Cannonism

As it must to all men, Death came last week to Joseph Gurney ("Uncle Joe") Cannon, 90.

He was already long past the age which interests life insurance companies, when his left hand brandisHed the Speaker's gavel before the House of Representatives on March 19, 1910. On that day he fought for the power which echoed from his gavel. For seven years he had told the House what to do, by means of a few terse epigrams and a set of rock-ribbed rules.* Now the House was in revolt against its Tsar. The epigrams were impotent without the rules; so Democrats and insurgent Republicans, led by Representative (now Senator) George W. Norris of Nebraska, made an assault upon the rules. They voted to have the House choose the members of the Committee on Rules and ousted the Speaker from it. "Tsar" Cannon objected, was overruled. The House was in a turmoil; hostile Congressmen rushed at the Speaker's rostrum as if to tear him bodily from his throne. His gavel smote his desk; he said that his seat could better be declared vacant by a majority vote. A vote was taken. He kept his throne until 1911; but gradually the old rules were replaced; "Tsar" Cannon was replaced by "Uncle Joe" Cannon of the big black cigar and thumping quid.

Strange it is that this "standpat" Republican should have been born in Guilford, N. C., in 1836 in the reign of Andrew Jackson, whose Democratic pals spilled cider on the White House carpets. Then he spent his boyhood near Terre Haute, Ind.

With such a background young Cannon went to law school in Cincinnati and thence to Danville, Ill., a land of Lincoln legends, destined in another half century to grow big with Cannon legends. There he embraced Republicanism and carried it through 46 years' service in the House. His diversion, he said, was: "Raising the tariff in the daytime and raising the ante at night."

After the fall of Cannonism, after a split with Theodore Roosevelt, after a squall with Samuel Gompers, "Uncle Joe" spent eight years (1915-23) in Congress in the subdued role of a mere member. Then he returned to Danville, to see how his Second National Bank* was getting along, to sing his old favorite songs:

Oh, de ham bone am good, de

bacon am sweet,

Possum meat am very, very fine;

But gimme, oh, gimme, oh, how I wish you would,

Dat watermillion hangin' on de

vine.

Last week he went into a deep sleep; after ten hours his heart muscles weakened; he died a "standpat" Republican, with something of the humanity of Abraham Lincoln, something of the fire of "Jim" Reed.

* The "Reed Rules" drawn up in 1890 by Speaker Thomas B. ("Tsar") Reed, Representatives William McKinley and Joseph Cannon. * Founded by Joseph Cannon and his brother half a century ago, it made them worth more than a million dollars.