Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-10-08
X/HEN the Republican Representatives


the victorious Democrats, somebody with
high tenor voice and keen appreciation of
the needs of the hour voiced this lyric:
"What we want is a wOrdy wasp, man
who can throw the hooks into the majority.
Let us choose an asp. Nay, more, my fellow
members give us at this crucial moment a
man more merciless than the asp. If 1t be
possible, let us elect an aspidorhyncus.
Then, amid applause, huzzas and haw-
hawS, that caucus, actuated solely by Its
love of party and its overwhelming desire to
discomfit Democracy, rose as a unit and
pointed to the Hon. James r. Mann OF
Chicago, Illinois, who was gently stroklng
his beard and letting the kindly light of mer
rinent creep into his blue eyes-thereby
conveying the impression that he wouldn't
hurt a fly and that he experienced great
difficulty in persuading butter to melt in his
mouth. However, he accepted the job and,
along with it, the task of making the aspl-
dorhyncus look as if it had had all of its
conical teeth removed by painless dentistry.
AS a matter of stern reality, unadOrned
truth, and undeniable fact, Mann is the
founder of the Fly in the Ointment Union.
For legislative purposes, he has modernized
the tricks of the Spanish inquisition, put
few more frillS on the technlC of the bander
illero, and added a new note to the song of
the gadf1y. There is no one in the House
with sufficient daring to dispute his title as
the champion parliamentary poniard and the
sharpest dagger in debate. Until short
time ago, nobody believed the old story that
Cadmus sowed the dragons teeth and saw
spring up from the sowing a crop of armed
men, versed in all the arts OF warfare; but
everybody believes it now. The proof is at
hand Jim Mann is the last survivor of the
Dragons Tooth Brigade. In the language
of Colonel Graham B. Nichol, anybody
think he amt? Then We'll fight em three
fast rounds!'
Mann is, first of all, shark on parliament
tary law. He has studied it in the old fash
ion of beginning at the first page and reading
to the last, and according to the Chinese fad
of memorizing things backward. In the
second place, he never leaves his seat on the
floor of the House. When the daily session
begins, he anchors himself to his chair-tak-
ing care to give himself enough leeway to
spring to his feet with agility and speed.
Other men slip out to get bite of lunch;
but not Mann. He keeps a cake of cream
chocolate in his pocket, and when hunger
posters him he nibbles on the cake.
Throughout the day on every day he
smiles and laughs and frowns and shouts
while he makes progress on the task OF put
ting the aspidorhyncus into the shade By
night he and his clerks go over every bill on
the HOUSE CdlenudI dIlu llO HlCdSuIS ID SNcl
called up to find him unfamiliar with its
contents He is prodigious worker as well
as human snickersnee. He has to be, in
order to keep up with everything pulled off
on the floor of the House.
Provided with parliamentary skill, knowl-
edge of what each bill contains and means,
and a vocabulary that would make the con-
versation of Lord Macaulay sound like the
babbling of a child, he is forever popping up
with questions, points of order, objections,
and parliamentary inquiries that give Champ
Clark crick in the neck because he has to
turn so often to the parliamentary clerk to
find out what to say in reply.
But Mann is not famous only for his
finished methods of disconcerting the oppo-
sition and giving his daily performance of
the Fly in the Ointment. He has a record
for constructive legislation, and he votes as
he pleases-votes for what he thinks is right.
And, if his party doesn't like it, or the Presi-
dent is displeased by it, or the newspapers
criticize him, he doesn't care one red copper
cent A fine illustration of this was the fact
that he voted against the Payne Aldrich
tariff bill in the Sixty-first Congress, and
laughed when he did it.