PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE
JANUARY 5, 1911.
The Chaplain, Rev. Ulysses G. B. Pierce, D. D., offered the following prayer:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who compassest our path and our lying down and art acquainted with all our ways. Thou knowest the sorrow of our heart, as also the frailty of our nature. But for the assurance of Thy grace, how could we endure the vicissitudes of life? Thanks be to Thee, our Father, that Thy love abides through every change. Thou hast given and Thou hast taken away; blessed be Thy name.
We remember before Thee him whom Thou hast called from our midst. Lighten the sorrows of our hearts, we pray Thee, and be with those against whose lips this cup of grief is most closely pressed. Uphold us by Thy holy spirit, and grant that neither life with its burden nor death with its sorrow may separate us from Thee, who art our God and our Savior.
And unto Thee, who art able to keep us from falling, and to present us before Thy presence without fault in exceeding joy, be glory on earth and in heaven, now and forevermore. Amen.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, it becomes my painful duty to announce to the Senate the death of my colleague, the Hon. STEPHEN B. ELKINS, which occurred at his residence in this city at 12 o'clock last night. After a long and serious illness, making a brave fight for his life, as he always had fought bravely for the principles that he believed to be right, he has answered to the roll call on the other side.
To me, Mr. President, his death brings deep personal sorrow and the country suffers a great loss. West Virginia especially has suffered one of the severest blows with which she could possibly have been inflicted.
At some future time, Mr. President, I shall ask the Senate to pay fitting tribute to his memory. At this time I offer the following resolutions and ask for their present consideration.
The VICE PRESIDENT. The Senator from West Virginia offers the following resolutions, which will be read.
The resolutions were read and unanimously agreed to, as follows:
Resolved, That the Senate has heard with profound sorrow of the death of the Hon. STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS, late a Senator from the State of West Virginia.
Resolved, That a committee of 17 Senators be appointed by the Vice President to take order for superintending the funeral of Mr. ELKINS.
Resolved, That as a further mark of respect his remains be removed from his late home in this city to Elkins, "W. Va., for burial in charge of the Sergeant at Arms, attended by the committee, who shall have full power to carry these resolutions into effect.
Resolved, That the Secretary communicate these proceedings to the House of Representatives and request the House to appoint a committee to act with the committee of the Senate.
The Vice President appointed as the committee, under the second resolution, Mr. Scott, Mr. Hale, Mr. Frye, Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Cullom, Mr. Gallinger, Mr. Lodge, Mr. Bacon, Mr. Tillman, Mr. Kean, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Foster, Mr. Stone, Mr. Crane, Mr. Carter, Mr. Smith of Maryland, and Mr. Root.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, as a further mark of respect to the memory of my deceased colleague, I move that the Senate do now adjourn.
The motion was unanimously agreed to; and (at 12 o'clock and 6 minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned until Monday, January 9, 1911, at 12 o'clock meridian.
JANUARY 23, 1911.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, on behalf of myself and the
Senator from Colorado [Mr. Guggenheim] I desire to
give notice that on Saturday, February 11, at half past
2 o'clock in the afternoon, I shall ask the Senate to consider
resolutions in memory of the late Senator ELKINS,
of West Virginia, and the late Senator Hughes, of
Colorado.
SATURDAY, February 11, 1911.
The Chaplain, Rev. Ulysses G. B. Pierce, D. D., offered
the following prayer:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, whom alike the living and the dead praise, we thank Thee for this day of reverent memory and of tender recollection. We thank Thee, who art the giver of every good gift and of every perfect boon, for the lives and services of those whom our lips shall this day name. It is hard to yield up those who have labored by our side and have shared our councils. As they stand again before us in memory and again live in our hearts, teach our tongues fit words to utter our sense of loss and to voice our unchanged devotion. Sanctify to us, we implore Thee, the services of this day, and make us worthy of the fellowship of those who in newness of life dwell with Thee in Thy heavenly kingdom. Join our hearts with theirs, and unite our spirits with the faithful and true, there and here, in one light of faith, one beauty of holiness, one repose on Thee.
And unto Thee, our Father, who hast loved us and blest us and given us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, will we ascribe praise now and forevermore. Amen.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CURTIS in the chair). The hour of half past 2 o'clock having arrived, the special order of the Senate will be taken up.
Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, in pursuance of the notice that I gave on January 23, I offer the resolutions which I send to the desk and ask for their adoption.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Secretary will read the resolutions submitted by the Senator from West Virginia.
The resolutions (S. Res. 346) were read, considered by unanimous consent, and unanimously agreed to, as follows:
Resolved, That the Senate has heard with profound sorrow of the death of Hon. STEPHEN B. ELKINS, late a Senator from the State of West Virginia.
Resolved, That as a mark of respect to the memory of the deceased the business of the Senate be now suspended to enable his associates to pay proper tribute to his high character and distinguished services.
Resolved, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to the House of Representatives and transmit a copy thereof to the family of the deceased Senator.
Mr. PRESIDENT: To-day the Senate pays its last tribute of respect to the memory of my late colleague, STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS. Words of praise spoken here fall short of being adequate to measure our affection for the one who has passed on or the loss his countrymen feel, for a mighty man has passed away; a great leader is no longer with us; a tall cedar has fallen. While our lips pay him this acknowledgment of remembrance, we know that his deeds live after him and that he can not soon be forgotten.
Why does the Nation mourn? Why does the State of West Virginia feel that she has suffered a loss that can not be measured? Because a man wise in counsel, strong in action, a doer of great deeds, a builder up of wildernesses, a constructive man, a power in the market and in the forum, a lovable, genial companion, has passed from our mortal sight forever. It is to bear testimony to these qualities - the qualities which made the man - that we are here to-day. As his colleague and his friend, it becomes my duty to try to give some estimate of the man and his worth to our Nation, as well as to the State he so faithfully represented.
Perhaps no Member of the United States Senate was more widely known and respected than he. The qualities which make up American manhood were found to the full in him, for the qualities which tend to the upbuilding of a republic found him a channel through which to act. His upbringing was similar to that of thousands of young Americans. Reared on a farm in Ohio, his thirst for education took him through college at the head of his class, and the spirit which has built up first the eastern and then the western sections of our great Republic started him on his career. The great war between the States was on, and notwithstanding the fact that his father and family felt it their duty to cast their sympathy with the Confederate States Mr. ELKINS was forced by his convictions to cast his lot with the Union. A short but creditable career in the Army found him at the end of that great conflict on the threshold of manhood - the future all before him. The Middle West being settled, the golden Southwest tempted him, and New Mexico became his home.
Determined to succeed in his chosen profession, the law, he found it necessary, on taking up his residence in New Mexico, to learn the Spanish language. Just starting his career in a strange land this fact did not daunt him, and in less than a year he possessed a fluency in this tongue which aided materially in advancing his influence and popularity. Though a success in the law, yet political life was to him alluring. The close contact with men who were doing things, who were leading, was most enticing, and it is not strange that he was soon a member of the Territorial legislature and commenced that political career which was to be so full and complete. In a few years he was made attorney general of the Territory; two years afterwards United States district attorney, and a few years afterwards he was chosen to Congress, where he served two terms in the House of Representatives and made a name and a reputation for himself. Even in the early seventies, while a member of the House, he introduced a bill for the statehood of New Mexico, which passed the House by over a two-thirds vote, passed the Senate with an amendment, and only failed to become a law because of lack of time to take it up again in the House. During these years of the practice of his profession and his first introduction into politics he did not, however, lose sight of the business opportunities which presented themselves. So successful was he along these lines that at the expiration of his term in Congress he was able to commence the great work of development which associated him with the State of West Virginia, and led eventually to his becoming a power in the business as well as in the councils of the Nation.
At that time the great riches of the State which he so long represented in the upper branch of Congress were but little known to the outside world. It is true that stories almost as fantastic as fairy dreams were told of the great wealth lying undeveloped in the hills of West Virginia. A large portion of the State was almost a wilderness, traversed only by a few country roads and sparsely inhabited by a home-loving, liberty-seeking people. To develop this wilderness required capital, energy, and business enterprise of no mean degree. To this task Mr. ELKINS, in company with his distinguished father-in- law, ex-Senator Henry G. Davis, a most noted citizen of our State, dedicated his life. The result in the years that followed more than justified his judgment. The wilderness was made to bloom and blossom; railroads were built, mines were opened up, towns were erected, and nowhere in this broad land of ours can happier, more contented, more enterprising communities be found than among these mountains and hills which he helped to bring in touch with civilization. Following the line of his railroads came schoolhouses, churches, and colleges, and to-day located within the confines of the once wilderness are an educated and God-fearing people.
I first met Mr. ELKINS in the campaign of 1884, when he was striving to have James G. Blaine elected President of the United States. He was then, as I have always known him since, an aggressive, energetic, wide-awake, alert man, and was much interested in the election of Mr. Blaine. They were warm personal friends and had been associated in business. It was a great disappointment to Mr. ELKINS when it was finally decided that Mr. Blaine was defeated. Smilingly he accepted the result, but he always held that several thousand votes in New York should have been counted for him which were counted for another candidate. This election ended Mr. ELKINS'S active participation in politics until he became thoroughly a citizen of West Virginia and commenced to help build up in our State the Republican Party, in whose principles he thoroughly believed.
In the year 1888 I was again thrown closely with him in the nomination and election of Mr. Harrison. Mr. ELKINS, with the assistance of several other prominent politicians and friends of Mr. Harrison, perhaps did more to give him the nomination than any other man in the United States. From this period on my personal acquaintance with Mr. ELKINS became closer and closer, and as the years went by I esteemed more highly his friendship. During these years he was a power in West Virginia. His genial, sunny disposition made him friends on every side. His poise of mind, his great intellect, helped him to hold his friends, made him a leader of leaders, and eventually led in 1894, when West Virginia became Republican for the first time in almost a generation, to his being the Republican candidate for United States Senator. The legislature selected him, and Mr. ELKINS then became the first Republican Member of the United States Senate in many years from the so-called solid South.
The history of these years, leading up to his election and reelection to the Senate, is a part of the history of the development and wealth of our Nation, and especially of our State. It is impossible to attempt, even in the briefest manner, to estimate the influence of Mr. ELKINS without referring to the material development of the large section of country in which he was interested. He was a great captain of industry, and as such became known and respected everywhere. To him and his associates is due directly the building of four railroad lines through different sections of West Virginia - lines that total about 500 miles and are now feeders to great through systems. When one remembers that these roads were built over mountains, across deep ravines, through an undeveloped and virgin country, it can readily be seen that great judgment was necessary and a great faculty for the management and control of men. These faculties he possessed to a high degree and they bound him to the laboring man, the merchant, and the capitalist. He always endeavored to establish confidence and harmony between employer and employee, and personally his political enemies loved him as much as his political friends. The improvements to the rivers of West Virginia have been largely due to his influence; changes in railroads stand to his farsightedness, and there has been no material advancement of far-reaching importance in our mountain State for the past 25 years in which he has not had a part. A thriving city on the top of one of the Allegheny Mountains bears his name; a college directly honors his memory, and from the north to the south and the cast to the west of our State his memory is closely bound in achievements of all kinds.
Politically, Mr. ELKINS was a Republican. He believed in the principles of that party. He studied with the eye of a student the progress of the protective principle; he saw that it built up and did not destroy; that it was constructive and not destructive; that it made happier the poor man and gave him greater advantages; and to the development of this principle he devoted his time and his energy. He believed in progress and did his best to bring to the markets of the world the undeveloped wealth of one State. He believed that the principles of the party to which he belonged aided in his doing this, and he was broad enough to stand for its extension to every other State of the Union. He believed this party right, and he fearlessly stood for what he thought was true.
The career of Mr. ELKINS was laid in troublesome times. With him it was a struggle, a fight, from beginning to end. Struggling for an education, taking part in the great Civil War, conquering a foreign language, wresting supremacy from the hands of nature, fighting for political principles that he thought right:these occupied his attention to the end. But Mr. ELKINS was constituted to enjoy these struggles, in the larger sense, and to him the overcoming of a difficulty was a pleasure and a pride. In the latter years of his life his wonderful personality, his commanding genius, his whole-souled geniality served him in the contests with his political foes without and within his own party. Perhaps one of the deepest regrets of his life was the fact that he was unable to take an active part in the late campaign in our own State. Smiling, he fought until he could fight no more.
