Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1916 — ANOTHER HUGHES CONVERT [ARTICLE]

ANOTHER HUGHES CONVERT

Republican All His Life But Former Congressman Comes Out for Wilson. Youngstown, O.—Ex-Congressman James Kennedy, Republican from McKinley’s old Nineteenth district, has given in detail the reasons why he will support President Wilson against Mr. Hughes. Mr. Kennedy represented the district in four Congresses. “I think,” he says in a published letter, “that the Adamson bill was altogether the best piece of legislation that has been enacted by Congress during my lifetime. It recognizes completely for the first time the right of Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to fully and completely regulate the nation’s highways. “It recognizes the fact that the trainmen working for the railways are public servants working directly for the public. And it for the first time asserts the right of the people to attend to the people’s own business. Congress should fix the hours of labor, the compensation and conditions of employment of the public’s own servants . “It is with great reluctance that I am compelled to abandon the party with which I have been affiliated all my life, but a sense of duty compels me to take the position I have just indicated. I shall vote for Woodrow Wilson for President solely because he reconized fully the fact that the great instruments of interstate commerce should be regulated by the people acting through Congress, and not by a labor union and an association of railroad Presidents. “This great issue has been clearly injected into the campaign by Mr. Hughes, and if he is elected he will turn backward. If Mr. Wilson is elected it will be with the mandate of the people to go forward.”