‘Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog’ & 1912 presidential campaign

I had never heard of Champ Clark, and you probably haven’t either.

Clark was the front-running candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912, but Woodrow Wilson snatched it away from him. His given name was James Beauchamp Clark, born in Kentucky, settled in Missouri and served as Speaker of the U.S. House from 1911 to 1919.

I learned of Champ Clark recently while combing the tables at an auction house. I observed a small stone mud-colored hound-dog figurine sitting atop a mound inscribed with these words:

“They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dawg Aroun'”

I immediately recognized those words. A few years ago, I had found framed sheet music with a similar title. The origin of the song is unclear, but plenty of souls have sung it since it was written – either around the time of the Civil War or starting in 1912. Here’s one version of its beginnings from a 1912 trade magazine.

As I started searching for more about this little dog, I stumbled onto Champ Clark’s name. The hound-dog song was the slogan for his campaign for president – and that publicity helped popularize it.

The figurine was made by E.J. McNerney, who filed a patent for its design in April 1912. It’s not clear if it was made for or used by Clark’s campaign, but it did come at the right time. McNerney described it as an “ornamental design for a statuette.” I also found on the web a stone figurine of a bulldog made by another company with similar wording and a campaign button.

.Clark was born hardscrabble poor in Kentucky, lost his mother when he was three years old, and decided he wanted to be a lawyer and a Congressman after reading a book about how easy it was to do both. He went to college, where he worked to help pay his bills, but was expelled after firing a gun in self-defense at a fellow student during a quarrel. He later enrolled at another college from which he graduated (he also became president of Marshall College – now university – in West Virginia).

A Democrat, he was elected to the Missouri state legislature and tried his hand at running for Congress in 1890 but lost. Then he tried again two years later, won. Tried for re-election, lost. Then he finally won and held the seat until 1921 – the year he died.

Clark eventually became Speaker of the House but was said to have never pushed any significant bills of his own. He was against big business and for women’s right to vote, among other things.

Then he went after the U.S. presidency. Clark was a powerful politician who had many important friends and supporters, including William Randolph Hearst who used his considerable newspaper empire to promote the man and the foremost Democratic politician and thrice- nominated/thrice-lost presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

The Democratic convention was held from late June to early July in Baltimore in 1912. The week before, Clark’s delegates could be seen dancing and singing the hound-dog song in the streets. One delegate walked from Oklahoma with a hound dog. The Missouri delegation brought 16 Ozark hound dogs.

Clark entered the convention as the front-runner with the largest share of delegates. He had put together a campaign of local party leaders who had delivered those delegates to him.

In early balloting, he garnered more votes than Wilson but not get enough to win the nomination. After long, tedious and raucous rounds of voting, he lost to Woodrow Wilson on the 46^th ballot after Bryan and others switched loyalties. A 1960 Life magazine headline told the story succinctly: “In Steamy 1912 Free-For-All, Democrats kicked Clark’s houn’ dawg, followed Bryan, Put Wilson In.”

Long after Clark’s loss, his hound-dog slogan was used often to refer to situations where folks got kicked around for one reason or another.

Clark lost his House seat when Warren G. Harding and the Republicans took over the presidency and Congress in 1921.