OUT OF ChUECH 
 
 Not long after Mr. Clark took up his abode at Louisi- 
 ana, Mo., there was a steamboat excursion on the Missis- 
 sippi River. The excursionists were mostly young people 
 and there was dancing. Mr. Clark was one of the happiest 
 of the company and he danced all night. The following 
 Lord's Day he attended church, according to his usual 
 custom. 
 
 One of the brothers arose in the congregation and re- 
 ported that one of the flock had gone astray. He related 
 most sorrowfully the wickedness of the delinquent, and 
 delivered a dissertation concerning the dance that took 
 place on the steamboat when Brother Clark had disre- 
 garded the rules of Christian conduct by indulging in the 
 frivolity of that diversion; he moved that Mr. Clark be 
 excluded from the church. The motion carried by unani- 
 mous vote, and Mr. Clark was horrified to find himself 
 cut off from church membership. He had been a devout 
 member of the Christian Church from his earliest youth; 
 he had put himself to great inconvenience to attend Beth- 
 any College, founded by Alexander Campbell, and the 
 
REMINISCENT 147 
 
 chief seat of learning of the Christian Church ; and he had 
 graduated from that institution ; he had been superintend- 
 ent in the Christian Sunday-school at Camden, Kentucky. 
 He believed in his church as he believed in the political 
 tenets of Thomas Jefferson. 
 
 Now, to be thrust out in this unceremonious manner, 
 for unconsciously violating a church rule, with no oppor- 
 tunity for defense, angered him. He strode forth out of 
 the House of God in high dudgeon. He cooled his brow 
 for a while in the summer breeze beneath the trees, and 
 then re-entered the building just as the minister was 
 "opening the doors of the church" for any who wished to 
 join. Mr. Clark walked forward and offered himself for 
 membership. 
 
 There was a murmur of surprise, and the deacons and 
 elders began to hold whispered consultation. The fallen 
 brother had returned with unexpected promptitude, and 
 was asking forgiveness for any wrong committed and de- 
 siring reinstatement. The Bible commands that an erring 
 brother shall be forgiven. There was nothing else to be 
 done in this case. So Mr. Clark was received back into 
 the church, after being out of it for less than one hour. 
 The experience cured him of dancing, and he continues to 
 this day a member of the church in good standing. 
 
 Jeeey Simpson 
 
 Mr. Clark referred in a speech in Congress to his un- 
 
148 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 successful attempt to make Kansas his adopted State. 
 The speech was known far and wide as his "Obscure 
 Heroes" speech. Mr. Clark said: 
 
 "There is one funny circumstance about my brief resi- 
 dence in Kansas. I have a good deal of sympathy, I will 
 say by way of preliminary, with Mr. Jerry Simpson. Last 
 summer I was going home from New York on the train 
 and when I grew weary of having nobody to talk to I 
 went into the smoker and entered into conversation with 
 a man I found there. He had on a white choker and 
 looked like a minister of the gospel. I asked him where 
 he was from and he replied, 'Hutchinson, Kansas.' 
 
 "Then I inquired about the salt wells and things of 
 that kind. Said he, *You seem to know a good deal about 
 Kansas.' 'Yes,' I answered, 'I went out there in 1875 to 
 practice law, and I left because the grasshoppers drove me 
 out of the State, and I don't believe there has been a 
 grasshopper in the State since.' He looked very serious 
 for a minute or two, and then said, 'No, there has not been 
 any grasshoppers there since, but we have something out 
 there that is a d — d sight worse than grasshoppers.' 
 'Good heavens !' I exclaimed, 'what is it ?' 'Why,' replied 
 my clerical-looking friend, 'it is Jerry Simpson,' " 
 
 The $500 Bill 
 
 Once upon a time — and this has never been told — a rail- 
 road man of high degree down that way, with the best of 
 
REMINISCENT 149 
 
 intentions, knowing that Champ Clark's election expenses 
 would be high, in a hot campaign, and that Champ's 
 pocketbook was flat, quietly called on Mrs. Champ Clark 
 and just before leaving handed over an envelope; and 
 after he was gone Mrs. Clark found in it a new five- 
 hundred-dollar bill. Here was a situation. She knew that 
 if she told Champ there would be no living under the same 
 roof with him for a week, such would be his black rage; 
 and besides, the railroad man was honorable, but he had 
 overplayed his part, thoughtlessly, so Mrs. Clark believed. 
 
 She took the five-hundred-dollar bill, slipped it out of 
 sight in a certain place, where women hide money, and 
 kept her guilty secret till after the election. 
 
 Then she told the whole story and handed Champ the 
 five-hundred-dollar bill. 
 
 What did he do? He wrote a fair-minded letter, such 
 as you yourself would like to receive, under similar circum- 
 stances, thanking his friend for the well-intended help, 
 and, inclosing the five-hundred-dollar bill, sent it back. 
 
 Not a line ever came out in the newspapers ; no play 
 to the galleries ; no sensational charges of attempted 
 bribery, so familiar in the creed of the demagogue — but 
 a man's frank letter to a man. To tliis day the two are 
 the best of friends, and there is no reason why they should 
 not continue to remain such to the end. 
 
 — John H. Greusel. 
 
150 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Claek at "Honey Shuck" 
 
 The Clark home, spacious and comfortable and resem- 
 bling a substantial farmer's mansion, stands three blocks 
 east of the court-house, on the edge of a deep ravine, 
 which is crossed by a narrow wooden footbridge. There 
 are several acres of ground, covered with all kinds of na- 
 tive forest trees, many of them festooned with vines, and 
 in the autumn they are loaded with grapes. The name 
 "Honey Shuck" was given to this residence because of two 
 fine, thorny locust trees that stand near the house. 
 
 The chief charm of the place is to be found on the 
 inside, especially when Mr. Clark, with his family, is occu- 
 pying it as a residence. He has here the finest private 
 library in the State of Missouri ; not for show, but for use. 
 Here Mr. Clark may be found when at home surrounded 
 with his books and papers, always busy, but never too 
 busy to receive visitors who may call to see him. The 
 humblest is made welcome to his home with the same unre- 
 served cordiality as the mightiest of the land. 
 
 Annually, in the autumn before the family departs for 
 Washington, there is a public reception given at "Honey 
 Shuck," on which occasion Mrs. Clark, Miss Genevieve 
 Clark, and Bennett Clark aid the big Congressman in re- 
 ceiving his friends, who come for miles, driving to Bowling 
 Green in buggies, carriages, and automobiles. The notice 
 of these annual receptions is published in the papers, and 
 
1 
 
REMINISCENT 161 
 
 simply says that the Clark family will expect their friends 
 without further invitation. Mr. Clark enjoys these re- 
 ceptions and moves about among the guests, discussing 
 the crops, the weather, politics, anything and everything, 
 interspersing the talk with inimitable anecdotes. 
 
 Mrs. Clark, talented, stately, is a great favorite at 
 Bowling Green as she is in Washington, while the daugh- 
 ter, the very picture of her handsome father, with blue 
 eyes and flaxen hair, is the idol of her Pike County friends. 
 Bennett Clark is the future hope of the Ninth Congres- 
 sional district, where no one doubts that he will be in all 
 respects worthy of his distinguished father. 
 
 Mr. Clark has more canes and less use for them than 
 any other man in the county. He cannot refuse these 
 tokens of regard when they are presented by admiring 
 friends. He also has a fine collection of Indian relics, in 
 which he takes great pride. 
 
 Mr. Claek as a Bill Collectoe 
 
 The story goes, though unauthenticated, that when 
 Champ Clark began the practice of law at Louisiana, Mo., 
 he was employed by a certain business firm to collect some 
 old accounts, among them a bill against a farmer living 
 in Pike County. 
 
 He went out to see the farmer and walked up to him and 
 said brusquely, "My name is Clark." The farmer looked 
 at him and said, "Yes, I know your name is Clark." The 
 
152 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 visitor, without a smile, going straight to the business in 
 hand, said: "Old man Blank has a bill against you and 
 wants me to collect it. What are you going to do about 
 it?" The farmer sized up the six-footer and repHed, "Oh, 
 I hardly know, but I guess I'll pay it," which he did on 
 the spot. 
 
 That Pair of Mules 
 
 The avowed purpose of Mr. Clark to drive down Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue behind a team of Pike County mules 
 when he should go to the Capitol to assume the Speaker- 
 ship received wide publicity in the newspapers. Nearly 
 every newspaper in the United States and a few in Canada 
 printed the story, with comments and with comparisons 
 with the story of Thomas Jefferson's riding to the Capitol 
 on horseback and hitching the animal to the fence while 
 he went in to take the oath as President. 
 
 Mr. Clark has long been famous for unique and striking 
 expressions and ideas. On a parallel with this proposition 
 was his declaration that, if he could have his way, every 
 custom-house in the land would be burned down. This set 
 Mr. Clark before the country as a free trader with accen- 
 tuation that no argument could have procured. His prop- 
 osition about the mules dates back some years, and has 
 to do with a story of adventure and the loyalty of friends. 
 
 Luke Emerson, a wealthy stock raiser in Mr. Clark's 
 district, a Republican in politics, but an admirer and con- 
 
REMINISCENT 153 
 
 stituent of the Pike County Congressman, was touring 
 in Europe some years ago. One night he was taking in the 
 sights of London when he was set upon by three robbers. 
 Mr. Emerson promptly killed one of them and crippled 
 the other two. The police came rushing to the spot and, 
 seeing the fallen men, arrested Emerson as the aggressor 
 and hurried him off to prison. In this dilemma the incar- 
 cerated Missourian cabled to Champ Clark. 
 
 Gov. David R. Francis was at the time in Europe, inter- 
 viewing the crowned heads in behalf of the Louisiana Pur- 
 chase Exposition. Clark and Francis were on the best 
 of tenns, having canvassed the State together when Fran- 
 cis was running for Governor. Clark was in the Legisla- 
 ture when Francis was inaugurated the Chief Executive 
 of the State. When Mr. Clark received the cablegram 
 from his friend Emerson he at once communicated with 
 Francis, who hastened to London and easily secured Emer- 
 son's release. Mr. Emerson was very grateful to both 
 Clark and Francis. He subscribed twenty-five hundred 
 dollars then and there, and gave Mr. Francis a check for 
 twenty-five hundred dollars for stock in the exposition. 
 
 When Mr. Clark became a member of the Ways and 
 Means Committee, Mr. Emerson foresaw the Speakership 
 looming in the distance, being perhaps the first man to 
 see Speaker Clark dimly outlined on the horizon. Mr. 
 Emerson made this proposition, "On the day that Mr. 
 Clark shall become Speaker of the House I will present 
 him with the finest span of mules on my farai, provided he 
 
154 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 will drive them down Pennsylvania Avenue once." Mr. 
 Clark is as good a judge of live stock as he is of men, and 
 he accepted Mr. Emerson's offer, considering it a joke. 
 
 Some Old School-Books 
 
 Mr. Clark and Mrs. Clark often revert to their school 
 days and to the books that they studied in childhood, and 
 both take joy in recalling the merits of the old-time text- 
 book. James B. Morrow asked Mr. Clark, "What books 
 have had the greatest influence on your life?" The ques- 
 tion uncovered his philosophy and revealed the head- 
 waters of his inspiration. He answered : " 'Buckle's His- 
 tory of Civilization in England,' which opened many 
 things to me and set me to thinking, and the 'Rhetoric' of 
 George Payn Quackenbos. Of course, I put the Bible 
 above all else." 
 
 These two books led the youthful Clark to study the 
 art of expression, which made him an orator, and political 
 economy, which made him a statesman. He would have 
 been an orator and a statesman anyway, but it is interest- 
 ing to know from what books he received his first and, per- 
 haps, greatest impetus. 
 
 Continuing, Morrow wrote: 
 
 "The year 1862, when Henry Thomas Buckle, hurrying 
 from Egypt to London, died at Damascus, and when 
 Champ Clark, then a youth of twelve, hacked himself on 
 the leg while cutting corn in Kentucky — related incidents, 
 
Copyright, 1912, by Edmonston. 
 
 MISS GENEVIEVE CLARK 
 
 [opposite p. 154 
 
REMINISCENT 155 
 
 in a way, though wide apart geographically — the year 
 1862, as I was about to say, unmistakably impresses itself 
 upon current events, and may possibly compel some 
 changes in the schedules of the tariff bill now (1908) in 
 the toils and pains of Republican unification. 
 
 "It was in October of that year that Champ Clark ap- 
 peared for the first time in public. He was working for 
 John Call, a farmer. There was a picnic in the neigh- 
 borhood, and he had a piece that he wanted to declaim. 
 John Call promised to let him off when he had cut eleven 
 fat shocks of corn, which was a decent day's work for an 
 able-bodied man. Champ cut the corn, beginning before 
 day, and also, in his eagerness and haste, he cut a gash in 
 his leg. Binding his wound, he sped away. An orator 
 was bom that day who has been diligent with his fine 
 talent for talk ever since. 
 
 "At about the same time, perhaps, Buckle was breath- 
 ing his last at the edge of a desert, among heathens and 
 infidels — Buckle, who declared that man is the result of 
 civilization, that therefore civilization cannot be the work 
 of man, and that intellectual progress is wholly a matter 
 of climate, soil, and food. The doctrines and graces of 
 Buckle and Quackenbos, joining and centering themselves 
 in one vigorous personality, have given the country 
 Champ Clark, the Central West its most persistent and 
 glowing prophet, and to the State of Missouri, where per- 
 fect climate, soil, and food, proportioned and mingled by 
 the hand of Nature, produce the only ideal men and 
 
156 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 women in the history of all mankind, its sweetest minstrel 
 and its most masterful advocate. At bottom Champ Clark 
 is a missioner of sunshine. He wanted something large 
 and glorious to talk about. Buckle took him by the hand 
 and led him into the valley of the Mississippi, and there 
 Quackenbos put moving words into his mouth." 
 
 Mrs. Clark fondly recalls the days of her girlhood, when 
 she gave her best efforts to the mastery of "McGuffey's 
 Eclectic Readers" (old series) and "Ray's Arithmetic." 
 These old-fashioned books have honored places to this day 
 on Mrs. Clark's bookshelves. She has adopted these books 
 as her "hobby," inasmuch as she was called upon to have 
 a hobby, which she had not heretofore thought necessary 
 to have. She said in an interview: 
 
 "My search for a hobby came about in this way : Among 
 my duties in Mr. Clark's absence is to look over his mail, 
 answer his correspondence, etc. Some time ago I received 
 a request from a magazine for a three-hundred-word arti- 
 cle on my 'hobby'. I thought and studied and investi 
 gated and dreamed in search of, oh, just any kind of a 
 *hobby.' I discovered that most women — especially club- 
 women — have them. Still, my search was quite in vain 
 I am frank to confess that it is the same as it was. I 
 can't find anything that beats 'McGuffey's Readers' and 
 'Ray's Arithmetic' " 
 
 Her preference for these school-books accords with the 
 expressed opinions of James G. Blaine and Whitelaw Reid 
 She maintains that "McGuffey's Readers," which she 
 
REMINISCENT 157 
 
 studied in the little country schoolhouse down in Calloway 
 County, Missouri, have been one of the greatest forces in 
 her life. She insists that there is nothing in the modem 
 text-books to compare with the moral and religious tone 
 of the stories in those quaint volumes. She committed to 
 memory all the poems in those "Readers," and she has not 
 forgotten them. Especially does she recall the pointed 
 doggerel of "Meddlesome Mattie," the shining virtues of 
 "Grateful Julian," and the horrible fate of the "Idle 
 Schoolboy." 
 
 Many a man and woman who recalls the well-thumbed 
 pages of Webster's old blue-back "Speller," which often 
 went with "Ray's Arithmetic" and the "McGufFey's 
 Readers" in the country schoolhouses of a generation 
 ago, will quite agree with Mrs. Clark in her preference for 
 these sterling old school-books. 
 
CHAPTER XVni 
 
 Various Opinions 
 
 HASTINGS MACADAMS 
 
 (In the St. Louis Republic, November 30, 1910) 
 
 Clark Discusses Committeeships. — Champ Clark 
 reminisces now and then. While in Washington he is a 
 flat dweller. One evening recently, in his cozy apartment, 
 while lolling in a comfortable armchair, he preferred re- 
 trospection to talking of urgent issues. 
 
 "If it were not for the name of the thing," he said, "I 
 would as soon come to Congress a new member and not be 
 appointed to any committee at all." 
 
 This is a startling statement. Committee assignments, 
 which vary greatly in importance, are looked upon as giv- 
 ing members opportunities for distinguishing themselves, 
 which otherwise they would not have. 
 
 "I would be content to serve twenty years without a 
 committee place," he continued, "and would wager that I, 
 or any other man, would rise to a place in the House just 
 commensurate with his abilities. For one who had done 
 
 158 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 159 
 
 pretty well in his State, who had a little local reputation, 
 I got as cold a deal as was ever dealt when I first came 
 to Congress, twenty years ago. The House was Demo- 
 cratic, and then the Speaker, Crisp, put me on the Com- 
 mittee on Old Pensions, almost equivalent to no committee 
 at all, and on the Committee on Claims in which there is 
 ample opportunity for hard work and no opportunity for 
 glory. 
 
 "The silver bill was up. It was a big session, and the 
 big guns were using all the time. Like most new mem- 
 bers, I wanted the speech to make a good impression. I 
 was told that I might get in at night, but certainly could 
 not have the chance in the daytime. I studied about it 
 long enough to find out the working of the five-minute rule, 
 and I fixed up a speech on the tariff. I crammed, and sat 
 up nights framing all the epigrams that I could, and 
 practiced to find out how much talk took five minutes. 
 I divided the speech, about an hour and a quarter of it, 
 into five-minute sections, and memorized each section. I 
 knew them as well as I know the Ten Commandments. 
 
 "One day, when the five-minute rule was in force and the 
 House crowded, I got the floor and turned loose for five 
 minutes ; and, after holding them pretty well, got my time 
 extended five minutes more. A little later I got up again, 
 and then had my time extended three times, and so on until 
 I had delivered my speech. 
 
 "If importance is to be attached to committeeships," 
 continued Mr. Clarkj using an informal and conversational 
 
160 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 style, "I believe that the bottom place on the Ways and I 
 Means Committee is fully as good as the chairmanship of 
 most other Committees. It was not so very long ago, eight 
 years, I think, when the Fifty-eighth Congress was organ- 
 izing. John Sharp Williams was the Democratic leader. 
 I then ranked first among the Democrats of the Com- 
 mittee on Foreign Affairs. John came to me and said he 
 wanted me to go on the Ways and Means Committee. I 
 hedged, saying I was close to the top of a good Committee, 
 and, if the House went Democratic, might count on being 
 chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. 'Champ,' 
 said John, 'I need you over there. Republican speakers have 
 packed the Committee with protection Democrats, and I've 
 got to have you to help me in tariff debates on the floor.' 
 Well, I agreed to make the change. 
 
