118 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS envied Mm the place he had won ; no one sought to take power from him, for he pushed it away with his own hand. He thought the attributes which had so long gone with the Speak- ership were too great for any one man, even though that man be himself. Those powers which he had snatched from the hand of Cannon he returned to the people and their repre- sentatives. In his view such concentration of power in the Speaker of the House as had been built up under Republican rule was both unsafe and undemocratic. In his address on taking the chair Speaker Clark said: No man is fit to be a law-giver for a great people who yields to the demands and solicitations of the few having access to his ear, but is forgetful of the vast multitude who may never hear his voice or look into his face. * * In that speech Clark repeated all the promises made in order to win the last election, and specifically promised their fulfihnent through legislation in the ensuing session. How unique in politics! The campaign for the presidential nomination of 1912 came on while Clark was occupying the Speakership. His own State had, in a convention called for another purpose, passed a resolution endorsing the candidacy of Governor Folk, of Missouri, for the presidency. So long as that condition ex- isted Clark would not enter the lists, but the people of Mis- souri wanted Clark, and grew so restive under the existing situation that the matter finally came to a head when the State Committee met and called a State Convention to settle the question as to who was really Missouri's choice. Clark carried 111 of the 114 counties in the State, thus securing nearly all of the delegates in the State Convention. This was on February 20th and the National Convention was but four months away. It was a late start, funds for campaigning were very scarce and Clark would not leave his post of duty at Washington to tour the country in the interest of his can- didacy. In half the States he made no contest. Neverthe- less, he entered the Baltimore Convention far in the lead of the nearest competitor and very soon secured a clear major- ity of votes over all his opponents, which should have entitled