Mr. ELKINS was a scholar, and in his books he found rest from the strife of the outside world. He loved his classics, and his Latin or Greek he could read with ease at any time. A great student of the Bible, he found solace and comfort there. Full of humor, he could find something to smile at most anywhere, and was ready and apt with quotation or simile.
As an illustration both of his love of books and his power of comparison, I may be permitted to relate an anecdote. During one of our heated party fights, after a State convention which bade fair to split in two our party and over which he had presided, at a great expense of vital force, he returned to his home at Elkins. For several weeks the opposing press and some of the papers of his own political faith bitterly upbraided him for his rulings in the convention, for his " bossism," and for the ruination he was bringing on his party. After these vituperations had traveled from one end of the State to the other, a visitor to his hospitable home found him sitting in his library reading and smiling. In answer to an inquiry, he turned to his visitor and said:
I have been comforting myself reading the Book of Job; but I don't think Job was in it with me.
His career in the Senate is well known. In his early service, assigned to important committees, he became a painstaking student of all legislative questions coming before this body. With a well-stored mind, a fund of information seldom excelled, he was a ready debater, and gradually won his way to the front. After 16 years of service in this body he was the peer of anyone, unexcelled by none.
Important legislation bears his name. His influence was felt in all directions. Sure of his position, he could meet with a smile the attacks of those who differed from him on matters at issue, but never lost himself. It was largely due to his geniality, his grasp of details, his power of comprehension, his unfailing courtesy, that the great railroad measure which passed this body at the last session became a law. As a legislator none in this body will say me nay when I cry that a great man in the councils of the United States Senate has gone from us.
That such a character should attract to it other great natures was inevitable. So it is not strange that Mr. ELKINS numbered among his warm and personal friends some of the greatest names in the history of our country in the last half of the nineteenth century. Stretching from the time of Lincoln to that of Taft, what an opportunity was his of thoroughly enjoying the friendship of the men who have been shaping the financial and political destinies of our country. Intimately associated with Mr. Blaine, he undoubtedly would have occupied a prominent position in the latter's political family had he become President of the United States. His close friendship to Mr. Harrison led to his selection by that President as Secretary of War, and in this important position his constructive genius had full sway and its effects are still felt. Connected by business ties with the greatest financiers of our age, he possessed their personal esteem and confidence. A Presbyterian in religious convictions, he could yet enjoy the close friendship of the cardinal of the Church of Rome. Intensely American in every fiber of his nature, he was on loving terms of friendship with the distinguished men of foreign nations who have represented their Governments at this capital for the past quarter of a century. To his competitors along business lines he was courteous and friendly, and he numbered among his close followers and friends in his own State all of his largest business opponents. To the humblest West Virginian he was always accessible, and greeted him with the same kindly interest with which he met a diplomat, a prelate of the church, or a great financier.
It is no wonder, then, that around his bier stood men whose names will live in history; that loving tributes to his memory and to his kindly heart came from all around the world. It is no wonder that tlie newspapers of this broad land of ours, those impartial judges of men, carried to all Americans the news of his passing on and their judgment of his work and worth. It is no wonder that in his own State, from every town and hamlet, from every city, expressions of regret and affection came pouring in, and our large dailies were filled with such utterances almost to the exclusion of all other matter. It is no wonder that on that bright January day, when his mortal remains were lowered to rest in a beautiful cemetery in the city he founded, the Army flag flew at half-mast nearly all around the world, that his home city was one sorrowing community, that his State paid its tribute of respect and the Nation its word of farewell. It is no wonder that the governor of our State later appointed his son as his successor in the Senate, a closing tribute to the love and respect borne Mr. ELKINS.
Born September 26, 1841, he passed from our sight January 4, 1911. The wonder is that so much could have been crowded into a life of less than 70 years:farmer's boy, soldier, lawyer, legislator. Member of Congress, Cabi- net officer. United States Senator, and a great captain of industry.
Life's struggle over, his mortal remains rest forever on the West Virginia hills, whitened by the snow of winter and carpeted by the flowers of spring. But he still lives in his great works, his kindliness of heart, his purity of character, and his love for his country and his fellow man. Not soon will he be forgotten.
ADDRESS OF MR. GALLINGER, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Mr. PRESIDENT: It was my privilege to serve for nearly 17 years in this body with the late Senator from West Virginia, whose death we all keenly deplore, and whose splendid achievements, in public and private life, will serve as an inspiration to those of us who knew and admired him. Service with him on three of the important committees of the Senate - Appropriations, Commerce, and Printing - covering a long period of years, gave me unusual opportunities to become acquainted with the qualities of heart and mind of Senator ELKINS. His remarkable career, from boyhood days to the zenith of his power and influence, has been graphically told by the Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Scott]. For me it is sufficient to offer a simple tribute of affection to his memory.
It is safe to say that few men have served in the Senate who have been more popular or universally esteemed than Senator ELKINS. The morning after his death, in the course of an appreciative review of his life, the Washington Post truthfully said:
He was a man who made friends on every hand, who drew and held them to him, regardless of political affiliation, religious creed, or racial characteristics. Of him it may be said he was without an enemy. He was the apostle of sunshine, the embodiment of good cheer, the inveterate foe of pessimism, a supreme optimist, who saw only the best in everyone and refused to believe that which was not good. It was impossible for him to harbor a grudge, and if ever this sincere and big-hearted man gave offense in the heat of debate or political discussion, he was quick to retract and heal the wound before it began to hurt.
What higher tribute could be paid to any man than that? The man who makes and holds friends, whose very presence dispels gloom, and whose cheery smile and warm handclasp make his associates forget the little animosities, trials, and burdens of life; such a man is an evangel of peace and love and happiness, and such a man was our late associate.
Senator ELKINS was not an orator, but he possessed powers infinitely more potent than that of oratory. He was an indefatigable worker, and knew the art of approaching and dealing with men. He carried through the Senate measures of great importance to the American people, and in the stirring debates over the bills that he had in charge the success he achieved was largely due to his imperturbable good nature, his courteous treatment of his opponents, and his dogged determination to accomplish results. In the statutes of his country are written monuments of his broad-mindedness, his intense patriotism, his devotion to the public weal, and his independence of thought and action. He was an honest and successful legislator, a shrewd politician, and a high-minded public servant, whose record will grow brighter and brighter as the years come and go.
Mr. President, what more need be said? In my 20 years' service here death has invaded the senatorial circle many, many times. Four honored Senators alone remain of those who greeted me when I entered this Chamber. The list of those who have departed is a long and honorable one. Memory recalls the names, and tender thoughts touch the heart as we summon them before us. But they are gone, and we remain a little longer, to bear the burdens and the cares from which they have escaped. Among them all there was no more genial and lovable soul than the late Senator from West Virginia. He was so strong, so full of energy, and so hopeful for the future that his death came to us all as a peculiar shock. When he left the Senate a notable figure passed from our view. His seat here is vacant, but his memory will be cherished and his virtues remembered by those of us who admired his character and valued his friendship. In the death of Senator ELKINS this body, the State that honored him, and the Nation which he served so well have sustained an irreparable loss.
ADDRESS OF MR. DEPEW, OF NEW YORK
Mr. PRESIDENT: At no time in its history has death in so short a period removed from the Senate so many of its members. Daniel of Virginia, ELKINS of West Virginia, Dolliver of Iowa, Clay of Georgia, McEnery of Louisiana, and Hughes of Colorado were among the most valued and distinguished Senators. Many of them had been long in the public service and won national reputations. In their careers, activities, and characteristics they represented distinct types of American citizenship.
I might select for comparison ELKINS, Daniel, and Dolliver. Senator Daniel was almost the last of that line of southern orators whose fervid eloquence and glowing rhetoric made famous the forum and the platform before the Civil War. He had lofty ideals of government and civic duty. He had an intense pride in the greatness and glory of the country, and drew inspiration from the past for guidance in the present. The wonderful material developments since the Civil War, the increase in national, and especially in individual, wealth did not appeal to him. He never possessed either greed for gain or lust for fortune. He was an idealist of a rare type, whose great gifts were devoted to the realization of those ideals in the preservation of the constitutional limitations of the powers of the Federal and the State Governments, and to bringing back the people to what he regarded as the purer and higher life of the fathers of the Republic. A chivalric figure both on the battle field and in the Senate, he brought the knightly virtues of a romantic age to the solution of the prosaic problems of the day. Senator Dolliver, on the other hand, was intensely modern. From the parsonage of his father, in which he received his early training, he carried into public life the spirit of the missionary. He was possessed of a rare faculty for oratory, and equally brilliant in argument, appeal, ridicule, and humor. He came while young into public life and from a constituency which promised a long continuance in the public service.
He never was in contact with and cared little for the wonderful opportunities for men of masterful genius in affairs which have created the phenomenal fortunes of the past 40 years. He was essentially a tribune of the people. His mind was absorbed in the solution of the economic problems of protection and revenue in a way which, according to his faith, would add to the wealth of the Republic and the individual prosperity of every citizen. He studied the movements of the markets with the sole purpose of originating and promoting such legislation as would keep our places of trade and barter as far as possible for the benefit of the producers and workers of the United States. He also believed in such use of the prestige, power, and diplomacy of the country as would win an open door for our surplus in competition with the great manufacturing nations of the world into the Orient and Africa. He died, as he had lived, on his chosen battlefield, using all his powers and exhausting his energy and vitality for ideas which he believed would eventuate in policies and measures for the best interests of the people. The chivalric knight from Virginia and the modern soldier from Iowa filled large and useful places in our political economy and have left few successors.
Senator ELKINS presented an entirely different and equally useful type of American citizenship and activity in public life. He was preeminently the business man in politics in its best sense. He was a pioneer and a promoter. He could turn the wilderness into productive possibilities which would attract and support masses of people. He could project and construct railroads for the development of the mine and the forest, and won for himself by his genius for affairs an enormous fortune. Yet as a Senator he brought the invaluable aid of his experience, his business acumen, and his knowledge of affairs to legislation which was for the protection of the people against the misuse of millions and the creation or the existence of monopoly.
A contemplation of the lives of these three statesmen presents a vivid picture of varying conditions in the 48 Commonwealths which constitute our Federal Union. In many of the States there has been cultivated a hostility to corporations and wealth which builds bars of insuperable height and strength against any man, no matter how gifted, who has made a success in corporate management or accumulated a fortune in active business, becoming a representative of the people in public office. Such communities believe they are best served by theorists and idealists. They accept with eagerness and enthusiasm the various panaceas which are so skillfully manufactured and so attractively presented for the cure of the ills of the body politic. But West Virginia and other States similarly situated present a remarkable contrast. Limitless wealth and opportunities for employment and the accumulation of a competence lie in the mines in her mountains and valleys and her primeval forests. Instead of locking up her boundless resources she welcomes capital and capitalists who will open her mines, build her villages, enlarge her cities, improve her water powers, and construct her railroads. Ever since her organization as a State she has sent to both Houses of Congress the men who were doing this work in her behalf, while they were accumulating, or had accumulated, large fortunes by their efforts. Her people recognized that every mine opened meant more families supported and more opportunities for the youth, and every railroad built or extended meant the wilderness converted into boundless opportunities for development, for population, and for prosperity. She believed that the men whose genius, energy, experience, and money were accomplishing these results could best secure for her the legislation which would redound to the progress of the State and the benefit of its people. Senator ELKINS was easily the leader among these bold and adventurous spirits who dare risk their all, because they know if they live success is certain to crown their efforts.
ELKINS, the legislator, though a railroad promoter and owner, saw the necessity, for the protection of the people and of investors, of a large measure of Government control over railroad corporations. As the head of the great Committee of Interstate Commerce he had charge of the measures which have accomplished so much in the preceding administration and the present one to remove the railway from politics, to reform and punish abuses, to give shippers and the traveling public a tribunal with power for instantaneous redress, and to secure stability to business and credit by the largest measure of Government activity in railway affairs. The antirebate bill, which goes by the Senator's name, was his own creation. By supervision and penalties he prohibited discriminations in favor of individuals or communities and compelled these great corporations to treat all alike. So the railway rate bill of the Roosevelt administration and the railroad bill of the Taft administration, distinct advances in the line of wise corporate control, greater than had been accomplished since the first locomotive was placed upon the rails 81 years ago, passed through his formative hands as the chairman of the committee that had them in charge and were conducted by his skill and genius as a parliamentarian in their passage through the Senate.
