DEMOCRATS IN POWER.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1095, 6 April 1911, Page 5

DEMOCRATS IN POWER.

NEW CONGRESS SITS. By Telegraph-Press Association-Copyright New York, April }. The extra session of Congress summoned by Mr. Taft (o consider the Reciprocity Bill and other measures was opened this morning. This is the first session of the sixtvsecoml Congress,, which was elected in November last, the members of the old Congress continuing in office until March J, in accordance with the American practice. For the first timo in twenty years there is now a Democratic majority . in tho House of Representatives, and the Republican majority in the Senate has been reduced (o fiftce:i. The President's Message to Congress outlined an ambitious programme, including the Canadian-United States Reciprocity Bill, which the late Congress failed to pass. Mr. Champ Clark, the* Democratic 'party's nominee, was elected Speaker of tho House, in succession to Mr. Joseph Cannon, who has ruled for the Republicans since 1903. THE EMPIRE AND RECIPROCITY, (Rec. April 5, 11.30 p.m.) London, April 5. Speaking in the House of Commons, in reply to questions, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said he was unable at present to state what steps were necessary and desirable in order to obtain an extension to other parts of the Empiro of reduced duties to be granted by the United States on Canadian goods included in tho American-Canadian reciprocity agreement.

THE NEW SPEAKER. A correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian" wrote recently:—Upon Champ Clark, whom the Democrats have chosen for Speaker in the next Congress, will largely depend the political fate of the United States in the half-dozen years ahead. The result of the Presidential election of 1912 will probably be decided by. the conduct of the Democratic party in Washington in the months which intervene, and the couduct of the partv will be very much a matter for its leader and Speaker to determine. Its members are unused to power and unused to obedience, and, as everyone knows, they have been for years disorganised and discredited. The -prophets will not say whether Mr. Clark will succeed; thev will only say that he is the best man ava'ilablo for the post which "Uncle Joe" Cannon held so long and so masterfully until his downfall after that all-night session March (last year). Mr. Clark is best known to the American public as a "spell-binder." A big man with a big voice, the enterprising agents made the very most of him for lecture and debating purposes as a V 1 ? i n <.\1 could vmr m the wal ' 3 echoed. 11 J. D Joe " 110 ,las always cultivated the homespun" type of oratory, which loves direct, simple, and "snappy" speech, and is very fashionable in the=s days of reforming zeal. But the Speakerelect is a good deal more than a windbag. He is in reality neither pugnacious nor rough. Ilis is a genial character, touched with humour' and adorned by scholarship and wide reading.