Sept. 1.--I have just been preparing a speech for to-morrow evening at
our convention. It is a good speech and will take well. It is also
sincere.
I will give the outlines of the speech here, so that in case I should
die or slip up on a stenographer the basis of my remarks may not perish:
Fellow-Citizens: You have seen fit to renominate me for the office which
I have held one term already--viz.: member of congress from this
district.
As you are aware, I am a self-made man. I have carved out my own career
from the ground up, as I may say, till to-day I am your nominee for the
second time.
What we want these days is not so much men of marked ability as
candidates but available, careful and judicious men. We are too apt to
strive for the nomination of brilliant men of pronounced opinions when
we must need men who can be easily elected. Of what avail is a man of
genius and education and robust brains and earnest convictions if we
cannot elect him? He is simply a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
Therefore, I would say to the youth of America--could they stand before
me to-day--do not strive too hard or strain yourselves by endeavoring to
attain some object after you are elected to office. Let your earnest
convictions remain dormant. Should a man have convictions these days,
let him reserve them for use in his own family. They are not necessary
in politics. If a member of congress must have a conviction and
earnestly feels as though he could not possibly get along another day
without it, let him go to the grand jury and make a clean breast of it.
I may say, fellow-citizens, without egotism, that I have been judicious
both in the heat of the campaign and in the halls of legislation. I have
done nothing that could disrupt the party or weaken our vote in this
district. It is better to do nothing than to do things that will be
injurious to the interests of the majority.
What do you care, gentlemen, for what I said or did in our great session
of last winter so long as I came home to you with a solidified vote for
this fall; so long as I have not trodden on the toes of the Irish, the
German, the Scandinavian, the prohibitionist, the female-suffragist, the
anti-mormon, or the international-copyright crank?
Let us be frank with each other, fellow-citizens. Do you ask me on my
return to you how many speeches my private secretary and the public
printer attached my name to, or how many packages of fly-blown turnip
seed I sent to you during the last two years?
No!!!
You ask yourself how is the vote of our party this fall as compared with
two years ago? And I answer that not a vote has been mislaid or a ballot
erased.
I have done nothing and said nothing that a carping constituency could
get hold of. Though I was never in congress before, old members envied
me the long, blank, evasive, and irreproachable record I have made.
No man can say that, even under the stimulating influence of the wine
cup, I have given utterance in the last two years to anything that could
be distorted into an opinion. And so to-day I come back to you and find
my party harmonious, while others return to their homes to be greeted by
a disrupted constituency, over whose ruins the ever-alert adversary
clambers to success.
So I say to you to-night, Mr. President and gentlemen of the convention,
let us leave to the newspapers the expression of what we call earnest
convictions--convictions that arise up in after years to belt us across
the face and eyes. Let injudicious young men talk about that kind of
groceries, but the wary self-made politician who succeeds does not do
that way.
It seems odd to me that young men will go on year after year trying to
attain distinction by giving utterance to opinions when they can see for
themselves that we do not want such men for any place whatever, from
juryman to congressman.
If you examine my record for the last session, for instance, you will
not find that I spent the day pounding my desk with an autograph album
and filling the air with violent utterances pro or con and then sat up
nights to get myself interviewed by the disturbing elements of the
press. No, sir!