A young American who has finished his college course and continued his law studies until admitted to the bar has the world before him. It is the critical initial period which tests the fiber of his being. He may settle down in his native village or take the more perilous plan of entering the contest in a large city or move to new territory to grow up with the country. His choice and the few years following it indicate his future and fix his career. In 1864 New Mexico was as distant almost as Japan now is and as little known in the States. The Spanish adventurer Coronado had conquered the Indians and settled it with his followers 70 years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock.
The Territory had been in 1864 only 14 years annexed to the United States, and its population was still overwhelmingly Spanish. The conservatism of the people is best illustrated by the fact that the first rail was not laid down in the Territory until 1878. Young ELKINS, looking around for the best field for a career, selected this distant Territory. His magnetism, his charm, his resistless energy, and the fact that within a year he had acquired the Spanish language, captured the imagination and confidence of these Latins, who had met no one like him in the over 200 years of their settlement. They sent him to the legislature and elected him twice to Congress. In the House of Representatives he came in contact with the brilliant men who were Members of that body in the Forty-third and Forty-fourth Congresses. With his alert and receptive mind, with his rare faculty of soon gaining an intimacy with strong characters, he speedily absorbed an intimate knowledge of the resources and business opportunities of the different sections of the country. He recognized early the fortunes there were in the acquisition of coal lands, if they could be reached and developed by cheap transportation. He saw that the future for him was not in the slow-moving life of New Mexico, but in bringing into the channels of trade the treasures which had been accumulating for ages beneath the soil of West Virginia. I remember how, in the early years of his life, in West Virginia, I used to meet him often in New York trying to inspire men of means with his own confidence and enthusiasm in the resources of his State. Always hopeful, perennially optimistic, neither indifference nor incredulity nor rebuffs could discourage or dishearten him. He brought into the countingrooms of finance the fresh and invigorating atmosphere of his mountain home. By his earnestness, his indefatigable industry, his wonderful ability to win the hardest headed to his faith, he advanced by many years the progress and development of his State.
Few versatile men are successful. Concentration is the secret of power, but nature endows some highly gifted with the ability to concentrate with equal success in many lines. Senator ELKINS was one of these fortunate individuals. Notwithstanding the cares and anxieties which attend the initial processes of the development of nature's resources, he found leisure to be for 12 years one of the most active and influential members of the Republican national committee. We of the older generation know the trust which was reposed in him by his fellow members and the extent to which the greatest responsibilities were placed upon his shoulders. I never shall forget a dramatic scene between him and the Republican candidate for President, James G. Blaine. It was just after the famous meeting of the presidential candidate with a thousand Protestant ministers when three words uttered by their spokesman ended the most hopeful of canvasses and changed the course of American history. Mr. ELKINS was responsible for bringing about this meeting, which was all right in its conception and intended to remove the prejudice which had grown up among Protestants because of Mr. Blaine's family relationship to the Catholic Church. Of course, no one could foresee that the preacher, who was also the spokesman, had a formula which he had used a hundred times successfully from the pulpit, but which when it became a part of the literature on one side of political controversy proved a can of dynamite for the cause it was uttered to promote. No one saw the disastrous effects of coupling together rum, romanism, and rebellion more clearly than did Mr. Blaine. He was naturally for a while not only indignant, but unreasonable, and yet, when he saw how deeply affected was Mr. ELKINS, Blaine put his arm around ELKINS'S neck and said in that tone of tenderness which captured and bound to him thousands, " Steve, it was planned for the best and no one could have foreseen what has occurred."
The few who witnessed the incident knew what a load it lifted from the heart of the one and how deep and abiding was the affection of each for the other.
I had an illustration of Senator ELKINS'S methods of accomplishing results. After his second nomination and the retirement of Mr. Blaine from the Cabinet, President Harrison tendered to me the position of Secretary of State. I told him I could not take it because, as president of the greatest railway system in the country, it would inject in the then inflamed condition of the public mind on railway questions an unnecessary issue into the canvass, which had four months to run before the election. The President did not think so, and sent Mr. ELKINS, then Secretary of War, to persuade me. He did not argue with me, but said, " Come, let's take a walk," and he led me over to the State Department and then pointed to the portraits of those who had occupied that great place, among them Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Edward Everett, and William H. Seward, and said:
There is a list far more eminent and distinguished than the Presidents of the United States. To have your picture hung in that line is fame.
To Senator ELKINS was granted a rare equability of temper and equilibrium of mind. He was an earnest partisan and stated his views on all public questions with the vigor of profound conviction, but he never uttered a word which injured anyone's feelings or left a sting behind. When partisan rancor was most bitter and passions intense he was equally welcome with every faction of his own party and of the opposition.
Senator ELKINS was a big man physically, mentally, and sympathetically. Successful men have hard experiences with temporary setbacks, discouraging failures, or faithless friends and implacable enemies. Their experiences harden them against appeals from suffering humanity. But for the Senator these trials broadened his charity. He was remarkably free from enmities and animosities. To forgive and forget were his nature and policy. He was first beside friends in sorrow or sickness, and his affectionate interest and bracing vitality were of infinite help and comfort. If the trouble was financial, instead of avoiding the unfortunate, which is the common way, he would drop his own great affairs to take up those of his friend. If the enterprise was sound and required more pecuniary assistance to tide over the depression of a panic or a mistaken calculation, his sagacity and money would change the situation from impending bankruptcy to prosperity. Though not an orator, yet in debate upon the purely material propositions, which constitute most of our legislation, his common sense, practical experience, and lucidity made him a dangerous adversary and persuasive advocate. The memory of this happy, healthy, helpful figure in our public life will long linger among the best traditions of the Senate. West Virginia is destined to become one of the most prosperous of our industrial Commonwealths. As the State grows because of the development of its exhaustless natural resources, so will the fame of one of its greatest State builders, STEPHEN B. ELKINS.
ADDRESS OF MR. BAILEY, OF TEXAS
Mr. PRESIDENT: When I entered the Senate I enjoyed but a slight acquaintance with the late Senator from West Virginia, Mr. ELKINS, but even that had brought me to appreciate those qualities which made and kept him easily the best-beloved Member of this body; and when one afternoon, soon after I had assumed my duties here, he crossed the aisle and proposed a permanent pair with me, I readily and cheerfully consented to that arrangement. Our relation, thus established, brought us frequently into contact, and Senators will understand all the better what that contact meant when he volunteered to say that if in his absence at any time I felt that my duty to my people or the suitable care of my own political fortunes required me to vote, I was at liberty to do so, even though it left him without a pair.
Our friendship, beginning almost when my term in the Senate began, was not only a source of constant and uninterrupted pleasure to me, but it was often used by my other friends to their good advantage, for it became a common practice with those who knew how much I loved him to seek my intercession with him. When the river and harbor bills were pending Members of the other House, not from my own State alone, but from other States, often appealed to me to interview Senator ELKINS in behalf of projects which deeply interested them, and many was the time I have taken anxious Members of the House to him in order that they might state their own case.
In all of those incidents not once did that Senator ever exhibit an impatience or appear indifferent to the request of a Member whose name perhaps he had not known until I had introduced him and in whose State he could not possibly have felt any local interest. Not only was he generous and obliging to men from all sections, but he was especially so to men of the section from which I came. He was the best friend the Southern States have ever possessed in this Chamber since I have been a Member of the Senate, and in making that statement I do not even except Senators from the South themselves. No Senator from any Southern State ever invoked the friendly offices of Senator ELKINS in vain, and he sometimes aided us in works which we believed right and proper though our colleagues from other Southern States could not agree with us. Not only in those great works of internal improvement, but on every other question which touched the honor or the interest of the South he was our steadfast and our unswerving friend.
He had so impressed me with his peculiar interest in our States and in our section that one day, half in jest and half in earnestness, I said to him, " You are better to us that we are to ourselves, for you will help us whether we are right or wrong." He looked at me with that unfailing good nature which so won the hearts of all who came in contact with him, and he said, " My dear boy, to me the southern people are never wrong." And then, as if that needed to be qualified, he added, "They were wrong once, I suppose, when they tried to dissolve the Union, but that is the only mistake they have ever made, and I never expect to think that they have made another."
Other Senators on this side, who often appealed, as we were compelled to appeal, because we were in the minority here, to his great influence with his colleagues on the other side, appreciated his services no less than I do.
Mr. President, there have been many who have served in this great assembly who were loved and trusted by all their colleagues; there are Senators here now loved and trusted without measure and without question; and yet, without invidious distinction, I believe I may safely say that not one of us who are still here, and not one of those who have gone before us, was as universally loved and trusted as he was. And if I sought a reason for a fact like that I would find it in the other fact, that he loved and trusted us, and thus he warranted us in loving and trusting him.
He was of that nature that, intending no evil himself, was not swift to impute evil motives to other men, and though he passed through that calumny which all successful men encounter, it left no stain upon his name and it left no scar upon his heart. I have seen him, when they were misrepresenting his purposes, and when they were challenging his patriotism, put such suggestions aside as strong men would the challenges of children, and he was often charitable enough to believe that the men who unjustly aspersed him were honestly mistaken. I almost envied him that virtue. I never envied him his fortune, magnificent as they say it was; I never envied him his station, because perhaps my own was not less than his; I never envied him his friends, though they were manyfold more numerous than mine; I never envied him any of the great and varied success which fate or his own exertion had won for him; but sometimes I did almost feel weak enough to envy him his good nature. To those of us who have a bitterness easily aroused by ungenerous treatment, it is almost incomprehensible how a man can be gentle and patient under criticism which he knows to be malicious and untruthful. To those of us who find it difficult to believe that honest men ever libel other men, it was a source of constant astonishment how this brave and upright man passed unheeded the things that would have deeply wounded others.
In all of my close and intimate association with him, Mr. President, I never saw him out of humor; and I heard the clergyman who officiated at his funeral say that he had never been known to lose his temper. Yet, sir, it must not be supposed that because he did not permit himself to fall into an ugly frame of mind he was one of those weak and vacillating natures who can not be otherwise than civil. He was that strange combination, sir, of which we have often heard but which we seldom see in this world, which unites a gentle nature with the firmest purpose. He would yield and he would compromise the honest differences which often divide men in this Chamber. He was by nature a pacificator; and he did not believe, as too many in high position do, that he was wholly right and those who differed from him were wholly wrong; but conceding to them as much of honesty and as much of wisdom as he claimed for himself, he met them and he sought to accomplish work, to achieve results by adjusting differences where differences could be honorably adjusted. But when he found that it was not a difference which they were seeking to adjust, when he found that men were striving to impose upon his good nature, he could reject all overtures and he could resist all selfish appeals as firmly as any man whom it has ever been my pleasure to know. Gentle, yielding to what he thought others believed was right, yet, sir, when he reached the limit he was as firm as the hills amongst which he sleeps in peace to-day.
When we adjourned the last session of this body and he passed out yonder door, he was a specimen of physical and intellectual manhood such as we seldom see. Full of hope, full of courage, and full of honors, it seemed so reasonable to believe that he was likewise to become fuller yet of years. So robust, so eager, so devoted to all that is best in life, he was the last amongst all our colleagues upon whom we thought God would soon lay His hand. Stronger than any of us, in robust health, with much undone which he was eager yet to do, it did not seem, sir, that he was standing upon the verge of the grave, and that ere our duties called us back he would sink forever into its narrow bosom.
But, Mr. President, while we stand with uncovered heads and with tear-stained eyes about his open grave, we are not without our consolation, for it was his faith, embraced no matter how late in life, it was still the faith in which he died, that the grave is but the vestibule of a nobler, a better, and a more eternal life than that which he put off amidst our tears but without his fear. He has gone, but behind him in the records of this Nation he has left a monument more enduring than affectionate hands can build for him. Clothed with the confidence and affection of a brave and a free people, commissioned to speak in the highest assembly of the world as one of the representatives of a sovereign State, that would have been honor enough. But that is not all of the honor which belongs to him and to his career, for, sir, his name is inseparably connected with some of the most useful and some of the most far-reaching legislation ever written into the statute books of this Republic; and the memory of his service will endure as long as men read the history of the time in which he lived.
ADDRESS OF MR. WATSON, OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. PRESIDENT: The memory of STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS, for 16 years a distinguished Member of this body, will remain fresh and fragrant in the great State of West Virginia through many generations.
In the upbuilding and development of that splendid Commonwealth; in the progress and prosperity of its people; in the dignity and honor and standing it has achieved, he was a potent force - a fine, fearless figure that loomed dominant and large.
His name will be cherished in affectionate remembrance by our people, and his powerful and attractive personality missed and mourned for many years. In his death his State and this Senate has sustained a loss, the extent of which will be better realized as time passes.
