EDITORIAL
BROWARD IS DEAD
Never in the history of the state has the death of any man brought more sorrow to the hearts of our people, than did the passing away last Saturday [October 6, 1910] of Ex-Governor and Senator-elect Napoleon B. Broward.
Born and reared in the most abject poverty he had won his way to the top of the ladder by sheer force of intellect and character, and was at once the most loved and hated of any man in the state. Loved by the great common people whose representative he was in every sense of the word, hated by the predatory interests by whom he could be neither bribed, bulldogged or beaten, but even they recognize his greatness, his nobility of character and his statesmanship.
Big of stature, heart and brain his constant purpose was the advancement of his native state, and his own ambitions, realized in his being chosen in the primaries of last June to represent the state in the national senate, were that he might do them more service, and that he would have taken front rank in that great body was conceded by all. He would have been to the south what Lafollette is to the northwest, a leader for the restoration of the government to one of the people.
It is not ours to question the inscrutable ways of Providence, and why the state and the nation should have been deprived of his services and his family of his love and protection we cannot know, we only know that our best loved, noblest statesman, our personal friend is gone. A marble shaft may mark his resting place but the noblest, most lasting monument to his memory will be his services to the state and the example of his life to the young.
[Contributed by Michael Strickland]