Arizona republican., 1908-06-29
The Big plsnlpoteniiary /"
(By Robert Lee Dump


 (By Robert Lee Dump
 There never has been a man who has had so queer a job as that of Secretary of War William Howard Taft For that matter, there never has been a man like him in the ser vice of the country and in a way he has made his own job by giving abundant proof of his extraordinary abilities. One month he is down at Panama, seeing that they are not trying to run water up hill, the next he is opening the Philippine assem- bly so that it will stay open, and then laying aside his white duck suit and Panama hat he puts up his fur cap and fur overcoat and goes over to St. Petersburg to talk China and Japan with the cZar. At times he runs the war department by foresight for month in advance. He carries his cabinet portfolio with its .myriads of matters in his hat on his long trips and there never has been a time when things were quite so up to the mark as during his incumbency, though he has spent half of the time away from his desk.
 As Uncle Joe Cannon said not long ago, Tt is really too bad that when the Almighty was making the earth and the fullness thereof, Bill Taft was not around. He might have been seventh day and there certainly would have been more fullness."
 There is a reason for this capacity r- l,s ,, sort of productive manufacturing plant. Some have small outputs and some big outputs. Taft is one great big gigantic plant, equipped with high grade, high speed machinery and there is such a demand for his goods that he runs overtime. It looks as if his reward is going to be more hard work.
 His Wonderful Physique.
 Physically he is so big that the man who sees him for the first time always has a better opinion of the cartoonists. They are not such liars in lines after all" he says to himself He is tall, of huge frame and that frame is loaded with more than three hundred pounds of stamina. There are a few men in different parts of the world who have at various times been under the impression that the man they were chumming with was a big fat, good natured. wheeZy sort of person, who was fond of an arm chair and a strong cigar and always made the street cars stop when he wanted to get on. They have tried to make things easy for him in an effort to be agreeable or else just hard enough to have a little fun at his expense and get him out of breath. One man asked him to a game of golf in the Philippines. The secre- tary put him through nine miles of following the ball and a five-mile walk up to a plantation house on the mountain side for tea. The secretary was strong and fresh at the finish. The other man was in bed all next day. Some friends bribed an old 1 French Canadian guide to lose him in the upper reaches of trout stream. That evening Taft came swinging in lcalling for a square meal in a hurry. Behind him tOttered the guide. When the other men got the guide out back of the house to ask him what Ihap- pened he was in a rage.
 ''Wot fool you mek wis me? Hey git lose, shure Mike. hey git lose, but holly mackarelle. he walks me all 'roun dey dam. Canada"
 A Master of World Politics. 1 No man who has not an infinite capacity for effort should ever pre- sume to put himself in the position | of trying to keep step with the big plenipotentiary. The best of them have tried it but before long they | find that Taft begins work before they do and is hard at it long after they finish and seems to enjoy it and to thrive on it. He works harder, plays harder. sleeps harder. eats hard CT and lives harder than any man in public life today and yet there is always that good nature about him that makes association with him a pleasure. This is the testimony of a iman who has fought him for four years: He is fair and honest with out any noise about it; he does the common sense thing always without any pretense of, being the source of all wisdom; he is intensely American without carrying a red, white and blue handkerchief and he is perfectly