 "In four years, such was luck, I passed from the bottom 
 to the top among the Democrats of this important com- 
 mittee. John Sharp Williams left the House to run for 
 the Senate. Robertson, of Louisiana, retired. Swanson, 
 of Virginia, quit to run for Governor, McClellan resigned 
 to become Mayor of New York, and Cooper, of Texas, was 
 beaten for the nomination." 
 
 During all the eight years the tariff was being con- 
 stantly agitated in the country. Finally, a revision be- 
 came inevitable; the Republican National Convention of 
 1908 was forced to promise it. In such a situation, the 
 ranking Democrat on the Wa3^s and Means Committee 
 was the logical selection for Democratic leader; and the 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 161 
 
 leader, control of the House being won, is now the logical 
 choice for Speaker. 
 
 With a Span of Mules 
 
 george griswold hill 
 
 (In the New York Tribune, November 13, 1910) 
 
 "Worked as a hired hand, 
 "Clerked in a country store, 
 "Edited a country newspaper, 
 "And finally practised law." 
 
 — Champ Clark, in his own hiography 
 
 When a member of the next House of Representatives 
 rises and says, "Mr. Speaker," he will not be addressing 
 "the gentleman from Danville, 111." but "the gentleman 
 from Pike County, Mo." At least, that is the prediction 
 of v/ell-informed Democrats, and they ought to know. As- 
 suming, therefore — and in the light of the large Demo- 
 cratic majority elected last Tuesday — that for once a 
 Democratic prediction will come true, when you enter 
 the visitors' gallery of the next House you will no 
 longer observe the stately form and "affidavit-like" face 
 of "Uncle Joe" Cannon surmounting the marble rostrum 
 opposite, but instead you will perceive a typical South- 
 erner, stout rather than lean, with clean shaven face and 
 a somewhat severe expression, but one that suggests that 
 if only refractory Democrats and exasperatingly logical 
 
162 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Republicans would permit, it might break into an expan- 
 sive smile. 
 
 Champ Clark is a man at whom most people would look 
 more than once, whom few people would mistake for any- 
 thing but a Democrat. Adorned with his broad, black 
 slouch hat it would be impossible to mistake him for any- 
 thing but a Democratic politician. He stands six feet 
 one inch in his stockings, weighs about two hundred 
 pounds, and, except when he is "orating," has a some- 
 what commanding presence. When he "orates" he assumes 
 a stoop which sometimes resembles a crouch, and were it 
 not for the force and sobriety of his utterances some of his 
 gestures would seem actually grotesque. 
 
 Bom in 1850 in Kentucky, and immigrating as a com- 
 paratively young man to Missouri, Champ Clark combines 
 the spread-eagle eloquence of the Blue-Grass State with 
 the indomitability of the Missouri mule. An early, but 
 brief experience in Kansas, whence he was driven by grass- 
 hoppers, imparted to him those vagaries of political and 
 economic view which the "insurgents" admire and the 
 Democrats adore, and which mark him as the logical 
 leader of a Democratic House. 
 
 Prepares for His Career — A well-educated, in fact, a 
 cultivated man, despite his propensity for mules and meta- 
 phors, he early demonstrated his love of oratory. When 
 only twelve years old he delivered an oration at a country 
 picnic in Kentucky. When twenty-three, after having been 
 graduated from Bethany College and the Cincinnati Law 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 163 
 
 School, he became president of Marshall College, being 
 the youngest college president in the land. Of his bril- 
 liant attainments there was little question, and as a peda- 
 gogue he might have achieved an enviable career, but fate 
 had marked him for a politician, and he was too wise to 
 resist its promptings. As if with a prescience almost in- 
 credible, young Clark determined to abandon his collegiate 
 career, and still further to fit himself for the position of 
 a great leader of the Democracy, he became the proprietor 
 and editor of a Missouri newspaper, which he conducted 
 with a loyalty to the Democracy wholly oblivious of politi- 
 cal facts or economic truths. The sound qualities of the 
 man who had been chosen by fate to be a Democratic 
 Speaker were abundantly dem.onstrated, however, when he 
 came to sell his newspaper property. He sold it back to 
 the man from whom he purchased it — and at a profit. That 
 he might acquire the bucolic point of view so essential to 
 the Missouri politician, Mr. Clark conducted a series of 
 agricultural experiments on a Kansas farm, but, as has 
 been told, the grasshoppers were his undoing and he re- 
 turned to Missouri a wiser if a poorer man. 
 
 Having done a little of everything and nothing for 
 long, and having established an enviable reputation at the 
 Pike County bar, Mr. Clark decided, in 1888, that he was 
 well fitted to enter upon the serious work of his chosen 
 career. He ran for the Missouri Legislature and was 
 elected. That he was a genuinely good fellow, possessed 
 then as now of many attractive qualities, is abundantly 
 
164 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 proven by the fact that at least one staunch Republican 
 voted for his nomination. That was in Missouri, and at a 
 time when Republican votes did not count much in that 
 State unless they were cast for Democrats, so the Repub- 
 lican was excusable. This Republican supporter did not 
 vote in the primaries, however, but in the grand jury, 
 for, strange as it may seem, it was a grand jury which 
 gave the Pike County statesman his first boost into politi- 
 cal life. It was before the grand jury that ]\Ir. Clark 
 had been practising as prosecuting attorney, and so deeply 
 was the jury impressed with his ability that it voted 
 unanimously to nominate him for the Legislature, paid all 
 the primary expenses, and had the satisfaction of seeing 
 its judgment confirmed in the primaries and ratified at the 
 election. 
 
 Feom Pike County to Washington — It was in 1892 
 that Mr. Clark was first elected to Congress. Two years 
 later, when Missouri sent eleven Republicans to the House 
 out of a delegation of fourteen, the future Democratic 
 Speaker was defeated for reelection by a music teacher. 
 And it was right there that Mr. Clark's indomitability 
 went into action. He went to work immediately to demon- 
 strate to the Ninth Missouri District that the music 
 teacher was out of harmony with the district, that he was 
 a discordant note in the House. He promoted fugues and 
 feuds enough to drive an ordinary music teacher insane. 
 He convinced his district, and the beating that he gave to 
 that professor of harmonies two years later would have 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 165 
 
 been scandalous treatment to accord a kettledrum. Then 
 and there the Ninth Missouri District acquired the habit 
 of sending Champ Clark to Congress, and it has been doing 
 it ever since. 
 
 It has been said of Champ Clark that he is "a Democrat 
 by instinct." It is certainly true that he has always been 
 "agin the government," and there is little reason to hope 
 that as Democratic Speaker during a Republican adminis- 
 tration anything will work his conversion. Early in his 
 career as a member of the House he was appointed to the 
 much coveted Foreign Affairs Committee, but he was not 
 happy there. He found the intricacies of foreign affairs 
 as boring as Henry Cabot Lodge finds them interesting. 
 He was wholly incapable of putting himself in the place 
 of the foreigner, of seeing through his eyes, or of perceiv- 
 ing the significance w^hich foreigners are likely to attach 
 to little things. He has a large taste for figures, a certain 
 grasp of economies, and an extraordinary memory for 
 detail. Of literature, as such, at least for that large class 
 of literature which makes demands on the imaginative 
 faculties, the Pike County statesman is intolerant. In a 
 word. Champ Clark lacks imagination. It was not until 
 he had rendered long service in the House that he achieved 
 his ambition to become a member of the Committee on 
 Ways and Means, but once there he amply demonstrated 
 his capacit}^ for work. As a cross-examiner of witnesses 
 he is incisive and penetrating, and when the tariff bill was 
 under consideration he rendered valuable service not only 
 
166 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 to his party but often to the Republican Chairman, Sereno 
 Payne. 
 
 As AN Orator. — It is as an orator, however, that Mr. 
 Clark has achieved greatest distinction. Despite certain 
 limitations, he is a really great orator. Mr. Justice 
 Brewer, in his work, "Best Orations of the World," in- 
 cluded Mr. Clark's eulogy of Gen. Frank P. Blair, and no 
 one who has heard the Missouri statesman at his best can 
 have failed to be entertained and sometimes instructed. 
 Champ Clark has not only read the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, the Constitution, and Washington's Farewell 
 Address, but he has also masticated, swallowed, and assimi- 
 lated them. He once committed them to memory. Now he 
 no longer recalls their phraseology, because he has made 
 it his own, and thinks and speaks it. Occasionally, just by 
 way of variety, he speaks the language of Patrick Henry, 
 but even that he does unconsciously. But while he is an 
 orator, he is not a rhetorician, and while he is often 
 eloquent, it is, perhaps, in the running exchange of debate 
 that he most shines. 
 
 In action Champ Clark becomes enthused by his own 
 fervor and emits oratorical pyrotechnics like a Vesuvius 
 on a rampage. Metaphor and invective, sarcasm and 
 humor, are all at his command. As he works himself up 
 to the forensic frenzy which usually characterizes his per- 
 oration, the Republicans among his hearers should be 
 writhing in their consciousness of guilt — and perhaps they 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 167 
 
 would be, were they not so immensely entertained by the 
 Missourian in action. Indeed, Champ Clark is always at 
 his best in a fury of denunciation. Excoriating that ven- 
 erable old figure of bygone Buckeye politics, Gen. Charles 
 H. Grosvenor, he was in his element. And on such occa- 
 sions he strove to emphasize his remarks by a singular 
 gesture — perhaps posture would be the better word. Grip- 
 ping each side of his desk tightly, he would crouch like a 
 cat about to spring, and then slowly shake his hands from 
 side to side as if he had his victim in his teeth. Occasion- 
 ally General Grosvenor and Mr. Clark met on the Chau- 
 tauqua platforms, and when they did the sparks flew as in 
 an old-fashioned smithy. It is really unfortunate that, 
 as Speaker, Mr. Clark will have so little opportunity to 
 talk, for the chief task of the Speaker is to listen, not to 
 speak. 
 
 His Personal Side. — Personally Mr. Clark is a genial, 
 kindly man. It is one of his most cherished recollections 
 that when he was prosecuting attorney he let off with 
 fines twenty-five young men, each indicted for his first of- 
 fense, and each of whom he might have sent to the peni- 
 tentiary, and it is with the utmost satisfaction that he re- 
 lates that of the number twenty-four are good and useful 
 citizens to-day. He is popular with his colleagues in the 
 House, and he has a keen sense of humor, despite the fact 
 that he asserts that a public man is better off without 
 
168 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 such sense ; that it is likely to be more hurtful than helpful 
 to men in public life. 
 
 Speaker Reed Mr. Clark once declared to be "in pure 
 mentality one of the greatest Americans in history." 
 Politically he was compelled to criticise Mr. Reed's some- 
 what arbitrary control of the House. And yet it is en- 
 tirely probable that none better than Mr. Clark appre- 
 ciated the extraordinary conditions with which Mr. Reed 
 was called upon to deal, and it would not be surprising 
 if he largely sympathized with the drastic measures which 
 the Speaker employed to combat filibustering tactics of 
 an extraordinarily exasperating character. It is certainly 
 a safe prediction that if Mr. Clark did not then entirely 
 sympathize with the methods of the Maine statesman he 
 will do so before he has long occupied the Speaker's chair. 
 
 An Outside View of Clark and His District 
 
 (In Ainslee^s MagazinCy june, 1900) 
 
 No one that has met the honorable Congressman from the 
 Ninth Missouri would doubt that Champ Clark came from 
 a part of the country as characterful as himself. His 
 broad face, stout body, keen gray eyes, and restful manner 
 mark him emphatically for the West. There is something 
 in the pursed lips, set against even teeth, and broad- 
 brimmed hat, pushed genially back upon the forehead, the 
 heave of the body by which he rests, now on one foot, now 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 169 
 
 on the other, that shows him to hail from a region where 
 easy manners and aggressive independence are still the 
 rule in the individual and not the exception. When he 
 utters his slow, measured "I hope you all will excuse me," 
 he settles conjecture. 
 
 "You all" is good Missouri for you. In famous Pike 
 County, where he lives, you will hear nothing better than 
 this, and he gets his style from his constituents. 
 
 The Ninth Missouri is proud of Champ Clark. The 
 whole State admires him, but the Ninth considers him a 
 fine type of itself. There you will hear him spoken of by 
 his good, old, hide-bound Democratic supporters as you 
 hear fathers speak of their sons. 
 
 "Champ's a pretty able man," they will tell you, with 
 mental resen^e. "He's as smart as a whip." 
 
 If you imagine this is poor praise, accuse Champ Clark 
 of being a poor twig of Democracy. Then you will hear 
 something which will make clear why he is invincible in his 
 district. When Missourians of the old school like a man, 
 they like him all over. 
 
 "Oh, Clark's got good friends out here," one said to 
 me. "His best ones 'ud go through hell and water to 
 save liim, I guess. He's as smart a man as you'd want 
 for that job." 
 
 To understand a political character of this sort we 
 must understand Iiis district. The average Congressman 
 at Washington, neatly dressed, smooth-mannered, and 
 pleasantly conversing upon broad American principles, 
 
170 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 savors little of the crude condition from which he has 
 sprung. In the luxurious atmosphere of Washington the 
 rough country-trailer walks a different man. He meets 
 a class who may never have seen the rough district with 
 which he is so familiar. He enters an entirely different 
 world, a world where his position is accepted, where the 
 means by which he has risen are unrecognized. Here he 
 is a Congressman, pure and simple, with all the dignity 
 that attaches to the ofBce, with all the smallness that it 
 may indicate. 
 
 Back of him may be, as in the present case, a country 
 and a people wholly strange to the capital atmosphere. 
 The land is of meager population, of crude habitation, of 
 old-fashioned ideas, of simple, almost primitive amuse- 
 ments. The long roads lie untraveled save by the hardest 
 necessity. The fields may be cultivated in the crudest 
 way. The majority may not see a railroad train once in 
 three weeks. A daily newspaper may be a rarity, except 
 in the case of the best local families. The fathers are 
 rough and husky — their one comfort, their home; their 
 one diversion, politics. The mothers are excellent house- 
 wives, whose world consists of husband and children. The 
 children, hale, quiet-mannered youngsters, have a drawl 
 of voice and manner which would make their city cousins 
 stare. Often they are studious, and of that solid stuff 
 which reinforces the cities with brain and brawn, and gives 
 to the world men of mark. When you find such a district 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 171 
 
 you will sometimes find a man who represents it. Such a 
 representative is Champ Clark. 
 
 The honorable Congressman from the Ninth has a dis- 
 trict which is as interesting as he is. It is one of the 
 fifteen gerrymandered portions of Missouri which have 
 sent to Washington such men as Dockery, of Gallatin, 
 Cowherd, of Kansas City, Bland, of Lebanon. 
 
 It was the Eighth, which adjoins Clark's district on the 
 west, that, barring one term, kept Bland at Washing- 
 ton from 1873 until the day of his death. It is the Third 
 that has done nearly as well by Dockery. The Ninth is 
 one which is gerrymandered, but not in Clark's favor. It 
 has a great many more Democrats than it needs to elect 
 a Congressman. 
 
 "We was just a-wasting votes up here until we decided 
 to help the Thirteenth," one white-haired patriarch said 
 to me, "so we threw out two counties and took in Gas- 
 conade and Crawford. They're naturally Republican, but 
 when they's in with us they can't do much damage." 
 
 These two sad-fated Republican counties now cast their 
 votes in vain. A rousing 3,000 majority greets the Dem- 
 ocratic nominee, whoever he may be, provided the Demo- 
 crats are not quarreling among themselves, which happens 
 not infrequently. 
 
 In this district the voters are known personally to the 
 leaders. The leaders are solid men of the community. 
 An element of individuality comes into play, on which 
 the leaders must count. The average citizen knows his 
 
172 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 own district as he knows his best horse. He can tell jou 
 just what it can do politically and financially. He is 
 proud of its towns and country districts, of its fertility 
 and beauty. The man of the Ninth sees it in his mind's 
 eye, a long, straggling line of counties shaped almost 
 like the continent of Africa. He knows where the good 
 towns are, where the rich valleys lie, where the streams 
 run. He has heard of the political squabbles of this place, 
 the financial difficulties of that. Jonesburg, Montgomery 
 County, is going to have a new opera house? So it is, 
 to be sure. When you tell him that, it is of the same 
 nature to him as information concerning his brother's eld- 
 est boy's success. It is all family information. 
 
 The residents of such districts are proud enough to 
 want a good leader. It is the district they love, more 
 than the Congressman who represents it ; but when the 
 Congressman arises, who, by the very qualities which they 
 admire, distinguishes himself, who has somewhat about 
 him of the atmosphere and soil which they are accustomed 
 to, that man comes to embody for them the spirit of their 
 local world. His manners are the manners of the district ; 
 his sentiments are the sentiments of the district. He 
 walks abroad shod as they are shod, and strong as they 
 are strong. He comes to have their feelings, as well as 
 their virtues, and at last he is their representative. No 
 one can beat him. There is no need for any one to try. 
 
 It takes a sterling sort of people to make a sterling 
 leader. The men must have their independence, the women 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 173 
 
 their virtue. Out in the Ninth they have both. One still 
 finds family life there operating almost upon a patriarchal 
 basis. It is a region of large families, as well as of large 
 convictions. The father who has nine stalwart sons is not 
 a rarity. 
 
 "I just met Brother Weemans over here," said Con- 
 gressman Clark, while canvassing Gasconade County in 
 1896. It was during one of those long buggy rides over 
 rough roads from one small town to another, and all sorts 
 of topics were seized upon to relieve the tedium. "He's 
 got nine strapping boys, and had 'em all there to shake 
 hands with me. Said he wished he had nine girls, so he 
 could make 'em all marry Democrats who would vote for 
 me also. Good old man, Weemans is." There are families 
 much larger and just as loyal. They live and propagate 
 in one region, and finally become exceedingly numerous 
 and of one name. There is a family of Tates in Mont- 
 gomery County, seventy or more strong, all living in one 
 neighborhood, and all Democrats. A family of Homans 
 in another section of the district is equally numerous and 
 equally Democratic. Family feeling does not end with 
 one household. It extends to the homes of every son and 
 daughter, and to the homes of their children and their 
 children's children in turn. Speak of the Swart family 
 out there and you are thought to be refen*ing to several 
 scores of Swarts, scattered all over the district. Family 
 reunions are com.mon, and embrace such multitudes that 
 
174 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 camping out is resorted to, and a picnic indulged in, while 
 they last. 
 
