Speaker of the House of Representatives Served Lengthy Apprenticeship
Before He Was Called to Preside.
Joseph G. Cannon, Speaker of the House of Representatives, recently
concluded a few words of advice to a writer investigating the condition
of affairs in the national government by saying: “I don’t know but that
I’d have you study twenty years before beginning to write.”
The advice was not given sarcastically. Cannon himself has gone about
his work thoroughly, systematically, and, to all appearances, slowly.
There has been nothing spectacular or hysterical about his progress, but
the amount of ground covered has been enormous. Every new work
undertaken has been based upon arduous and exhaustive preparation in
other work leading to it. As a result he has come from a clerkship in a
country store to the Speakership of Congress, and he has filled the
office ably in a stirring and momentous period.
Joseph G. Cannon is descended from Massachusetts Quakers who migrated
from the colony to North Carolina to escape persecution. His father was
left a penniless orphan in infancy, and two maiden Quaker women adopted
him and supported him until he was able to study medicine. The future
statesman was born in Guilford, North Carolina, in 1836, and as the
Quakers had protested persistently against slavery, the South became
unsafe for them, and many, Dr. Cannon’s family included, moved North.
The Cannons settled near the Wabash River, at Annapolis, Indiana.
Dr. Cannon was drowned when Joseph was fifteen years old. The doctor’s
eldest boy was in college, and the family decided to allow him to finish
his studies. The youngest was near-sighted, and was unable at that time
to find employment. Joseph, the second son, had shown self-reliance, and
had worked between school hours, so he was sent to work in the local
general store. The first year’s pay amounted to one hundred dollars.
At the age of twenty Joseph had earned a thousand dollars and saved five
hundred, and though his employers tried to persuade him to stay, and
even offered him a partnership, he left them to begin the study of law.
The trial of a slander suit he attended aroused in him a resistless
ambition to become a lawyer. The privations he must undergo to realize
his ambition were patiently endured. He took his five hundred dollars
and went to Terre Haute, where he entered the office of John P. Usher.
Office work for two years, supplemented by six months’ study in a
Cincinnati law school, fitted him for practise. Before he went to
Cincinnati he had never been in a large city, had never seen a theater,
and had heard but little music. The city broadened him, for there he
heard Moncure D. Conway and Horace Mann, and received a newer and truer
idea of the world. Practise in a large city was alluring, and for a time
he thought of settling in Cincinnati. Then he turned from it and located
at Tuscola, Illinois.
The first year he did not earn enough to pay his board bill. He could
not afford to keep a horse to ride the circuit as most of the other
lawyers did, so he tramped it over the prairies, picking up a little
business that gave him much work and scarcely any money. Farm truck,
grocery orders, and on one occasion a couple of cured hams, on another a
side of veal, on still another a pair of trousers much too large for
him, constituted some of his fees. Shortly after he started practise he
had an appointment with a prospective client. He waited until late in
the evening and the man did not come. Then, in desperation, he started
after him.
“Why didn’t you come to see me?” asked Cannon when he had found him.
“Oh,” said the man easily, “I forgot to tell you. I find I can pay more
than I expected, so I have hired another lawyer.”
The struggle Cannon underwent was a grim, hard one that called into play
all the sturdy qualities of his nature. Instead of souring him as it has
many other men, it increased in him a desire to help others who have the
same fight to make, and many a young man battling for a practise, or
facing the work of Congress for the first time, has received the benefit
of it.
“Uncle Joe really knows how to help a fellow,” said one of the young
lawyers to whom he had given a helping hand. “He’s been up against it
himself.”
The hardships of the first year of practise gave way in the second year
to better things, and Cannon was able to make a scant living and pay off
his debts. He went into politics, too, and stumped the county, getting
directly at the people, winning fame among them as well as winning the
regard of his party managers. He had a fairly good practise when he
decided to marry, and he built a four-room cottage at Tuscola.
His wife was an Ohio woman, and before going to their new home the two
went to Chicago to buy furniture for it. They selected Potter Palmer’s
department store as the best place, and were highly pleased with the
intelligence and skill of the young clerk who waited on them. His name
was Marshall Field. After spending part of the three hundred dollars
Cannon had with him, he proudly brought his wife home to the little
cottage.
“There, Mary,” he said as he walked her from one room to another, “I
don’t think a young couple could ask for a better start in life.”
His wife did all her own housework, and as he was State’s Attorney for
the district until 1868, and earned about fifteen hundred dollars a
year, they considered themselves prosperous. From 1868 to 1872 he built
up a private practise, and that paid him better. Besides, the
short-sighted brother had gone into banking, had taken Joseph’s money
for investment, and succeeded mightily.
In 1872 “Old Joe” Gillespie pushed Cannon forward for the Congressional
nomination, and Cannon not only won it, but was elected after a brisk
campaign. He has been in Congress, with the exception of one term, ever
since then.
Altogether, Mr. Cannon has served thirty-two years, and, according to
his own statement, it has cost him three hundred thousand dollars to
live during that time. The government has paid him one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. The rest came out of his private income. Nearly twenty
years of the time has been spent as a member of the Committee on
Appropriations. When the expenditures steadily increased Cannon was
taxed with extravagance.
“You think,” he said in reply, “that because I am chairman of the
Committee on Appropriations that it is my duty to make appropriations. I
tell you it is rather my duty to prevent them being made.”
During the period of his service Congress has spent nearly twelve
billion dollars. Since he has been Speaker it has spent nearly two
billion dollars, and he has fought down expenses constantly. It is a
staggering total, but the country that demanded such expenditures has
reached a wealth never attained by another nation, and the leading men
who ran the government and made the appropriations have been of giant
size. Cannon stands among the foremost.
Speaker Cannon is a poor man, as far as personal wealth is concerned,
and yet he is as happy as when he built the little four-room cottage for
his wife and with her began the upward fight that has landed him in a
supreme position in the national government.