The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-25
TOHN ELL-REPUBLICAN LEADER

and bought old Bill Morrison's seat for Jehu Baker; but the democrats had good working majority In the Fiftieth Congress. Carlisle was speaker, Mills was chairman of the ways and means, and Randall, who had been the means of defeating three Morrison bills reform ing the tariff was now powerless to beat the Mills bill. which passed the House of Representatives and became the para mount issue of 1888. Dalzell was marked man from the day he was sworn in. Ready, fluent, aggressive, he had yet a greater advantage-hls memory was stored with a rich fund of general infor- mation, historical and current Like John Sharp Williams, he is an Apollo; he did not run to voice. But he is formidable debater, and the more dangerous because always prepared. It Is due to him 70 say he left the law office of the Penn sylvania road when he entered Congress.
 The Fifty-irst Congress was republican by majority of about three. The only way 1t could do business was to steal a dozen seats and that 1t immediately pro- ceeded to do; but 1t was powerless even for that infamy until 1t first successfully practiced the greater nfamy of making the will of the speaker the will of the House and that it did by a process of revolution utterly and defiantly unconst- tutional Your Massachusetts republican except Charles Sumner and Ben But uer-from Henry l.. Dawes to Henry Ca bot Lodge from Henry Wilson to Fred- erick Huntington Gillett, over took the studs" when he ran across something that he could not find authority for In the voluminous preachments of John Quincy Adams; but now Massachusetts upheld Speaker Reed in a ruling that was in the very teeth of John quincy Adams greatest effort. A sufficient ntm- Der of democratic seats were stolen-no great feat for q party that had obtained the presidency twelve years earlier by bribery, forgery. and theft-the minority were gagged and the G. o. P. in the sad dle.
 Henry Cabot Lodge introduced and the speaker damned through bill making it illegal. unconstitutional, revolutionary and void for southern state to return democratic majority To the end that President Harrison might not be pestered by bill providing 16 to l, an assault was made on the public credit, and the sherman silver law was substituted Tor l6 to and that sent the treasury to the sll- yer basis whence Grover Cleveland, threc years later. rescued 1t. The Mckinley tariff was enacted, that was pretty nearly a tariff for protection only. The ap- propriations for the two sessions reached a billion The people took a whach al IL in 1890. the year the democratic party gained the greatest political victory In the entire history of the United States, when there was anything that could be called an opposition.
 DslzeU plaved a prominent part In the E-if.v-frst congress. and in the Fifty second he was a trusted lieutenant of Thomas B. Reed. the minority leader, assisted by Burrows, Lodge, Dingley, Hit and Deliver, in addition to Dalzell. IF u,as inc most brilliant leadership in the history of parlaments among Eng Ish-speaking peoples. The democratic majority was double the entire repub- ucan membership, and yet Reed, with his a,pl,tv-seven followers, fought them not onlv to 4 standstill. but put them to ac- t11al ro1t. however. his position was very different from that of John Sharp Will Hams. Every republican fetched and car "a, at his slightest order and the com mands from his stern lips of All up or "All down" were as instantly obeyed