The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1913-10-08
Hobson and His MUD

Alabama is full of politics. Next
year a governor is to be elected, a
United States senator is to be elected,
and a representative in Congress from
each district is to be elected, to say
nothing of the county elections.
The gubernatorial contest has been
under way for sometime, and the fight
for the senatorship, will soon wax
warm. Congressman Richmond P.
Hobson announced for the Senate
sometime ago and he has been cam
paigning for months. Congressman
Henry ID. Clayton is an announced
candidate for the Senate, and SO, too,
now is Congressman Oscar w. Under
wood. There is really no justification
flor mud-slinging in any campaign;
and as for this senatorial race, there
is certainly no sort of excuse for vitu-
peration or wrathful utterances. Yet
Mr.. Hobson has started on defama-
tory course as desperate as it is UNI
Christian.
Mr.. Underwood has served in Con-
gress for period of 20 years. His
record from the beginning of his polit-
zeal career has been as open as it has
been honorable and convincing. And as
chairman of the ways and means COM
mittee the democratic leader has won
greater national fame than any other
southerner since the war This state
has had a number of distinguished
men in the national legislature, but
not one of them has ever gained the
parliamentary power that has been
accorded to Oscar Underwood. His
far reaching work of tariff revision
has been accomplished and he now
sees fit to ask for seat in the Sen
ate. In his modest announcement,
which appeared in Sundays Age
Herald, he made it clear that in case
he be not elected to the Senate he will
retire from political life.
Alabama democrats have shown
full appreciation of their great men
in the past. They delighted in honor
ing John T. Morgan and Hilary A.
Herbert, both men of national pres
tige; and surely they will not be I'M
appreciative of Oscar Underwood
father of the Underwood tariff bill
and, like Morgan and Herbert, the
personification of integrity, moral
courage and patriotism. But Mr..
Hobson has made an attact on Mr..
Underwood which is as baseless as it
is unseemly and vicious.
Hobson accuses Underwood of being
tool of the liquor and moneyed inter-
ests. Anyone who has kept up at all
with Congress knows that Mr.. Under
wood, so far as favoring any particu-
lar interest has had in mind only the
public good. His record shows most
emphatically that in revising the tariff
he has done the very things that the
so-called Interests" hoped he would
not do. Never was there statesman
more independent of Wall street than
Underwood. His whole purpose has
been to be fair and practical and to
do that which would be best for the
many rather than the few.
Hobson will gain nothing by bitter
attacks. The people are not so easily
fooled as some politicians think they
are. Hobson's charge will be regarded
by all fair minded democrats as at
once ridiculous and disingenuous. The
most telling answer to his attack on
Underwood is Underwood's own
record.
Mr.. Underwood, with his splendid
equipment for continued public SER
vice, should he Alabama's next sena-
tor, and the chances are that he will
be. But no matter what the future
may develop in our state politics, it
is sincerely hoped that mud-slinging
from now on will be absolutely elimi-