Hon. Charles B. Landis: Congressman from Indiana

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Hon. Charles B. Landis
Congressman from Indiana
Exclusive Management
SLAYTON LYCEUM BUREAU
Steinway Hall
Chicago.



Hon. Charles B. Landis
Congressman from Indiana
HON. CHARLES BEARY LANDIS is known throughout the length and breadth of the land as a brilliant young Congressman from Indiana, who knows what he thinks and is not afraid to say it under any and all circumstances.  He is a young man to whom the average American citizen takes as a duck takes to water, and not only the people of his own district, but those of the whole state delight in honoring him whenever opportunity affords.  Courageous, loyal to his principles and loyal to his friends, good natured and affable, unostentatious and happy natured, he is a man who is invariably liked on his acquaintance and intensely admired as one comes to know him better and understand his rugged honesty of purpose and high ideals.

Mr. Landis was born in Millville, Ohio, July 9, 1858, one of a large family of sons.  He is of German-Swiss ancestry.  His father, Dr. Abraham H. Landis was a well-known physician and surgeon, but when the war broke out he went as a regimental surgeon to the front and gave up a lucrative practice.  All he could do for his boys was to give them a good home education that would fit them for the battle of life.  Charles was educated at the Logansport public schools and sent to Wabash College.  When he finished college he did not sit down and bewail the fate of the educated unemployed, but started out in the good American way to hustle for a job, ready and anxious to take anything that might offer in the way of honorable work that would afford a livelihood.  In the summer he worked as a common hand in the field on a farm, and for a few months hauled gravel as a laborer on the streets of Logansport.  In time, however, he secured employment as a reporter on the Logansport Journal and his ability and industry soon won him an excellent newspaper reputation and many warm friends.  When in 1887, there was an opportunity to purchase the Delphi Journal, he embarked in business for himself, and any one who has worked and grubbed and struggled to make a country newspaper pay will understand what Landis went through during the next few years.  But he stuck to it and won success, and at last found himself the owner of a paying property and thoroughly respected by the people he had loved and worked among.  Naturally in conducting a newspaper at a county seat, the young man mingled a great deal in local politics and was from the start connected in various capacities with the county committee.  He always participated in state and other conventions of his party, but never sought public office in his own behalf.  His field of activity widened and it was not long before he was known as a factor in the politics of the state.

In 1894 Carroll County was in the old tenth district, and the young Republicans of the district insisted that Landis should make a fight for the congressional nomination.  He entered the race reluctantly, but once he was in it made the most surprising canvass the district has ever known.  His opponent for the nomination was Judge William Johnson, of Valparaiso, recognized as a leader of the bar in Northwestern Indiana.  The contest for the nomination covered a period of two months and before its close attracted the attention of the whole State.  When the delegates met in convention at Hammond they were almost evenly divided but the friends of Mr. Landis, by a narrow majority, controlled the organization of the convention.  The tension was so high that the convention split and the followers of Judge Johnson withdrew.  Mr. Landis was nominated and two
 weeks later the friends of Judge Johnson met again at Hammond and placed him in nomination.  Thus two candidates in the field and factional lines forming throughout the district endangering party success, Mr. Landis withdrew from the race and suggested the calling of a new convention and the naming of a new candidate who had not been identified with the former contest.  The suggestion was followed and Dr. Jethro A. Hatch, of Kentland, became the party candidate, both sides giving him loyal support.  Mr. Landis took the situation with cheerful philosophy, never sulked a moment, gave up three months of his time to the state and district committees and made daily speeches up to the close of the campaign.  Two years later the State was redistricted for congressional purposes and Carroll County, the home of Mr. Landis, became a part of the ninth district.  His new associates took kindly to him and at the first Republican convention held in the new district Mr. Landis was nominated for Congress withlittle opposition.  Though the district was a very close one politically, he was triumphantly elected, and in 1898 was renominated by acclamation and again elected.  In Congress his record has earned for him a national reputation.  When he attacked the inconsistencies and petty mistakes of the Civil Service system he struck a popular chord throughout the Nation.  While he believes in the Civil Service principle, in so far as it seeks to secure the best service and weed out the incompetent, he was keen enough to pick out many of the follies and incongruities in its administration and hold them up to merciless ridicule.  He has been active in all the successful legislation of the past ten years, and has fought fiercely and efficiently for the right.



SUBJECTS:

Grant
An Optimist's Message
The Mission of the Anglo-Saxon
Washington in the Last Decade



Some Press Comment

Congressman Landis, of Indiana, who has made the hit of the session in the debate on the Civil Service at the Capitol, has a reputation as an orator second to none in the Hoosier State.  His delivery is not of the rear and pitch style, the only effect of which is to tire lungs and listeners, but his tones are well modulated and his enunciation perfect.  Every word uttered on Wednesday was heard distinctly throughout the Hall of Representatives, and apparently without effort on the part of Mr. Landis.  Congressmen on the floor and spectators in the galleries did not require calling to order by Speaker Reed, for they did not want to lose a word uttered by the smooth-faced, heavily built Indiananian who was posing for the first time in the national arena of debate and winning golden opinions from his audience, regardless of political affiliations.—
Chicago Tribune.


