The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-14
President Becomes Popular by
 Recommending Statehood MUST PROFIT BY MISTAKES
Taft Tells People of Arizona That Constitution Is Most Important Thing to be Considered and
 Must Be We'll Made.


 Prescott. Ariz., October 1s.-President Taft won a welcome into Arizona to- day by proclaiming wherever he went
 that he was heartily in favor of state hood for each of the territories of Arizona and New Mexico.
 When the joyousness that greeted this statement had died away, MT. Taft had some sober words for his audience in which he sought to impress upon them the necessity for deliberation in framing a state constitution.
 He declared that their constitution should follow the simplicity of the constitution of the United States and should be merely fundamental laws with simple rules of limitations. MT.
 Taft urged the people of Arizona to profit by what he termed the mistakes of Oklahoma in constitution making. He characterized the Oklahoma consti- tuition as a geological garden of cranks."
 The Presidents train was whirled along at breakneck speed today
 through scorching desert wastes and
 sags brush and cactus.
 At times the alkali stirred up by the rushing cars filtered in a cloud through ventilating screens and closed windows
 and was well nigh stifing. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone with torrid intensity.
 Garden Spot.
 Throughout the day the horizon was lined with the jagged rusty peaks of sunbaked mountains shrouded in azure haze. Occasionally, however, the train rush ed through a veritable little gar den spot of fruit and flowers where the touch of water had worked it's wonders. Altogether the President had typical glimpse of the far southwest. At Phoenix and Prescott. where he made his principal stops, and at each in- ter.nedate station where he appeared for moment or two on the rear plat form of his car, he was greeted by the cosmopolitan people of the territory. The anachronism of Indians in their primitive blanket wrappings standing in the midst of group of high pow cred automobiles became common be- fore the day was over.
 The territorial officialg headed by Governor Sloan, met the Presidents train at Yuma before daylight and will continue with him until after his visit to the Grand Canyon tomorrow. Post master General Hitchcock joined the party today With him was Victor Mason, who had charge of the repub- lican national headquarters in New York during the campaign of last fan. Speech at Phoenix. In his principal speech, delivered at Phoenix today, President Taft said: "It is a new sensation for me to talk to the people of a territory, and I may say this far it is a very pleasant sensa- tion l want to congratulate you on hav- ing such a territory, such energy and such enterprise as has called forth from the republican party a pledge that you shall have statehood, and In order to establish my relation with you early, I want to say that so far as I am con cerned am going to help carry out that promise as far as I can. Sometimes it is better to postpone the marriage and everything else in a nevel to the end, but I always have ther Habit of looking through to whether it ends all right before I begin, and I am inclined to
 
 follow that course
 Now gentlemen and ladies-for don't know whether you going to let the ladies vote or not, and I speak therefore with due consideration-you are antici- patng statehood. You are anxious tu show what you can do as an independent government and I am afraid you are anticipating the pleasure of that inde- pendence without fully understanding or realizing the responsibility of it. State Constitution.
 ..You have got to formulate constitu- tion after the Congress says you shall come in, and I want to say word apout tbat constitution Tn saying so I give vol, an earnest knowledge of the serious ness with which I say that believe you will be made state. A constitution IS for the purpose of laying down funda- mental limitations upon your legislature, and vour executive Now. if you think that in the constitutional convention you 1 o,,pht to lay down all the limitations that arc ordinarily included in the statute, vou are going to make a great mistake. ;rbe greatest constitution that was ever made is the constitution of the United states and you can go throughout that | n very short time. You take the las- constitution that was made-the consti tutIon of OkIahoma--and 1t is a zoologi- caI garden of cranks I don't mean to say that 1t has no good ideas in it; it has. but the idea of tfeing down lesis- lature which Is an experiment, so to speak, with the laws that are. to be adopted for a new territory, with long discourse imposing all sorts of limita- | LII .T.k A..