Death of Underwood

Senator J. Thomas Heflin of Alabama interrupted a debate on the cruiser bill, last week, with the announcement: "The Senate will be profoundly shocked and grieved to learn of the death of ... Oscar Underwood."

Thus, irony in its most logical form. Alabama gave both Heflin and Underwood to the Senate. In cast of mind and in frame of opinion, the two men were a million miles apart.

Heflin, Klu Klux Klan, free silver, William Jennings Bryan, prohibition, woman suffrage, McNary-Haugen farm relief may all be classed as attempts at reform. They have shared in common: lofty purpose, great zeal, and not a little oratory. Senator Oscar W. Underwood was opposed to each and every one of them. He saw something dangerous in them all. He felt that their purposes were not worth their methods. He was a complete Jeffersonian, and a quiet one at that.

His life:

Born in Louisville, Ky., on May 6, 1862.

Educated at the University of Virginia. Member of the House of Representatives (1895-1915); author of the Underwood Tariff Bill; majority leader.

Member of the Senate (1915-27); voluntarily retired from politics, due to poor health.

He might have been President, had he not been so hostile to William Jennings Bryan in 1912. Famed, but not so signifi cant as the Underwood boom of 1912, was Alabama's cry, "Twenty-four votes for Oscar W. Underwood," which was re peated 103 times at the Democratic convention of 1924.

One of his last labors was a book,* in which he said: "Let us bear in mind that the best brains and the best energies of our people are given to production; politics is now, and always has been, of secondary interest to most of the people. And there the danger lies." Oscar W. Underwood was an exception to his own theory.

Death came to him, last week, twelve miles from Washington, D. C., in his Virginia home, Woodlawn, a house built by a nephew of George Washington in 1799.

*DRIFTING SANDS OF PARTY POLITICS--Oscar W. Underwood--Century ($3.50).