Political Notes: Sep. 17, 1923

William G. McAdoo is a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1924, but he is not the man in the moon. In the East especially he has been faced by a strenuous dislike of his management of the nation's railroads during the War. In a letter to Senator Couzens, of Michigan, he set forth his defense as Director General of the railroads:

"Although I was Director General for only one year, 1918, and was succeeded by Walker D. Hines, who ran the roads for 14 months after I retired, you always hear McAdoo alone charged with everything that happened under Federal control.

"Why should I be held responsible for the acts of Mr. Hines, who succeeded me, any more than I should be charged with the results of the Esch-Cummins bill? I had no more to do with either than the man in the moon."

The Rev. O. J. Kvale, Representative to the 68th Congress, closed his 29th year of service in the ministry by preaching a farewell sermon in the Norwegian Lutheran Church of Benson, Minn. Mr. Kvale bade farewell to the ministry so that he might take up his duties as a Congressman, succeeding Andrew J. Volstead, whom he defeated in election last Fall.

John Knight Shields, for ten years a United States Senator and for 65 years a Democrat, exclaimed in an interview apropos of the settling of the anthracite coal strike: "If this is a fair sample of President Coolidge's adjustment of strikes and labor troubles in the interests of the people of the United States, I hope he will not make any further efforts in that direction! "

At Columbus, Ohio, Senator Frank B. Willis of that state told of a visit he had made to Bowling Green, Mo. There, said he, was the grave of former Speaker Champ Clark, neglected; with his own penknife he cut away the weeds and in a speech " censured the people for neglecting the grave of one of the ablest men who ever sat in Congress."