Monday, Sep. 06, 1926
Miscellaneous Mentions
The U. S. leads the world in the fight against noisome, noxious insects; has more scientific experts engaged in the battle than all other nations combined. This was the boast last week of Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the Bureau of Entomology. The personnel of his bureau numbers 575, of whom 369 are scientific experts. From New Zealand, Holland, Spain, Germany, England come learned men to see how the U. S. handles the bug problem.
Representative John Q. Tilson, seldom quixotic, is a Connecticut Yankee in spite of the fact that he was born in a log house in the Tennessee mountains. He ages pleasantly. Also he is majority leader of the House, and Eastern campaign director of the Republican Congressional Committee, hence he has to make occasional public utterances. Last week in Manhattan reporters questioned him on the shopworn subject of prohibition. Said Congressman Tilson more tersely than is his habit: "It is a universal topic of conversation rather than an issue in the campaign."
If Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York could get the Solid South behind him, his chances for nomination for President in 1928 would greatly improve. Last week, Governor Thomas G. McLeod of South Carolina invited him to come South to help observe South Carolina Day at the Southern Exhibition on Oct. 7.
At the ground breaking he was too feeble to lift the spade which a workman had half-filled for him; at the cornerstone laying last week he was too ill to be present. Parishioners of the St. James Methodist Church in Danville, Ill., bowed their heads in tribute to the absent hero of their town.
That night Dr. Charles E. Wilkinson reported that Joseph G. ("Uncle Joe") Cannon, 90, he of the "black cigar and thumping quid," he who was elected 23 times Congressman, he who ran the House from the Speaker's chair with an iron but genial hand in the days of Roosevelt and Taft, was gradually failing.