Claude Kitchin

An advocate of the two dollar shirt from Scotland Neck, N. C.-- that was Claude Kitchin. But he was more as well. In 1901 he came to Congress, where his father had been before him, where one of his brothers (who later became Governor of North Carolina) then was. In 15 years, by his mastery of diatribe and skill in the strategy of legislative wrangling, he had made himself Democratic floor leader in the House. In four years more--four strenuous years of war time activity--he had brought on himself a stroke of paralysis from overwork. For three years he had clung to his seat in Congress and continued to hold, for all his ill health, at least the nominal leadership of the House Democrats. Now he is dead.

He was, as his enemies said, something of a demagogue, bitter and sectional. But he was fearless, and brilliant in attack on the floor of the House. The tariff was his home territory and he knew it like the proverbial book. He made his name as a Democrat by attacking the free lumber plank in the Democratic platform of 1908. He strengthened his posi-tion in the following year by his attack on "Cannonism" and the tariff of 1909.

When Underwood retired from the floor leadership in 1916, Kitchin was his logical successor. Although clinging to the principles of the old South, he was never subservient to party demands. He turned the torrent of his eloquence against President Wilson's plan to strengthen the Navy, he fought to the last the declaration of war against Germany in 1917. But once war was declared he reversed his attitude entirely and gave uncompromising support to war financing measures.

Kitchin's fighting record goes farther back than his political record. His father fought for the Confederacy. Claude was one of eleven children, nine sons and two daughters. He became a lawyer and in one of his first cases defended a murderer in a case in which his father was the prosecutor--and the son was victorious. Later he was often opposed to his brother Paul.

Following Mr. Kitchin's illness three years ago Representative Garrett of Tennessee became acting Democratic floor leader because of the former's enforced inactivity. Garrett is neither so brilliant nor so bitter, and the Democrats will now feel entirely, as they have already felt in part, the loss of one of their ablest parliamentary strategists.