The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-02-26
SENATOR MORGAN
IS A ToILER AND A PATIENT WAITER FOR EVENTS TO
 HAPPEN HIS WAY.
He Wants the Nicaragua Canal-"1i Panama Canal Could Be Dug in Week With Spoon It
 Would Be the Same"

|
 Washington Special to New York World. Down in Alabama they believe in the maxim "Old men for counsel. At least, | they exemplify It in their selections TOT | the United States Senate.
 John T. Morgan is 70 years old ana ms | colleague. Edmund w. Pettus. is &. Both were Brigadier Generals in the Civil War. | Pettus was an officer In the Mexican war They are big, gray-poiied men, Wtn | deep chests, ruddy cheeks and minds that work like chain lightning They are | deeply versed in the law.
 Senator Morgan is now serving his | twenty-fifth year in the Senate. It Is not likely that he will ever again enter | so deeply into a question as he has gone | Into the project of an isthmian waterway. | He couldn't, in fact, unless he lives to be | hundred, for he has proclaimed the ad- | vantages of the Nicaragua route for l twenty years and Is still proclaiming them I unabashed by the fact that nearly all the | other members of the Senate are tacitly, | at least. In favor of the Panama route. John T. Morgan Is a slow moving, hard thinking man. He does not jump at con- clusions. but he has the gift of seeing, | ahead of his colleagues, what the future | has in store Years ago. when everybody considered the Hawaiian Islands as for eign territory that could not for long time come into the United States, Senator Morgan was advocating the admission of the islands as a Territory. He harped on | that theme in and out of season. lie l made himself a nuisance about 1t, but he
 was in the Senate when Hawaii was
 made Territory.
 The distinguishing characteristics of Morgan are his tenacity, his capacity TOT work and his answering faith in his own Judgment. When he takes hold of a proposition he never lets go. A year is a | short time to him. He will wait ten years If necessary but he will get what he wants or he will go down after the most stubborn kind of a fight and always pro testing that he Is right and the opposi- ton wrong. Morgan is not obnoxious in his ideas. He displays no contempt for those who differ from him. He goes along steadily, carefully, working night and day. He will listen patiently to what ms opponents have to say. He will dis pute points he differs in, but always cour- | teously and considerably. No man is big | enough to swerve him from his chosen | path. When he makes up his mind that | proposition Is right, that settles 1t. He | may be overwhelmed by numbers, but
 there Is no power on earth to change hls | mind
 Senator Morgan believes in a canal | across the isthmus. He has given years | of study to the project. Those years of | study have convinced him that the prop
 CT place to put the canal is along the Me l aragua route. If he were shown that the | Panama Canal could be dug in a week | with teaspoon that would make no diff | ference to him. He has looked into the | merits of both routes. He has concluded. | after all these years that the Nicaragua | route is best. That settles it.
 He lives In an oldfashioned house in John Marshall place. The name of that
 street gives an index to MT. Morgan'a
 character. It used to be Four-and-a- | Half Street. which name, MT. Morgan
 contended, and reasonably, was too long, ] too clumsy and absurd. He picked out I John Marshall. the expounder of the Con- | stitution, as fit person to be honored by
 having a street named after him, and he | selected his own street as the proper l street to carry the name.
 Patiently year after year he worked with | the District Commissioners to have the name of the street changed. Continued | rebuffs did not bother him. Finally the l block in which Senator Morgan's house | stands to John Marshall Place. The Sena- \ tor smiled and passed on to something
 else. It had taken him some years to win. | but he had won.
 | The Senator's speeches sound villain
 ously. They appear to be mumbled, jum-
 bled, disjointed affairs lacking in coher- ence as much as they lack in oratorical
 nourisnes; When they appear in the Con-
 gressional Record 1t is seen that this as-
 sumption is entirely erroneous. The
 speeches in print are clear and logical a | bit heavy, 1t Is true, but straightforward
 presentations of the Senator's ideas and | crammed and damned with facts.
 He has probably made a hundred
 speeches in favor of the Nicaragua Ca
 nal At the end of the Fifty-sixth Con- | gress he spoke with much feeling He told how he had been fighting for years for a | Nicaragua Canal, and had said that he
 probably never would talk on the subject
 again. Then he got warmed up and for | three hours advanced reasons why if | would be a crime to Jig the canal any l where but on the Nicaragua route It was
 a swan song, he said, but 1t was lustily sung.
 In the Fifty-seventh Congress the House passed the Nicaragua Canal bill, Senator | Morgan took heart. He plunged into the
 thick of it again. Congress adopted the
 Spooner compromise that left the selec- | ton of the route to the President, but
 favored the offer of the Panama Com pany. Senator Morgan smiled grlmly. l When the treaty with Colombia came
 to the Senate he girded up his loins and
 started in The first thing he did was
 to otfer fifty amendments to the treaty
 and to announce that he intended to talk
 on every amendment. He said he would
 talk the treaty to death If he could, and
 he didn't care whether other legislation | suffered or not.
 Morgan was lusty man in his younger | days. His frame is heavy yet. lie is | six feet tall and broad across the shoul-
 ders, although bowed somewhat with his | years He has high, protruding fore head. His head is rectangular He wears a little gray mustache, at which he con- l stantly chews when he Is in repose He IS | attentive to his duties in the Senate and | can generally be found at his desk When l he Is not writing he sits with folded hands | looking with unseeing eyes at the carpet l He will sit for hours like this. but he
 hears everything that Is said, and when it l seems necessary to ask question or make statement he does it incisively. | listens to the answers and then sinks into
 his chair again. The Senate respects him.