The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-06-23
OBSTINATE CROMWELL
 AND SENATOR MORGAN
From the New York Times.

From the New York Times.
 T IS we'll known to all kunologists
 that farm dog has once chased a
 woodchuck into his hole cherishes thereafter the imperishable belief that it is his duty whenever he has an after noon off to go and bark at that hole, even though it may for years have been unin- habited by the woodchuck or the heirs of his body. These are the tactics and this the belief of Senator John T. Morgan with respect to our townsman, William Nelson Cromwell, one-time American counsel of the new Panama Canal com pany of Paris. If after study of the Senate calendar the senator from Alabama forsees that for some days to come he will not have an opportunity in debate to make any fellow senator unhappy, he forthwith makes a date for Mir. Cromwell to appear before the committee on in- teroceanic canals and there proceeds to tease and "worrit' him with questions about canal transactions and in partic
 ular, about that forty -million-dolar trans action which made the United States the
 owner of the Frenchmen's rights and op-
 portunities.
 MT. Cromwell has adopted a policy no less consistent and continuous than that
 Of Senator Morgan. Conscious of a guilty
 past. he incases himself in the privilege of counsel and grins defiance al his baffled
 tormentor. His tranquility is for the most
 part quite undisturbed MT. Morgan reads at him a long prepared question and then
 MT Cromwell draws from his pocket typewriter answer. which is no answer, since he always declines to gratify all or
 any part of his examiners unsuitable curl osity.
 Now. of course, there are a multitude of things about the Panama canal pur-
 chase that Mir. Morgan burns to know,
 and that the country at the time ought to
 have known The path of the negotiation is strewn with the skeletons of inchoate syndicates. filtered with paper prospec-
 tuses, and cluttered up with financial plans providing quick but moderate re-
 turns to the French owners of the canal
 and millions of glorious profits to the
 American brokers. if we may so call them,
 who under MT. Cromwell's skilled guild ance were to sell the property acquired to our government for sloS GOO or so. But this belongs to the dim and shadowy
 realm of the second aorist It is ancient history. interesting only to the pedantic publicist and of no determinable profit to anybody Throughout the transaction
 Mir Cromwell showed himself to be as patient as Father Times, as persistent as the attraction of gravitation and smarter than chain lighting. He got the
 canal for the United States government.
 It may have been a bad bargain. but 1t
 was long ago concluded, and Is irrevoc- able.
 Why will not Senator Morgan let by
 zones be bygones, make his politest Ala bama bow to MT. Cromwell as tribute to
 the remarkable astuteness and ability ex- hibited by that gentleman in the long
 negotiation, and then, turning his eyes to the front, out of the fruits Of his long experience and his unsurpassed knowl- edge make his utmost contribution to our
 deliverance out of the unpleasant and disouietng fix in which we now find our selves on the isthmus? MT. Morgan was an advocate of the Nicaragua route. Very likely, if we had not plunged into the Panama venture we should now have the | Nicaragua canal about half done. But that, too, is a bygone thing. The Alabama | senator is now a believer in the Panama | canal as a practicable and profitable un- dertaking. If he would devote to the un- travelling of the isthmian tangle the time and the thought he wastes upon the im- | penetrable Cromwell he would help ma