The news & observer., 1905-12-03

Joe" CamnOn--JoSeph G.-StandS
about second in the pubic life, as he
brings to town his drove of $50 Con-
gressmen, and lays the butt of some
thing like a whip down, and sees them
assorted and stalled. Just before the
adjournment they ran along to be
counted. and all but six or seven regis
tered against the Senate. which ad-
1ourned from an indisposition.
You see pass along the street a tall,
raw-boned, Suspiciously high -colored
representation of Uncle Sam. He
could wear the whole Stars-and-
Stripes suit and the white hat and
short trousers half way down 10 his
boots belonging to Uncle sam without
challenge, sustained by tnat high COM
pIexIon OF red and blue eyes He is a
ntt.e country-fair like and walking
upward. and his white hairs are not
degenerating 10 his years which will
be seventy next May He might be
able to enter the side show and dance
the reel We never know from what
his skin, gait, and cape are like. what
nc may not be UP to. The fat woman,
The dwarf. and the lady snake
charmer might be enamored of
Joseph. He is the model of all the
agricultural communities. from Rube
in New York, and HaySeed in Long
Island. and Tarheel in North Carolina
There are three types i'm him, the Cape
Cod Yankee. the Southerner from the
least assumptive' and excftable Com
monweaith. and Illinois. He closely fol-
lows Abraham Lincoln, whom as pre-
sumptively of Yankee stock. moved on
to the upper partr Of Virginia and for
mated on the praI,Ies. Cannon is Yam
kec. but born where Nathaniel
Greene. man of his sort. first brought
regular tactics. learned from books.
into play and stood off Lord Cornwall
lis, at Guilford Court House. now
Greensboro. N. c.
The future speaker writes his fife
in Mr.. Halford's directory in six lines.
and does not even say he is a speaker
AT the beginning of modern history.
1861, he was States Attorney of Yer
million county, halfway down the
length of Illinois against the Indian
line, and not far from the center Of
the United States population for nea:
twenty years passed. Seven years 1s
I'll 1853. Cannon held to this office
the prosecutor for the people. That
year Grant swept away by population
the old fogies of the Republican party.
like Trumbull. Yates. Palmer, Brown
ing. etc., and brought in the waI
school. Cannon appears to have had
no intermediate legislative experience.
but to have come to Congress fifteen
uIneS as the lawyer off the DanVille
district. from the bardto the Capitol
OF the nation. Danvillc is on a branch
OF the wabash River. near tho eastern
center of the State. west of Lew Wal
lace's town of Crawfordsvillc
Left Him Out Once.
The duties of a prosecuting attor-
ney are Well preparatory for aggres-
slve speaking in Congress, and this
was so easy to Joseph that he trode
on the hem of his district garment by
describing q fellow-member in terms
such as suited generation whicn
knew not Joseph They left him out
of the Fifty-Second Congress. after
trying him eighteen years 1t was
however. time of Republican rebel
hon. They forgave him and sent him
TO six more Congresses. the whole
thirty years. as long as Benton was in
the Senate. Cannon'S vitality. with
more caution. kept finely up. and he
really served the whole nation by his
resistance at the head of the Appro-
prlatlonS Committee to the universal
lnroads upon the Treasury. what
Kind of man is this?" exclaimed
the President General Admiral Field
Marshal of the Daughters of Genea-
logy when Cannon refused her small
demand site for a colosseum and part
of million to put up a gavelkind
What being is he?" Joseph was as
used to tears as Potiphar's wife. We
mad nearly genius for saying No with
JUNCTION. He was in the habit Of
raising his high color at the prisoner
at the bar, and his committee room
was prosecuting office. with civility
like the black cat. under the commit
Tee table. But moral courage stands
far more than double facedness. The
party members found that Cannon s
Stlft neck had saved their recollection
and party majority, and his nature
grew upon them spite of its queer
ness. till. one day they raised him on
their shields to the Speakers chair
There he continues to be one of the
two wheels of the party chariot. the
other being the President and Can
non Will be Seventy-two at the next
election. fit to cope with Henry c..
Davis. but not with anybody under
age. He. therefore. is good work
, horse senior in the double team. not
very liable to be run for the Presi-
Dental derby. and steadied by that
knowledge.
How He Resembles Lincoln.
To resemble Lincoln, an Illinoisian
must have come originally and not be
Il crockery imitation. Cannon has the
spirit, the humOr. some of the genius,
and some of the coarseness of Lincoln.
He is a Whig of the Wings, and his
tariff quality came from before he was
taken in the foal of North Carolina.
The West is now getting the benefits
of the tariff which New England is
willing to lay down and keep her ad-
vantage, which the West disputes.
Hides grow West: are raw material
East; and the West expects to make
Ine shoes. Hence. Cannon versus
whitney, and the shoemaker, Douglas.
To study the tariff one must go West
When New England was for free trade
the Ohio Valley had the ocean and
Europe In competition. and called for
tarlH The first decIaratory paper for
broad-tread protection was that of
R1cnmond Rush. of PENNSYLVANIA. in
John quincy Adams Cabinet on
which Adams wrote. 'It will, of
course, be roughly handled in and out
of Congress. but the policy it advo-
Gates wilf outstand the blast of fac
ton. and the decay of time" We now
see the grandsons of Adams in New
England free traders. while this
Southampton Westerner. Cannon.
who was born but four years after the
tariff notification war, was the lion