Congressional Campaign
The first office which Mr. Cox sought was as Congressman from the Third District of Ohio. This was in 1908, about ten years after he came back from Washington as Secretary to Congressman Sorg. He tells me that his great difficulty was then in connection with making speeches. He seemed at first unable to make an extemporaneous speech. His early speeches were read like Sunday sermons, much to the amusement of his opponents. Finally, some of his friends used to get his written speeches away from him and hide them. He was then forced to talk directly to his audiences. After being thrown overboard, he apparently was able to swim and he never returned to the written speeches. Mr. Cox now has a delivery much like the Roosevelt delivery. It is very vigorous and determined. He grows red in the face and violently brings down his fist upon the desk or table in front of him. He is intensely earnest in all he says and convinces his hearers of his earnestness.
He was first elected to the Sixty First Congress. He was re-elected in 1910 by a majority of 12,809 votes. Under great difficulties he made himself felt. This was at the time when all important legislation was put thru by the caucus system and a lone Congressman had very little opportunity to express himself. In his first campaign, he was opposed by Frizelle and Eugene Harding; and in his second campaign by Judge Dustin. The Congressional Directory of those days shows that Mr. Cox served on the District of Columbia Committee during his first term and on the Appropriations Committee during the second term. He attracted attention by his fight against the Payne-Aldrich Bill—which was afterwards rejected by the people—and for his efforts to have the Federal Government inaugurate a Children’s Bureau. He was one of the first to urge Congress to appropriate money for aeroplanes and to investigate the conduct of the National Military Homes.
While the career of Cox in Congress deserves commendation, the merit of his work in that body is now being over-emphasized by various Democratic speakers. The fact is that Cox was not in Congress long enough to become in any sense an outstanding figure.