The country as well as the community has suffered by the untimely taking away of this big and lovable man, who labored for the general welfare and whose clear conception of his public duties and comprehensive grasp of public questions marked him as a statesman of great force, wide influence, and tremendous achievement.
His distinguished and inspiring career, his early struggles, the brave battle with life he made and won, his political and professional triumphs have been eloquently and feelingly described by Senators who have preceded me. His success as a lawyer, a soldier, a student, a man of business and finance, and as a public servant have been graphically and truthfully described by men who were at once his colleagues and his devoted friends.
It is to STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS the man to whom I wish to pay tribute - the man whose genial and lovable nature, whose cheering smile and unchanging amiability attracted friends to him as the magnet draws the steel. His warm heart, his kindly nature bound to him those friends with bonds that were never broken, and now, that he is gone forever, his loss leaves them with a void that can not be filled. Time may diminish the pain they now feel, but the memory of his sunny disposition and the great kind heart of the man will be imperishable.
To those upon whom the blow falls hardest - the members of his immediate family - the sympathy of his State, of the Nation, and of the people whom he served goes out in full measure.
His was a full and useful life, crowded with honors and crowned with gratified ambitions; but absorbing as were his many interests and activities they were not allowed to diminish his love and devotion to those nearest and dearest to him, and it is in his home the keenest sorrow is felt and the burden is heaviest.
A sturdy oak has been uprooted. It will be a long while before one springs up to take the place of the towering tree that has fallen.
Mr. GUGGENHEIM. Mr. President, I offer the following resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado submits a resolution, which will be read.
The Secretary read the resolution, as follows:
Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of Mr. ELKINS and Mr. Hughes, the Senate do now adjourn.
The resolution was unanimously agreed to, and (at 5 o'clock and 10 minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned until Monday, February 13, 1911, at 12 o'clock meridian.
MONDAY, February 12,1912.
Mr. CHILTON. I submit a resolution, and ask that it be read.
The Secretary read the resolution (S. Res. 216), as follows:
Resolved, That the remarks of Dr. Radcliffe on the life of the late Senator ELKINS be printed as a part of his eulogies.
Mr. CHILTON. Mr. President, I desire to explain the necessity for the passage of the resolution. I learned to-day that, in order to have these remarks printed as a part of the eulogies, it will be necessary to have a resolution adopted by the Senate. The remarks are very short, and I hope there will be no objection to the present consideration of the resolution authorizing the printing.
The resolution was considered by unanimous consent and agreed to.
(The remarks of Dr. Radcliffe will be found on page 83 of this volume.)
JANUARY 5, 1911.
The House met at 12 o'clock noon.
The Chaplain, Rev. Henry N. Couden, D. D., delivered the following prayer:
Eternal and overliving God, our heavenly Father, once more in the ceaseless flow of time Thou hast brought us to the beginning of a new year, rich in the material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual wealth of all the past. Help us, we beseech Thee, with high resolves to face the future without fear, for as Thou hast been in our past so shalt Thou be in our future, a very present help in every need. And grant that our failures may be stepping- stones to a brighter future, that, passing on, we shall leave to coming generations a better Government, a better world.
Profoundly moved, O God our Father, by the sudden death of one of our foremost statesmen, whose life has been conspicuous for many years in State and Nation, we pray for Thy sustaining and guiding hand, that his many warm friends and the bereaved family may look forward to the larger life with the same optimistic spirit which ever filled his mind and led him onward to nobler achievements. And Thine be the praise forever. Amen.
Mr. GAINES. Mr. Speaker, it is with deep personal sorrow and a profound sense of the public loss that I rise to announce to the House the death of the Hon. STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS, late a Senator from the State of West Virginia. As a Member of this body, as Secretary of War, as a Senator of the United States for 16 years, and in other public positions he served his country with great distinction.
Following the custom of the House, I shall at some future time ask that a day be appointed when fitting tribute may be paid to his memory and his distinguished public services. Now, in behalf of the delegation from West Virginia, I offer the following resolutions, and move their adoption.
The SPEAKER. The gentleman from West Virginia offers the following resolutions (H. Res. 889), which the Clerk will report.
The Clerk read as follows:
Resolved, That the House has heard with profound sorrow and sincere regret of the death of the Hon. STEPHEN B. ELKINS, late a Senator from the State of West Virginia.
Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate, and send a copy thereof to the family of the deceased Senator.
Resolved, That a committee of 17 Members of the House, with such Members of the Senate as may be joined, be appointed to attend the funeral.
The resolutions were agreed to.
Mr. GAINES. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Speaker be authorized to determine the number of the committee.
The SPEAKER. Is there objection?
There was no objection.
After adjournment, in pursuance of authority heretofore granted, the Speaker announced the appointment of the following committee:
Mr. Hubbard of West Virginia, Mr. Hughes of West Virginia, Mr. Woodyard, Mr. Sturgiss, Mr. Gaines, Mr. Mann, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Rucker of Missouri, Mr. Alexander of New York, Mr. Longworth, Mr.Calderhead, Mr. Livingston, Mr. Slemp, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Adamson, and Mr. McCall.
Mr. GAINES. Mr. Speaker, I also offer the following resolution.
The SPEAKER. The gentleman from West Virginia offers a resolution, which the Clerk will report.
The Clerk read as follows:
Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of the deceased Senator the House do now adjourn.
The resolution was unanimously agreed to.
Accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 30 minutes p. m.) the House adjourned.
THURSDAY, December 14, 1911.
Mr. HUGHES of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for the consideration of the following order, which I send to the Clerk's desk.
The SPEAKER. The gentleman from West Virginia asks unanimous consent for the consideration of the following order, which the Clerk will report.
The Clerk read as follows:
Ordered, That Sunday, the 7th day of January, 1912, at 12 o'clock m., be set apart for addresses on the life, character, and public services of the Hon. STEPHEN B. ELKINS, late a United States Senator from the State of West Virginia.
The SPEAKER. Is there objection?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER. The question is on agreeing to the order.
The question was taken, and the order was agreed to.
SUNDAY, January 7, 1912.
The House was called to order by the Chief Clerk, who read the following communication:
THE SPEAKER'S ROOM,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Washington, D. C., January 7, 1912.
To the House of Representatives:
I hereby designate Hon. William G. Brown, a Representative from the State of West Virginia, to act as Speaker pro tempore for this day.
CHAMP CLARK, Speaker.
Mr. BROWN took the chair as Speaker pro tempore. The Chaplain, Rev. Henry N. Couden, D. D., offered the following prayer:
Infinite Spirit, our God and our Father, who boldest in Thy heart the secret of life and the mystery of death, Thou knowest the beginning and the end.
Behold! we know not anything;
We can but trust that good shall fall
At last - far off - at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
We bless Thee, O Father, for the profound faith, sublime hope, and imperishable love - qualities of soul which inspire the great thoughts, the heroic deeds, and bind us together into families and friendships which shall live on forever. We are met by a common impulse, a natural desire to record on the pages of history the rounded-out character and splendid achievements of a faithful public servant, that his example may be an inspiration to us and those who shall come after us to emulate his virtues. Let the everlasting arms be about the confiding and stricken wife, his children, and friends drawn to him by a loving and genial nature, that we may look forward with bright anticipations to a reunion in some fairer clime where changes never come. And blessing and honor and praise be Thine. In the spirit of the Master. Amen.
The Clerk began the reading of the Journal of the proceedings of Friday, January 5, 1912.
Mr. HUGHES of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the further reading of the Journal be dispensed with.
The SPEAKEK pro tempore. The gentleman from West Virginia asks unanimous consent that the further reading of the Journal be dispensed with. Is there objection?
There was no objection.
The Journal was approved.
Mr. HUGHES of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that leave for 10 days to print remarks relating to these ceremonies be granted to the Members of the House.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from West Virginia asks unanimous consent that Members have leave for 10 days to print remarks relating to these ceremonies. Is there objection?
There was no objection.
Mr. HUGHES of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I offer the following resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from West Virginia offers a resolution, which will be reported by the Clerk.
The Clerk read as follows:
Resolved, That in pursuance of the special order heretofore adopted the House proceed to pay tribute to the memory of Hon. STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS, late Senator from the State of West Virginia.
Resolved, That as a particular mark of respect to the memory of the deceased and in recognition of his eminent abilities as a faithful and distinguished public servant the House at the conclusion of the memorial proceedings of this day shall stand adjourned.
Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate.
Resolved, That the Clerk be, and is hereby, instructed to send a copy of these resolutions to the family of the deceased.
The resolution was unanimously agreed to.
ADDRESS OF MR. HUGHES, OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. SPEAKER: The long and intimate association with Senator STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS that it was my privilege to enjoy through many years seems to make it all the more difficult for me to try to paint the man as he was. His character had so many sides that were admirable that to know them all was given to but the favored few who enjoyed with him those rare moments he was occasionally able to take from the busiest life I have ever known to devote to the intimate intercourse of true friendship.
Born near the town of New Lexington, Perry County, Ohio, in the year 1841, where his father was then living on a farm, in early boyhood he was taken by his parents to the State of Missouri, where he entered the State University, from which institution he graduated at the early age of 18 with signal honors. When came the war that tested as may never be tested again the ability of this Government to live, young ELKINS cast his lot with the Union and did his full share in that great conflict.
Deciding upon the practice of law as his life work, he selected the then Territory of New Mexico as offering the best advantages and located there. The qualities of mind that so distinguished him as a student soon won him prominence at the bar and his influence left its mark on the history of the Territory, where he was successively attorney general and United States attorney.
At that time a thorough knowledge of the Spanish language was necessary to the practice of law in New Mexico and this knowledge he quickly acquired, and in after life one of the greatest pleasures was to meet some one with whom he could converse in that language.
In 1873 he was elected as Territorial Delegate in Congress from New Mexico and reelected in 1875, notwithstanding his declination to seek a second term and the fact that at the time of his last election he was absent from the Territory. At this period his efforts to secure the admission of New Mexico as a State called general attention to the Territory's great natural resources, and in one of his speeches on this subject Senator ELKINS gave evidence of those brilliant qualities that were destined to carry him to the front rank of American statesmen.
Shortly after the end of his term as Delegate Senator ELKINS moved to my State, West Virginia, and began to exercise that remarkable talent for business of which he had already shown signs before leaving New Mexico. His business activities were all directed along the line of the development of the resources of his adopted State, and it was largely due to his efforts that the vast natural resources of West Virginia became known. His activities gave employment to thousands, and his treatment of labor was always such as to win its earnest friendship. Although occupied with his enormous business interests he always found time to take an active interest in the public affairs of State and Nation, and in the presidential campaign of 1884 was a member of the Republican national committee. On December 17, 1891, President Benjamin Harrison called him to his Cabinet as Secretary of War, and in his administration of the duties of that position he added to his already enviable reputation as a public servant.
In January, 1895, I had the honor of presenting him to the joint legislature after he was elected to the United States Senate by the West Virginia Legislature, and was twice reelected, being the only West Virginian thus honored by three elections to the Senate.
He was especially equipped to deal with questions affecting the business interests of the country, and during his long service in the Senate his name was connected with many acts of legislation of vital importance. His statesmanship was constructive and his mind gave forth sound and original ideas. The weight of his influence was always for the sane, the safe, and the wholesome in public life.
He died in Washington on January 4, 1911, during his third term as United States Senator.
ELKINS the lawyer showed by his fidelity to the interests he represented and the ability with which he handled his cases that he made no mistake as to his chosen profession. ELKINS the financier caused the wilderness to become habitable, made the mountains to give up the riches they concealed, giving to his State a wonderful development, always fighting fair, yet always commanding the respect of those with whom he came in contact in a business way by his evident ability to take care of himself under all circumstances, finally becoming one of the leaders of the financial world. ELKINS the statesman carried into his public life that innate sense of justice and fair dealing that always characterized him, and he viewed all public questions in a broad and patriotic spirit that won the admiration of his associates and the Nation. But it was ELKINS the man that those who knew him loved best. His many beautifully tender qualities of mind endeared him beyond measure to his friends, and to have known him intimately was indeed a great privilege.
West Virginians loved STEPHEN B. ELKINS and West Virginia was proud of his achievements, and when for him, surrounded by sorrowing loved ones, came the sunset of life and "the evening star and the one clear call" he put out on that unknown sea with a feeling that in this life he had "acted well his part."
ADDRESS OF MR. DAVIS, OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. SPEAKER : It is written:
Man must endure his going hence even as his coming hither, ripeness is all.