 Champ Clark has little, if any, blood kin, as the word 
 is there, but a vast number of political and social friends 
 who are as close as blood could make them. Most of the 
 Democrats of the nine counties claim a speaking acquaint- 
 ance with him. Most of them have entertained him at one 
 time or another. He has stopped at their gates, dined at 
 their tables, slept for a night in their best spare bed- 
 rooms. He has talked politics with the fathers, and en- 
 couraged and strengthened the political views of the sons. 
 
 Among his chief adherents you find men who have sacri- 
 ficed not only time and labor, but also hard-earned money, 
 in the cause of their political idol. In almost every case 
 they expect nothing and receive nothing. Their reward 
 is the triumph of their affections and prejudice. 
 
 "I went to my brother Morg," said one of Clark's sup- 
 porters, in describing the latter's first Congressional fight, 
 "and begged him to let up on Clark. 'It doesn't make 
 any difference to you,' I said. *Why do you help my 
 enemies .^^ You know his enemies are my enemies. For 
 God's sake, turn once now and help me.' " 
 
 "Did he.?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, he did." 
 
 "And why did you make such a fight for the man.'^" 
 
 "I liked him. He's my friend. He is a friend of all my 
 friends." 
 
VARIOUS OPINIONS 175 
 
 In the nine counties there are but 153,000 people, 
 60,000 of whom are gathered into small towns. The re- 
 maining 93,000 are scattered over 3,000,000 acres of land. 
 If all families were of the State's average size — five and 
 one-half members — and they were evenly scattered over 
 the district, there would be one such family to every 
 two hundred acres. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Excerpts from Clark's Speeches and Lectures 
 
 eulogy on francis preston blair 
 
 {Delivered in the House of Representatives 
 
 February 4, 1899) 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri: Mr. Speaker, when Governor 
 B. Gratz Brown, one of the most brilliant of all Missouri 
 statesmen, on an historic occasion said, "Missouri is a 
 grand State and deserves to be grandly governed," he 
 uttered an immortal truth. He might have added with 
 equal veracity, "She deserves to be grandly represented 
 in the Congress of the United States," and she has been 
 in the main, particularly in the Senate, where paucity of 
 members and length of tenure more surely fix a man in the 
 public eye than service in the House. 
 
 Of Missouri's twenty-one Senators there were fourteen 
 Democrats, one Whig, and six Republicans. Of one hun- 
 dred and fifty-six years of Senatorial representation to 
 which she has been entitled, two were not used, six fell 
 to Whigs, twenty-two to Republicans, and one hundred 
 and twenty-six to Democrats. 
 
 This roster of Missouri Senators is an array of names 
 
 176 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 177 
 
 of which the nation, no less than the State, may well be 
 proud. There are many great men — scarcely a small 
 one — In the list. 
 
 Missouri Is proud of her Immeasurable physical re- 
 sources, which will one day make her facile princeps 
 among her sisters; but there Is something else of which 
 she Is prouder still, and that Is her splendid citizenship, 
 consisting at this day of nearly four million industrious. 
 Intelligent, patriotic, progressive, law-abiding. God- 
 fearing people. 
 
 When questioned as to her riches she could with pro- 
 priety imitate the example and quote the words of Cor- 
 nelia, the mother of the heroic Gracchi, and, pointing to 
 her children, say truthfully and pridefully, "These are 
 my jewels." 
 
 In sending Thomas Hart Benton and the younger 
 Francis Preston Blair to represent her forever in the great 
 American Valhalla, where the effigies of a nation's immor- 
 tal worthies do congregate, Missouri made a most happy, 
 fitting selection from among a host of her distinguished 
 sons. These two men complement each other to an 
 extraordinary degree. Really their lives formed but one 
 career — a great career — a career of vast Import to the 
 State and to the nation. Both were Southerners by birth ; 
 both were soldiers of the Republic; both members of this 
 House; both Senators of the United States; both added 
 largely to American renown; both left spotless reputa- 
 tions as a heritage to their countrymen. 
 
178 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 In this era of good feeling it may seem ungracious to 
 talk much about the Civil War, and may appear like 
 "sweet bells jangled, out of tune"; but this is an historic 
 occasion, Frank Blair is an historic personage, and the 
 truth should be told about him. All his deeds with which 
 history will concern itself are those which he performed 
 in matters pertaining to that unhappy period — either 
 before, during, or after. A speech about him and without 
 mention of these things would be like the play of "Hamlet" 
 with the Prince of Denmark left out. 
 
 His Birthplace. — Bom in the lovely blue-grass region 
 of Kentucky, reared in Washington City, in the excite- 
 ment and swirl of national politics, spending his man- 
 hood's days in St. Louis, the great city of the Iron Crown, 
 his opportunities for growth were of the best, and he 
 developed according to the expectations of his most san- 
 guine friends. 
 
 Within a radius of seventy-five miles of Lexington, 
 Kentucky, where Frank Blair first looked forth upon this 
 glorious world, more orators of renown were bom or have 
 exercised their lungs and tongues than upon any other 
 plat of rural ground of the same size upon the habitable 
 globe. 
 
 Whether the inspiring cause is the climate, the soil, 
 the water, or the limestone, I do not know, but the fact 
 remains. 
 
 Soldier. — Frank Blair was a soldier of two wars. He 
 received his "baptism of fire" during our brief but glorious 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 179 
 
 conflict with Mexico, being a lieutenant in that small, 
 heroic band of Missourians, who, under Col. Alexander 
 W. Doniphan, made the astounding march to Santa Fe, 
 Chihuahua, Sacramento, and Monterey — an achievement 
 which added an empire to the Union and which threw into 
 the shade that far-famed performance of Xenophon and 
 his ten thousand which has been acclaimed by the histo- 
 rians of twenty centuries. 
 
 In the Civil War he began as a colonel, fought his way 
 to a ma j or-generalcy , and was pronounced by General 
 Grant to be one of the two best volunteer officers in the 
 service, John A. Logan, "the Black Eagle of Illinois," 
 who married a Missouri wife, being the other. In Sher- 
 man's famous march to the sea Blair commanded a corps, 
 and was considered the Marshal Ney of that araiy. 
 
 The Fight for Missouri. — Early impressions are 
 never effaced ; and it may be — who knows .^ — that the fact 
 that when a child he sat upon the knee of Andrew Jack- 
 son, received the kiss of hereditary friendship from his 
 lips, and heard words of patriotism fall burning from his 
 tongue, determined his course in the awful days of '61, 
 for Jackson himself, could he have returned to earth in 
 the prime of life, could not have acted a sterner or more 
 heroic part than did his foster son. 
 
 The fact that Andrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Benton, 
 and the elder Francis Preston Blair were sworn friends 
 most probably caused young Frank to settle in St. Louis, 
 a performance which, though little noted at the time, in 
 
180 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 all human probability kept Missouri in the Union, and 
 thereby defeated the efforts of the Southern people for 
 independence; for had it not been for Blair's cool cour- 
 age, clear head, unquailing spirit, indefatigable industry, 
 commanding influence, and rare foresight, the Southern 
 sympathizers in Missouri would have succeeded in taking 
 her into the Confederacy. 
 
 When we consider the men who were against Blair it is 
 astounding that he succeeded. To say nothing of scores, 
 then unknown to fame, who were conspicuous soldiers in 
 the Confederate army and who have since held high politi- 
 cal position, arrayed against him were the Governor of 
 the State, Claiborne F. Jackson ; the Lieutenant Governor, 
 Thomas C. Reynolds; ex-United States Senator and ex- 
 Vice-President David R. Atchison; United States Sena- 
 tors Trusten Polk and James S. Green, the latter of whom 
 had no superior in intellect or as a debater upon this con- 
 tinent; Waldo P. Johnson, elected to succeed Green in 
 March, 1861, and the well-beloved ex-Governor and 
 ex-Brigadier-General in the Mexican War, Sterling Price, 
 by long odds the most popular man in the State. 
 
 No man between the two oceans drew his sword with 
 more reluctance, or used it with more valor, than "Old 
 Pap Price." The statement is not too extravagant or 
 fanciful for belief that had he been the sole and absolute 
 commander of the Confederates who won the battle of 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 181 
 
 Wilson's Creek, he would have rescued Missouri from the 
 Unionists. 
 
 The thing that enabled Blair to succeed was his settled 
 conviction from the first that there would be war — a war 
 of coercion. While others were hoping against hope that 
 war could be averted, or, at least, that Missouri could be 
 kept out of it, even if it did come — while others were mak- 
 ing constitutional arguments ; while others were temporiz- 
 ing and dallying — he acted. Believing that the questions 
 at issue could be settled only by the sword, and also believ- 
 ing in Napoleon's maxim, "God fights on the side of the 
 heaviest battalions," he grimly made ready for the part 
 which he intended to play in the bloody drama. 
 
 A Leader. — The old Latin dictum runs, ''Poeta nascl- 
 tur, non fit.'" The same is true of the leader of men — he 
 is born, not made. 
 
 What constitutes the quality of leadership, Mr. 
 Speaker? You do not know. I do not know. None of us 
 knows. No man can tell. 
 
 Talent, genius, learning, courage, eloquence, greatness 
 in many fields we may define with something approximat- 
 ing exactness ; but who can infoj-m us as to the constituent 
 elements of leadership? We all recognize the leader .the 
 moment we behold him ; but what entitles him to that dis- 
 tinction is, and perhaps must forever remain, one of the 
 unsolved mysteries of psychology. 
 
 Talent, even genius, does not make a man a leader, for 
 some men of the profoundest talents, others of the most 
 
182 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 dazzling genius, have been servile followers, and have de- 
 based their rich gifts from God to the flattery of despots. 
 Most notable among those was Lord Bacon, the father of 
 the inductive philosophy, who possessed the most exquisite 
 intellect ever housed in a human skull, and whose spirit 
 was so abject and so groveling that he was not unjustly 
 described in that blistering, scornful couplet by Alexander 
 Pope: 
 
 "If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin'd, 
 "The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind!" 
 
 Courage is not synonymous with the quality of leader- 
 ship, though necessary to it, for some of the bravest sol- 
 diers that ever met death upon the battlefield and defied 
 him to his face were amazingly lacking in that regard. 
 
 Learning does not render a man a leader, for some of 
 the greatest scholars of whom history tells were wholly 
 without influence over their fellow-men. Eloquence does 
 not make a leader, for some of the world's greatest orators, 
 among them Cicero, have been the veriest cravens ; and 
 no craven can lead men. 
 
 Indeed, learning, eloquence, courage, talents, and ge- 
 nius altogether do not make a leader. 
 
 But whatever the quality is, people recognize it in- 
 stinctively and inevitably follow the man who possesses it. 
 
 Frank Blair was a natural leader. 
 
 Yet during his career there were finer scholars in Mis- 
 souri than he, though he was an excellent scholar, a grad- 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 183 
 
 uate of Princeton ; there were more splendid orators, 
 though he ranked with the most convincing and persua- 
 sive ; there were profounder lawyers, though he stood high 
 at the bar ; there were better mixers, though he had cordial 
 and winning manners; there were men, perhaps, of 
 stronger mental force, though he was amply endowed 
 with brains, so good a judge of human nature as Abraham 
 Lincoln saying of him, "He has abundant talents"; there 
 were men as brave, though he was of the bravest, but as a- 
 leader he overtopped them all. 
 
 Believing sincerely that human slavery was wrong 
 per se, and that it was of most evil to the States where 
 it existed, he fought it tooth and nail, not from sympathy 
 for the negroes so much as from affection for the whites, 
 and he created the Republican party in Missouri before 
 the Civil War — a most hazardous performance in that day 
 and latitude. At its close, when in his judgment his party 
 associates had become the oppressors of the people and 
 the enemies of liberty, he left them, and, lifting in his 
 mighty arms the Democracy, which lay bleeding and 
 swooning in the dust, he breathed into its nostrils the 
 breath of life — another performance of extraordinary 
 hazard. 
 
 This man was of the stuff out of which martyrs are 
 made, and he would have gone grimly, undauntedly, un- 
 flinchingly, and defiantly to the block, the scaffold, or the 
 stake in defense of any cause which he considered just. 
 Though he was imperious, tempestuous, dogmatic, and 
 
184 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 impetuous, though no danger could swerve him from the 
 path of duty, though he gave tremendous blows to his 
 antagonists and received many of the same kind, he had 
 infinite compassion for the helpless and the weak, and to 
 the end his heart remained as tender as a little child's. 
 
 When he came out of the SLvmy, with his splendid mili- 
 tary and civil record, it may be doubted whether there 
 was an official position, however exalted, beyond his reach, 
 if he had remained with the Republicans. I have always 
 believed, and do now believe, that by severing his connec- 
 tion with them he probably threw away the vice-presidency 
 — possibly the presidency itself — a position for which 
 most statesmen pant even as the heart panteth for the 
 waterbrook. During his long, stormy, and vicissitudinous 
 career he always unhesitatingly did what he thought was 
 right for right's sake, leaving the consequences to take 
 care of themselves. That he was ambitious of political 
 preferment there can be no question ; but office had no 
 charais for him, if it involved sacrifice of principle or com- 
 promise of conscience. 
 
 This great man, for great he was beyond even the 
 shadow of a doubt, enjoyed the distinction unique among 
 statesmen of being hated and loved in turn by allMis- 
 sourians, of changing his political affiliations violently 
 twice long after he had passed the formative and efferves- 
 cent period of youth, and, while spending nearly his entire 
 life in the hurly-burly of politics, of dying at last mourned 
 by every man and woman in the State whose good opinion 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 185 
 
 was worth possessing. In that respect his career is with- 
 out a parallel. Bom a Democrat, he served in this House 
 as a Republican, in the Senate as a Democrat, and died 
 finally in the political faith of his fathers. 
 
 Change of party affiliations by a man of mature age 
 is nearly always a painful performance — generally injuri- 
 ous to his fame ; but Blair's two complete changes of base 
 appear to have increased the respect in which men held 
 him, and the secret of this anomaly is that in each instance 
 he quit a triumphant and arrogant majority, with which 
 he was prime favorite, to link his fortunes with a feeble 
 and hopeless minority — proof conclusive of his rectitude 
 of purpose; whereas, if he had abandoned a minority to 
 join a majority, his honesty of motive might have well 
 been impugned. 
 
 Benton's scorn of his opponents was so lofty and so 
 galling, the excoriations he inflicted — aye, lavished — upon 
 them bred such rancor in their hearts, the lash with which 
 he scourged them left such festering wounds, that they 
 never forgave him until they knew that he was dead — 
 dead as Julius Caesar — dead beyond all cavil. Then they 
 put on sackcloth and ashes and gave him the most mag- 
 nificent funeral ever seen west of the Mississippi. 
 
 Blair's was a happier fate than that of his illustrious 
 prototype and exemplar. While from the day of his re- 
 turn from the Mexican War to the hour of his retirement 
 from the Senate, he was in the forefront of every political 
 battle in Missouri — and nowhere on earth were poHtical 
 
186 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 wars waged with more ungovernable fury — such were his 
 endearing qualities that the closing years of his life were 
 as placid as a summer evening, and he died amid the 
 lamentations of a mighty people. Republicans seemed to 
 remember only the good that he had done them, forgetting 
 the injuries, while Democrats forgot the injuries that he 
 had inflicted upon them and remembered only the invalu- 
 able service that he had rendered. Union veterans named 
 a Grand Army post for him; Confederates proudly call 
 their boys Frank Blair, and his fellow-citizens, without 
 regard to creed or party, erected his statue of heroic size 
 in Forest Park to perpetuate his fame to coming genera- 
 tions. 
 
 The Border States During the War. — Gen. Wil- 
 liam Tecumseh Sherman once said "War is hell!" Those 
 who lived in the "border States" during our Civil War 
 and who are old enough to remember the tragic events of 
 that bloody but heroic epoch in our annals, will with one 
 accord indorse his idea, if not his sulphurous language. 
 
 It was easy to be a Union man in Massachusetts. It 
 was not profitable to be anything else. It was easy to be 
 a Confederate in South Carolina. It was not safe to be 
 anything else. But in Kentucky, Missouri, and the other 
 border States it was perilous to be the one thing or the 
 other. Indeed, it was dangerous to be neither and to sit 
 on the fence. 
 
 I was a child when Sumter was fired on, living in Wash- 
 ington County, Kentucky. I remember an old fellow from 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 187 
 
 whom the Union raiders took one horse and the Confed- 
 erate raiders another. So when a third party of soldiers 
 met him in the road and inquired whether he were a Union 
 man or a rebel, being dubious as to their army affiliations, 
 he answered diplomatically, "I am neither one nor the 
 other, and very little of that," and thereby lost his third 
 and last horse to Confederates disguised in blue uniforms. 
 
 The Kentuckians are a peculiar people — the most hos- 
 pitable, the most emotional, the kindest-hearted under the 
 sun; but they are bom warriors. A genuine son of "the 
 Dark and Bloody Ground" is in his normal condition only 
 when fighting. It seems to me that somebody must have 
 sown that rich land with dragon's teeth in the early days. 
 To use a sentence indigenous to the soil, "A Kentuckian 
 will fight at the drop of the hat and drop it himself." So 
 the war was his golden opportunity. He went to death 
 as to a festival. Nearly every able-bodied man in the 
 State — and a great many not able-bodied — not only of 
 military age but of any age, young enough or old enough 
 to squeeze in, took up arms on one side or the other, and 
 sometimes on both. 
 
 Neighbor against neighbor, father again son, brother 
 against brother, slave against master, and frequently wife 
 against husband; the fierce contention entered even into 
 theology, and blotted out the friendships of a lifetime. 
 
 Men who were bom and reared on adjoining farms, who 
 had attended the same schools, played the same games, 
 courted the same girls, danced in the same sets, belonged 
 
188 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 to the same lodges, and worshiped in the same churches, 
 suddenly went gunning for one another as remorselessly as 
 red Indians — only they had a clearer vision and a surer 
 aim. From the mouth of the Big Sandy to the mouth of 
 the Tennessee, there was not a square mile in which some 
 awful act of violence did not take place. 
 
 Kentucky has always been celebrated for, and cursed 
 by, its bloody feuds, feuds which cause the Italian ven- 
 detta to appear a holiday performance in comparison. Of 
 course, the war was the evening-up time, and many a man 
 became a violent Unionist because the ancient enemies of 
 his house were Southern sympathizers, and vice versa. 
 Some of them could have given pointers to Fra Diavolo 
 himself. 
 
