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While governor he earned his soubriquet by establishing State gasoline stations, waging a successful price-war with oil companies. He also floated a $2,000,000 bond issue to finance State cement-making; his plant still functions, redeems the bonds. In 1924 he was elected to the Senate. His term expires March 4, 1931. In Congress: He is the least odd but not the least effective of insurgent Republicans. He is eager to argue for his constituency's interests. often able to achieve legislation for them. His committees: Claims, Indian Affairs, Military Affairs, Post Offices & Post Roads, Public Buildings & Grounds.
He voted for: Farm Relief (1927, 1928, 1929), the Boulder Dam (1928), the Jones (greater Prohibition penalties) law (1929).
He voted against: Tax reduction (1926, 1930), the Navy's 15-cruiser bill (1929), Reapportionment (1929), the Tariff (1930).
He votes and drinks Dry.
His views on international affairs are usually an echo of those of Idaho's Senator William Edgar Borah, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
Legislative hobbies: farm-relief and pacifism. In 1928 the Senate adopted his resolution calling for a reduction of industrial tariff rates which was the opening gun of the tariff battle. He once offered a bill to draft Government (Continued on p. 8) officials and Congressmen as front-line soldiers in time of war. In appearance he is slight, short (5 ft. 7 in.), dark-haired, partly bald. He dresses better than most other insurgents. He talks rapidly, sometimes bitterly, on the floor, debates well but without humor.
He is an Episcopalian. He smokes cigars and cigarets, does not swear. Outside Congress: In Washington, he lives with his wife in an apartment at No. 3220 Connecticut Ave., N. W., where his children pay frequent visits. He prefers family to social contacts. He drives his own Buick sedan to the Congressional Country Club for golf, attends baseball games. In Yankton he owns but leases his home, "lives around" when there. He is a Mason, Odd Fellow, Elk. Impartial Senate observers rate him thus: not an outstanding, but an ingenious legislator, not a smart leader but an able, trustworthy follower, an asset to the farm bloc. Opposed in the autumn elections by Democrat William John Bulow, onetime Governor of South Dakota, he depends for re-election largely on the Republican machine headed by his colleague Senator Peter Norbeck, in which he is unquestionably No. 2 man.—ED.
Mortison No Copycat
Sirs: . . . Lou Stone didn't spring into prominence because he sent a picture of a two-headed chick down here, and his best story was not about a buck deer with an inner tube around his neck. Stone wrote just one good animal story 25 years ago last spring. It was about a farmer who found a watch he had lost seven years before. He found it in the stomach of the old cow after he had killed her and cut her up. The watch was still going; the digestive muscles of the cow's stomach had kept it wound up. Oh yes, the watch had lost only a minute and a half.
That story was picked up and reprinted all over the country, and Lou Stone was the famous weird animal man of Winsted. He is a fine feller, I believe, although I never met him, but his stories are pretty punk—like Mortison's. Some of them are worse. He is copying himself, and not doing very well.