Tennessee's Seat

Until Robert Marion La Follette Jr. took his seat in the Senate at the age of 30 (in 1925), the youngest Senator ever to sit legally was Luke Lea of Tennessee, aged 31, in 1911. Henry Clay of Kentucky sat in 1806, when he was 29, but in doing so he took a liberty with the Constitution. Had Luke Lea been renominated in 1916 and again in 1922 and still again in 1928 he would today, aged 50, be seventh in Senate seniority. But there was War in 1917 and Luke Lea organized an artillery battalion, became a real Tennessee Colonel, fought with distinction, tried (and nearly succeeded) to kidnap the Kaiser. Then he plunged into publishing the Nashville Tennessean, Memphis Commercial Appeal and Evening Appeal, Knoxville Journal.

To such a man, "any office, even as exalted as that of U. S. Senator," now seems to possess less opportunity for public service than his own private activities. Or so he told Governor Henry Hollis Horton of Tennessee last week when the Governor asked him to fill the seat of Senator Lawrence Davis Tyson, deceased (TIME, Sept. 2). Governor Horton, not greatly surprised, next offered the exalted office to William E. Brock, Chattanooga candy man.