 As all the evil passions of men were aroused and all 
 restraints of propriety as well as all fear of law were re- 
 moved, every latent tendency toward crime was warmed into 
 life. The land swarmed with cutthroats, robbers, thieves, 
 firebugs, and malefactors of the helpless, who committed 
 thousands of brutal and heinous crimes — in the name of 
 the Union or of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 I witnessed only one battle during the Civil War. A 
 line in Gen. Basil W. Duke's entertaining book, "Morgan 
 and His Men," is all that is vouchsafed to it in the litera- 
 ture of the war, but surely it was the most astounding 
 martial caper ever cut since Nimrod invented the military 
 art, and it fully illustrates the Kentuckian's inherent 
 and ineradicable love of fighting. 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 189 
 
 I saw seven home guards charge the whole of Morgan's 
 cavalry — the very flower of Kentucky chivalry. 
 
 I was working as a farmhand for one John Call, who 
 was the proud owner of several fine horses of the famous 
 "copper-bottom" breed. 
 
 Morgan had, perhaps, as good an eye for a "saddler'' 
 as was ever set in human head, and during those troublous 
 days his mind was sadly mixed on the meum and tuum 
 when it came to equines — a remark applicable to many 
 others beside Morgan, on both sides at that. 
 
 Call, hearing that Morgan was coming, and knowing 
 his penchant for the noblest of quadrupeds, ordered me to 
 mount "in hot haste" and "take the horses to the woods." 
 
 Just as I had climbed upon a magnificent chestnut 
 sorrel, fit for a king's charger, and was rounding up the 
 others, I looked up and in the level rays of the setting 
 summer sun saw Morgan's cavalry in "all the pride, pomp, 
 and circumstance of glorious war," riding up the broad 
 gravel road on the backbone of a long high ridge, half a 
 mile to the south. Fascinated by the glittering array, 
 boylike, I forgot Call and the peril of his horses, and 
 watched the gay cavalcade. 
 
 Suddenly I saw seven horsemen emerge from the little 
 village of Mackville, and ride furiously down the turnpike 
 to within easy pistol range of the Confederates and open 
 fire. I could hear the crack of the revolvers, and see the 
 flash and smoke, and when Morgan's advance guard fell 
 back on the main body, I observed that one riderless horse 
 
190 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 went back with them and that only six home guards rode 
 back to Mackville in lieu of the seven who had ridden forth 
 to battle. 
 
 Morgan's command halted, deployed in battle line, and 
 rode slowly up the hill, while I rode a great deal faster to 
 the woods. 
 
 The home guards had shot one man out of his saddle 
 and captured him, and Morgan had captured one of them. 
 Next morning the home guards, from their forest fast- 
 ness, sent in a flag of truce and regularly negotiated an 
 exchange of prisoners, according to the rules in such cases 
 made and provided. 
 
 Of course, Morgan would have paid no attention to 
 the seven men, but he supposed that even his own native 
 Kentucky never nurtured seven dare-devils so reckless as 
 to do a thing like that unless they had an army back of 
 them. 
 
 I have often thought of that matchless deed of daring, 
 and can say, as did Gen. Pierre Bosquet of the charge of 
 the Light Brigade at the battle of Balaklava, "It is mag- 
 nificent, but it is not war." 
 
 Years afterward one of the seven was sending his chil- 
 dren to school to me. After I became well acquainted 
 with him, one day I said to him, "Gibson, I have always 
 wanted to know what made you seven fellows charge Mor- 
 gan." "Oh," he replied, "we were all full of fighting 
 whisky" — an explanation which explained not only that 
 fight, but thousands more. 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 191 
 
 If that splendid feat of arms had been performed in 
 New England by New Englanders, the world could 
 scarcely contain the books which would have been written 
 about it. It would have been chronicled in history and 
 chanted in song as an inexhaustible theme. 
 
 If Frank Blair had never captured Camp Jackson — for 
 it was Blair who conceived and carried out that great 
 strategic movement, and not Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, of New 
 England, as the Northern war books say — Missouri would 
 have joined the Confederacy under the lead of Gov. Clai- 
 borne F. Jackson and Gen. Sterling Price, the famous 
 soldier, and, with her vast resources to command, Lee's 
 soldiers would not have been starved and frozen into a 
 surrender. 
 
 If the government built monuments to soldiers in pro- 
 portion to what they really accomplished for the Union 
 cause, Frank Blair's would tower proudly among the 
 loftiest. Camp Jackson is slurred over with an occasional 
 paragraph in the history books, but it was the turning 
 point in the war west of the Mississippi, and it was the 
 work of Frank Blair, the Kentuckian, the Missourian, the 
 slave-owner, the patrician, the leonine soldier, the pa- 
 triotic statesman. 
 
 Some day a Tacitus, Sismondi, or Macaulay will write 
 a truthful history of our Civil War — the bloodiest chapter 
 in the book of time — and when it is written the Kentucky 
 and Missouri heroes, both Union and Confederate, will be 
 enrobed in immortal glory. 
 
192 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 It is said that figures will not lie, and there they are: 
 To the Union armies Missouri contributed 109,111 sol- 
 diers; Kentucky, 75,760; Maryland, 46,638; Tennessee, 
 31,092; and West Virginia, 32,068 — ^making a grand 
 total of 298,669. 
 
 In Missouri the war was waged with unspeakable bit- 
 terness, sometimes with inhuman cruelty. It was fought 
 by men in single combat, in squads, in companies, in regi- 
 ments, in great armies ; in the open, in fortified towns, and 
 in ambush; under the Stars and Stripes, under the Stars 
 and Bars, and under the black flag. The arch-fiend him- 
 self seems to have been on the field in person, inspiring, 
 directing, commanding. Up in north Missouri Gen. John 
 McNeil took twelve innocent men out and shot them in 
 cold blood, because it w^as supposed that some bush- 
 whacker had killed a Union man. That is known in local 
 history as "the Palmyra massacre," and has damned John 
 McNeil "to everlasting fame." It turned out afterward 
 that the Union man was still alive, and so the twelve men 
 had died in vain — even according to the hard rule of 
 lex talionis. 
 
 At Centralia one day a Wabash train containing more 
 than thirty Union soldiers was captured by Bill Anderson, 
 a guerilla chief, who had sustained some grievous personal 
 injury at the hands of the Unionists, and whose blood 
 some subtle mental alchemy had converted into gall. He 
 deliberately took them out and shot them every one, as if 
 they had been so many wolves. 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 193 
 
 Having completed that gory job, he marched out to a 
 skirt of timber, about a mile from town, and camped at 
 the foot of a long, gentle prairie slope. Shortly after- 
 ward a certain Colonel Johnson, with a body of Union 
 cavalry, followed him and took position on the ridge of 
 the prairie. The sight of them made Anderson wild with 
 delight, and whetted his appetite for blood; so he 
 mounted his eighty men — the most superb horsemen in 
 the world, who, with bridle reins between their teeth and 
 a navy revolver in each hand, rode up on Johnson's one 
 hundred and sixty men, whom he had foolishly dismounted, 
 and, firing to right and left, killed one hundred and forty- 
 three of them, and would have killed the other seventeen 
 if they could have been caught. Only one man was taken 
 alive, and he was badly wounded, the legend in the neigh- 
 borhood being that he saved himself by giving the Ma- 
 sonic sign of distress. 
 
 Such are samples of the Civil War in Missouri and 
 Kentucky. 
 
 The survivors of those cruel days. Union and Confed- 
 erate, are now living side by side, cultivating assiduously 
 the arts of peace in the imperial commonwealth of Mis- 
 souri — the most delectable place for human habitation 
 beneath the stars. 
 
 A Pioneer Peacemaker. — Lately we have heard a vast 
 deal of eloquence about a reunited country. Thirty-two 
 years after Appomattox men are accounted orators, 
 statesmen, and philanthropists, because they grandilo- 
 
194 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 quently declare that at last the time has arrived to bury 
 the animosities of the Civil War in a grave upon whose 
 headstone shall be inscribed, "No resurrection." I would 
 not detract even in the estimation of a hair from the fame 
 of these eleventh hour pacificators. I humbly and fer- 
 vently thank Almighty God that the country is reunited. 
 
 When I look into the faces of my little children, my 
 heart swells with ineffable pride to think that they are citi- 
 zens of this great Republic, one and indivisible, which is 
 destined not for a day, but for all time, and which will be 
 the crowning glory and dominating influence of all the 
 centuries yet to be. But if we applaud these ex post facto ' 
 peacemakers, and shed tears of joy over their belated 
 pathos, what shall be our meed of praise, the measure of 
 our gratitude, the manifestation of our admiration, the 
 expression of our love, for Frank Blair, the magnificent 
 Missourian, the splendid American, who, with his military 
 laurels fresh upon him, within a few days after Lee sur- 
 rendered, returned to his State, which had been ravaged 
 by fire and sword, holding aloft the olive-branch, proclaim- 
 ing to the world that there were no rebels any more, that 
 his fellow-citizens who had fought for the South were 
 entitled to equal respect and equal rights with other citi- 
 zens, and that real peace m,ust "tinkle on the shepherd's 
 bells and sing among the reapers" of Missouri? He took 
 the ragged and defeated Confederates by the hand and, 
 in the words of Abraham to Lot, said, "We be brethren." 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 195 
 
 "The truly brave 
 "When they behold the brave oppressed with odds, 
 "Are touched with a desire to shield and save." 
 
 It seems to me that the very angels in heaven, looking 
 down with approving eyes upon his magnificent conduct, 
 must have sung, in full chorus, the song of nineteen hun- 
 dred years ago, "On earth peace, good-will toward men." 
 
 King Solomon says : "To everything there is a season, 
 and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to 
 kill, and a time to heal." 
 
 In the time for killing Frank Blair was one of the most 
 persistent of fighters. When the time for healing came, 
 he was one of the first to pour the balm of consolation into 
 bruised hearts and to bind up the nation's wounds. 
 
 In the arm}^ he was one of the favorite lieutenants of 
 Ulysses Simpson Grant, who, with knightly honor, reso- 
 lutely and courageously kept his plighted faith to Lee, 
 thereby preventing an aftermath of death at the very 
 thought of which the world grows pale. 
 
 In the fierce and all-pervading light of history, which 
 beats not upon thrones alone, but upon all high places as 
 well, Blair will stand side by side with the invincible sol- 
 dier who said "Let us have peace" — the noblest words that 
 ever fell from martial lips. 
 
 PRESIDENT TAFt's VETO OF THE WOOL, SCHEDULE 
 
 (August 18, 1911) 
 The Speaker pro tempore [Mr. Underwood]: The 
 
196 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. 
 Clark]. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri: Mr. Speaker, I fully agree 
 with my well-beloved friend, the gentleman from Ilhnois 
 [Mr. Mann], that the growth of this country since 1860, 
 in wealth and in every other respect, has been phenomenal. 
 No man rejoices in that more than I do. I permit no 
 living human being to be more patriotic than I am. [Ap- 
 plause on the Democratic side.] I suppose his figures are 
 correct, but the gentleman leaves out of his calculations 
 the most important element of growth in the United States 
 since 1860, and that is the growth in population [ap- 
 plause on the Democratic side] ; and surely no Republican 
 will dare to claim that the Republicans begat all that in- 
 crease in population. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 Democrats did their full share in that regard. Who cre- 
 ated this wealth.'' Democrats had as much to do with 
 increasing it as the Republicans had. [Applause on the 
 Democratic side.] It makes me weary to hear people talk 
 about somebody's wanting to destroy the industries and 
 prosperity of this land. It is a lie. [Loud applause on 
 the Democratic side.] No sane man wants to injure in 
 the estimation of a hair any legitimate industry of this 
 country. [Applause on the Democratic side.] That that 
 charge is a thing incredible I have contended always, and 
 especially since we carried the House and had the responsi- 
 bility placed upon us. We all want the industries of the 
 land to prosper. It is our country as well as yours; our 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 197 
 
 children must live here as well as yours ; we have as great a 
 stake in the prosperity of the Republic as you have ; and, 
 in the language of Tiny Tim, "God bless us^ every one." 
 [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 The President has the constitutional right to veto this 
 bill if he wanted to do so. I am not quarreling with him 
 about that. I am, as his personal friend, lamenting his 
 lack of wisdom. [Applause on the Democratic side.] He 
 has raised an issue which will rage with unabated fury 
 until the close of the polls in November, 1912. [Applause 
 on the Democratic side.] We most cheerfully welcome 
 that issue. We will meet the President and his stand-pat 
 cohorts at Philippi. You gentlemen talk about our put- 
 ting the President in a hole. We did not have to do so ; 
 he has done it for himself. [Applause on the Democratic 
 side.] 
 
 But, nevertheless and notwithstanding, the gentleman 
 from Kentucky [Mr. James] stated the literal historic 
 truth when he said that the right of veto is a remnant of 
 the royal prerogative. He was correct also when he stated 
 that no English sovereign has dared to exercise the veto 
 power in something like two hundred years. If George 
 the Fifth should veto an important measure he would lose 
 his crown and his throne and be sent on his "travels," as 
 Charles the Second facetiously denominated his banish- 
 ment. My good friend from Tennessee [Mr. Austin], 
 who nominated me for President — and I rejoice in the 
 fact that the Republican Members of this House feel as 
 
198 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 kindly toward me personally as the Democrats do [ap- 
 plause] — it is a matter of infinite pride with me — the 
 gentleman got this Tariff Board business wrong. The 
 gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Underwood] and myself 
 never advocated this Tariff Board. [Applause on the 
 Democratic side.] We never voted for it, I will tell you 
 what we did advocate and what we did vote for, and that 
 is to make that board a board of real experts and then 
 make it responsive to the House of Representatives in 
 general and to the Ways and Means Committee in par- 
 ticular. [Applause on the Democratic side.] I am will- 
 ing to do that now. I am not going to say anything 
 derogatory of this Tariff Board, but I am going to say 
 what I think, as I always do. The gentleman from New 
 York [Mr. Payne] and the gentleman from Pennsyl- 
 vania [Mr. Dalzell] and all the rest of the Republican 
 members of the Committee on Ways and Means who served 
 on that committee in the Sixtieth and Sixty-first Con- 
 gresses, when the Payne-Aldrich bill was framed and 
 passed, and the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Cannon], 
 who, while he was not present when the first tariff bill 
 was made in 1789, has been present at nearly all the rest 
 of them [laughter] ; and the gentleman from Alabama 
 [Mr. Underwood], and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
 Randell], and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Har- 
 rison], and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Brant- 
 ley], who were also on the old Ways and Means Commit- 
 tee — any one of them knows more about the tariff to-day 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 199 
 
 than that entire Tariff Board rolled together. [Applause 
 on the Democratic side.] I name only the old members; 
 but I will say that the new Democratic members of the 
 Ways and Means Committee were selected for their fitness 
 for such work; and I desire to bear witness in this distin- 
 guished presence to the fact that no set of men ever 
 worked harder, more persistently, or more painstakingly 
 in the discharge of a duty than have the Democratic mem- 
 bers of the committee in revising Schedule K and the cot- 
 ton schedule. They all desei*ve well of the House and of 
 the country. I am rather inclined to the opinion that 
 my distinguished friend from Illinois [Mr. Mann] and 
 myself know something about tariff bills, too. [Applause 
 on the Democratic side.] He voted against the Payne 
 tariff bill — bless his heart for doing it ! [Applause on the 
 Democratic side.] I yielded him twenty minutes time to 
 make his speech, the best one he ever made in his life. 
 [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 The members of the Tariff Board are, no doubt, most 
 excellent and learned gentlemen; but whatever else they 
 may be, they are not tariff experts. To hear certain per- 
 sons tell it, all Senators and Representatives in Congress 
 are idiots, utterly ignorant of the tariff question, and 
 should not be permitted to do anything touching the 
 tariff except to register the decrees of the Tariff Board 
 of non-experts. I throw out this gentle hint: If the 
 Tariff Board is to be used as the President is using it in 
 this case, to delay tariff revision instead of expediting it, 
 
200 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 it will have a short shrift, as certain as grass grows or 
 water runs. The Tariff Board, if it continues to exist, 
 should be made the servant and not the master of the 
 Representatives of the people. Why do not the little Solo- 
 mons, who go about asseverating that Congress is com- 
 posed of a lot of ignoramuses on the tariff, come to Con- 
 gress themselves and pass a model tariff bill.^ They do 
 not come for the all-sufficient reason tliat they cannot get 
 votes enough. The people declared last November that 
 they desired tariff revision, and they will not be enamored 
 of those who block that work. 
 
 The gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Campbell] voted for 
 this bill. What change has come o'er the spirit of his 
 dream .P Is it the sweet odor of the fleshpots of Egypt or 
 not? [Applause on the Democratic side.] These gentle- 
 men supporting the President's veto message have all said 
 — every one of them who made a speech that I have 
 heard — that this wool bill is unconsidered. The stand- 
 patters are unanimous on that proposition. 
 
 I do not propose to have that kind of a statement go 
 unchallenged to the country, because it is absolutely un- 
 true. What happened? We called a Democratic caucus 
 of the Democratic members-elect of this House on the 19th 
 day of January. The purpose of that proceeding was to 
 select the Democratic members of the Committee on Ways 
 and Means, that they might go to work preparing tariff 
 bills. That was before anybody dreamed of this extra 
 session. Some of the newspaper Republican brethren said 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 201 
 
 it was my "crazy scheme," but it worked like a chanii. 
 We chose the Democratic members of the Ways and Means 
 Com_mittee, and they went to work and spent nearly three 
 months preparing this wool bill. [Applause on the Demo- 
 cratic side.] I defy my distinguished friend from New 
 York [Mr. Payne] to state that he and his committee 
 ever spent three months on any one schedule in the tariff 
 bill. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 Mr. Payne: I wish to say that we spent more than 
 ten times as much time on this woolen schedule than you 
 did. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri: When was it.^ When did you 
 spend it.'' I will give you a piece of history you seem to 
 have forgotten. A tariff bill has fourteen schedules in it. 
 You and I and the rest of your committee began consider- 
 ing the Payne bill with the fourteen schedules on the 11th 
 day of November, and you reported that bill to this 
 House, with the fourteen schedules, on the 18th day of 
 March. [Applause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 Mr. Payne : I commenced the preparation of that bill 
 more than a year before the committee met. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri: And so did we, bless your 
 soul. I have been preparing for the wool bill and other 
 tariff for the last twenty years. [Applause on the Demo- 
 cratic side.] 
 
 Mr. Payne: But I want to ask the gentleman what 
 that has to do with this mongrel thing that comes from the 
 conference committee .'' 
 
