Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1909 — PRESIDENT AND WILKIE FLAYED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PRESIDENT AND WILKIE FLAYED

Denunciation of Executive 'Stopped In House. \ SMITH AND COOK TALKERS “Nowhere," Says lowa Representative, “Except In the Vainglorious Boastings of Its Chief Did I Find That the ,Becret Service Had Done Anything Except In the Watching of Jurors.” Colorado Man Says Agent Sent to His State Was a Horse Thief. Washington, Feb. 26.—8 y an overwhelming vote, and without party distinction, the house of representatives sustained the committee on appropriations in again reporting a provision in the sundry civil appropriation bill restricting the operations of the secret

service detectives of the treasury department. The president was denounced by Representative Cook, a Colorado Republican. Representative Smith of lowa, also a Republican, and one of those named by the president in his message of Jan. 4 last, as being responsible for the secret service limitation, seemingly employed all the Invectives at his command in an attack on that service. He compared the secret service detectives with “common Kars,” declared them to be worthless and pointed to the assassination of President McKinley as a sample of the watchfulness and capacity of those men, one of whom, he said, stood at the president’s side when he was shot down and failed to observe the approach of the assassin with his supposedly bandaged hand in full view.

Calls Sleuths “Common Liars.” Smith declared that it was a matter of common knowledge that one of the requisities of a detective was that he should be a “common liar.” Many of the secret service agents, he said, work for $3 a day in hunting down land frauds, “when there is not a considerable number of them that know a legal from an illegal entry.” The secret service men, he charged, were worthless, and, he said, “nowhere except in the vainglorious boastings of Wilkie and the testimony of men who didn’t know anything about It, did I find that It had done anything except in the watching of jurors and the like." “The only, president assassinated since the secret service men were ,detailed to watch the president,” Smith declared, “was when President McKinley was shot down at Buffalo with a secret service man by his side. That man did not even capture the murderer.” Then he slowly remarked: “But it took a man with a black skin to capture the assassin.” Stop Put to.book’s Remarks. Cook said: “It is unfortunate not only for President Roosevelt, but for the citizens of the republic, that he has not a legal mind and no equipoise of reason, riding through and around the arena of political action on his broncho of arrogant, egotistical Impulse, pretending to throw his lariat of execution at the heels and broad horns of capital, for the delectation of voting labor, and ending the scene with the cunning catch of a prairie wolf or a gopher.” So denunciatory of the > president was Cook that he was denied the privilege of continuing his remarks after he had spoken a few minutes. In the main Cook was addressing himself to the work of the secret service men in Colorado, one of whom, he stated, was a horsethief. Referring to the attitude of the president in the matter of ferreting out fraud, Cook declared that “in all of this fuss and feathers of the whole administration the president and his pliant attorney general have tnot sent a single pultocrat to the penitentiary." “Such a keen political speculator,” Cook added, “has never been seen before tn this republic, and let us fervently hope that his like shall never be seen again. Look at the paragraphs of his rattled messages and you will be startled to see and read the insinuations and abusive phrases against the legislative anil judicial departments of the government” He declared that the liberty of the people Was being "gradually and secretly stolen by sneaking executive encroachments.”

CHIEF WILKIE.