The Bourbon news. [volume] (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19??, 1921-03-08

wore of after the President entered
the white House, and on Legislative
policies they worked in harmony. ex-
cept III one notable instance-the re-
peal OF the Panama tools exemnt;on
cessfully. Nfo'o" u"Suc-
Inc failure of his candidacy at Bal
tlmore never ceased to be the disan.
pointment of Mr.. Clark's life: He re-
Iused the nomination as Vice Presi.
dent, and told the House on the eva
OF MS defeat that he preferred to
remain as Speaker.
MS election to the Speakership of
the house came in the Sixty-second
congress, prior to the Baltimore con-
ventlon, and it was by a united Dem
ocracy IN recognition of the contest
Mr.. CLARK had made against the rule
OF speaker Joseph Cannon, Mr.
clark had served in every Congress-
since and including the Fifty-third in
1898, except the Fifty-fourth, when
ne was beaten.
Although Champ Clark was known
as Mlssourian, he was born in An
derson, KY, on March z, 1850. He
was christened James Beauchamn
Clark, but early in life he reduced
this to Champ Clark. His first work
was as alarm hand, clerk in a gen
eral store, and on a country news.
paper.
he was educated at Kentucky Uni
verslty and Bethany College and the
Cincinnati Law School. For a short
tlme ne was President of Marshall
College, and, at %, held the record of
oelng the youngest college President
IN the United States. In 1875 he
moved to Missouri, where he took up
the study and practice of law, and
became Prosecuting Attorney in Pike
county. His next step was into the
Missouri Legislature, where he franz
ed the Missouri primary law, an anti
trust statute and an Australian ballot
law: He was Permanent Chairman
OF the Democratic National Conven-
ton at st. Louis in 1904 and headed
the committee that notified Alton B.
Parker of his Presidential nomina-
ton.
Sent To House In 1898.
He was first sent to the national
forum in 1898. Although then re-
garded as green" his strength in the
House developed rapidly. When John
Sharp Williams left the House for the
Senate, Representative Clark was
made minority leader by virtue of his
seniority on the Ways and Means
Committee, which drafted the Payne
Aldrich tariff act. His service on that
committee in trying to keep duties
down won him the regard of the Dem
ocrats, and his speech of five hours
against the bill was one of the nota-
BILE addresses of that Congress.
Mr.. Clark's sincerity, friendship
for opponents and adherents alike, his
fairness as presiding officer and his
knowledge of history, his love of
clean anecdotes and humorous stories,
his marvelously retentive memory
ranked with his attributes of leader
ship. He welded the minority into a
virtual Democratic unit when he was
minority leader, and after the ousting
of Cannon, which robbed the Speak
ership of many of it's powers, he di-
vided with Majority Leader Under
wood the control of the Democrats in
the House and they formed a great
working team.
PHYSICALLY he was giant of a man,
standing over six feet two inches in
height and Weighing a trifle more
than 200 pounds.
Speaker Clark and Mrs. Champ
Clark, familiar figure in the
Speakers bench in the gallery, enter
tanned not only at an annual New
Years house and at other functions,
but gave informal weekly luncheons
at the capitol to which members and
the capitol to which members and
others were invited. Mrs. Thompson
and Bennett Clark parliamentarians
of the House at the Speakers ap-
pointment, whom the Speaker hoped
to have succeed him to his seat in
Congress, comprised the rest of the
immediate family.