The Riverside Press-Enterprise
In 1915, speaker of House gave lecture in ... Hemet
In October 1915,
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Beauchamp “Champ” Clark gave a series of five lectures on a visit to Southern California.
Clark was a Democrat from Missouri who was the speaker from 1911 to 1919 and a member of the House continuously from 1896 to 1921, when he diedjust a day before his term was to end.
You might think, if Clark was to give a lecture in Riverside County, that he would do so in the largest city, Riverside, but you would be wrong.
Riverside was a Republican stronghold at the time, and all it got from Clark was a 10-minute visit when he stepped off a train there. The Riverside Enterprise joked about this issue when it wrote that, for once, the saying, “as lonesome as a Democrat in Riverside” was a misnomer. The Enterprise went on to say “the four original Democrats in this city” were firm in their faith in the Democratic Party that day because they had in their midst the second-greatest Democrat, Champ Clark.
Instead of Riverside, Clark was giving his lecture in Hemet. But why this small town, which had a population at that time of under 1,500, as opposed to Riverside, which was 10 times that size?
At that time, elected officials were allowed to give lectures for a fee, and Hemet had decided to have a lecture series, most likely for the edification of town members and to attract people from outside of Hemet. It was announced as far back as April 1915 that Champ Clark would be one of the speakers, an impressive “get” for the small-town lecture series. In other words, simply put, Clark came to Hemet because he was asked and because he was going to get paid.
The Riverside Daily Press said 25 people attended the lecture from Riverside and the Hemet News said six came from Lake Elsinore and a carful from Banning. A fine dinner was held at the Hotel Hemet before the 8 p.m. speech, attended by all the dignitaries who came to town to hear Clark. The Hemet Opra House, where the speech was held, was expected to be almost full.
The title of his address was “America in the 20th
Century.” According to the News, Clark’s speech was “splendid.” He compared America of 100 years before to contemporary America of 1915. One statement noted in the News that Clark said was, “Where there once was religious intolerance and bitterness there is now a united effort on the part of all churches to provide greater social service and, I believe, a better and truer religion.”
Whether we agree or disagree with that comment, it is interesting how a man third in line to the presidency thought of the United States in 1915.