On the 4th day of January, 1911, STEPHEN B. ELKINS went, as must all mortal men, back upon the path by which he came, back to the great unknown. In every such announcement there is a solemnity, which comes not alone from the severing of the ties of love and friendship, not alone from a sense of personal or public grief and loss, but also from the knowledge it imports that the book of another life has been closed and another account made up forever. At such times we may with propriety assemble to record our grief at the separation and to enter upon record the salient facts of the ended life.
Such, Mr. Speaker, is the purpose of this occasion. Others have spoken, or will speak, of the details of Senator ELKINS'S life's history. To those whose good fortune it was to know him better than did I must be left the intimacies of his personal life and conversation, and in better form, no doubt, by others, a summary of his public achievements will be given. But I desire to record a brief mention of those characteristics which, to the world, stood out most strongly in the man and which most contributed to his remarkable career.
And his career was one truly remarkable, whether from the standpoint of results obtained or of the broad field of activity it covered. Soldier, lawyer, banker, business man, railroad executive, political leader, attorney general of the Territory of New Mexico and United States district attorney for the same Territory, Delegate to Congress, Secretary of War, Senator of the United States - all these and more he was, and in all his powerful talents and natural gifts made himself preeminent. No man can point with certainty to the hidden springs from which flow the actions and the life work of his fellows, and only the boldest will assume to catalogue all the gifts with which another is endowed. But some of the reasons for the power of this man are easily discernible.
First of all, he was in physique a favored child of nature. When he became Secretary of War in 1892 there was written of him a description which might stand, without amendment, to the day of his last illness. It may be entered here as follows:
He is one of the biggest men I have ever known. Standing over 6 feet in his stockings, his broad shoulders are well padded with muscular flesh, and his big arms make you think of those of Samson, and his legs are firm and strong. He is not fat, but his massive frame has no angles, and he is the personification of energetic health. He has a great big round head, which is fastened to his broad shoulders by a big, well-made neck. His clear blue eyes look out from under broad, open brows. He has a strong jaw, but there are pleasant lines about his mouth, and his short, strong, white teeth are often shown when he laughs. His hair is now white; it is cut short, and you can see the rosy scalp showing through its frosted silver strands. Secretary ELKINS'S face is smooth shaven, and its mobility is shown in the change of expressions which pass over it as his thought turns from grave to gay as he talks. His face impresses you with its cleanliness, and his words are as clean as his skin. He never uses slang or profanity, and he once told me that he had never, in all his life, uttered a word which he would be ashamed to repeat in the presence of the purest woman he knew.
Within this powerful frame there was implanted a keen and discriminating intellect, to which he added a tireless industry. He shrank from no task as being beyond either his physical or mental powers, and when in President Harrison's Cabinet it was said of him in comparison with his confreres that -
The man capable of the greatest amount of work is filling an office where the least is to be done.
The statement was accurate in so far as his capacity for labor was concerned. But in that office, and in all others, he proved that only those who shrink from labor complain that the opportunity for it is denied. One might believe that he took as his life motto the lines:
No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him; there is always work
To do and tools to work withal for those who will,
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.
The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set
Until occasion tells him what to do.
And he who waits to have his task marked out
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.
His intellect and energy were guided by a courageous determination which never wavered from a goal once fixed upon and was never more steady than at the very time when it might seem to yield. He was a past master of the art of conciliation and of compromise, and knew how, with consummate tact, to harmonize conflicting interests among his followers and associates and weld them all into a compact and efficient body, subservient to his purpose. Perhaps no man of his time in public life possessed to a higher degree the four great gifts of intellect, industry, will power, and tact. These it was which made of him a born leader of men. No higher praise can be or need here be given, for whoever can lead his fellows along the path he wishes them to follow, whoever can bend to his use that greatest of all forces, the elemental force of human nature, must indeed be great himself.
With these endowments it was but the working out of natural law in the spiritual world that he should have had an extraordinary capacity for making and for keeping friends, and it was equally inevitable that, like all strong natures, he should encounter opposition in all the spheres of life in which he was engaged. Enemies confronted him, and he overcame them; calumny assailed him, and he outlived it; envy and malice attacked him, and he proudly ignored them. Often did he prove that -
He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
Their loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds of snow
.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below.
Though high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Around him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head.
After a long, wasting, and mysterious illness, he neared his end; but though physically weakened by the struggle his last conscious words were, " I do not expect to die."
It may have been perhaps the dominating will of the man still asserting itself; it may have been his defiant challenge to the last of earthly foes; but may we not equally believe that it was all this and something more - a declaration of his belief in the final triumph of the soul over death itself, a prophecy even now fulfilled of an immortality assured. May we not share that-faith and believe that somewhere even now that bold and tireless spirit is still working out its God-appointed destiny?
He is gone. I have no desire to weaken my tribute to his memory by a mere amplification of words, which he, of all men, would have most decried. He was a great figure in the State of West Virginia and in the Nation. A strong man has fallen; it may be long before another comes to fill his place.
ADDRESS OF MR. MANN, OF ILLINOIS
Mr. SPEAKER: I rise, sir, to express my appreciation of STEPHEN B. ELKINS while he was alive, my respect for the memory of the man and his deeds, my sincere regret at his departure from this life, and my profound sympathy for the family he left behind.
It is indeed a melancholy pleasure to pay my sad tribute to the worth of his deeds. I knew Senator ELKINS in a legislative capacity. I had contact with him in the construction of some of the great legislation which has been enacted in recent years in relation to railroads. For a time there was a strong feeling in the country that the railroads needed additional control, that preferences were being granted by them to great shippers in the way of rebates, and in 1903 Senator ELKINS introduced into the Senate a bill, now enacted into law, called the Elkins bill, for the purpose of preventing the granting of rebates by railways. I had the honor, by direction of that other great statesman, William P. Hepburn, of Iowa, to have charge of that bill in the committee and on the floor of the House. It brought me somewhat in contact with Senator ELKINS and gave me an insight into his capacity for constructive legislation; but it was in 1910 that I came in closer contact with him. The air was filled as it were with electric excitement concerning the bills to increase the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission in the control of railways, their rates, and other matters relating to them.
A bill for that purpose was reported from the committee of which I had the honor to be chairman. It passed the House, went to the Senate, and came back here with all after the enacting clause stricken out and a new bill inserted. Senator ELKINS was chairman of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce. There were striking differences between the bill as it had passed the House and the bill as it passed the Senate.
After some discussion and a decided division of opinion in the House it was sent to conference. There were those who believed that it would be impossible for the House and the Senate to come to an agreement. I was the chairman of the House conference committee, and upon that committee were Representative Wanger and, as a minority member, the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Adamson. On the Senate conference committee were Senators ELKINS and Aldrich and, as a minority member. Senator Newlands, of Nevada. I confess that at the time I had grave doubts whether we would be able to agree; I had grave doubts when I entered the conference whether the sharp division of opinion might not give rise to decided personal differences and conflicts.
For several weeks, while the bill was in conference, Senator ELKINS and myself were in daily communication. We met at the Capitol, we met at his house, we met at the White House, we met in various other places, we rode and rode, and we sat down and talked and discussed. In the end the differences in the conference were reconciled, a conference report was agreed upon, adopted by both bodies, and the bill became a law. During that time while we were having these decided differences of opinion and discussions. Senator ELKINS was always decided but good natured. I do not know whether I was always good natured, but I believed that I was usually decided.
I came to have in that connection a strong personal affection for the work and the character of Senator ELKINS. I came to know that he was a constructive statesman. During that same period of time when this bill was under discussion there were also in conference between the two Houses, where Senator ELKINS and I were conferees, two bills, one relating to the reporting of accidents by railroads and the other regarding the standardization of safety appliances on railroads. I learned that Senator ELKINS not only had a profound knowledge of the management and operation of railways, but a profound sympathy for the enginemen, the brakemen, the trainmen, and all those who work in connection with the operation of railroads.
Mr. Speaker, I simply wish to say that, in my judgment, the two laws now upon the statute books bearing his name in usual reference to them, the antirebate law and the act to strengthen the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, themselves establish, without other evidence, the profound constructive statesmanship of this friend of ours who has gone to the other shore.
ADDRESS OF MR. SULZER, OF NEW YORK
Mr. SPEAKER: As a friend for many years of Senator ELKINS I come to-day to place on record my tribute of respect to his memory. He was my friend and evidenced it in many ways during the time we served together in the Congress of the United States. In his unexpected death the State he represented here so long, so intelligently, and so industriously was deprived of one of its foremost citizens; the Republic lost a loyal and a patriotic public servant; his bereaved family a loving husband and an indulgent father; and his innumerable friends, from one end of the land to the other, a safe counselor, a sagacious advocate, and a wise and consistent champion.
One had to know Senator ELKINS intimately to know the real true man. He was warm-hearted, broad-minded, and tolerant. He was alert in thought and quick in speech. He was dignified and sympathetic. He was a man who stood high among the constructive statesmen of his time; he lived above the commonplace and sought his friends and did his work on the higher level of purpose and of intellectuality, of usefulness, and of strict integrity.
He served his State and his country well, and he served in all things that were elevating and lasting. The sterling manhood that was in him recognized both the duty and the opportunity, and lifted his service into the light of lasting companionship and the reality of good example. He was a diligent student of affairs, and in all matters of moment he carefully searched for the truth. What he said was based not on impulse but on sincere conviction. There was no forced attempt at brilliancy in his oratory. He was a direct man and spoke simply and truly and honestly. He was a man of clean thought and of clean speech; his inner life was carefully swept and generously garnished, so that all could quickly tell what sort of man was the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. He was an indefatigable worker, and he fell by the wayside at the zenith of his public service because strength was exhausted and nature demanded her long rest.
In many ways it can be truly said of Senator ELKINS that he was a brilliant man, a constructive statesman, who took a prominent part in all the great debates of his time. He wrote lasting laws on our statute books, and by his industry and ability, together with his courteous manners and his genial ways, won the lifelong respect and the lasting admiration of his colleagues and his fellow citizens.
STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS was a child of the great West. He was born in Perry County, Ohio, September 26, 1841; he received his early education in the public schools of Missouri and graduated from the university of that State, at Columbia, in the class of 1860; he was admitted to the bar in 1864, and in the same year went to New Mexico, where he acquired a knowledge of the Spanish language and began the practice of the law. He was a member of the Territorial Legislative Assembly of New Mexico in 1864 and 1865, and held the offices of Territorial district attorney, attorney general, and United States district attorney. He was elected to the Forty-third Congress, and while abroad was renominated and elected to the Forty- fourth Congress. During the time he served in Congress he was made a member of the Republican national committee, on which he served for three presidential campaigns. After leaving Congress he moved to West Virginia and devoted himself to his business affairs. He was appointed Secretary of War December 17, 1891, and served until the close of President Harrison's administration. In February, 1894, he was elected to the United States Senate to succeed Hon. Johnson N. Camden, and was reelected in 1901 by every vote of the Republican members of the legislature, giving him a majority of 40 on joint ballot. He was again unanimously reelected in 1907 and served in the Senate until his untimely death. Such, in brief, is the brilliant record of S. B. ELKINS, and it demonstrates anew the hope and the opportunities of the Republic. What a splendid and triumphant career!
When Senator ELKINS passed away, at the summit of his congressional life, he had made an enviable record for statesmanship and for usefulness, not only for the benefit of his constituents but for the good of the whole country. We have missed him much here since his long departure, and as the days come and go we who knew him well will miss him more and more. The work he did for the people will live in the history of his State and of his country. The good he did will grow brighter and brighter as the years pass away until it becomes his lasting monument, more enduring than marble or brass and forever sacred in the hearts of his grateful countrymen.
We mourn and sympathize with his beloved family, but we find words of comfort and of consolation in his noble life, his generous character, his sympathetic nature, and the great work he accomplished for his country. His deeds of kindness, of charity, and of generosity will ever keep alive his memory and frequently call to recollection the glory of his name.
The memory of good deeds will ever stay,
A lamp to light us on the darkened way;
A music to the ear on clamoring street,
A cooling well amid the noonday heat;
A scent of green boughs blown through narrow walls,
A feel of rest when quiet evening falls.
Senator ELKINS was a true man, a lover of justice, a believer in the supremacy of law, a friend of every cause that lacked assistance. He stood for eternal principles of right, and believed in the opportunity vouchsafed to everyone under the dome of the Union sky. He was no skeptic, no scoffer, no cynic. He was broad and liberal in his views, had charity for all, trusted the people, and never lost faith in humanity. He knew the world was growing better, and he believed in the greater and the grander destiny of his country.