W2 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Mr. Clakk, of Missouri: After the House considered 
 this bill the Senate considered it. The gentlemen had to 
 give up a good deal of his own bill two years ago, and 
 sulked, and swore, and was peeved because he had to 
 yield. That is the truth. 
 
 Mr. Payne: Well, he did not yield the whole thing. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri : You yielded all you could. 
 
 Another thing, they say that we are playing politics. 
 Whenever any man stands up and undertakes to do any- 
 thing for the benefit of the great masses of people he is 
 denounced by the "interests" as a demagogue and is 
 charged with playing politics. But to stand up and ad- 
 vocate the cause of the "interests" is the highest evidence 
 of statesmanship. As far as I am individually concerned, 
 I sprang from the loins of the common people, God bless 
 them, and I am one of them. I labored with my hands in my 
 youth, and would do it again to-morrow if I had to do so ; 
 and I unhesitatingly take my stand with the consumers of 
 the land as against the "interests." 
 
 The President desires to have tariff legislation post- 
 poned till his Tariff Board can tutor him up sufficiently 
 to write a tariff bill, which when we consider his multifari- 
 ous and onerous duties and his passion for long distance 
 traveling and frequent speechmaking, we must perforce 
 conclude would be a far-away day in the sweet by and by. 
 We do not want the people to suffer that long. 
 
 The President made a famous speech at Winona, Minn. 
 The only part of that speech which was any good [laugh- 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 203 
 
 ter] was that part of it in which he said the wool schedule 
 was too high and ought to be reduced. [Applause on the 
 Democratic side.] 
 
 Here are his exact words on that celebrated occasion: 
 
 "With respect to the wool schedule, I agree that it is too 
 high and that it ought to have been reduced, and that it 
 probably represents considerably more than the difference 
 between the cost of production abroad and the cost of pro- 
 duction here. The difficulty about the woolen schedule is 
 that there were two contending factions early in the his- 
 tory of Republican tariffs, to wit, woolgrowers and the 
 woolen manufacturers, and that finally, many years ago, 
 they settled on a basis by which wool in the grease should 
 have 11 cents a pound, and by wliich allowance should be 
 made for the shrinkage of the washed wool in the differen- 
 tial upon woolen manufactures. The percentage of duty 
 was very heavy — quite beyond the difference in the cost 
 of production, which was not then regarded as a necessary 
 or proper limitation upon protective duties." 
 
 Those words sank deep into the minds of the American 
 people. They made them the basis of hope for cheaper 
 and warmer blankets and clothing. Now, so far as in him 
 lies, the President dashes those fond hopes to the ground; 
 but what's writ is writ, and those presidential words are 
 part of the history of the Republic. 
 
 It is asked why we took the wool schedule first. I will 
 tell you. We took it because the President said that it 
 ought to be reduced [applause on the Democratic side]. 
 
204 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 because we faced a hostile Senate and faced a hostile Presi- 
 dent. This bill is not what I would have written if I had 
 had carte blanche; it is not what the gentleman from 
 Alabama [Mr. Underwood] would have written ; it is not 
 what any of us would have written; but we undertook to 
 get a bill that would have the best chance possible of 
 passing the ordeal of the House, the ordeal of the Senate, 
 and the ordeal of the White House. [Applause on the 
 Democratic side.] I was certain that the President would 
 sign the bill cutting down the wool tariff ; we took him at ' 
 his word. That is the head and front of our offending in 
 putting the revision of the wool schedule first. I never did 
 believe he would veto it until the last two or three days. 
 Then, we took the cotton schedule next, because it, too, is 
 a textile schedule. I am violating no secret in stating that 
 so soon as the revised cotton schedule was through the 
 House, the Democratic members of the Ways and Means 
 Committee began industriously to prepare the iron and 
 steel schedule revision, having previously collected a large 
 assortment of information on that subject. 
 
 We welcome the issue. We are not afraid to go to the 
 people on it. We know that we stand for right and truth 
 and justice. [Applause on the Democratic side.] The 
 gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Mann] quotes zEsop's 
 Fables, ^sop was, perhaps, the greatest writer of fables 
 that ever lived ; but nobody ever rated him as an authority 
 on economics till the gentleman from Illinois arose to-day. 
 We have no desire to kill the goose that lays the golden 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 205 
 
 eggs, as the gentleman seems to think. What we do desire 
 is that a few shall not monopolize the golden eggs, but 
 that they shall be distributed more equitably among the 
 people of the land. The most important problem that 
 good, wise, and patriotic men have to solve is a fair dis- 
 tribution of the profits of business; and blessed be the 
 name of the man forever who achieves the solution which is 
 just. 
 
 The Globe-Democrat said that I had come around to a 
 tariff on wool because I had heard the bleating of 134,000 
 sheep in my district. I tell you what I did hear. I heard 
 the cry of 93,000,000 American citizens for cheaper and 
 better clothing. The great desire of my heart is to give 
 them some relief from their burden of taxation which they 
 have borne for lo ! these many years. [Loud and pro- 
 longed applause on the Democratic side.] 
 
 EULOGY ON JOHN W. DANIEL 
 
 (June 24, 1911) 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri : Mr. Speaker, from the begin- 
 ning Virginia has been rich in great men — great states- 
 men, great orators, great jurists, great soldiers. So long 
 as the world exists the names of her illustrious sons will 
 be among the noblest on fame's eternal beadroU. 
 
 Patrick Henry precipitated the Revolution ; Thomas 
 Jefferson penned the Declaration ; George Washington 
 
206 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 made that Declaration good on Yorktown's blood-stained 
 heights ; James Madison was "father of the Constitution" ; 
 and John Marshall its chief expounder. Her bill of rights, 
 written by George Mason, has been considered a model 
 for more than a century and a quarter. These were fol- 
 lowed by a long line of men, distinguished in peace and 
 in war, whose records are among the precious treasures 
 of the Republic. 
 
 John Warwick Daniel ranks high among Virginia's 
 worthies. So far as the public is concerned, he appeared 
 in a fourfold character — soldier, lawyer, author, orator. 
 The universal testimony of his companions in arms is that 
 he was a fine soldier. His brethren of the Virginia bar 
 bear witness that he was a successful practitioner of the 
 noblest of professions. Lawyers and courts everywhere 
 cite his law books as standard authorities. All the world 
 knows that he was one of the foremost orators of his 
 time, and it is his oratory more than anything else which 
 will perpetuate his fame to coming generations. He was 
 richly blessed with the divine gift of moving men's minds 
 and hearts by the power of spoken words. He was lavishly 
 endowed by nature with the elements and qualities which 
 constitute an orator. Some men are so ugly and ungainly 
 that it is a positive advantage to them as public speakers 
 by reason of the pleasurable surprise which their eloquence 
 creates. Others are so handsome and prepossessing that 
 they win the hearts of their audience before they have 
 opened their lips. To the latter category John Warwick 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 207 
 
 Daniel undoubtedly belonged. Of commanding presence, 
 with a handsome and leonine countenance, courtly manners, 
 a musical voice of great compass and far-reaching quality, 
 a strong and well-trained mind, a warm and generous 
 heart, a vivid imagination, he presented a superb picture 
 to the eye and appealed with compelHng force to the pas- 
 sions and emotions of all who heard him. He possessed 
 the advantages of high family connections and of a col- 
 legiate education, to which was added the glamour of 
 martial fame, achieved in his early manhood on many a 
 bloody field. An Englishman dearly loves a lord and the 
 average American dearly loves a soldier, and it can not 
 be doubted that Senator Daniel's military record aided 
 him materially in his political battles. This is attested 
 by the fact that Virginians fondly called him "the Lame 
 Lion of Lynchburg" — most assuredly a helpful and fortu- 
 nate sobriquet. For a generation he was the idol of his 
 native State, and it was agreed by common consent that 
 he should remain in the Senate so long as he lived, which 
 he did. His reelection every six years was a mere formahty 
 to comply with the Constitution and the statutes of the 
 land. 
 
 Virginia's great lyric orator, Patrick Henry, was dubbed 
 "The forest-bom Demosthenes." John Warwick Daniel 
 may be not inaptly denominated Virginia's Cicero. Henry's 
 fame rests almost entirely on tradition; but Daniel's is 
 bottomed on the words which he actually spoke. The 
 greatest of his orations is that on Gen. Robert E. Lee, 
 
208 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 which would have aroused envy in the bosom of Tully 
 himself. Daniel's masterful oration recalls and illustrates 
 what Daniel Webster said of eloquence in his oration on 
 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson : 
 
 "It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the 
 occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp 
 of declamation, all may aspire to it; they can not reach 
 it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a 
 fountain from the earth or the bursting forth of volcanic 
 fires, with spontaneous, original, native force." 
 
 Webster was a great orator; he had a great subject 
 on a great occasion, and he delivered a great oration. 
 Daniel was a great orator; he had a great subject on a 
 great occasion, and he delivered a great oration — one 
 which will be read with delight so long as our language is 
 spoken by the children of men. 
 
 There was once a man named Hamilton, in the British 
 Parliament, who delivered one splendid speech and could 
 never be induced to make another speech. Hence he was 
 nicknamed "Single-Speech" Hamilton. Such w^as not the 
 case with Senator Daniel. He delivered many excellent 
 speeches, several fine orations, but I give it as my literar}^ 
 opinion, for what it is worth, that his oration over Lee 
 is the one by which he will be remembered, and by which 
 he would choose to be remembered. 
 
 His theme was his old commander, one of the greatest 
 of English speaking captains; the occasion was the un- 
 veiling of the recumbent statue of that famous soldier, 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 209 
 
 me of the most beautiful statues ever fashioned by sculp- 
 ;or's chisel; the scene, Lexington, Va., gem of the moun- 
 ;ains, one of the loveliest spots betwixt the two seas, 
 vhere Stonewall Jackson taught and prayed, and whence 
 le went forth to win world-wide and imperishable renown. 
 Daniel's heart was in that oration. In it he will live; 
 :hrough it he will speak to his countrymen forever. 
 
 John James Ingalls 
 (Saturday, January 21, 1905) 
 
 Mr. Clark : Mr. Speaker, in the very heart of the conti- 
 nent, lying side by side, are the magnificent Common- 
 svealths of Missouri and Kansas. Neither northern nor 
 southern, neither eastern nor western, they are the great 
 central States of the Union. A circle with Kansas City 
 for its center and with a radius of 300 miles would con- 
 tain more land of the richest quality than any other circle 
 of equal size on the habitable globe. Within its circumfer- 
 ence can be produced all the necessaries and most of the 
 luxuries of human Hfe. Cultivated as scientifically as 
 Belgium or Holland, Missouri and Kansas could sustain 
 a population equal to that of the entire Republic at the 
 present time. 
 
 It is, however, not in their phenomenal wealth of ma- 
 terial resources and possibilities that these two States are 
 most lavishly blessed, but in their superb citizenship. 
 
210 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 In the early days Missourians and Kansans, inheritingj 
 from the fathers a bitter, irrepressible, historic quarrel foi 
 which they were in no way responsible, were at daggers^ 
 points, and led "the strenuous life." Now, acting on the 
 noble philosophy that "Peace hath her victories no less 
 renowned than war," they are illustrating the virtues of 
 "the simple life." Love, which laughs at locksmiths, has 
 broken down the lines of demarcation. Missouri boys 
 have married Kansas girls, and Kansas boys have married 
 Missouri girls, until we are all getting to be kinfolks. 
 The blend is the highest type of American manhood and 
 womanhood. Missourians and Kansans are rivals now 
 only in patriotism — in intellectual, moral, religious, and 
 material achievement. They are leaders in the nation's 
 triumphal progress, the true story of which is more 
 marvelous than any tale out of the "Arabian Nights." 
 
 It was a matter of ineffable pride with the people west 
 of the Mississippi that for many years the two most bril- 
 liant speakers in the Senate of the United States lived on 
 the sunset side of the great river — George Graham Vest, 
 of Missouri, and John James Ingalls, of Kansas. 
 
 They were the opposites of each other in almost every- 
 thing — in nativity, in lineage, in methods of thought, in 
 style of oratory, and in politics. Ingalls boasted that he 
 was a "New England Brahmin," whatever that may be. 
 Vest was a fine sample of the Kentuckian, "caught young 
 enough" and transplanted to the rich alluvial soil of 
 Missouri. 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES Ut 
 
 Both had classical educations, Ingalls being an alumnus 
 of Williams College, Massachusetts, and Vest of Center 
 College, Kentucky — two famous seats of learning. Both 
 delighted in the wisdom of the ancients and the modems 
 and both reveled in the poets. 
 
 Ingalls was a judge-advocate of Kansas militia for a 
 short while ; Vest served on Price's staff a few days. 
 
 Ingalls's speeches were composed largely of aqua fortis, 
 dynamite, and Greek fire ; Vest's were a mixture of vitriol, 
 sweet oil, rosewater, naphtha, and gun cotton. 
 
 Danton's motto was : "L'audace! L'audace! Toujours 
 I'audace!" Ingalls's weapon was "Sarcasm! Sarcasm! 
 Always sarcasm!" In that regard he ranks with Tristam 
 Burges, John Randolph of Roanoke, Thaddeus Stevens, 
 and Thomas Brackett Reed. Vest tempered his sarcasm 
 with genial humor which cured the wound which he had 
 inflicted. 
 
 , Ingalls possessed the most copious and most gorgeous 
 ^Vocabulary of his day, more copious and more gorgeous, 
 I indeed, than that of any other American orator except 
 Henry A. Wise; and was the most painstaking precisian 
 in the use of our vernacular who has appeared in our Con- 
 gressional life. He burnished his sentences till they glit- 
 tered as a gem. He was well qualified to write an una- 
 bridged dictionary or a book on synonyms. Clearly he 
 thought with Holland that : 
 
 "The temple of art is built of words. Painting and 
 sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, bor- 
 
212 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 rowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive ( 
 only of the temple's uses." 
 
 Vest's diction was rich, but the construction of his 
 sentences lacked evidence of the severe and repeated 
 polishings to which the caustic Kansan subjected his. If: 
 he used as much art, he employed the rarer art of conceal- 
 ing its use. 
 
 Each wielded the scimitar of Saladin rather than the 
 two-handed broadsword of Richard Coeur de Lion. 
 
 Ingalls was tall, slender, and erect as a grenadier; Vest 
 was short, rotund, and walked with the proverbial stud- 
 ent's stoop. 
 
 Ingalls neglected none of the accessories of public 
 speech. He looked well to the stage settings. He was a 
 connoisseur in costumes. Neither Roscoe Conkling nor 
 Solomon in all his glory w^as more splendidly arrayed. 
 He followed in letter and in spirit the advice of Polonius 
 to Laertes : 
 
 "Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 
 
 "But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; 
 
 "For the apparel oft proclaims the man." 
 
 Vest enjoyed the comforts of good raiment, but cared 
 nothing for the adornments. 
 
 In the strictest acceptation of the term. Vest was never 
 popular in Missouri, and Ingalls was never popular in 
 Kansas. They had a wondrous hold on the admiration 
 but not on the affections of their constituents. Thinking 
 of Vest, a man is proud to call himself a Missourian. 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 213 
 
 Thinking of Ingalls, another is proud to call himself a 
 Kansan. Thinking of either of them, one is proud to call 
 himself an American. 
 
 Each through sheer brilliancy of intellect and soul- 
 stirring eloquence aroused intensest enthusiasm among his 
 countrymen. Men listened to Vest and Ingalls just as 
 they listen to the thrilHng strains of entrancing music, 
 but the frenzy of rapture which they engendered is not 
 adequately expressed by the paltry word "popularity." 
 It w^as delirious delight ! 
 
 When either addressed the multitude, he so warmed their 
 hearts that — 
 
 "They threw their caps 
 
 "As they would hang them on the horns o' the moon, 
 
 "Shouting their exultation." 
 
 It is a queer fact— perhaps a regrettable one — that 
 these two celebrated intellectual gladiators never engaged 
 in an oratorical pitched battle in the Senate. Such a duel 
 would have been worth journeying across the continent to 
 witness. Each being in perfect fettle, with a subject of 
 sufficient historic importance, a contest betwixt them 
 ought to have rivaled the Webster-Hayne debate in endur- 
 ing interest. 
 
 Kansans are paying their highest meed of praise to 
 Ingalls by placing his effigy, carved by a cunning hand 
 from Parian marble, in Statuary Hall, the great American 
 Valhalla, where our choicest worthies do congregate for 
 posterity. Missouri would do the same for Vest but for 
 
^14 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 the fact that her quota in that illustrious company waa 
 filled while he still tabernacled in the flesh. 
 
 Ingalls preceded Vest to the grave, and in the Saturdai^ 
 Evening Post the brilHant Missourian said, inter aliai 
 touching the brilhant Kansan: 
 
 "Of all the public men with whom I have served John 
 James Ingalls, of Kansas, was the most original and eccen- 
 tric. He was a living enigma, and I could never fully un- 
 derstand his motives and the many-sided phases of his char- 
 acter. He had a strong, daring intellect, which defied all 
 limitations, and was an eloquent, attractive speaker, with sa 
 wealth of imagination and diction which was inexhaustible. 
 He was at times cynical and morose, but was a great word 
 painter and could express the most elevated thoughts in 
 language so beautiful as to fascinate his hearers. Above 
 all, he was an iconoclast, and nothing delighted him so 
 much as to startle and even shock the staid and dignified 
 Senate by the utterance of opinion utterly at variance with 
 
 the settled belief of many centuries. 
 
 ******* 
 
 "I do not believe that Ingalls was malicious or bad 
 hearted. He was an expert in denunciation and could 
 not resist the temptation of exhibiting his wonderful capa- 
 bility in that regard to the world. He loved poetry, 
 music, painting, sculpture, and the beautiful in nature. 
 His prose poem on Grass, published in a Kansas maga- 
 zine before he came to the United States Senate, is 
 a marvel in literature, and I am glad to know that a 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 215 
 
 sentence from that essay is to be inscribed on tlie granite 
 bowlder which marks his grave. The sentence is the one in 
 which he eulogizes the blue grass sward, beneath which he 
 sleeps, as a *carpet for the infant and a blanket for the 
 dead.' 
 
 * * * * iff * * 
 
 "Senator Ingalls was a master of satire and invective, 
 being unable to resist the temptation to attack any of his 
 colleagues, even those of his own party, whose record or 
 character presented a vulnerable point for assault. On one 
 occasion, when President pro tempore of the Senate, he 
 called another Senator to the chair, and going down on 
 the floor, made a vicious personal attack upon Senator 
 Brown, of Georgia, one of the most amiable and courteous 
 members of the Senate. The venerable Georgian was 
 sitting quietly looking over a committee report when a 
 cyclone of satire and vituperation burst upon him without 
 the slightest notice of its coming. The look of astonish- 
 ment on the amiable countenance of the victim, as verbs, 
 nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and epithets filled the air, 
 caused a ripple of amusement through the Senate ; but the 
 chmax was reached when Ingalls alluded to a habit Senator 
 Brown had when speaking of gently rubbing one hand 
 over the other, by quoting Hood's lines : 
 
 *And then, in the fullness of joy and hope, 
 *Seemed washing his hands with invisible soap 
 'In imperceptible water.' 
 
