The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-02-23
.LAUDAT|ON FOR
 SPEAKER CANNON Congressman Mich. Longworth
 Speaks At Peoria MUST CAST VOTE FOR TAFT Longworth Says Cannon Would Make a Good President, and He Would
 Vote For Him But For
 Taft's Candidacy
MUST CAST VOTE FOR TAFT

Peoria, H., February 22-Congressman Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati, Sem ator Robert L. Taylor of Tennessee, Rear Admiral Joseph B. Coghlan, United States Navy, retired, and Dr. M. W. Stryker, president of the Hamilton college, Clin- ton, N. Y, were the speakers tonight at the annual Washington birthday banquet of the Creve Cour club of this city. Col. Frederick II. Smith, president of the club, officiated as toastmaster.
 Congressman Longworth paid high compliment to Speaker Joseph G. Can non of the national House of Representa- tives, and while admitting his pledge to Ohio's favorite son, personally spoke in commendatory terms of the Illinois congressman's candidacy.
 The subject of the toast of Mir Long worth was '190S"
 He began his speech with compliment to Speaker Cannon, saying that there was no man in the country who knows more of the workings of the government in it's every phase. and in its every de- partment than does Uncle Joe" The American people, Mir Longworth said, owe a debt to Speaker Cannon that it would be impossible to pay in full by the gift of any office, even the presidency, and whether he shall ever attain that greatest of all offices or not, his place is secure in history as one of the great American statesmen.
 Here on the soil of his own state,' said MT. Longworth among the people who rightly honor him. it would i'll be- come me to advocate the claims of any other man in this country for the office of President of the United States, and if l be as 1 am, pledged to the cause of another, it is not because l do not believe that your favorite Joseph G. Can non, fully measures up to the stature of a President 1t is because the man to whom my allegiance Is pledged. the man whom I regard as supremely qualified for the highest place in the gift of the people, is q son of Ohio, a resident of my own congressional district, and my lifelong friend. If circumstances should be such that MT. Cannon should be tho choice of the republicans as their candi- date for President there would be no one who would press his shoulder to tDe wheel more ardently and more en- Enthusiastically than l."
 Unpropitious Dawn.
 The dawn of 1908, MT Longworth said was not propitious at least from the standpoint of general business prosperity, it was not as propitious as 1907.
 T do not believe,' he said that the vast majority of American people, the men who do the countrys work and re- we're our institutions believe or ever could be brought to believe that our present financial distress is due to any other con ditions than those which were bound to occur and which periodically have occur red, not only in this country, but through the ordinary course of human events If we stop to think for moment we will see that the present financial distress is not only peculiar to the United States, but Is worldwide.
 "The President of the United States had no more to do with the recent New York panic or whatever you please to call It. than he had with the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius. 1 will not say that some of his utterances, some of the investiga- tions that he caused to be made into the methods of some of the so-called high financiers' may not have hastened by a little the time at which some of the finan- cial structures. erected upon foundations of rottenness and dishonesty were bound to topple; but I do say that had he sat supinely and allowed dishonesty of which he knew to proceed without raising his hand against 1t, the crash would not have been long delayed, and when it came, 1t would have been followed by hurricane, compared to which the present condition is as zephyr
 "There are two causes, and two causes
 lCONTINUED ON PAGE 7)