Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1913 — “UNCLE JOE” CANNON LEAVES WASHINGTON" [ARTICLE]

“UNCLE JOE” CANNON LEAVES WASHINGTON"

Returns to Home in Danville, Hl., After Forty Tears of Turmoil In National Capital. Washington, March 16.—Joseph Guerney Cannon, private citizen, “went home” today after nearly forty years of public service. Unattended the first white “czar” of the house "picked up his gripsack and started for Danville, Vermillion, county, Illinois.^. - “Uncle Joe” and two big cedar boxes left together. The boxes contained the private letters and documents of a long series of years in the midst of Washington’s political turmoil. It took weeks to sort them out from the accumulation of the former speaker’s letter files. “Well, I’m through,” sighed “Uncle Joe” as he straightened up after closing the last book, shook the dust from his hands and rumpled his scanty gray hair. “I’ve had a devil of a job getting rid of stuff. I must have had thousands of newspaper clippings and cartoons, besides my letters and papers. They were all worth keeping when I gathered, them and I had a hard time weeding them out. Most of them were clever, but scarcely of a complimentary nature,” and Uncle Joe’s keen gray eyes twinkled reminiscently. “What are you going to do back home?” he was asked. He rubbed his head reflectively, hoisted himself to the edge of the table, wrapping his long legs about the back of a chair and began: “Well, my business is in pretty good shape; I’ve got a little bank stock and that is pretty well organized. My farm land is well handled. I guess I’ll just look around a bit. When I was young I wanted to travel, but I was too busy earning a living. Now I don’t care much about it. The folks are planning a grand trip around the word, China, India, Japan, the Philippines and all the rest of it—” Uncle Joe stroked his beard a moment and then leaning forward confidentially remarked: “But I’m not going. I may take a little,run through Mississippi and Arkansas where L want to look over some land for investment in the Yazoo and St Francis country, but that will be about all of the traveling I’ll do. “I’m not tired. I feel just as well as I e v er did, but I suppose that is because I’m the old devil they say I am.” “Will you Continue in politics?” - He pondered a minutes and then replied: “When I lose interest in politics you can bet 11l be dead. I will still be in politics, as h private citizen”— then as an afterthought, “without personal ambitions.”