He hated cant and despised hypocrisy. He had a sun- shiny disposition and a forgiving spirit that never harbored revenge. He was a plain, simple man, who loved his fellow man. He will live in the hearts of those he left behind, and to do this is not to die. He was a great worker, and succeeded in accomplishing what he undertook to do. He met Napoleon's test - he did things. He was a true son of our native soil, the friend of the toiler, and the eloquent advocate of the oppressed. He tried to lift his fellow man up to a higher plane and help him forward on the highway of progress and of civilization. He was a fearless man and ever dared to do what he thought was right regardless of the consequences. He was a faithful public official, and died in the service of his country. His work here is done. His career on earth is finished. He has run his course; he kept the faith; he fought the good fight; he has reaped his everlasting reward in the great beyond, and we, his friends, can all most truly say, Well done, thou good and faithful servant of a grateful people.
ADDRESS OF MR. LITTLEPAGE, OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. SPEAKER : I am here as a Representative of a proud people of a great State to raise my voice in proclaiming to the people of this Republic that there dwells within the Commonwealth of West Virginia a people noted for their chivalry, integrity, loyalty, appreciation, and all that goes to constitute character and good citizenship, and I feel that I bespeak the sentiments of them all when I say that State and this Nation lost a faithful friend when United States Senator STEPHEN B. ELKINS gave up the fight for the greatest boon in life - that of living - and surrendered his spirit to the God of mercy and love, and when that great and good spirit took its flight over the river of time to that home from which no tired and weary traveler has ever returned and never will; that all who knew him at home and here in Washington, the scenes of his great labors for the good of mankind and the upbuilding of this Republic; that the sorrowful acclaim should properly go up to that great white throne, before which we shall all appear sooner or later, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Since the great reaper of the ripe sheaves must gather you in so early in your useful career, we with one sorrowful accord wish you Godspeed to a position on that great white throne where sorrow is no more, there to dwell in everlasting peace of mind and joy of heart.
Senator ELKINS was a self-made man. Starting from the lowest rung on life's ladder, he ascended step by step, by hard work and good judgment, to assume mighty responsibilities and to an exalted public position. Be it said of him that he was a Republican, residing at Elkins, W. Va. He was born in Perry County, Ohio, September 24, 1841, attended schools in Missouri, graduating from the university of that State in 1860. He was a successful lawyer by profession since 1864. He went to the Territory of New Mexico, where he acquired a remarkable knowledge of the Spanish language. He was a member of that legislative assembly, 1864-65. He was also district attorney, attorney general, and United States district attorney of that Territory, elected to the Forty-third Congress and reelected to the Forty-fourth Congress, and a member of the Republican national committee during three presidential campaigns. He moved to West Virginia, and became Secretary of War in 1891, and as such a member of President Harrison's Cabinet. He was elected to the United States Senate from West Virginia in 1894, defeating Hon. Johnson N. Camden, a Democrat; reelected in 1901 to the United States Senate, and was still a United States Senator from that State at the time of his death in January, 1911.
Thus we see another important example of a young man having a fixed purpose in life and bending every energy to the accomplishment of that end; patient, loyal, energetic, and true all the time, starting in life without means, friends, or influence, he attained wonderful success in his profession, business, and political life; starting an humble country boy, he ran out his life's course and died in the Senate of the United States, where he exerted great influence and had much to do with shaping the destiny of the Republic he loved so well.
We are assembled here in the Capitol of this Nation to pay a last and farewell tribute to the memory of one of my State's favorite sons. My heart is full of sympathy for his bereaved ones left behind, but they should be consoled by the fact that a great chieftain, in passing from this stage of action to a better world, has left as their heritage a stainless official record, worthy of emulation by country-loving and country-serving men placed in official positions by the suffrage of a grateful people, who are ever ready, regardless of politics, to appreciate official integrity, love of country, and those great characteristics so wonderfully possessed by Senator ELKINS.
He was a developer of men and country. My State, that of his adoption, has important railroads, coal properties, timber plants, and other public utilities now blossoming and of great value to our Commonwealth, all the result of the handiwork, energy, and sacrifices of our dead Senator.
We differed in politics, but he was a most lovable character, and, above all, he was true to his friends, a thoroughly grateful man, the latter being the noblest characteristic possessed by mankind. He remembered long and faithfully an act of kindness, as was shown by his devotion, sacrifices, the expenditure of his means, and the taxation of his mental energies to have pardoned the Younger boys, who saved his life when he was a young man. When I read an account of this, and understood the motives that prompted his action, I was ever afterwards his personal friend and admirer.
One by one the great men have fallen and gone to their everlasting reward as time and the ages roll by. We scatter the flowers of memory over the tombs in passing. Let us look to a future, remembering, as we go by, that to so live in the sight of God as to command the respect and confidence of mankind should be the ambition of us all. Senator ELKINS has gone, but his memory will dwell in and with the history of my State and this Nation evermore.
Peace and good will to his memory. When the human harps of the nations of the earth shall sing out in after years in acclaim the songs of the memory of great men of the past ages, none shall be more sweetly enjoyed by the people of the American Republic than the one of the life, labors, sacrifices, and good deeds of United States Senator STEPHEN B. ELKINS, of West Virginia.
Mr. DAVIS of West Virginia assumed the chair as Speaker pro tempore.
ADDRESS OF MR. BROWN, OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. SPEAKER: A mighty oak has fallen, and its many tendrils and branches had so interlaced and entwined themselves among its lesser neighbors that a rude and unfilled opening has been left among its fellows. It is so with the death of Senator ELKINS. While the Nation mourns him and while his death left a vacancy peculiarly hard to fill, in this, that not only did Senator ELKINS possess all the faculties of a great statesman, but along with those he enjoyed the peculiar faculties of a business man familiar with the laws of commerce and our industrial interests. Few men combined these rare gifts in so high and comprehensive a degree. Not only a trained lawyer by profession, he was a pioneer of industry, a builder of railroads, familiar with all conditions of trade and manufacture. As a fearless explorer of undeveloped fields of mineral wealth he brought the hidden treasures of earth and emptied them into the lap of civilization, to be used for the comfort and happiness of his fellow men. He was a classic scholar, a tireless and accomplished student of political economy, and an historian who read history not as a pastime, but as a student who drew from it practical lessons of civil government. He was a field marshal in all branches of industry, and an honest, energetic champion of civil government and the rights of the people. His loss will be greatest felt by those who had a personal acquaintance with him and who came in close touch with him in business and social affairs. While he was a national character and belongs to the Nation, he was held to the people of West Virginia by the strongest of home ties. While a man of large means, he did not hide his light under a bushel, but used it in developing that rapid and growing Commonwealth which honored him by making him its representative in the Senate, and which he so well represented and honored in return. In West Virginia his name was identified with every prominent development.
With Senator Camden and Senator Henry G. Davis he learned that by developing his own country and by building railroads into the trackless forests and penetrating its rich coal fields he not only enriched himself and brought wealth and prosperity to its local citizens, but remunerative employment to hundreds of its people, which, in the end, is the true source of all greatness and wealth in every State. In this way he brought blessings to countless homes and became one of the greatest public benefactors in the State of his adoption. While he will be mourned by his friends at the National Capital and the men of prominence throughout the Nation, the tear- dimmed eye of the miner in the solemn stillness of his humble home will no less testify to the love, esteem, and high regard in which he was held by them. Senator ELKINS was great in big and great as well in the small things that go to make life worth living to all. But it was as a leader of men that he stood preeminent. His organization, both in politics and business, was perfect. It was for him to direct, for those under him to execute. In all his organizations, both political and industrial, he knew well his generals as well as those who stood in the humbler ranks. They were all executive officers to him. To them he gave courtesy, consideration, and fair treatment, but from them he expected faithful and exacting service. Napoleon never stood at the head of a better military organization. No one could fall short of the requirements expected and long hold his position. No one dare pitch his tent at the foot of a strategic elevation when he was expected to occupy the summit. He was a man of sternness and great exactness, but gentle and kind to his friends, and while, as I said before, the Nation has lost a splendid leader, the State of West Virginia, as a Commonwealth, has met with a still greater loss. In it every true cause has lost a champion and every good man a friend. Senator ELKINS was a man who believed in doing things, not saying things. His life was made up of acts, not words. A man gifted by nature with a splendid mind enshrined in a body of magnificent physical development, and he gave them all to his country's service. He was an untiring worker, a zealous advocate of every cause in which he enlisted, a man who believed whatever was worth doing was worth doing well. In his political and professional life he endeavored to be prepared for all emergencies. He was seldom surprised. He studied well the avenues of life he intended to follow before entering upon them. The road was always carefully laid out beforehand and the weak places fortified, the streams bridged before he came to them, and the right course mapped out and the proper finger boards selected before the crossroads of life were reached. He possessed in an exalted degree two combinations rarely found in the same human mind - a highly educated, well-trained intellect, combined with that greatest of all natural gifts, common sense. In his political and business career he followed no false lights. All finespun theories, when refined from their dross by his analytical mind, produced only practical results. Few men could so well reject the false premises and accept the true as Hon. STEPHEN B. ELKINS, and while some minds may have penetrated farther into certain subjects, seldom was there found a man who knew so many things so well.
ADDRESS OF MR. HAMILTON, OF WEST VIRGINIA
Mr. SPEAKER: One year after the death of an eminent American citizen, this House is assembled in solemn session to pay a tribute to his memory, and by that which has been already said we are reminded that the loss sustained by his departure is not confined to the State which he represented in the Congress of the Nation. While STEPHEN B. ELKINS was a native of Ohio, and at the time of his death was a resident of the State of West Virginia and one of her representatives in the Senate of the United States, his field of work during his life was confined to no single State or Territory, but in its scope took in the Nation.
As Delegate in Congress from the Territory of New Mexico, as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Harrison, and as a Senator from West Virginia his public service extended over a period of nearly 40 years, and when his last illness struck him he was the recognized leader, especially in matters pertaining to the great commercial and business legislation of the country, in the Senate of the United States.
In the field of politics he was a giant, and in many respects comparable to the renowned Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who in English history has been styled the "Setter-up and puller-down " of kings. On more than one occasion the influence of Senator ELKINS was controlling in the national conventions of his party, and for 16 years or more with unquestioned supremacy he held the reins which guided the chariot of the dominant political party of West Virginia.
He married the daughter of the Hon. Henry Gassaway Davis, now a distinguished ex-Senator of the United States, and who in a recent campaign was the candidate of his party for the Vice Presidency of the Nation, and who full of years of usefulness and honor survives his illustrious son-in-law, and is to-day held in the highest estimation not only in his own State but throughout this great country.
Upon the death of Mr. ELKINS he was succeeded in the Senate by his son Davis Elkins, and it may thus be seen that there was practically three generations of Senators in the same family. Not only is this true, but a son of Mr. ELKINS intermarried with a daughter of John E. Kenna, another distinguished Senator of West Virginia, whose illustrious services to his country and to his State were such as to cause a sculptured perpetuation of his appearance in life to be set up in that part of this Capitol Building devoted to the commemoration of the great men of the Nation.
In a republican government like ours this close connection and relationship between distinguished citizens can not arise from hereditary causes as in other lands, but when it is found to exist, or to have existed, it must be in consequence of the individual merits of the persons who have attained the eminence.
However, Mr. Speaker, the great esteem in which the memory of Mr. ELKINS is held in West Virginia and in other States depends not alone upon his public career in the Cabinet and in the Congress. Aside from his services as a statesman he was a great public benefactor; and through his instrumentality and untiring energy and that of his distinguished father-in-law, who was associated with him in many business transactions, the native resources of his State were largely developed and thrown open to the world. Railroads were built, mines were opened, great enterprises pushed forward and advanced, and in various sections where before that time little or no development had been made there was opened, through the ceaseless efforts of these men, a record of enterprise and progress, the final chapters of which will not be written for many years to come.
