Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1916 — WATSON FIGHT STIRS CAPITAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WATSON FIGHT STIRS CAPITAL

WASHINGTON IS INTERESTED Labor Union Endorses Watson’s Work. Washington, Sp’c’l.—Leaders in Congress are expressing keen interest at the prospect of the return of “Jim” Watson to Washington as the Junior Senator from Indiana. When the Republicans last held sway in the nation’s councils, Watson achieved an enviable reputation for effective work. Even the few who did not like him had to acknowledge his geniuß for getting things done. When Theodore Roosevelt and "Uncle Joe” Cannon might almost have been put in jail for what they thought of each other and yet one was President and the other Speaker of the House, someone had to serve as emissary between Congress and the White House. Watson was that man. Roosevelt liked him, in spite of the good natured swats the Indiana Congressman would occasionally hand out in choice Watsonese. Republican Senators in Congress, who have been having a hard enough

time at best, say they need the kind of help Watson will give them at this critical time in national legislation. Few men, if any, know Senatorial and Congressional practice as well as Watson. As Republican whip of the House, which means that the whip is virtually the “Speaker of the House on the floor,” Watson made a record in legislation. One of his principal hobbies was labor legislation, which in a turbulent time, he steered to enactment through many a gale and past many a rock. Recognizing this, the Plate Printers "Union of Washington passed resolutions characterizing Watson as "the champion of the legislative measures in which organized labor generally was interested.” The plate printers said they esteemed “Mr. Watson as one of the tried and true friend of organized labor,” in whom they had ‘great interest and pride and who, like Lincoln, delights in serving the common people.” The plate printers have published a list of a score or more specific labor measures which Watson either himself put through, or supported.

HON. JAMES E. WATSON.