 "At this critical moment Senator Brown looked down at 
 
216 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 the offending members as if inquiring why they had 
 brought on the volcanic eruption which was blazing about 
 him." 
 
 The late Senator George Frisbie Hoar, in his auto- 
 biography, says: 
 
 " John James Ingalls was in many respects one of the 
 brightest intellects I ever knew. He was graduated at 
 Williams in 1855. One of the few things, I don't know 
 but I might say the only thing, for which he seemed to 
 have any reverence was the character of Mark Hopkins. 
 He was a very conspicuous figure in the debates in the 
 Senate. He had an excellent English style, always im- 
 pressive, often on fit occasions rising to great stateliness 
 and beauty. He was for a while President pro tempore 
 of the Senate, and was the best presiding officer I have 
 ever known there for conducting ordinary business. He 
 maintained in the chair always his stately dignity of bear- 
 ing and speech. The formal phrases with which he de- 
 clared the action of the Senate or stated questions for its 
 decision seemed to be a fitting part of some stately cere- 
 monial. He did not care much about the principles of 
 parliamentary law, and had never been a very thorough 
 student of the rules. So his decisions did not have the 
 same authority as those of Mr. Wheeler or Mr. Edmunds 
 or Mr. Hamilton. 
 
 "I said to him one day : 'I think you are the best presid- 
 ing officer I ever knew, but I do not think you know much 
 
 I 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 217 
 
 about parliamentary law.' To which he replied: *I think 
 the sting is bigger than the bee.' 
 
 "He never lost an opportunity to indulge his gift of 
 caustic wit, no matter at whose expense." 
 
 Mr. Eugene W. Newman, who writes much and felicit- 
 ously under the nom de plume of "Savoyard," characterizes 
 Ingalls as "the wizard of the English tongue," and says 
 of him : 
 
 "John James Ingalls was an extraordinary man. By 
 no means the ablest, he was perhaps the most brilliant 
 Senator in Congress conspicuous for exceptionally bril- 
 liant men. He was born in New England, of Puritan, not 
 Pilgrim, parentage; of the Endicott, not the Carver, 
 exodus ; of the Salem, not the Plymouth regime. In a 
 sort of mirage of tradition the family is traced back to 
 the Scandinavian kings and peoples who grafted Dane and 
 Norman on Briton and Saxon. The name is in Domesday 
 Book. President Garfield and Chief Justice Chase had like 
 
 origin; indeed, the same origin. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 "Ingalls rose to be one of the chief figures in American 
 politics and success came at his command. He never 
 courted it. He was a poet, and never so lonesome as when 
 in a crowd. Lamar was another of that order of man. 
 Ingalls was not 'a man of the people,' emphatically 
 not, and could not successfully employ the arts of the 
 vulgar demagogue. He could just as easily have uplifted 
 the club of Hercules or stricken with the hammer of Thor. 
 
S18 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 Honors came to him grudgingly and churlishly, and solely 
 
 because he was the first intellect and the one genius in the 
 
 Kansas that knew Dudley C. Haskell and Preston B. 
 
 Plumb." 
 
 These three — Vest, Hoar, and Newman — are competent 
 
 and distinguished witnesses. Perhaps the average opinion 
 
 of their evidence would properly and truly portray John 
 
 James Ingalls. As Dryden described Halifax so may 
 
 Ingalls be described: 
 
 "Of piercing wit and pregnant thought, 
 "Endued by nature and by learning taught 
 "To move assemblies." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, Kansas acts wisely in honoring John 
 ^Tames Ingalls, for in honoring' him she also honors her- 
 self. [Loud applause.] 
 
 George Frisbie Hoar 
 
 {Sunday, February IS, 1905) 
 
 Mr. Clark : Mr. Speaker, that Senator George Frisbie 
 Hoar will hold a high place and fill a large space in the 
 annals of his time goes without saying. Of Revolutionary 
 stock, a descendant of Roger Sherman, he was American 
 to his heart's core, and he devoted his life to the service 
 of the Republic, which rewarded him with her affection, 
 her confidence, and her admiration. His lines were cast 
 in pleasant places and in a history-making epoch. Though 
 sometimes he was viciously assailed, at others he ran the 
 risk of having applied to him the Scriptural injunction. 
 
 \ 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 219 
 
 "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you," and 
 at last, having almost reached the Psalmist's extreme allotr 
 ment of fourscore years, he had that — 
 
 "Which should accompany old age, 
 
 "As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." 
 
 Pleasant as it would be to me to enter into the details 
 of his life, character, and labor, that delightful task must 
 be left to others closer to him and more familiar with those 
 facts which constitute the essentials of biography; but 
 the invitation to speak here and now has suggested to my 
 mind a few thoughts which may or may not be of interest 
 to those who hear and read what is uttered on this occasion. 
 
 Job exclaimed: "Oh, that mine adversary had written 
 a book !" From that day to this when a man has taken his 
 pen in hand to write a book it has been assumed that he 
 also took his reputation, if not his life, in his hand; but 
 the fact that what the man of Uz considered an extra- 
 hazardous performance is not necessarily fatal to the per- 
 former is demonstrated by the event of the November 
 election, when Col. Theodore Roosevelt, who has written 
 many books, in which he expressed his opinions of persons 
 and things with startling freedom, not to say abandon, 
 was chosen President of this puissant Republic by an 
 overwhelming majority. This seems to signify that the 
 American people admire candid and courageous speak- 
 ing — even in a book. 
 
220 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 However that may be, I rejoice and hail it as a healthy 
 sign of the times that our public men are more and more 
 growing into the habit of writing, in the evening of their 
 lives, books of a more or less reminiscent nature, recording 
 from their standpoint their views of the transactions which 
 they witnessed and part of which they were. What they say 
 in that regard may be taken and accepted as part of the 
 res gestae. 
 
 Caesar owes as much of his fame to his Commentaries as 
 to his victories. The fimits of his conquests have long 
 since perished. The mighty empire which he founded has 
 crumbled into dust. Happily for mankind, the system of 
 government for which his name has become the synonym 
 is in process of ultimate extinction; but by his Com- 
 mentaries he has helped to form the minds of the youths 
 of every civilized country under heaven through twenty 
 centuries of man's most interesting history and most 
 stupendous endeavor. So long as education is valued 
 Caesar will exercise imperial sway over the human mind, 
 riot by the power of his invincible sword, which is rust, 
 but by his cunning with the pen. Fighting was the serious 
 business of his life. The preparation of his Commentaries 
 was merely a mental recreation in his tent at eventide, 
 amid the clatter of camps and the clangor of arms. Had 
 he been catechised as to his deeds on which would be 
 builded the towering fabric of his fame, he most probably 
 would not have enumerated his Commentaries as even the 
 smallest and humblest of them, but they constitute his 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 221 
 
 clearest, strongest, and most enduring title to the favor- 
 able consideration of mankind. 
 
 Napoleon, the most astounding son of Mars, with 
 clearer vision and a wiser judgment as to the relative value 
 of human achievements, proudly declared that he would 
 descend to posterity with his Code in his hand, a prophecy 
 which has been amply verified. The crimson glories of 
 Montenotte, Lodi, Areola, Marengo, the Pyramids, Aus- 
 terlitz, Ulm, Jena, and Wagram were dimmed by Leipzig, 
 Waterloo, and the dismal journey to St. Helena; the 
 thrones which he ravished from hostile kings and bestowed 
 upon his brothers, sisters, and stable boys passed again to 
 his royal enemies whom he had despoiled; the imperial 
 crown, bought with so much blood and so much crime for 
 his son, never encircled the brow of that pathetic child 
 of misfortune; but the laws created by the fiat of the 
 Corslcan Colossus influence and bless the lives of 75,- 
 000,000 people because they were grounded in justice and 
 in wisdom. His career illustrates and enforces the truth 
 contained in Bulwer-Lytton's famous lines: 
 
 "Beneath the rule of men entirely great 
 "The pen is mightier than the sword." 
 
 Others have marched as strenuously and fought as 
 bravely as Xenophon and his ten thousand, only to vanish 
 into oblivion ; but he and his band are among the immortals 
 because he wrote the Anabasis, which has delighted and 
 instructed millions of ambitious boys and which will de- 
 
CHAMP CLARK 
 
 light and instruct succeeding millions till the earth shall 
 perish with fervent heat. 
 
 The triumphal expedition of Gen. Alexander W. 
 Doniphan and his heroic Missourians into the heart of 
 Mexico by way of Santa Fe, traversing a vast wilderness 
 full of hostile savages ; subsisting on the enemy's country ; 
 winning numerous victories over the very flower of the de- 
 scendants of the knights of Castile and Aragon; never 
 losing a gun, a flag, a prisoner, or a skirmish, though 
 frequently engaging ten times their own number; never 
 drawing from the Government a dollar, a ration, a piece 
 of clothing, or an ounce of ammunition from the moment 
 they left Fort Leavenworth, Kans., till ragged, starving, 
 but invincible, they reported to Gen. Zachary Taylor on 
 the red field of Monterey, having added an empire to the 
 Union, is the most astounding martial achievement in the 
 entire history of the human race. Li difliculty, in courage, 
 in fortitude, in glory, in results it eclipses utterly the far- 
 famed retreat which Xenophon has embalmed in immortal 
 prose. 
 
 Every schoolboy knows by heart the fascinating story 
 of the Greeks ; but few remember the more wonderful per- 
 formance of the Missourians. Mirabile dictu! The 
 glorious name of Doniphan, the conqueror of New Mexico, 
 Arizona, and Chihuahua does not even appear in some of 
 our most ambitious encyclopedias. The reason is that 
 General Doniphan, of Missouri, did not emulate the laud- 
 able example of General Xenophon, of Greece, by writing 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES S23 
 
 a history of his own campaign; consequently he and the 
 brave Missourians who followed his all-conquering banner 
 are to dumb forgetfulness a prey. " 'Tis true 'tis pity ; and 
 pity 'tis 'tis true." While I am not general counsel for the 
 star actors in the world's drama, I make bold to suggest 
 to them that if they desire a square deal in history they 
 would do well to imitate Caesar and Xenophon and write 
 the histories themselves. 
 
 Who cares a straw what Joseph Addison did or did not 
 do as Secretary of State? But who that has a love of 
 learning in his heart would be willing to see the last copy 
 of "The Tattler" and "The Spectator" committed to the 
 flames ? 
 
 John Milton wrought much and successfully in the case 
 of human liberty, but "Paradise Lost" is his crowning 
 glory. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, the statesman, the lawgiver, the office- 
 holder, would have been forgotten years ago, but so 
 long as our vernacular — the most elastic and virile ever 
 spoken hj the children of men — is used, the history, the 
 poems, and, above all, the essays of Thomas Babington 
 Macaulay will inspire the human mind and thrill the 
 human heart. 
 
 Every scholar that has lived during three centuries 
 has regretted that Lord Bacon was ever high chancellor 
 of England, an office which he disgraced, and in disgrac- 
 ing which he also disgraced the noble profession of the 
 law^; but every scholar — aye, every lover of our kind — 
 
224 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 in all that long lapse of years has thanked Almighty God 
 that Francis Bacon wrote the "Novum Organum" and "De 
 Augmentis," by which, turning the human mind to utili- 
 tarianism, he contributed more to human comfort than 
 was ever contributed by any other of the multitudinous 
 sons of Adam. 
 
 The imperial house of Austria has long been a great ^ 
 factor in European affairs. H.enry Fielding, the Eng- 
 lish novelist, was related to it by ties of blood ; and Gibbon, 
 the historian of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire," declares that Fielding, by writing "Tom Jones," 
 shed more luster upon our race than all the Hapsburgers 
 that ever lived. 
 
 Of what interest to us are the achievements of Bulwer 
 pere in the role of statesman, or of Bulwer fils as gover- 
 nor-general of India? But till the end of time men will 
 read with interest and women with tears "Eugene Aram" 
 and "Lucile." 
 
 Thomas Brackett Reed, that masterful man whose 
 memory we all cherish with infinite pride, was one of the 
 great Speakers of this House, and accomplished a tre- 
 mendous revolution in parliamentary procedure; but his 
 fame is already a fading tradition. What would not the 
 world give for a book from his trenchant pen expressing 
 his honest opinions as to the men and measures with which 
 he was associated .^^ It would be a fit companion piece for 
 "Gulliver" and "The Letters of Junius." 
 
 Senator Chauncey Mitchell Depew ranks high In the 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 225 
 
 Senate ; but the best service he could render his kind would 
 be to devote his days and nights to writing a book of 
 reminiscences. Many New Yorkers would make creditable 
 Senators ; but no other living man could write a book of 
 such intense and abiding interest as could Senator Depew. 
 
 There has been much sneering at "the scholar in 
 politics." That manifestation of bad temper and jealousy 
 is easy and cheap. On a memorable occasion an eminent 
 practical Pennsylvanian politician referred to an illustri- 
 ous citizen of Boston who had been named for a high dip- 
 lomatic post as "one of them literary fellows," with a 
 profane adjective which the proprieties forbid me to re- 
 peat in this distinguished presence on this historic occa- 
 sion. Nevertheless and notwithstanding, Col. Thomas 
 Hart Benton, of Missouri, by writing his "Thirty Years' 
 View" did more to make himself a great, an indispensable 
 historic figure than he accomplished by his arduous service 
 of six full Roman lustrums in the Senate and of one term 
 in the House. As long as government exists on this conti- 
 nent he will be regarded as a standard authority on all 
 matters pertaining to Congressional legislation. By writ- 
 ing his "Twenty Years of Congress," James Gillespie 
 Blaine made a most valuable contribution to our political 
 literature and achieved for himself a more permanent 
 renown than if the supreme ambition of his heart had been 
 gratified by an election to the Presidency. 
 
 Samuel Sullivan Cox, one of the most brilliant of 
 mortals, a Representative in Congress for many years 
 
226 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 from both Ohio and New York, as well as minister to the^ 
 Sublime Porte, and the first man that every delivered ai 
 speech in this Hall, may fade from public memory as at 
 statesman, but "The Buckeye Abroad," "Why We Laugh," ' 
 and "The Three Decades of Federal Legislation" will be? 
 perused with pleasure by millions yet unborn. 
 
 For thirty-odd years, in House and Senate, George ? 
 Frisbie Hoar was one of the most conspicuous legislators j 
 and orators of the times in which he lived. No great: 
 statute was placed upon the books which he did not have' 
 a hand in shaping. No important question arose which hen 
 did not discuss ; but long after all that he did and said in i 
 tliis Chamber and the other has passed from the minds of 
 men his "Autobiography of Seventy Years" will challenge 
 the admiration of his countrymen. His noblest mental oif- • 
 spring was the last. 
 
 His book has been criticised on two grounds — as being;,; 
 too egotistical and as assigning to New Englanders ini 
 general, and Massachusetts men in particular, too highi 
 rank. At first blush I deemed both criticisms well taken, 
 but upon mature reflection I concluded that neither is . 
 tenable. An autobiography, whether written by a Har-- 
 vard man or by a Davy Crockett, is in the very nature of 
 things egotistical, for the ego is the very essence of the 
 theme. What might be offensive or preposterous in | 
 private conversation or in public speech may be appro- I 
 priate and even pleasing in autobiographical writing. 
 
 When he came to the graceful task of assigning the 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 227 
 
 status of New Englanders and Bay State men he evidently 
 took to heart the precept of St. Paul : 
 
 "But if any provide not for his own, and especially for 
 those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
 worse than an infidel." 
 
 Even if it be conceded that he did overpraise the men of 
 New England and Massachusets — 
 
 "His failings leaned to virtue's side." 
 
 For undue friendliness to one's kindred and neighbors 
 is greatly preferable to jealousy of them, and bears testi- 
 mony of a nobler soul. 
 
 Indeed, he had much cause to be lavish of panegyric in 
 speaking of the men of Massachusetts. Merely to walk 
 the streets of Boston and read the inscriptions on her 
 monuments, her statues, and her buildings is a liberal 
 education in patriotism. Should an inhabitant of another 
 planet, versed in both Latin and English, descend upon 
 that city, without any prior knowledge of our histor}^, he 
 would naturally conclude that Massachusetts, single- 
 handed and alone, originated and achieved the Revolution, 
 created the Republic, and has sustained and governed it 
 from the first. If he should read Massachusetts books, 
 which constitute a great multitude which no man can 
 number, he would be confirmed in this erroneous impression. 
 No complaint can reasonably be made of Massachusetts 
 nor of Senator Hoar for unduly exalting the horn of 
 Massachusetts men. What I do complain of is that the 
 people of the South and West have not pursued the same 
 
228 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 plan with their own worthies, and have permitted them to 
 be killed off by the inexorable rule of exclusion. Their 
 pioneer statesmen, warriors, orators, and State builders 
 were content to do things, great and glorious things, but 
 were careless of what record was made of their achieve- 
 ments. The incorrigible New England habit of book- 
 making accounts for the fact that her influence in America 
 is large out of all proportion to her area, population, or 
 achievements. Her writers would be destitute of human 
 nature if they were not biased — unconsciously, perhaps, 
 but biased nevertheless — in favor of New England men, 
 New England women. New England performance. New 
 England scenery. New England opinion, and even of New 
 England climate. Of course the ground already lost by 
 the South and West in this regard can never be recovered ; 
 but surely it is high time to go resolutely, systematically, 
 and extensively into the book-making business themselves. 
 This much they owe to their ancestors, to themselves, to 
 their posterity, to history, to truth, and to patriotism. 
 
 Thousands of statesmen, orators, soldiers, and lawyers 
 have lived and been forgotten ; but it may be safely stated 
 that since Guttenberg invented movable type no man has 
 written a really great book who is not still remembered 
 by intelligent persons. 
 
