Evening star., 1933-03-19

papers and even for the daily news
papers themselves. Mr.. Hull's people
seldom saw daily newspapers.
Nor did they and their children have
any chance to expand their minds at
great spectacles of foot ball, basket ball,
six-day bicycle riding, motor car racing,
airplane stunting, skiing or Olympic in
ternationalizings of mankind's progress
toward higher and higher high dives.
The one absorbing spectacle then was
that county weekly 1t had the news Of
the neighbors, and it had the utteranceS,
the PHILOSOPHERS, the records, of states
men at length-at cruel length
Mr.. Hull has often described to me
the pedantic consequences Of that harsh
and narrowing discipline.
In my youth" Mr.. Hull will say, my
constituents were marvelously informed
as to what statesmen, both local and na-
tional had done and had said. States
men, politicians were watched and rated
then as so many of us now watch and
rate great athletes. People kept score
cards-as it were-on them. They were
not only our supposed public duty. They
were our thrill. They were our sport"
4 Ar. HULL chose that sport, that Sc
W. rious sport, that sport Of contests
Of public ideas and of public actions, for
his career. He was elected to the Ten
nessee Legislature when he was 81. He
was elected to local circuit judgeship
when he was 81. He was elected to the
Federal House Of Representatives when
he was IS.
In an interim between being State
Legislator and being a circuit Judge he
became a military man. He was captain
of Company H of the 4th Tennessee
Infantry in the war against Spain.
call his service at that time military be-
cause, actually, he got to Cuba.
At the time when Mr. Hull entered the
Federal House of Representatives, at the
age of IS, in 1907, his higher education
consisted of the following elements:
Two years in the National Normal Uni
yersity at Lebanon, Ohio.
A law degree secured in the ensuing
year at Lebanon Law School.
Sixteen years of virtually continuous
public service and of absolutely continu-
GUS implacable study of public problems.
In the House Of Representatives at
Washington Mr.. Hull became-incredibly
even more studiouS. There is a study
at Washington that wears men to the
bone. It's the tariff There is another
study that turns their hair white That's
the income tax Students choose be-
tween them. Mr. Hull, the super student,
chose both.
He became equally proficient at know
ing the amount of revenue to be derived
from an increase of l per cent in the
surtax on incomes between $100, 900 and
$500 900 per annum and at knowing the
amount of revenue to be forfeited by
decrease of 10 per cent in the tariff duty
on chlorate and perchlorate of potassium
in view Of the productivity of the potash
mines of Alsace-Lorraine and the poten-
tiality of the potash mines of Texas.
Such themes filed Mr.. Hull's being
with rapture. He played no golf-or any
equivalent thereof. He played no bridge
or any substitute therefor. He played
few dinner parties. He stretched his
long legs on a couch and reached his
long arms to shelves and studied income
tax and tariff tax documents.
On both points he found Republicans
Wrong-very wrong. In 1888 Mr.. Benja-
min Harrison, Republican, had run
against Mr. Grover Cleveland, Democrat,
for the presidency. Mr.. Hull was then
II years old. He was then giving to poll
tics and to political debates his frst
really fixed attentiveness Mr.. Cleve-
land converted him tor confirmed him
ina passion for tariff reform"
LIVE or six years later Mr.. Hull was