St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1913-06-04
PRESS COMMENT
Cannon

The Honorable Joseph G. Cannon
of Danville, ILL.,, was born in North
Carolina a long time ago; it was
before the war, yet it seems so re-
mote that bilious people who have
been stepped on by Uncle Joe al
lege he was a passenger in Noah's
ark. Uncle Joe is not of lamb
like nature; he is not only combat
i've, but he snorts at orators and
punctures wind-bags in a manner
calculated to excite laughter and ir-
ritate gentlemen whose heads con-
sist of large hollow bones, adorned
with tongues surrounded by teeth.
Uncle Joe left North Carolina at
an early age and worked on farm
| for his father; and being a boy
without imagination he learned that
it took muscle and sweat to raise
crops, and no amount of eloquence
was ever able to make him believe
that two and two made five; and
this dull scepticism has always
made him unpopular with patriots
who think with their tongues, toll
with their jaws, and believe a soft
thing is easier TO work than a fat
field. Nothing develops a mans
criminal instincts like farming; and
in good time, though he hung on to
his farm, Uncle Joe went into law,
banking and politics, the three car
dinal crimes of the age, and made a
success of them.
He joined the Republican party,
preferring a party devoted to hard
money and hard facts to one addict
ed to promissory notes and hard
times. His criminal nature directed
him to an organization that did
things, that made many laws and
few speeches, that practiced much
and preached little, and that was
vulgar enough not to believe that
.. prosperity was based on works not
words. When the political hurri-
cane season set in Uncle Joe began
to accumulate unpopularity, and
the Greenbackers, Silverites, Pop
ulists, Socialists MiHdle-of-the
Readers, Free-Trade-Winder Dem
ocrats, Progressives, and all the
cults of the Rainbow and the Cave
of the Winds, united in declaring
that he was unfit to eat, an ally of
the forces of darkness, an imp of
the Money Devil, an old bunker, an
obstreperous reactionary, an enemy
of the Plain People, and a bad egg
first, last, and all the time Having
practical principles and a depraved
= nature, being impervious to langu-
age and Indifferent to epithets,
; Uncle Joe continued to cut tobacco,
! use cuss words, and thumb his re-
dictionary nose at all the political
: John the Baptists, Moseses and voic-
es calling in the wilderness, and to
: recommend that keepers and asy-
lums be provided for the Uprisen
West.
In the course of time and the re-
tirement of that tyrant and GEAR
Henderson, Uncle Joe was elected
Speaker of the House of Represen-
{ tatives by the Republican minions
of the Money Power; and at once
progress ceased, the Common peo-
pie were oppressed and it grew in
creasingly difficult to get money out
of the treasury to erect million dol
lar buildings in thirty cent towns,
and bills out of committee, which
, proposed to bring in the Millennium
: two weeks after date. Uncle Joe
sat on his throne eating tobacco, ig-
! noring the saviours of the coun-
try, gagging the Friends of the
People, needless of the yells of
} 'tyrant'' and "czar" that raised the
dome, unmoved by the memory of t.
: Jefferson and unterrified by the IN
timely fate of Rome and Caesar. 1t
: was a tough time for liberty and
: democracy: the Robber Tariff
: gloated in triumph all over a plum
! dered land; harvests were fat, mills
= were busy. Kansas shaved it's whis-
: kers and rode in automobiles, the
banks were glutted with money.
q and patriots, even in the Sunny
: South, were compelled reluctantly
to go to work.