 Macaulay says: 
 
 "One of the most remarkable circumstances in the history 
 of Bacon's mind is the order in which its powers expanded 
 themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 229 
 
 to the last. The blossoms did not appear till late. In 
 general, the development of the fancy is to the develop- 
 ment of the judgment what the growth of a girl Is to the 
 growth of a boy. The fancy attains at an earlier period 
 to the perfection of its beauty, Its power, and its fruit- 
 fulness, and, as it is first to ripen, it is also the first to 
 fade. It has generally lost something of its bloom and 
 freshness before the sterner faculties have reached ma- 
 tunty, and is commonly withered and barren while those 
 faculties still retain all their energy. It rarely happens 
 that the fancy and the judgment grow together. It 
 happens still more rarely that the judgment grows faster 
 than the fancy. This seems, however, to have been the 
 case with Bacon. His boyhood and youth appear to have 
 been singularly sedate. His gigantic scheme of philo- 
 sophical reform is said by some writers to have been 
 planned before he was fifteen, and was undoubtedly 
 planned while he was still young. He observed as 
 vigilantly, meditated as deeply, and judged as temper- 
 ately when he gave his first work to the world as at the 
 close of his long career. But in eloquence, in sweetness, 
 and variety of expression, and In richness of illustration, 
 his later writings are far superior to those of his youth." 
 
 These words may be applied almost literally to Senator 
 Hoar. From the day he delivered his great Philippic 
 against Mr. Secretary Belknap to the hour of his death 
 he spoke as frequently perhaps as any other man in public 
 life, and every word that fell from his lips was read with 
 
g30 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 eagerness by the intelligence of America. His style con- 
 stantly grew richer, more imaginative, and more ornate, 
 until some of his later speeches partook largely of the 
 nature of epic poems. The peculiar order of growth which 
 Macaulay notes in Bacon's mind, and which I have just 
 stated to be true with reference to Senator Hoar's, is 
 also true, though in a lesser degree, of the intellects of 
 Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William Mc- 
 Kinley. The feature in which their minds and styles seem 
 to have changed most markedly in their advanced years 
 was that of humor. Prior to their induction into the 
 Presidential office it would be difficult to discover even a 
 trace of humor in their writings or their speeches; but 
 after quitting the White House both Mr. Cleveland and 
 General Harrison developed a rich vein of humor. On his 
 trip to California President McKinley lightened up his 
 speeches with genial humor, which was a grateful surprise 
 to his countrymen. Even on his death-bed he uttered one 
 delicious mote at the expense of his physicians. I hold it 
 truth that this development of humor in these three illus- 
 trious citizens of the Republic was so much clear gain to 
 all our people. 
 
 It may possibly be — who knows.? — that these men were 
 dowered with the humorous faculty at birth, but the occu- 
 pations of their lives had been so serious and so pressing 
 that they never had leisure nor inclination to indulge its 
 exercise. 
 
 It is a matter of congratulation that they did develop 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 231 
 
 that facult}^, for I believe in Carlyle's dictum that 
 "Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection 
 of poetic genius." 
 
 The career of Senator Hoar suggests still another 
 thought — that all the world, including Massachusetts, is 
 growing more liberal and more tolerant. As a matter of 
 fact, Massachusetts has always been liberal and tolerant 
 above the average in the range of opinion peniiitted to her 
 public men. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Boston 
 shut the doors of Faneuil Hall in the face of Daniel 
 Webster, the greatest New Englander who ever saw the 
 light of day, the greatest orator who ever spoke the Eng- 
 lish tongue, and that the legislature of Massachusetts 
 passed resolutions of censure upon Charles Sumner, be- 
 cause they had run counter to the public sentiment of 
 their constituencies. But Senator Hoar's was a happier 
 fate, for, notwithstanding the fact that he ran counter to 
 her public sentiment more frequently and more violently 
 than either Sumner or the godlike Daniel, Massachusetts 
 re-elected him in his extreme old age to a fifth full term 
 in the Senate of the United States. With her increasing 
 generosity the Old Bay State would probably have kept 
 him in the Senate a half century had he lived so long. 
 This wiser liberality was not only an honor to Massa- 
 chusetts and a gratification to Senator Hoar, but is an 
 added glory to the Republic and to the human race. 
 
CHAMP CLARK 
 
 SPEECH AT JEFFERSON DAY BANQUET 
 
 {Louisville, Kentucky, Saturday, April 6, 1912) 
 
 Mr. Clark said: In the preface to his wonderful Life 
 of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, Voltaire speaks of cer- 
 tain Emperors, Kings, Princes, potentates, warriors, and 
 statesmen as "rising above the vulgar level of the great." 
 That was one of the most suggestive phrases ever coined 
 in the teeming brain of its brilliant author. It sticks to the 
 memory like a burr, and tells us with an emphasis never 
 to be forgotten that many men considered great by their 
 worshipful contemporaries were only make-believe great 
 men, pseudo Goliaths, who were the happy beneficiaries of 
 an optical delusion common to the people of their day, 
 but that time, the acid test of reputations, reduces them to 
 their proper stature, assigning most of them to oblivion. 
 The truly great, whose fame and deeds, surviving the revo- 
 lutions and evolutions of the centuries, are enshrined in the 
 minds and hearts of men, are like "angels' visits, few and 
 far between." 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, the anniversary of whose birth wo 
 celebrate, wrote his name in indelible letters high up on 
 the scanty list of the immortals. He was the profoundest 
 philosopher that ever devoted his life to politics, the great- 
 est statesman that ever lived, bar none, the foremost and 
 tallest among the torch-bearers and path-blazers of human 
 liberty. The high place assigned to him by his contem- 
 poraries has been confirmed to him by the well-nigh unani- 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 233 
 
 mous voice of posterity and his vast reputation constantly 
 grows vaster as the ^^ears steal into centuries. 
 
 Second to Washington Only. — In all our history his 
 reputation is topped by that of only one other, George 
 Washington, who added to the renown of a statesman the 
 glory of a successful soldier and who earned more thor- 
 oughly and wore more becomingly the proud title of Pater 
 Patriae than did Marcus Tullius Cicero. We scarcely do 
 justice to Washington even yet. He rendered more im- 
 portant service to his country and to human liberty as 
 President of the Constitutional Convention than as either 
 Commander-in-Chief of our aiTnies or as President of the 
 United States, for it is almost certain that, but for his 
 all-pervading influence in the convention, no Constitution 
 would have been agreed upon, and but for the absolute 
 certainty that he would be the first President the Constitu- 
 tion would never have been ratified. 
 
 Byron's splendid picture of Washington is not over- 
 drawn : 
 
 "Where may the wearied eye repose 
 "When gazing on the Great; 
 
 "Where neither guilty glory glows, 
 "Nor despicable state? 
 
 "Yes— One— the first— the last— the best— 
 
 "The Cincinnatus of the West, 
 "Whom En^y dared not hate, 
 
 "Bequeathed the name of Washington, 
 
 "To make man blush there was but one." 
 
 ******* 
 As He Saw Himself. — When Jefferson came to die he 
 did the unusual thing of writing his own epitaph. Passing 
 
234< CHAMP CLx\RK 
 
 over the fact that he had been a member of the Virginia 
 Burgesses, member of the Continental Congress, Governor 
 of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice- 
 President and President, he set forth the three achieve- 
 ments which he deemed his clearest titles to the love and 
 admiration of his fellowmen in these words: "Here was 
 buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of 
 American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for re- 
 ligious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia." 
 Those were great and glorious deeds for which we owe 
 him an everlasting debt of gratitude, but even the wisest 
 men sometimes build more wisely than they know, and 
 through the strangest literary omission in all history, he 
 failed to mention the most stupendous and beneficent of 
 all his achievements, the "Louisiana Purchase." That is 
 the capstone on the towering fabric of his fame. 
 
 When the Corsican Colossus released all claim to that 
 rich empire on the 30th day of April, 1803, we became 
 instanter and ipso facto a world power. If Jefferson's 
 keen blue eye had never looked forth upon this glorious 
 world somebody would have written a Declaration of 
 American Independence, for that was a thing inevitable. 
 It would not have possessed the majestic sweep of Jef- 
 ferson's. No other state paper ever did. But it would 
 have sufficed. If he had never been bom somebody would 
 have penned Virginia's statute of religious freedom and 
 somebody would have founded a university in Virginia; 
 but if Thomas Jefferson had not defeated John Adams 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 235 
 
 in 1800 we never would have owned one square foot of land 
 west of the Great river, for, while Napoleon was supreme 
 upon the land, England was Mistress of the Sea, and she 
 would have stripped him of his trans-Mississippi posses- 
 ■sions. Hemmed in as we would have been by Great Britain 
 on the north and west and Spain on the south, it would 
 have been difficult, if not impossible, for us to maintain 
 our independence and to preserve our autonomy. 
 
 ****** viJ 
 
 Doubly Dear to Trans-Mississippians. — So that, 
 while Jefferson's memory is precious to all Amencans, it 
 is doubly precious to those of us who dwell on the sunset 
 side of the Father of Waters. He enabled us to be Ameri- 
 cans and to live where we now live. It is a great thing 
 to be a Kentuckian. It is a great thing to be a Missounan, 
 but the greatest thing is to be an American. Every time 
 they think of him millions of people beyond the Mississippi 
 bless the name of Thomas Jefferson : 
 
 "His spirit wraps the dusky mountain, 
 "His memory sparkles o'er the fountain; 
 "The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
 "Rolls mingling with his fame forever." 
 
 There are a cloud of witnesses to the greatness of 
 Thomas Jefferson. I shall quote only two. Senator George 
 Frisbie Hoar, of Massachusetts, was a Republican all his 
 days, and yet he began a remarkable speech on tlie great 
 Virginian in this wise: 
 
 "If we want a sure proof of Thomas Jefferson's great- 
 ness it will be found in the fact that men of every va- 
 
236 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 riety of political opinion, however far asunder, find con- 
 firmation of their doctrine in him. Every party in this 
 country to-day reckons Jefferson as its patron saint." 
 
 In the same line, Abraham Lincoln declared in one of 
 his great speeches that he never had a political idea in his 
 life which he had not learned from the Declaration of 
 
 Independence. 
 
 * * * * ^ * * 
 
 Senator Hoar's Tribute. — Again, Senator Hoar says : 
 "The mighty figure of Thomas Jefferson comes down in 
 history with the Declaration of Independence in one hand 
 and the title deed of Louisiana in the other. He ac- 
 quired for his country a territory of 1,171,931 square 
 miles, now fifteen States, to be hereafter the seat and 
 center of empire certainly of this continent and, as we 
 confidently believe, of the world. Yet I believe in the 
 estimate of mankind that achievement is insignificant com- 
 pared with the other. 
 
 "The author of the Declaration of Independence 
 stands in human history as the foremost man who ever 
 lived, whose influence has led men to govern themselves 
 in the conduct of States by spiritual laws. That was Jef- 
 ferson's mission — to teach spiritual laws. Observe that I 
 say spiritual laws, not spiritual truths merely, not form- 
 ulae to be assented to, but rules of life to be governed by 
 and acted upon. 
 
 "It was due to Jefferson that our fathers laid deep the 
 foundations of the State in the moral law. They first set 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 237 
 
 to mankind the great example and exhibited the mighty 
 spectacle — the sublimest spectacle in the universe — of a 
 great and free people voluntarily governing itself by a 
 law higher than its own desire. 
 
 "Political freedom, religious freedom, and the educa- 
 tion that makes these possible and safe were the ends for 
 which he strove, the monuments by which he desired to 
 be remembered. Neither power, nor honor, nor office, nor 
 popularity, nor fame entered into the mighty heart or 
 stirred that mighty soul. 
 
 "I remember in my youth that a brilliant writer under- 
 took with some success to caricature Daniel Webster, al- 
 though it was a rather audacious attempt. He represents 
 Mr. Webster as saying: 'The common opinion in the 
 Eastern Hemisphere is so and so^ — I differ from this East- 
 ern Hemisphere.' That was not so unreasonable a thing 
 for Daniel Webster to say. But if Thomas Jefferson had 
 said it, it would occur to no man that it was either extrava- 
 gant or presumptuous. Thomas Jefferson was one of 
 those men who can differ from hemispheres, from genera- 
 tions, from administrations, and from centuries with the 
 perfect assurance that on any question of liberty and 
 righteousness, if the opinion of Thomas Jefferson stand on 
 one side and the opinion of mankind on the other, the 
 world will, in the end, come around to his way of thinking." 
 
 * elf * * * * * 
 
 Wonderful Versatility. — Its versatility was one of 
 the most striking features of Thomas Jefferson's exquisite 
 
238 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 mind, which was both telescopic and microscopic in its 
 range and operations. Shakespeare has been denominated 
 "the Myriad-Minded." That description may be applied 
 to Jefferson without exaggeration or bad taste. 
 
 Lord Bacon declared that he took all knowledge for his 
 province, which Jefferson appears to have done also, al- 
 though he never so stated or intimated. His bent was 
 towards philosophy, and the Agricultural Society of the 
 Seine voted him a gold medal for inventing a plow with 
 mold-board of least resistance. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton is much and justly lauded by histor- 
 ians for devising a plan for milling the edge of coins ; but 
 Jefferson accomplished so many things of importance in 
 so many fields of human endeavor that little mention is 
 made of the fact that he invented our system of coinage, 
 weights, and measures — based on the decimal notation — 
 thereby conferring an inestimable boon upon his country- 
 men. 
 
 Had he not been drawn by circumstances into the swirl 
 of politics, he would as a scientist have ranked with the 
 Father of Liductive Philosophy, with the Discoverer of 
 the Law of Gravitation, and with the Captor of the 
 Lightning. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Master of Law. — It Is conceded by all his associates, 
 whether friend or foe — and he had a full complement of 
 both — that he thoroughly mastered the law, to accomplish 
 which task Lord Eldon asserted that "one must live like a 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 239^ 
 
 hermit and work like a horse." Jefferson subscribed to the 
 last half of Eldon's dictum, but scorned the first half 
 utterly, for all his days he was the most sociable of mortals, 
 being at home equally with the plain people and with the 
 greatest of the sons of men. 
 
 While mathematics was such a pei^etual delight to him 
 that he habitually earned with him a pocketbook of logar- 
 ithms as an aid in intricate calculations, he was thoroughly 
 grounded in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, and was in 
 posse as universal a linguist as Elihu Burritt, "The 
 Learned Blacksmith." With much labor, indefatigable in- 
 dustry, and infinite patience, he collected fifty Indian vo- 
 cabularies, the loss of which by theft he mourned always. 
 
 As a presidential scholar, he stands in a class with John 
 Quincy Adams and James Abram Garfield. He was so 
 "cunning with his pen," to borrow a happy phrase from 
 John Adams, that in point of literary excellence his "Sum- 
 mary View of the Rights of British America," his "Decla- 
 ration of American Independence," and his first Inaugural 
 Address rank with Milton's Prose, the letters of Alexander 
 Pope, and the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 To please a friend and as a mental recreation he wrote 
 his "Notes on Virginia," which is an authority to this day 
 and which is as pleasant reading as Goldsmith's "Animated 
 Nature," and much more instructive. 
 
 Famous as Fiddler. — He possessed fine musical talent 
 and was a famous fiddler, drawing the bow with the zest, 
 if not with the skill, of Paganini and Ole Bull. 
 
^40 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 He was familiar with all systems of architecture and 
 knew more about them than any other American of his 
 generation. For his own use and for the use of Senators, 
 while Vice-President, he wrote "Jefferson's Manual," which 
 is the foundation of all the parliamentary codes in America 
 to-day. 
 
 Agriculture was his hobby; he did more for its promo- 
 tion than any other statesman that ever lived, and deserves 
 to be the perpetual Emeritus President of the Patrons of 
 Husbandry. He was the first man on this continent to 
 reduce farming to a science. He divided his lands into plots 
 and kept an accurate account with each, so that he could 
 ascertain what sorts of crops were suited to particular 
 soils. He obtained, for the planters of the South, Turin 
 rice, which has proved a source of vast wealth to that sec- 
 tion. He imported the first Merino sheep, which are a 
 great success, and experimented with fat-tall sheep, which 
 did not flourish in our climate. While controlling the mul- 
 titudinous and multifarious affairs of a nascent republic, 
 he somehow found time personally to establish and conduct 
 a miniature Agricultural Department, Botanical Garden, 
 and Weather Bureau, to make meteorological observations 
 three times a day through a long series of years, and to 
 note minutely the first appearance in the market and upon 
 the table of each particular species of vegetables, fruit, and 
 grain grown in this latitude. 
 
 He had made a profound study of the fauna and flora 
 of America, and was a lover of flowers, shrubs, trees, and 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 241 
 
 animals. He was a skillful horseman, and until the day of 
 his death, when past the Psalmist's extreme allotment of 
 four-score years, he would ride nothing but the pick and 
 choice of Virginia thoroughbreds. Some of his favorite 
 saddle horses, notably "Wildair" and "Eagle," have repu- 
 tations as enduring as Alexander's "Bucephalus," Napo- 
 leon's "Marengo," Wellington's "Copenhagen," Robert E. 
 Lee's "Traveler," Stonewall Jackson's "Old Sorrel," or 
 Philip H. Sheridan's "Rienzi." 
 
 Father of Public ScHOOLs.—Believing with all his 
 heart that the intelligence of the masses is the true basis 
 of free government, in his younger days he evolved the 
 system of public schools now in vogue, which we boast is 
 the chief bulwark of our liberties, and after retiring from 
 the presidency founded the University of Virginia— one of 
 the greatest institutions of learning on the whole face of 
 the earth. By these two achievements — to say nothing of 
 his political teachings— he has perhaps exerted a wider 
 influence over the minds of men than any of his predeces- 
 sors or successors in the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. 
 
 He must be counted among the greatest lawgivers of his 
 time. By abohshing the unjust and unnatural rule of 
 primogeniture he conferred a pennanent benefaction upon 
 his fellow-citizens, and his Statute of Religious Freedom 
 is one of the three things on which he chose to rest his 
 fame in his celebrated epitaph and which he deemed his 
 cleverest titles to the gratitude of future generations. 
 
 Had his scheme of gradual and rational emancipation 
 
 I 
 
M2 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 been adopted the chances are that we would have escaped 
 the countless hoiTors and calamities of the war between 
 the States. He, and not Nathan Dane, was the real 
 author of the ordinance for the government of the North- 
 west Territory, although Daniel Webster undertook to give 
 the honor to the latter. Jefferson was virtually the author 
 of the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the 
 United States, which are in the nature of a Bill of Rights, 
 and which contain the essence of human freedom. 
 
 He was so thoroughly grounded in the principles of gov- 
 ernment of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
 that he was a potent factor in two revolutions — one in 
 America, the other in France — the purpose of which was 
 to establish the twin propositions that "All men are created 
 equal" and that "Governments derive their just powers 
 from the consent of the governed." So clear was his vision 
 as a statesman that, after a century of legislation, we have 
 not attained his lofty standard of political conduct. The 
 strongest proof of his versatility is the fact that he is more 
 frequently quoted than any other statesman the world has 
 ever known. 
 
