BANQUET. 239 
ADDRESS BY HON. JOHN MacCRATE. 
Mr. Toastmaster and gentlemen, of course the toastmaster did not tell you that 
the reason I have not any topic assigned to me is because I am substituting for a great 
man, and I am here because somebody else is in Cleveland or some other place. If 
the junior senator from the State of New York, who has always been a friend of the 
shipping industry in this country and one of the best equipped men in the Senate of 
the United States on that subject—if William M. Calder were in New York tonight 
I would be in Brooklyn in my bed. (Laughter.) 
But I am perfectly willing to go to any place where I may meet American men 
interested in shipping and tell them of the work of men like my friend Edmonds in the 
House, and Calder in the Senate, business men, who do not profess to have the gift of 
gab, but who do have the saving sense called common sense, and who, in their com- 
mittees in Congress, make people show them why things should be done and what 
should be done. 
Mr. Edmonds is chairman of the Claims Committee, of which I am a member in 
Congress. If you can get five cents out of Uncle Sam with Edmonds in charge of the 
Claims Committee, you have got to invent some way that Raffles or Jimmy Valen- 
tine did not know anything about. Edmonds protects the Claims Committee and 
protects the Treasury of the United States, and as chairman of the Claims Committee 
he is most obdurate, only to go over into the Merchant Marine Committee and do any- 
thing that the shipbuilders and others ask him to do. 
I have been trying to get a claim for $26 through the Claims Committee, and by 
the way in which that has been obstructed you would think I was trying to take the 
Treasury back to Brooklyn. Now that I have fourteen years of occupation staring 
me in the face at a fairly reasonable income, he can go to blazes and I will find some- 
body else to get the $26. 
I found myself thinking, as some remarks were made about some people in the 
audience by the toastmaster, that Edmonds and myself are in bad odor here and that 
we are blamed for the present drought. We voted wet, but the majority were against 
us. (Laughter and applause.) If you think that the Sahara Desert is dry, go down 
to Congress when they are voting on any prohibition measure. Some people say 
they wondered how Volstead ever could win. Volstead told us, when he intro- 
duced the bill:—‘‘I will be beaten in the next Republican primary in Minnesota and 
I will be beaten by dry.” I said:—‘‘What kind of a country do you have out there?” 
It is wonderful how your conceptions change as you grow older. I have not grown 
so much older, but my conceptions have changed. 
I used to read the American Statesmanship Series of our congressmen and sena- 
tors. Among them I read the lives of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Charles Sum- 
ner, and I noticed they wore a long undertaker’s coat, a silk hat, and carried a cane. 
Well, since I have been in Congress I have not seen any undertakers’ coats down there. 
Everybody wears a business coat, and if you wear a silk hat it is only when you go to 
a wedding, and in the districts from which Mr. Edmonds and I come they would not 
allow you to use a cane. 
