The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-04-03
THE GEORGIAN'S SPLENDID TRiB-
UTE TO UNDERWOOD

Under the title, oscar Under
wood, Statesman, Student and Lead
ar,'' the Atlanta Georgian pays the fol
lowing brilliant contribution to the
growing popularity of the distinguish
| ID son of Alabama:
Among the public men who have H.
.ustrated and served the country in
/ .hese two decades of politics, not one
Of them has won or deserved a larger
anne and more general and cordial
| admiration than Oscar Underwood, of
Alabama.
Since John T. Morgan died in Ala
bama and Stephens passed away in
Georgia, the south has had no states
man who in genius and constructive
| achievement has even equaled the
present leader # the democratic ma
ority upon the floor of the house of
/ representatives.
The history of the democratic party
| IN congress within the last ten years
has been also largely the history of
the representatives from the ninth
congressional district of Alabama.
Every tariff within that period has
been largely builded or largely amend
ed or designed by his powerful adj
vocaey or criticism. AS an expert
upon the tariff, he has no equal upon
| the democratic side. Every currency
| bill or every economic measure born
within that period has felt the forma-
tive or reformative power of this
master economist and practical states
man.
The least spectacular, the most
patient, the most thorough, the most
determined and the most popular
man in congress is Mr.. Underwood.
He entered public life to understand
and to serve an industrial age, and
his public life has been as studious
and as diligent as it has been success
full.
The south has at this time no states
man that she could less afford to lose
or to even temporarily release from
public life than Mr.. Underwood.
Mr.. Underwood and Champ Clark,
working successfully and in perfect
harmony, have led the democratic
party in congress out of defeat and
disorganization and Encouragement
into what was year ago the most
compact, united, effective and tri-
umphant majority party that our post
bellum politics has known. If there
is today a dividing wedge driven into
its solid column, it is the work of the
dictator and his blind and servile fol-
lowers that has wrought the schism.
What Underwood and Clark and Dor
everywhere so valiantly, has been the
American spirit as exposed against
the surrender to foreign and English
dictation. BY reason of his record he
is the leading American statesman OF
today. He has been the indispensable
aid to the Wilson administration in
to conclusion the tariff bill which
bears his name. He was equally vital
j to the construction and passage of the
2 currency bill, which does not bear his
I name, but is part of his genius and
e leadership. He was wiser than all his
a fellows in the insertion into the tarih
bill at the last stage of the per cent
I preferential tariff on goods imported
: in American ships, which would have
e been the foundation of the American
: merchant marine President Wilson
and Secretary McAdoo went out OF
their way to use Attorney General
I McReynolds to kill the amendment by
1 law after Underwood had blocked and
defeated the administration effort to
repeal it in congress.
But the quality in which Oscar
Underwood, of Alabama, is pre-emin-
= ent among all contemporaneous
statesman in his unflinching public
courage of conviction, which is never
daunted or stayed by influence or by
} personal interest-the rarest, the fin
est and the most desirable quality in
an American statesman serving in
this era of trucking and time-serving
men.
In the construction of the tariff
which Oscar Underwood and his fell
low democrats presented to President