| Show TilE SEXATE AND AEW SENATORS The people of Utah are very much interested in the United States senate for very soon the state will have her first senators there and while they have not been elected as yet still everybody knows who they will be In this connection an interview with Senator Sen-ator Sherman a few days ago becomes of interest Asked regarding Cuba he said that in any event we ought not to annex Cuba and added that we have added a number of new raw states to the union which will for some time give us trouble to assimilate them Then he remarked that the eight states recently admitted have sixteen senators all silver men the effect of which will in his opinion be bad I think it will be to lower the tone of the senate which has generally been a body of seniors and of late has become be-come almost a young mens body That there has been a very considerable consid-erable change in the senate there is no doubt That seniors should be replaced re-placed by juniors does not necessarily mean a lowering of the tone of that distinguished body While it is composed com-posed of representatives of the states in the past its ideals of decorum and dignity have been modeled very largely upon the traditions of the house of lords The ideal Is changing and the change is not all for the better What Senator Sherman notes appears to be matter If common comment in Washington He says the house of representatives has become the conservative con-servative body while it is common talk at the capital that today the senate sen-ate is inferior to the house in ability or character and men who have known the senators of the past twenty years speak o < f the past with praise and mourn the degeneracy of the present pres-ent When they do this it should be remembered that the golden age Is 1 c I J j ever in the past There have been 1 hundreds of senators but of those hundreds hun-dreds few will recall the names of r I more than a score Men like Webster Clay Calhoun Benton and Sumner are rare and their career is part of the history of the country Had all their contemporaries and successors been their equals they would not today be the ereat men they ark If the senate today is inferior to I what it was formerly and it is generally gener-ally conceded that it is it shows very plainly that the state legislatures are I inferior to what they once were and back of all this that the people have I not the same lofty ideals they formerly former-ly had The trouble with the senate largely is not that it is so greatly inferior in-ferior in ability to what it has been but that many senators are more flippant flip-pant and selfassertive And this is a lowering of standard for dignified conservative mediocrity is preferable in all respects to smart mediocrity |