Mr. ELKINS was possessed with a fine sense of humor which he often brought to bear in public matters and which, no doubt, many times has tided him. over the shoals which frequently confront a man in public life. In the campaign of 1904 the political situation in West Virginia was in an unsettled condition for several months, and it looked as if there might be a great shaking up of political conditions then existing. There was a universal demand from the Democrats of the State that ex-Senator Davis should be their candidate for governor; and, in fact, this desire was evidenced also by many of the leading Republicans of the State. It was supposed that if he should accept the nomination for that office that the powerful influence of his distinguished son-in-law would be exercised either in his active support or rendered nugatory as an opposing force. But before the Democratic State convention was held Mr. Davis was named by the national convention of the Democracy as the candidate of that party for the Vice Presidency. A day or two after the nomination of Mr. Davis for that high office the Republican State convention of West Virginia assembled in the city of Wheeling, in perhaps as stormy a convention as has been held within that State. Mr. ELKINS was made temporary chairman thereof, and in his speech delivered as a keynote of the campaign he referred to the many rumors that he would have supported Mr. Davis had he become a candidate for governor and that he would support the electoral ticket upon which he was then a candidate for the Vice Presidency. He facetiously remarked that he had, indeed, been in a dilemma prior to the assembling of the Democratic national convention, while Mr. Davis was being talked of and urged to be a candidate for governor, but that the Democratic Party, which, in his opinion, could at all times be relied upon to do the wrong thing at the right time, had relieved him from the difficulty, and that when the party had failed to recognize the eminent ability and statesmanship of his father-in- law and to reward the same by placing him at the head of the national ticket and not at the tail thereof, he thought that there was nothing else for him to do but to continue in the support of the Republican Party, which through him had conferred such distinguished honors upon the family. He could not support a party which had cast such reflection upon his father-in-law.
Mr. Speaker, I was not intimately acquainted with Mr. ELKINS in a personal way, and have met him but very few times. For that reason I am not as well prepared to speak of him as others who are upon this floor for that purpose. However, the Hon. George W. Atkinson, now a judge of one of the Federal courts, an ex-Member of this body, and a former governor of the State of West Virginia, has been for many years the warm personal and political friend of the deceased Senator, and at the time of his death, or a few days thereafter, pronounced an eloquent eulogy upon the life and character of his departed comrade. As Gov. Atkinson can not be heard upon this floor under the rules of the House - and I am glad to see that he is present here to-day - at my request he has allowed me to use in connection with my remarks the tribute which he prepared, and I send the same to the Clerk's desk to be read in connection with what I have to say.
The Clerk read as follows:
"A TALL CEDAR HAS FALLEN AND MANY HEARTS ARE SAD."
Senator ELKINS is no more. He has gone from the throng of the living to mingle with the millions that have gone before. When a king is dethroned his subjects rejoice, but when a great man dies the people mourn. A tall cedar has fallen, and gloom pervades not only the State of West Virginia, but the Nation as well, because his fame was Nation-wide. His sun went down soon after it reached the zenith and began receding toward the west. When it settled beyond our visions, darkness fell upon thousands of devoted and admiring friends. It was God's will, not ours, that his sun should set before due evening tide Had come. He could not prevent its setting, nor could his friends prevent it. All we could do was to stand and watch and wait. We stood until the light went out, while he met the issue as only the strong and brave and great could do. We believe a new and brighter sun arose beyond the setting of his earthly life. We believe that death does not end all.
Some men flower early; others late. Senator ELKINS was a noted man in early life, and was scarcely at his best when the final summons came. He was just in the early afternoon of life and was best qualified to grapple with its sternest problems and be the most useful to his fellow men. Man proposes, but God disposes. We make our plans, but they are not always for the best, and a wise Providence often overrules them. We may wonder why, but that is not for us to know. It is enough for us to know that there is a God supreme, and that all of us should bow submissively to His will. The way is often dark. It is dark to-day to some of us. The pall hangs heavily over the dead statesman's household, but God willed it thus, and all should bow reverently to His decree. When the golden bowl is broken and the silver cord is loosened, we pause, we wonder, and we weep. We drop our tears. We pour out our sympathies. But tears and sympathies only aggravate the wounds, unless out of the surrounding darkness we can by faith in the unseen believe God's sunshine will some day drive away these clouds.
Just how much life means words refuse to tell, because they can not. The doorway of life is hung about with flowery emblems to indicate that it is for a purpose in the great Creator's plans for the government of His subjects. Life may be grand. God intended it to be glorious. So He paved its courts with diamonds, fringed its banks with flowers, and overarched it with stars. Around it he spread the physical universe - suns, moons, worlds, constellations - sublime in magnitude and grand in order and obedience. In this strange, this wonderful thing called life, every man, every woman, has his and her place. Some lay their life work down early, others late; but sooner or later all must surrender their trusts to God, the Creator of us all.
I have long been persuaded that nothing abides save God and the soul. There is nothing enduring in this world except the Creator and His laws. The stars that shone upon our cradles will shine upon our graves. Darkness is closing over the careers of Solon and Lycurgus. The hills that once echoed the eloquence of Pericles are now unknown. The groves in which Plato and Socrates prepared their philosophies have been razed to earth. The ancient, grand temples that were intended to immortalize the names of their builders have nearly all been gnawed asunder by the teeth of time; but God and His laws yet remain and are taking a stronger and still greater grip upon the nations as the years roll on.
This is the lesson that comes to us by the passing of the patriot and statesman whose life I am now briefly reviewing. What is life? Tell us, friends from the high abode of death, what is life? We ask this question, and no answer comes as we watch and wait. But if life on the earth contributes to the life of the soul, we have the comforting assurance that all is well. If the soul fills well the place assigned to it on the earth, discharges its duties faithfully, obeys the commands of its Creator, and helps others on in life, that one is a true child of the King. To one like this, death, however sudden, however shocking in its conditions and surroundings, can bring no fear, no sorrowful forebodings.
I believe firmly that death does not end all. The first and foremost poet of the Bible - if not, indeed, the foremost poet of all the centuries - when his heart was bleeding, as ours are to-day, by inspiration wrote for all the ages and for the consolation of the nations that when a man dies he shall live again. Senator ELKINS often told me he accepted this great truth and reverently believed it. Here, then, we find a balm for these bleeding wounds and "that earth hath no sorrow that Heaven can not heal."
When we buried Senator ELKINS at the place of his choosing, it was, as I have already said, a sad day for the State of West Virginia; but there was never a cloud so black that it did not have a silver lining. Our friend and brother, whose remains we have covered with "the clods of the valley," was a man of faith in his Creator, which was sufficiently abiding to illumine his soul when he reached the river which all of us must some day cross. Not given to loud professions or vain boastings of religious experience, yet deep down in his heart was a well of love and trust, which was constant in its flow toward the Savior of mankind. During all his life he exemplified the human side of religion by doing what he believed to be right. In this respect his faith was fixed. His purposes were strong. His devotion to duty and to the unseen was as unfaltering as the stars. There is nothing more to be admired in this life than a manly man. His constant purpose was to lift all persons with whom he associated to higher conceptions of life and duty. He was a brave man also. He had the courage of his convictions. He was a dangerous antagonist not only because of his vast intellectual attainments but because he could not be induced to compromise his principles or his convictions of duty.
His personal character was as spotless as a maiden's and as unsullied as a ray of light. He was never on both sides of a proposition at the same time. His make-up was too pronounced for anything like that. Living, he asked no compromise with those who opposed him; dead, there will be no utterances of him except those that are good. Such men always leave their impress upon the times in which they live. Such men will be missed, because their places will be difficult to fill.
Senator ELKINS is entitled to more credit than most men who achieve distinction in life, because he was self-made. He was the sole architect of his great career. He had the stick-to-itiveness to work his way through the University of Missouri, because he, although then a mere youth, saw the necessity of a college education if he hoped to reach distinction among his fellows. Next, he served his country as a soldier in the War of the Rebellion; then he became a lawyer and located in the then Territory of New Mexico for the practice of his profession. Shortly thereafter he became its attorney general, then its United States attorney, and next, for the term of four years, its Delegate to Congress. In all of these positions he displayed unusual ability, which led him on to still greater achievements. In his early manhood he came to West Virginia and engaged in vast business enterprises, which in two or three decades made him, perhaps, the wealthiest man in the State. He, in connection with his honored father-in-law, the Hon. Henry G. Davis, constructed railroads, opened coal mines, built sawmills, established banking institutions, founded towns and cities, and have made the then new Commonwealth now literally blossom as the rose. Largely because of their enterprise and foresight. West Virginia is now the second State in the Union in the production of both coal and coke. Senator ELKINS and ex- Senator H. G. Davis and J. N. Camden must always be recognized as West Virginia's greatest developers.
Although Senator ELKINS served honorably as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Harrison, and although he succeeded phenomenally in business, and indeed in everything he touched, his enduring fame will rest mainly upon his record as a Senator in Congress of the United States. Throughout the whole of his 16 years' service in that distinguished body his footprints can be traced in most of the important laws that were passed. Others outranked him in flowery utterances on the floor of that deliberative assembly, but few, if any, were superior to him in debate, and none were more effective in securing important legislation. He was big in body and brain, and was the friend of all his associates and the enemy of none. He was respected by all who knew him and was loved by all. Charming in his ways and manners, every acquaintance became a friend, and every friend deplores his death. He was also a devoted husband and a loving father, and his seeming untimely departure has left "an aching void" which can only be filled by the Scriptural promise: "My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest."
His funeral was held in the city of Elkins, which was named in his honor. All business of every kind was suspended. The citizens turned out en masse and his numerous friends and neighbors threw upon his bier flowers of gratitude and love.
So the watching is ended at home;
Yet a whisper of peace
Bids the flowing tears cease,
For to wait and to toil - yea, to toil and to wait,
Is Earth's passport to rest within Heaven's fair gate.
The sun of this great citizen has forever set behind the horizon of our view, but the memory of his just, virtuous, and upright life will linger as a beautiful twilight in the memories of all who knew him. " Peace to his ashes; rest to his soul."
Mr. HAMILTON of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, it is true, as stated in the address just read, that " a tall cedar has fallen and many hearts are sad," yet upon this occasion it is well for us to call to memory and reflection the oftentimes neglected and ignored fact that all mankind is mortal. The great destroyer of the visible part of man, which we call death, recognizes neither rank nor condition in his victims. The feeble and the strong, the foolish and the wise, the lowly and the high, the peasant and the king, the young man and the sage, must all alike follow at the beckoning of the hand of that last conqueror, whose emblem is the scythe, whose empire is the world, and the period of whose dominion is from the beginning to the end. To the universal sway of this monarch of the centuries Senator ELKINS could be no exception. It is true that he had not quite reached the allotted three score years and ten, but life may be measured by deeds achieved as well as by the lapse of time; and when his children and friends review the earthly career of this able man, along the course of which stand many monuments to mark his noble deeds, they may rest in happy reflection upon the knowledge that through him much for good has been accomplished.
Mr. HUGHES of West Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I regret exceedingly that illness prevents the attendance here to-day of Speaker Clark. It was his intention to be here. Having been a resident of West Virginia himself, and Senator ELKINS having been a resident of Missouri, they were great personal friends.
I also wish to speak of the absence to-day, on account of illness, of the Hon. John W. Langley, of Kentucky; and he wishes me to state that he will take advantage of the privilege which has been granted and submit remarks in the Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Brown). In accordance with the resolution heretofore adopted and as a further mark of respect to the memory of the late Senator ELKINS the House will stand adjourned.
Accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 27 minutes p. m.) the House adjourned until to-morrow, Monday, January 8, 1912, at 12 o'clock m.
ADDRESS OF MR. CLARK, OF MISSOURI
Mr. SPEAKER: STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS was named for the greatest of all Missouri statesmen - one of the greatest of American statesmen - Col. Thomas Hart Benton, the first man to serve 30 consecutive years in the Senate of the United States.
Senator ELKINS once lived in Missouri, and I once lived in West Virginia.
By reason of the foregoing facts it was easy for us to become good personal friends as soon as we became acquainted.
It is a peculiar and interesting historical fact that two governors of West Virginia - Jacob and McCorkle - and three of her United States Senators - Hereford, Kenna, and ELKINS - were at some period of their lives citizens of Missouri. They honored both States and both States are proud of them.
Usually the migration of our people has been from East to West, but there are exceptions to all rules, and within the last 40 years many persons have moved from West to East.
Senator ELKINS, born in Ohio, was educated in Missouri, and entered the Army from that imperial Commonwealth. He won his first distinction in New Mexico, achieving many honors, chief of which was that of being a Delegate in Congress from that Territory.
He is one of the very few men in our history who has been sent to Congress from two States or Territories. Only two have been elected by three States and Territories - Gen. James Shields was Senator from Illinois 6 years, from Minnesota 2 years, and from Missouri 39 days, while Mathew Lyon represented Vermont in the House 4 years, Kentucky 8 years, and was elected a Delegate from the Territory of Arkansas, dying, however, before taking his seat.
