Jeffersonians

Thomas Jefferson, a Republican now-sainted by the Democratic party, was born April 13, 1743. He was prouder of founding the University of Virginia than of writing the Declaration of Independence. No less proud of his memory is the University which honors his birthday each year with a great oratorical celebration under the auspices of the Jefferson Memorial Association.* To make the principal Founder's Day speeches this year Ohio's Senator Simeon Davison Fess, arch Republican, and Washington's Senator Clarence Cleveland Dill, Democrat, were invited and accepted.

An invitation to Founder's Day was also sent to Nebraska's Congressman Edgar Howard, 71, who styles himself a "Free Democrat." Mr. Howard, secretary to Nebraska's late great William Jennings Bryan in the '90s, has carefully preserved in himself many a quirk of the "Great Commoner." He wears his grey hair long and matted. His shoes are of the Congress gaiter variety. He couches his humor in a nasal drawl. Before breakfast each morning, to keep fit, he rolls over 30 times on a cement floor in a special ''rolling" garment without buttons or pins. When Mr. Howard observed that Senator Fess, than whom no Republican is more militantly partisan, was to extol Jefferson, he last week replied to the association's invitation as follows:

"In view of the fact that your organization has listed as its chief speaker a U. S. Senator who would not recognize a Jeffersonian principle if he should meet it in the middle of the road, I feel that I would not be loyal to Jeffersonian principles by lending my presence to such an occasion."

Theodore Fred Kuper, Jefferson Memorial Association secretary, carefully explained that his organization, nonpartisan, drew speakers from both parties, added. "We are pleased to get Senator Fess who was a professor of history before he became a Senator."!

No feeble copy of Bryan is Representative Howard. Fortnight ago on the House floor he delivered a blistering philippic against the House Triumvirate (Messrs. Longworth, Snell, Tilson) and their enormous power to limit, control and destroy legislation by "gag rule." He was wording the feelings of many a minority House member when he declared:

"Many magnificent statesmen sent here as servants of their home people are as helpless as children in an effort to accomplish legislation not favored by this trinity of control. . . . His [Rules Committee Chairman Snell's] power is so far-reaching he can choke to death any piece of legislation before it can be considered by the House.

"Observing his murderous treatment of legislation ... I find myself recalling a long-ago encounter between a magnificent President of the U. S. and a powerful money lord. And now I am wishing that I might have a tithe of the courage displayed by Andrew Jackson when he spoke to Nicholas Biddle. In that moment I would look Bertrand Snell squarely in the eye and my Quaker lips would paraphrase the speech of Andrew Jackson long enough to make them say 'Chairman Snell, the power which, under the House gag rules you exercise, is too damned muck power!' "

*This association purchased Monticello, Jefferson home, atop a hill outside Charlottesville, Va.. made it a public memorial. Many an architect considers Monticello a finer example of early American architecture than Washington's Mt. Vernon.

/-Professor of American history (1889--96) at Ohio Northern University.

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