[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 43 (Thursday, March 13, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E405]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   EXCERPT FROM THE WORLD OF WATCHERS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 13, 2008

  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, the attached article is submitted at the 
request of the American Center of Polish Culture.

     [Excerpts from The World of the Watchers by Edward Pinkowski]


                              Introduction

       Almost a century after it was created, the equestrian 
     statue of General Casimir Pulaski in Washington, D.C., has 
     overshadowed discussion of many subjects, For example, very 
     few are familiar with the Polish roots of Frank C. Watcher, 
     who was elected in Baltimore, Maryland, as a Republican to 
     the 56th Congress in 1898 and was reelected three successive 
     times. None of the other congressmen then had a drop of 
     Polish blood.
       When Abraham L. Brick, who came from South Bend, Indiana, 
     to Washington at the same time as Watcher, introduced a bill 
     for the erection of the monument to Pulaski, Watcher saw that 
     it had little support. He realized that if he didn't speak 
     out, none of his colleagues would pay attention to the bill 
     to honor the Polish hero of the American Revolution. He was 
     known as an efficacious man, with a cheerful smile, who 
     easily won others to his side. ``On the last day of the 
     session the Speaker of the House brought it up for 
     consideration,'' he told a reporter of the Baltimore Sun in 
     1902. ``The bill passed.''
       It took years after that for the federal government to set 
     up a commission, find a site for the Pulaski monument in the 
     nation's capital, and work out the rest of the details. The 
     sculptor was Kazimierz Chodzinski, who had studied under the 
     famous Matejko in Krakow, Poland, and was the one who carved 
     the Kosciuszko statue before in Chicago. When his equestrian 
     statue of Pulaski was unveiled in 1910, critics said it was 
     the best they ever saw.


                           City of Baltimore

       Frank Charles Watcher was born September 16, 1861, in South 
     Baltimore, where the Baltimore and Ohio company built the 
     largest railroad station in the world in 1852 and the 
     stockyards butchered more hogs than any other city on the 
     Atlantic coast. Built on the Patapsco River not far from the 
     Watcher home, Fort McHenry, which Francis Scott Key 
     immortalized in the Star Spangled Banner, was used in the 
     1860s to hold thousands of Confederate prisoners of war.
       When he was growing up, Frank Watcher dreamed of being a 
     tailor like his father. Upon graduation from St. Paul's 
     German English School, however, he got a job as a clerk for 
     $1.50 a week in a clothing store. In time, because of his 
     energy, determination, and brains, he managed a business.


                            Political Career

       The first important campaign of his life came in 1898 when 
     he received the Republican nomination for Congress. Nobody 
     expected him to win. One of the issues in his favor was 
     immigration. The Democratic Party, largely in Irish hands, 
     was against new immigration because the immigrants who came 
     mostly from Poland and Italy were taking the places of Irish 
     workers in mines and factories and working for less money. In 
     the coming election, the Polish citizens of Baltimore, most 
     of whom previously supported Democrats, voted in large part 
     for Watcher. He was elected to the Fifty-sixth Congress by a 
     majority of 122 votes.
       Watcher ran again two years later and won by more than 
     2,071 votes. After three terms in Washington, he ran for 
     mayor of Baltimore. He won in the primaries and lost in the 
     general election by less than 500 votes.
       His family was at his bedside when he died on July 1, 1910. 
     His body was followed to Loudon Park Cemetery by a long 
     cortege of political and business associates. The honorary 
     pall bearers included Speaker of the House Joseph G. Cannon.




                          ____________________