The debate on the Roberts resolution in the House of Representatives this week brought another Indiana man prominently to the fore.  Littlefield made the most logical speech; De Armond made the most incisive speech; Taylor's was perhaps the most convincing; but Landis, of Indiana, made the best speech of all.  It was full of humor; it was full of pathos; it overflowed with sentiment, with word pictures; with scathing attack on Roberts; with glowing tribute to Helen Gould.  It was a speech full of human nature, a speech that appealed to the hearts more perhaps than to the minds of men.  It certainly appealed to the heart of Representative Cox of Tennessee.  With tears streaming down his face he crossed over from the democratic side to shake hands with and thank the eloquent young Hoosier Republican.—
The Washington Morning Star.



Representative Landis of Indiana was the chief speaker in Congress Wednesday.  He was accorded a reception such as is rarely the fortune of a seasoned favorite to receive.  He had his time extended three times, and the time granted him at the start was strung out to an hour and forty-five minutes.  During all that time he held the pleased attention of both sides of the House.—
The Dayton Evening Press.


The capacity of the House for brilliant debate was again demonstrated yesterday in the discussion in the Roberts case.  Representative Charles B. Landis, of Indiana, who won his spurs in an almost historical encounter over civil service laws in the last Congress, replied to the dramatic plea of Brigham H. Roberts, delivered the previous day.  For an hour and a half he electrified his hearers with a fluent effort that measured up to the best recent records of practical and pleasing speech.  One of his colleagues remarked soon after the close of the speech: Landis was addressing the jury; Littlefield yesterday addressed the judge.  His voice, which, at first, was somewhat indistinct in the hubbub of the House, grew in volume and penetrating power, ringing through the chamber and emphasizing the earnestness of his opinion.  Gradually in the large semicircle of seats, chairs were swung to face the gentleman speaking, till the entire audience on the floor and in the galleries was as quiet as a church congregation.  His speech was accentuated by vigorous gestures, and was dignified and profound throughout.  No speech on the status of Roberts has so touched the popular sentiment of intelligent men in the House, as was shown by the applause.  It was all the more remarkable in the fact that Mr. Landis is the only member of the committee who is not a lawyer by profession.—
Washington Post.


The peroration of Mr. Landis, in his speech in the Roberts case, will live in history.  These were his closing words: I say that the people of this country expect us to turn him back; expect us to prohibit his coming in even for an instant, and I protest against his coming in.  I protest on behalf of constituency that has read the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.  I protest on behalf of the American homes, made beautiful by love and devotion and holy by the virtue of its women.  I protest on behalf of the American mother and her child, and the American father who will never consent to the enthronement and deification of human passion.  I protest on behalf of those doomed to illegitimacy, that pitiless brand of helplessness and shame that licentiousness writes upon the forehead of the innocent unborn.  I protest on behalf of the honest Mormons, those who believe in keeping inviolate the agreements of that instrument upon which Utah was admitted to the American Union.  The people ofthis country are waiting for us to act; they want us to act in a straight line, not in a circle.  They are waiting in New England, whose homes have been made a pattern for this continent.  They are waiting in the broad sweep of the Mississippi Valley, a section of this country purged of this very infamy of a half century ago.  They are waiting in the new States of the West, States whose territory has been invaded and whose atmosphere has been poisoned by this very plague.  And away down South in Dixie, where honor is religion, where gallantry is law, and virtue is the high ideal of beautiful womanhood, States are waiting today, waiting for American chivalry to speak.—
Chicago Record-Herald.


Congressman Charles B. Landis, of Indiana, is about the brightest of the men who have recently entered the House.  Of all the new men in Congress he is the only one who has made a record for oratory of the kind that tells.  He did not jump in at the beginning of his first term, in order to catch the attention of the House, but he bided his time till something came up in which he was really interested and concerning which he knew he had something to say.  Then he glided into the debate and captured everybody.—
Boston Sunday Journal.


It was a rattling speech that Charles Landis of Delphi, Ind., delivered in the House of Representatives yesterday.  It contained more fun and fervor than any that has been heard in the House since Hon. Robert C. Cousins of Iowa burst his bonds two years ago and made a reputation in fifteen minutes.—
W. E. Curtis in Chicago Record-Herald.


An hour and three-quarters of General Grosvenor against Civil Service; and an hour and three-quarters of Johnson of Indiana, on the other side, was the House entertainment this afternoon.  Both of these gentlemen are regarded as picturesque performers, but neither of them is producing the sensation that Mr. Landis, of Indiana, did yesterday.  Mr. Landis is a new man.  His speech was his maiden effort and no new member has made such an impression on the House since William Jennings Bryan's initial appearance five years ago.—
Chicago Post.