The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-03-30
CLARKE IS HAVING DESPERATE FIGHT FOR POLITICAL LIFE Official Canvass Will Be Necessary to Determine
 Arkansas Senator
IS AN ISSUE IN THE
 ALABAMA CONTEST
Senator Clarke Attacked Underwood for Stand in Regard to Cotton Ex- change Bill-Farmers Failed
 to Swallow Charges
Rx HIGH W. ROBERTS

Senator James P. Clarke of Arkansas, an issue in the senatorial campaign in Alabama as a result of his vicious assault on Oscar W. Underwood, is in the throes of a fight for his political life.
 Returns last night indicated the defeat of the senator. At that time Judge Kirby. his opponent, was leading by eight votes. It is definitely agreed that the official count will be required to make certain the winner.
 As is known, Senator Clarke sometime ago introduced bill which, had it been passed, would have wiped out with sin gle blow the cotton exchanges of America. He would have burned the corn for the purpose of killing the rat. The Senate passed the bill and tagged the bill onto the tariff bill. So drastic and dema- gogic was the bill considered that party caucus was held in which the President, Secretary Houston, Secretary Burleson and others participated, As a result, a substitute bill was agreed upon as an administration measure. The President delivered it to Oscar w. Underwood, dem ocratic leader, and the Alabamian intro duced 1t. It carried the House. In the Senate 1t was lost when the Senate with drew the Clarke bill.
 Farmers Only Smiled
 Senator Clarke went before the people of Arkansas with his bill as an issue He appealed directly to the farmers. He told them that the cotton exchanges were destroying them. that his bill would have saved them, and that his "beneficent' measure had been beaten through the trckery of MT. Underwood.
 The farmers, judging from the returns to date, did not respond with any ma ark ed affection to the patent pretensions of MT Clark, which is another bit of evidence that demagogic appeals no longer fool the people who live beyond the gleam of electric lights The farmers. 1t is prob able. suspected that the bill was intro- duced for the purpose of furnishing Mir Clarke sufficient thunder" to jolt him back to Washington. The farmers, it is probable, suspected that the Senate passed the bill for the purpose of "nombing up" an unpleasant duty to the House. The farmers, apparently, failed to believe that MT. Wilson, MT. Burleson, MT. Houston and MT Underwood were political trick sters when they introduced a substitute which destroyed the Clarke propaganda.
 And the farmers probably doubted the progressive instincts of MT. Clarke, for they were evidently aware of the fact that the gentleman from Arkansas, whc has been made an issue in Alabama was the sole democrat in the Senate who op- posed the passage of the bill providing for the direct election of senator's.
 MusgrOve Takes a Trip
 When MT. Clarke told the 'peepul' of Arkansas that oscar w. Underwood was @ political trickster and had cost the farmers sl0000,O00 a year when, at the rrequest of the President, the Alabaman introduced a substitute to the Clarke bill. Hobson forces in Alabama thought that in this state such utterances would sound unusually we'll So Col |, R Mus