Senator ELKINS succeeded to a remarkable degree in two fields of human endeavor where competition is always sharp, sometimes pitiless - politics and business. Thus his extraordinary talents and energies were divided. There is an old saying that the law is a jealous mistress; so are politics and business. The chances are that had he concentrated his ambitions and his energies in one field or the other he would have risen higher in the one selected than he did in both. While he laid the foundation of his business and political careers as a lawyer, he ceased to practice so early in life that his success in business and politics has to a large extent overshadowed his fame as a lawyer. Had he continued at the bar there is no doubt he would have attained highest rank, as, indeed, his splendid talents and immense energies would have insured him a high place in any profession. He performed with signal ability the duties of every office he ever held, whether Delegate in Congress, Cabinet minister, or Senator of the United States. His tact, ability, and industry advanced him to one of the highest and most conspicuous positions in the Senate.
Death cut short his career when his powers were unimpaired. His whole character may be summed up in the old Latin sentence: "Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re."
"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."
ADDRESS OF MR. LANGLEY, OF KENTUCKY
Mr. SPEAKER: How honorable is death and how little to be feared, when it comes at the end of a glorious career. We meet to-day to pay the last tribute of respect to the memory of STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS, a Senator from West Virginia.
My acquaintance with him began in 1888, when as a delegate to the National Republican Convention I met in conference with him and others who wanted to see nominated for President "the plumed knight" of Republicanism - James G. Blaine. Mr. ELKINS was then in the high meridian of fame. He was a strong Blaine man, but was likewise held in highest esteem by President Harrison, and did as much as any other man in the United States to make successful the Harrison administration.
For many years after this my duties in public office at Washington threw me more and more into personal contact with Senator ELKINS, and our acquaintance grew much closer, and as time rolled on I learned to esteem still more highly his regard and personal friendship. No words of praise that I can utter at this time can in any sense measure the affection I had for him - yea, that we all had - nor portray adequately the loss the whole country feels at his departure. For STEPHEN B. ELKINS was a great man, and no great man departs this life without a national sense of loss, and without creating a national grief.
Bismarck defined a great man tersely in these words: " Three signs indicate a great man - generosity in design. humanity in the execution, and moderation in success." STEPHEN B. ELKINS possessed these attributes to a high degree. He was generous in the outlines of all his plans, human and loving in their execution, and a most modest man when success crowned his efforts.
He was not born great. On a farm in southern Ohio he trod the usual road that western farm boys followed from 1841 to 1851. His life was but a copy of thousands of other lives in every State of the Union. As a boy, without fortune or friends, he entered Missouri, attended the common schools and its college, and a few years later, with less fortune and fewer friends, he pushed through the military lines into New Mexico. Nor was greatness thrust upon. He had to make his own way, and nobly did he perform the task. In the wilds of this western Territory he became a doer of life's great work - a master of its most intricate problems. He learned the Spanish language and cultivated the friendship of his western neighbors, and in 1864, in his twenty-third year, was sent by them to the Territorial legislature. He was vigorous, aggressive, and not afraid to work. He was true to his convictions and true to his friends. He was in turn Territorial district attorney. Territorial attorney general, and United States district attorney. He was elected as a Delegate to the Forty-third Congress, where his career in national politics really began. Instead of returning to New Mexico to look after his fences, he went to Europe to improve his mind and broaden his soul. While abroad he was renominated by his people and sent back to the Forty-fourth Congress. During his first year at Washington he was placed on the Republican national committee, which place he held for many years.
No man in New Mexico worked harder and no one was more honored. His enlarged political life was never permitted to submerge his business life. He was born to do great things in the business world, and the consummation of these greater things called for an enlarged theater of operations. In the East he found a home in West Virginia, where for his business ventures there was a field worthy of the genius who created them. Nor did great business ventures destroy his political force or acumen. In December, 1891, he entered President Harrison's Cabinet and served as Secretary of War until March 4, 1893. In the next year he was elected to the Senate of the United States from West Virginia and reelected successively in 1901 and 1907. He died in office, known to all men in all parties and honored equally by all parties.
It has been said, most truly, I think, that "superiority of circumstances always marks the great man." Judged by this standard. Senator ELKINS was great. He triumphed over the poverty of birth, the tragedy of a friendless youth, and died one of the best known as well as one of the best loved men of the Nation. He never waited for wealth or greatness to come to him, but with courage and high hope fought his way to both. He was one of the commissioned guides of mankind, as all great men ought to be.
As a young man in Washington I learned to love his genial, sunny disposition. He was approachable by youth, and the novice never failed to be greeted with a kind word or a cheery smile. He treated young men as his equals, and this gained him friends on all sides and held them as with " hooks of steel." He had a great intellect under splendid control. His mentality enabled him to grasp the roots of things, and his splendid poise kept him from wandering into brilliant but illusive bypaths. He knew just when to put on the brakes, and for these reasons was a born leader of men, as well as a leader of leaders. It took leadership of no small magnitude to enable him to come as a Republican Senator from West Virginia, the only one then from the solid South. His career as a Senator is too well known to be rehearsed at this time. He was emphatically a developer of West Virginia, and in a broader sense a developer of the whole country. His exertions led to larger appropriations, not only for West Virginia rivers, but for all the rivers of the country. To him the improvement of the Big Sandy River owes its origin, and thousands of people in the great Valley of the Big Sandy in West Virginia and Kentucky will forever remember Senator ELKINS with reverence and esteem.
He was a great captain of industry in West Virginia. He was not only a good lawmaker, but a splendid road builder. He created four railroads in his State, having a total of 500 miles and becoming feeders of other great trunk lines. To build 500 miles of railroad in the mountains of West Virginia required a wonderful mastery of management as well as a profound knowledge of men. He brought Democrats and Republicans alike under the sway of his personal magnetism and united them as an irresistible force in the development of his adopted State. He created his home town out of nothing, gave it a splendid position on the map of the world, and left it the center of a great industrial field. The town of Elkins alone will forever commemorate his name in West Virginia, while the "Elkins law" is one of the great monuments to his senatorial life.
He was a Republican in political faith and believed in the principles of his party. He was a firm believer in the doctrine of protection and was always alert in its defense. He believed that it always built up a country and helped the laboring man and that it was constructive and not destructive. Some of his greatest senatorial efforts were in championship of this cardinal doctrine of Republicanism. He was a most progressive man. He desired his people to have the best and to be the best. Ever in the front where undeveloped wealth was to be made productive and where great and new markets were to be made, he infused these ideas into his fellows, so that, whatever their views as to protection, they stood behind him, supporting him and helping him. His life was eventful and full of power. It was a life of struggle from the first to the last. He was a fighter for better things. He fought for an education; he fought for a start in life; he mastered a foreign tongue and fought the ideas of a partially foreign people and gained their good will; he fought his way to the best that New Mexico had and then enlarged the arena of his blows; he fought the great aggregations of business and won a commanding place; he fought nature at her worst and built 500 miles of railroad; he fought nature again and made her yield to humanity her hidden- stores of wealth. He triumphed and died a truly successful man. Democrats and Republicans alike grieve over his death and alike admire and praise his persistent, unconquerable power.
Few men were cheek by jowl with all the great men for 35 years as was he. He began with Lincoln and ended with Taft. His friendships extended actively with all the good and great men of his party. His intimate relations with Harrison made him Secretary of War, and his genial disposition gave him friendships by the thousand with all classes of men from Presidents to engineers, from Senators to coal miners; and among all of these he was everywhere proclaimed a good fellow, a true friend, and in every sense a man.
He sleeps in a "Christian graveyard - God's acre - the city of the silent," but his memory will linger long in the hearts and affections of the American people.
Funeral services for the Hon. STEPHEN BENTON ELKINS were held in the Presbyterian Church at Elkins, W. Va., on Saturday, January 7, 1911. At these services Rev. Dr. Wallace Radcliffe, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, of Washington, D. C., paid the following eloquent tribute to the memory of the late Senator:
This crowded assembly and mourning community are but representatives of hearts and homes and communities all over this land, whose eyes and affections turn to this hour in great tenderness, sympathy, and profound sense of loss. And yet, in the darkness and sorrow of this hour. the character of Senator ELKINS'S life must give a motive and atmosphere. He was incarnate cheerfulness. Whatever trouble, difficulty, or task he was laboring under, the cheer of his character and countenance expressed and inspired an abiding hopefulness.
Tears must fall. It is appointed to all to sorrow, but in this hour we sorrow not as those that have no hope. From his optimism, even in this darkness, there shines forth the ray of hope. Into death there is the assurance of eternal hope.
It was given to our friend to live during the wondrous years from Lincoln to Taft. These were years unusually large and great in opportunities, a period of progressive development unparalleled in the history of the world. He saw opportunities, met the responsibilities, and achieved their honors.
Senator ELKINS was a typical American, versatile, undaunted, victorious as soldier, lawyer, captain of industry, district attorney, Congressman, Secretary of War, United States Senator, and empire builder of this great Commonwealth.
He possessed large powers. His very physique was an element of success; his presence caught the eye and commanded admiration. His field of activity was remarkably varied, from New Mexico to West Virginia, from the camp to the Senate Chamber.
He had a capacity for hard work which organized industries, projected railways, developed wealth, built cities and States, administered national trusts, accomplished legislation influential and beneficial, and ends his career an acknowledged leader and builder of our national life. He had a genius for friendship and no doubt for enmity. Achievement is often through antagonism. The success of one is often the defeat of another.
The powers which he possessed were the gifts of God, and these gifts made him a leader of his fellow men intellectually, socially, and politically.
His geniality captured personality, dismissed cloudy and angry thought, and by the sunshine of life he won and conquered men.
Recently, when the Senator was asked to explain his splendid physique, he answered that it was because he "never got mad." By daily act and spirit he preached the gospel of cheerfulness. He illustrated the grace of geniality; he declared the power of practicalness; he revealed the crown of common sense; he could see things as they were and could grasp them at the right end. A great man, a willing and able servant, a master builder of the State and Nation, a gifted leader at the head of the column of modern progress and achievement.
We must not forget the largest and best part of his life. A few years ago in this place he publicly confessed his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his personal acceptance of Him as his Savior and Master. There is nothing higher, better, or more enduring than this. He commended himself to the blood of atonement and to the indwelling Spirit of God. His humility was his crown; his surrender was his victory. He was not too proud to acknowledge the authority of the divine Word, the duty of Christ, and the salvation of the cross.
Had he lived in the days of Asaph he would have been one of those of whom Asaph sang -
I said, "Ye are gods."
The singer was exalting the dignity and authority of rulers.
To the Hebrew mind the rulers were " gods," in their office representative of divine honor, idea, wealth, and power. Our friend had kindred, station, wealth, place, influence worthy of his gifts and endowments. Yet Asaph continues his song -
Ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
It was given to this man that he should move in the realm of divine ideas and eternal purposes. He was used to fulfill divine thought and intentions concerning this Nation and American humanity. The men in office are in a wonderful sense the gods not for privilege but for service. But these " gods shall die like men." It is the old story of the splendor of Saladin's banquet hall, whose most elaborate and commanding banner bore the inscription:
Saladin, king of kings;
Saladin, victor of victors;
Saladin must die.
It is appointed unto man once to die. It is not by chance. It is an incident. We are here for the eternities. God has us in school. He gives us our lessons and discipline until we are ready to graduate or be dismissed as incorrigibles.
Senator ELKINS died at exactly the right time. His work was done. We are in sorrow and sympathy with the family, the community, and the Nation. The Nation loses a wise counselor and a brave leader. But this is not all of life. If it were, life would not be worth living, with its multitude of pains and contradictions. Life prepares for the eternities. Life begins, but never ends. His life was an accomplishment, an incident, a triumph, a graduation. He served his generation by the will of God and fell to sleep. There is impressive significance In that word "served." It is originally applied to the slave who rows in the galleys. The will of God appoints us often to hard and continuous work. It brings weariness, sweat on the brow, pain to the muscles, often disappointment, defeat, and hardness. But it is the will of God, and it is carrying His vessel of large thought and redemption on to the certain heaven.
Senator ELKINS'S life was part of the divine decrees, and, consciously or unconsciously, his railroads, mines, business, legislations, victories, and defeats were all the compelled service to God's chariot. But he sleeps. And could those dumb lips speak to-day their appeal would be that we live for righteousness, for obedience, for immortality; and if we would obtain honor, that it be unto the crown of life; if we would gather treasure, that we lay it up in God.