 The Democratic Creed. — When Jefferson delivered his 
 first inaugural, which has become a classic, and which, if I 
 had my way about it, every boy and girl in America 
 should commit to memory as a literary exercise, for among 
 his other excellences he wrote better English than any 
 man that ever set foot on the American continent, he 
 stated the Democratic creed in these words : 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 2i3 
 
 "Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state 
 or persuasion, religious or political: 
 
 "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all na- 
 tions, entangling alliances with none ; 
 
 "The support of the State Governments in all their 
 rights, as the most competent administrations for our do- 
 mestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti- 
 republican tendencies; 
 
 "The presei-vation of the general Government, in its 
 whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our 
 peace at home and safety abroad ; 
 
 "A jealous care of the right of election by the people, 
 a mild and safe corrective of abuses, which are lopped by 
 the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are un- 
 provided ; 
 
 "Absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, 
 the vital principle of republics from which is no appeal but 
 to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of des- 
 potism ; 
 
 "A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace 
 for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them ; 
 
 "The supremacy of the civil over the military authority ; 
 
 "Economy in public expense, that labor may be lightly 
 burdened ; 
 
 "The honest payment of our debts and sacred preserva- 
 tion of the public faith ; 
 
 "Encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its 
 handmaid ; 
 
244 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 "The diffusion of information and arraignment of all 
 abuses at the bar of public reason. 
 
 "Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and free- 
 dom of person under the protection of the Habeas Corpus 
 and trial by juries impartially selected. 
 
 "These principles form the bright constellation which 
 has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of 
 revolution and reform. The wisdom of our sages and 
 blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. 
 They should be the creed of our political faith, the text; 
 of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the 
 services of those we trust, and should we wander from them 
 in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our 
 steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, 
 liberty, and safety." 
 
 To this all-embracing creed Jefferson's disciples this 
 night avow their allegiance with the same fervor as did 
 James Madison, James Monroe, Albert Gallatin, and the 
 Democrats of their day. If the American people lived up 
 in good faith to that declaration of principles we would 
 have a well-nigh perfect government. 
 
 What Government Should Do. — Another passage out 
 of that inaugural should be burned into the memory of 
 every man, woman, and child betwixt the two seas. It 
 runs in this wise: 
 
 "With all these blessings, what more is necessary to 
 make us a happy and prosperous people .f* Still one thing 
 more, fellow-citizens, — a wise and frugal government 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 245 
 
 which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall 
 leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of 
 industry and improvement, and shall not take from the 
 mouth of labor the bread it has earned." 
 
 The sort of government described in that paragraph is 
 precisely what the Democrats of to-day are striving for. 
 The idea therein contained and so happily expressed is the 
 perfection of Democracy, the people's rule. 
 
 What is the secret of this man's wonderful hold on the 
 minds, hearts, and imagination of mankind? It was his 
 intense love of liberty. That was the master passion of his 
 soul. He believed in the equality of all men before the 
 law. That was the basic principle of his creed. He be- 
 lieved with his whole heart in the honesty, the patriotism, 
 and the good sense of the masses of the people. He loved 
 them with all the intensity of his nature, and they repaid 
 that love in scriptural measure — heaped up, pressed down, 
 and running over. Ever since he wrote the Declaration 
 of Independence, wherever men have been struggling for 
 freedom in any quarter of the globe his name has been 
 their inspiration, and could he return to earth, while he 
 would rejoice in the marvelous physical development which 
 has taken place since his death, the tiling at which he 
 would rejoice most would be the spread of liberty through- 
 out the world. 
 
 Jefferson and Hamilton. — It is impossible to think 
 of Thomas Jefferson without thinking of Alexander Hamil- 
 ton. They were antagonists in life; they are antagonists 
 
246 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 in history, and they are antagonists in their graves. Jef- 
 ferson proclaimed that all men are created equal, and that 
 governments derive their just powers from the consent 
 of the governed. On the other hand his great antagonist 
 distrusted the people and believed in the aristocracy or 
 monarchial tlieory of government. He boldly declared that 
 the British Government, with King and Lords and Com- 
 mons, was the best ever devised by the wit of man. He 
 believed till the day of his death that the Constitution was 
 — to use his own words — "a weak and worthless fabric," 
 "a mere rope of sand." It is true, and the truth should be 
 stated, that Hamilton rendered valuable service in the New 
 York Convention, and in the Federalist in having the Con- 
 stitution adopted, but he did so because it was the strong- 
 est he could get, not because it was strong enough to suit 
 him. Here is a hard nut for the psychologist to crack. 
 How did it happen that Thomas Jefferson, who by birth, 
 lineage, and education and environment was an aristoci'at, 
 should have been the greatest leveler that ever appeared 
 on this continent — the very incarnation of the people's 
 inile, the chief priest, apostle, and propagandist of democ- 
 racy, and that Hamilton, who was born in the West Indies 
 and who had no such great family connection as had Jef- 
 ferson, and who by every rule of reason should have been a 
 democrat, was the head and front of the aristocratic party 
 in America. It is absolutely true that history is frequently 
 stranger than fiction. 
 
 The Tariff and Trusts. — ^We claim to be the disciples 
 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 247 
 
 of Thomas Jefferson, and what do we stand for to-day? 
 We are as much against special privilege, and as much in 
 favor of equal rights to all as he was. We believe and 
 we proclaim our faith in the great body of the people, and 
 that the law should give every citizen an equal opportunity 
 in the race of life. We won the election of 1910 on these 
 principles — stated, perhaps, in a different way, but on the 
 principles enunciated by Jefferson nevertheless. And the 
 Democratic House over which I have the honor to preside 
 has kept the faith, and has redeemed, or is in process of 
 redeeming, every promise made in order to achieve that 
 victory. 
 
 The high protective tariff system and the trusts are 
 bottomed on special privilege against which Jefferson con- 
 tended all his life. It is unjust to use the taxing power 
 to enrich a few men at the expense of the great body of 
 the taxpayers. The Government has the right to take in 
 the way of taxation every dollar that it needs for its own 
 economical and effective administration. I put in the word 
 "effective" because no good citizen, by whatever political 
 name called, desires to see the goverament crippled in 
 any legitimate function. But every dollar wrung from 
 the taxpayers beyond the needs of government economi- 
 cally and efficiently administered is an outrage on justice 
 and on patriotism, even though done under the forms of 
 law. The high protective tariff is the mother of trusts. 
 The trusts will never be abolished until the tariff is cut to 
 revenue basis, or to as close an approximation thereto as 
 
248 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 possible. The truth is that the tariff question and the 
 trust question are one and the same. 
 
 The Republicans promised before the elections of 1908 
 that if they were again entrusted with power they would re- 
 duce the tariff. Without that promise they could not have 
 carried the country. On that promise they did carry the 
 country, and immediately proceeded to revise the tariff up. 
 For that stupendous piece of bad faith the people trounced 
 them in 1910, and will trounce them still more thoroughly 
 in 1912. We won that election on six principal promises : 
 To submit a constitutional amendment providing for the 
 election of United States Senators by popular vote, against 
 which no man has ever been able to urge a tenable objec- 
 tion. If a citizen is fit to vote for President and Vice- 
 President, for Governors and members of the House of 
 Representatives and minor officers on down to constable, 
 they are equally competent to vote for United States Sen- 
 ators. What is a Senator, anyway.^ He is simply a larger 
 representative. At least that is what he ought to be, and 
 as such he ought to be elected by popular vote. 
 
 Money In Elections. — We promised to pass a law 
 compelling the publication of campaign expenses before 
 the election, instead of after the election. The average 
 American citizen, of whatever political faith, is absolutely 
 honest. He does not believe in the corrupt use of money 
 in elections, and he believes that in the last twenty years 
 money has been used corruptly in elections, constantly and 
 in rapidly increasing volume as the years go by, and he 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 249 
 
 proposes to put a stop to it. He does not intend that this 
 Government, which, with all its faults, is the best that the 
 sun ever shone upon, shall be destroyed through corrup- 
 tion. Therefore the average citizen has made up liis mind 
 that the expense of election shall be so reduced that poor 
 men as well as rich men may aspire to serve their country 
 in public places. 
 
 We promised to liberalize the rules of the House, and 
 we have done it. It was said that if the rules were liber- 
 alized, particularly if the Speaker were taken off of the 
 Rules Committee, of which he was chairman, and practi- 
 cally of which he was the whole thing, and if the power of 
 appointing committees was taken from him, business could 
 not be transacted, order could not be maintained, decorum 
 could not be preserved and chaos would return. We de- 
 prived the Speaker of the chairmanship of the Committee 
 on Rules; we took him off of the Rules Committee, and 
 we made the committees elective by the House, and yet all 
 observers of the situation will testify that order has never 
 been more thoroughly maintained in the House; that de- 
 corum has never been more constantly preserved ; that busi- 
 ness has never been more greatly expedited, and that chaos 
 has been conspicuous only by its absence. 
 
 Record of the House. — The present Democratic 
 House has passed more constructive legislation than any 
 other House since the Government was organized, in the 
 same length of time. In fact, we have set the high-water 
 mark for constructive statesmanship for all the Houses 
 
250 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 that shall come after us. Every member of the House feels 
 that he has been treated with absolute fairness, and there 
 has not been an unseemly scene in the House since it was 
 organized. We promised to admit New Mexico and Ari- 
 zona as two separate States. It is a shame that they were 
 not admitted when Wyoming, Idaho, the Dakotas, Mon- 
 tana, and Washington were admitted. 
 
 We promised to economize, and we are proceeding to do 
 so as we pass the great appropriation bills through the 
 House. Every one of them is being reduced wherever re- 
 duction is possible, keeping always in view the good of 
 the public service. I know that economy is one of the 
 dry est subjects under heaven. It is dryer than a powder 
 house in a drouth in the month of August. But when I 
 was a boy back in the hill country of Anderson County I 
 heard an old rough-and-ready country doctor say that 
 the most sensitive nerve in the human anatomy was the 
 nerve leading to the pocketbook, and the average citizen 
 believes with old Ben Franklin that a penny saved is a 
 penny made, and while all good citizens are willing to con- 
 tribute their just proportion of money to support the 
 Government, they are bitterly opposed to spending two 
 dollars where one dollar will do the same work effectively. 
 We began economizing where charity should begin — at 
 home — by lopping off over a hundred supernumerary 
 officials in the House and turning their salaries, amounting 
 to about $200,000, into the Treasury. 
 
 Party's Tariff Record. — We promised to reduce the 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES 251 
 
 tariff. There was nothing equivocal about that, and we 
 proceeded to redeem that promise at the extra session of 
 Congress. We passed a tariff bill which would have saved 
 to the American people about $500,000,000 a year of 
 tariff burdens. It should never be forgotten that under 
 a high protective tariff system, where one dollar goes into 
 the coffers of the Government, about five dollars go into 
 the pockets of the tariff barons. Five hundred million 
 dollars is about five dollars a head for the American citi- 
 zen, $27.50 for the average family. To some folks this 
 may seem like a small economy, but as the average head of 
 a family, which is the unit of our civilization, consisting of 
 five and a half persons, receives only about $400 a year, it 
 is a cruel outrage to gouge him out of $27.50 of his 
 meager income and give it to the tariff barons alread}^ rich 
 beyond the dreams of avarice. 
 
 President Taft vetoed all our tariff bills, thereby rais- 
 ing an issue which will rage with unabated fury until the 
 polls close in November. Under the Constitution he has 
 the prerogative of using the veto. So has the King of 
 Great Britain, but no British King has dared use the veto 
 in two centuries, and the first British King who does veto 
 an important bill will be the last of his line, just as William 
 Howard Taft will be the last of the Standpat Presidents. 
 He made his record; we made ours. On that record we 
 confidently appeal to the people, the court of last resort 
 in politics. 
 
 Big Saving In Sugar. — At this regular session we have 
 
252 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 passed tariff bills, which in the aggregate would save the 
 people as much as the tariff bills which we passed at the 
 extra session. In the item of sugar alone, one of our bills 
 saves the consumers of the land $150,000,000 a year. The 
 Payne- Aldrich-Smoot Tariff Bill raises about $53,000,000 
 a year on sugar. To recoup this loss of $53,000,000 we 
 passed a bill levying an excess tax on incomes over $5,000 
 a year, which it is estimated will bring into the Treasury 
 about as much revenue as is now derived from sugar, thus 
 reheving the people of about $100,000,000 of taxes on 
 sugar alone, which will reduce the cost of living that much. 
 This excise tax is practically a level income tax. 
 
 If I had carte blanche to write the laws I would estab- 
 lish a graduated income tax with liberal exemptions which 
 would bring into the Treasury a large amount of money 
 and would give us a free hand in the reduction of the 
 tariff. This excise tax is defensible on the ground of 
 humanity and justice — that it takes the burden of taxa- 
 tion off of the people who are least able to pay it and levies 
 the taxes on those who are most able to pay them. Presi- 
 dent Taft may veto our tariff bills passed at this regular 
 session. I have heard that he will. Without being a 
 prophet or the son of a prophet, I make bold to predict 
 that he will not veto the excise bill, and that if he signs it 
 the Supreme Court will not declare it unconstitutional. It 
 will thus be seen that we have religiously fulfilled, or are 
 in process of fulfilling, every promise that we made in 
 order to carry the election. 
 
EXCERPTS FROxAI SPEECHES 253 
 
 The impending campaign must be fought out very 
 largely on the record made by the Democrats of the House 
 in the Sixty-first Congress, which was so splendid as to 
 surprise our friends and dumfound our enemies, and also 
 on the magnificent record made by the Democrats in both 
 House and Senate in the present Congress. I helped to 
 make those records. I am proud of them, as is every good 
 Democrat betwixt the two seas, and on them we can win 
 in the impending struggle. 
 
 Big Issues In November. — Of course, there are many 
 other issues, some great, some small, some national in their 
 scope, and some confined entirely to the State, which I 
 have not time to discuss, but, above all, the overshadowing 
 issue will be the tariff question and the cognate question 
 of the trusts. The tariff ought to be reduced to a revenue 
 basis, and laws against the trusts in both their criminal 
 and civil features should be rigorously enforced without 
 fear or favor. There is no reason on earth why a big 
 criminal should go scot-free and a little criminal be sent 
 to jail or the penitentiary. Such an administration of the 
 law has a tendency to bring all law into contempt. 
 
 Our prospects of success this year are better than they 
 have been at any time in my recollection — ^better even than 
 they were in April, 1892, when we won our sweeping vic- 
 toi-y, and for the first time since 1859 had possession of 
 the House, the Senate, and the Presidency all at once. If 
 we lose this fight it will be through overconfidence and by 
 reason of a foolish dependence on the factional fight among 
 
S54 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 the Republicans. Against this I warn all my Democratic 
 friends. In order to win we must hold all the votes we 
 received in 1908 and win many thousands more. The only 
 way we can hope to draw independent voters to our side 
 is by continuing in the lines upon which the Democratic 
 House has been proceeding ever since its organization. 
 
 Appeal to Kentuckians. — My Fellow Kentuckians : ; 
 There is an old saying: "Once a Kentuckian always a 
 Kentuckian," and I believe it is true. 
 
 When the partiality of the Democratic Representatives ; 
 in Congress assigned me by their unanimous voice to the 
 highest office held by any man of our political faith since 
 the 4th of March, 1897, — the second highest office within 
 the gift of the mightiest and freest people under the sun— 
 I made it the rule of my conduct not to accept an invi- 
 tation to speak which would cause me to lose a day from 
 the discharge of the duties of the great office which I 
 hold. I made an exception in the case of Kentucky, the 
 State where I was born and where my mother's people 
 have lived since the Caucasians first came into' possession 
 of this goodly land which Tom Marshall denominated "the 
 Garden spot of the World." So I am here — ^I am glad to 
 be here — I hope it is good to be here. It is to me a home- 
 coming, arousing tender memories of the long ago. 
 
 The people of this dear old Commonwealth, some of them 
 at least, have known me from the cradle, how I toiled and 
 struggled as a hired farmhand from a time when little 
 more than a child, clerked in a country store, and taught 
 
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECHES S55 
 
 school before I was fifteen in the old-fashioned log cabin 
 with slab seats. 
 
 "Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes 
 "And fondly broods with miser care; 
 
 "Time but the impression deeper makes 
 "As streams their channels deeper wear." 
 
 Then I went forth to seek my fortune in the imperial 
 Commonwealth of Missouri, whose people received me with 
 open arms and loving hearts and have showered honors 
 upon me without stint. They have advanced me step by 
 step till I occupy the Speaker's chair, whose most illus-j 
 trious occupant was another Kentuckian, Henry Clay. Thej 
 people of Missouri have sent me forth with their indorse- 
 ment and their blessing as their candidate for the greatest 
 political office known among men. My heart goes out in 
 gratitude to the good people of Missouri for this last and 
 most conclusive evidence of their esteem and confidence. But 
 Missouri, great as she is, and proud of her as I am, cannot 
 single-handed and alone nominate a candidate for Presi- 
 dent. Where then should the Missourians, many thous- 
 ands of whom are Kentuckians or the descendants of Ken- 
 tuckians, look for help ? Surely to old Kentucky to whom 
 Missourians are bound by the ties of affection and of blood. 
 
 In this crisis of my fate to whom should I, four genera- 
 tions of whose ancestors sleep among the Kentucky hills, 
 turn for succor in achieving the supreme honor of the re- 
 public? Most assuredly to Kentuckians who are flesh of 
 my flesh and bone of my bone — to Kentuckians, the proud- 
 est and most clannish people in the wide, wide world. Of 
 
256 CHAMP CLARK 
 
 course, I am thankful for the support of Oklahoma, Kan- 
 sas, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, and other States, but 
 the support of Kentucky would be to me beyond all price, 
 more precious than rubies, sweeter than honey and the 
 honeycomb. Since Abraham Lincoln was gathered to his 
 fathers, no Kentuckian has had a chance to be President, 
 and all her great sons have missed the glittering prize. In 
 this exigency of my career I come to Kentucky for aid with 
 the implicit confidence with which a child would go to its 
 mother for assistance ; for, after all : 
 
 "There is no place like the old place where you and I were born! 
 "Where we lifted first our eyelids on the splendor of the morn, 
 "From the milk-white breast that warmed us, from the clinging arms 
 
 that bore, 
 "Where the dear eyes glistened o'er us that will look on us no more! 
 "There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning 
 
 days, 
 "No greeting like his welcome; no homage like his praise; 
 "Fame is the scentless sunflower with gaudy crown of gold, 
 "But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold." 
 
 X39 
 

 

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