Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1916-02-17

the United States Senate a man
with the background for appeal
to the whole people such as is
indicated in the life story of
William F. Hite, of Huntington,
whose announcement touched
spots in the diversified classes
of the Mountain States man
hood not calculatd upon when
Hite's name was first flashed on
the political screen. In the
broad sense of popular desires,
Iiite turns a new face" to the
voters for support. He was
Mayor of Huntington because
the people, foreseeing that the
city had destiny, elcted to put
man at the head of municipal
affairs whose business career
had tied him to administer to
the needs of the progressive
citizens of a rapidly growing
city. Hite's bitterest opponent
is willing to cencede that Hunt
ington, during his administra-
ton, took on new life, and re-
ceived that impetus for advance
ment which has marked it as a
coming centre Of American ac-
tivities. But his oifice-holding
ceased when other hands took
up the work he had so well be-
gun.
More intimate strength devel-
oped at once throughout the
State in a class Of intelligent
workers who do not often have
the chance to send to Washing
ton ION Of themselves" the rail
road men. With her $500 miles
of railway track within her Dor
ders, West Virginia's army of
railroad employees runs into
many thousands. Legislature
affecting railroads and railroad
workers Of the State have a
natural interest in the candida
cy of a man who began his life
work on the railroad and work
ed his way up to position of
Importance. There is some
thing in the comradeship that is
born of the midnight express,
the long-rolling thunder of the
freight, the roundhouse and the
shop, which would make rail-
road men firm in the fraternal
spirit even if they had not their
brotherhoods; and this frater-
nal spirit extends to the men in
the lone towers at the telegraph
key, with their hands on a spark
that guides for safety over
switch and frog in this
very vigil over life and death on
the rail, William F. Hite took
up the toll of manhood. To-day
he is rated as a man with means,
not so rich as many believe, per-
haps, but his life has not been
of luxury and ease, and all he.
has he CLEANED along the stony
path of hard work and earnest
endeavor. Every American adj
mires success in any citizen and
when this comes to a brothr OF
them an at the switch and tele-
graph key and throttle, in the
person of the former telegraph
operator and freight superin-
tendent now the candidate for
the United States Senate in West
Virginia, railroaders are not
slow to see in him an ideal de-
veloped out Of the fiber of their
own lives.
Jack Nightingale, Commits
sion Of Labor, in his report for
1914, gives the number of rail
road trainmen in West Virginia
as 4,500; locomotive firemen and
enginemen, 2,400; locomotive
$500; railroad tele-
graphrs, 500; railway carmen,
1880; railroad conductors, p
100-a total of about $4,000
railroad workers in the State,
and a great proportion of them
are native West Virginia and
nearly all of them are voters.
Hite, the candidate for the u
S. Senate, is not personally so
well acquainted in the Northern
end of the State as he will be by
June 9Th, the day of the pri-
but Hite, the star on
the West Virginia University
football team, is known to every
University alumnus and evry
young man with the red-blood
love Of clean athletics in his
veins from one end of the State
to the other. The popular foot
ball half back is the candidates
nephew, and "Uncle Bill" had