The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1904-05-13

and was exasperated by the certainty
that the house would override him.
"Yes,' he roared, shaking his fists
high in the air at Representative Alex
ander Of Buffalo, the sponsor for the
measure; make the government a
partner in your expositions. Then the
next step will be to make the United
States pay the losses of the county
fairs, and after that, l suppose, We'll
become the hackers of a Wild Bill
West shown
The howl that greeted this only
noyed him. He was too excited and
too dead in earnest to see anything
wrong with his sentence, and wild
Bill West show it remained.
Now all this is changed. He is the
picture of dignity as he stands in the
speakers place, and it is quaint, nat
ural, enforced dignity, nothing put on
about it. Yet he is the same Uncle
Joe, and he has not been speaker ten
minutes before the house was in a
roar because he told the new congress
men to ''step up to the area and be
sworn" And only the other day,
when the postal appropriation bill was
being passed and some n asked
what was before the house, this un-
conventional speaker bluntly replied,
1.-THE subsidy for the Southern rail-
way" The brutal word Subsidy"
struck the house dumb for a moment,
for they had been calling it all kinds
of fine names, and then they all join
ed in a shout of laughter.
Cannon had never bowed the knee
to the house machine, and he had new
er surrendered to the senate. Ee
thinks the house the greatest legisla-
tive body on earth, and he grieved
over it's continual sinking under the
Henderson regime to be a mere APP
panage to the senate. "The deteriora-
ton of the house, was a stock subject
for magazine and newspaper moraliz-
ing, and it sank lower and lower ev-
cry year. Cannon could not prevent
it. He was not one of the house ma
chine.
But at last one day. in the closing
hours of a legislative session, a new
piece of senatorial aggression unlocked
his tongue. 1t was 3 o'clock in the
morning when Uncle Joe mounted
on his desk and stripped to the shirt,
delivered such a speech about the
rights of the house and such a defiance
Of the senate that a house half asleep
and dog tired woke to frenzied thun-
ders of applause. He knew he was to
be speaker then, and the speech was a
gauge Of battle. The senate regarded
it but little. But congress had hardly
met when the solons at the other enc
Of the capitol found that a man had
become speaker who was determined
/ that the house should regain it's an
cient prestige.
Again and again the senate wen
! forth to battle, and every time it wa:
defeated. At every point the house
l won what it contended for. The house
: was a solid army under a beloved am
trusted leader, and that today it stands
> coequal with the senate, taking tn
place the founders of the government
meant it to hold, and that this chang
has been wrought within four months
is due to the iron will and %unhinchini
e pluck of Speaker Cannon.
The house loves and trusts him. III
e Is the most popular man in all it's mem
bership. The Democrats are little les
e fond of him than the Republicans. H
has treated the minority fairly an
even generously. And the house &C
mires him no less than it loves an
b trusts him. 1t will follow him to bal
y tie anywhere and for any cause, as
rose from it's degradation and TO
6 lowed him solidly to battle with til
senate. It knows him as an uncommo
y man; a man Of high ideals and fri
convictions and definite purposes.
6 knows him as a true man, n VIII
will not go back on his word nor veal
v en- in the face of odds.