Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/492

 OSCAB W. UNDERWOOD 469 More than three thousand men have served in the House since he began his career in Washington, and but four remain who started before he did ; and yet he was the youngest of all the presidential candidates in the 1912 primaries. His immense popularity and recognized ability in Birming- ham and the surrounding district is attested by the fact that he has been nine times nominated for Congress without op- position. The first recognition of his ability by his party came when, during his early service, he was made Democratic "whip.** No man in Congress has had a wider experience. He has served on the Committees on Judiciary, Rules, Ap- propriations, Public Lands, and Ways and Means, five of the most important committees of Congress. He is chairman of the last named, which is the most important committee of the greatest legislative body in the world. This committee nom- inates the members of all the other committees of the House. Its chairman is leader of the majority party, and, next to the President himself, is considered the most influential member of the party in power. Mr. Underwood's succession to this position gave him his first opportunity to demonstrate his true greatness, and as evidence of the fact that he did so, he re- ceived in the 1912 Democratic National Convention electoral votes from Maine and Florida, Connecticut and Georgia, Michigan and Mississippi, Maryland and Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, though he was the youngest man in the race, the last to enter the lists, and the first for- midable candidate from '*way down South *' since the Civil War, and despite the fact that in more than two-thirds of these states neither he nor his friends made any campaign what- ever. It was a spontaneous, voluntary tribute to merit. In 1910, when the Democrats came into power in the House, on all sides were heard the words accredited to James G. Blaine that * ^ the Democrats always do the wrong thing at the right time. ' ' But this time there was a Democratic Samson in the ranks, who spread dismay among the Philistines. He was able, because of his training and his qualities of steadfastness, integrity, and thoroughness, to meet a national emergency.