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Title: Modern Americans
       A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades

Author: Chester Sanford
        Grace Owen

Release Date: October 19, 2009 [EBook #30287]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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Copyright, 1918, 1921
by
Laurel Book Company

INTRODUCTION

“Tell us about real folks.” This is the request that comes to us again and again from children in the upper grades. In response to this appeal, the authors, in preparing “Modern Americans,” have attempted to give the pupils the worth-while things they like to read rather than the things adults think they ought to like.

Those who have taught reading very long agree that the old-time hero stories have always had a peculiar charm for pupils. But all the heroes did not live in olden times; they are with us today. Why, then, isn’t it well to acquaint the children with present-day heroes? Young people in the upper grades are especially interested in the men and women who are actually doing things. They desire to study in school the persons they read about in the daily papers. Elihu Root recently said: “It seems sometimes as if our people were interested in nothing but personalities.”

To bridge the gap between our schools and practical everyday life has become one of the chief concerns of the wide-awake teacher. Accordingly, in geography we are studying the industries about us. In English, civics, and history we are devoting an increasing amount of time to a consideration of “Current Events.” All this is in the right direction; for, to create an interest in the men and women of the hour and the social activities of the day makes for an intelligent citizenship. “Acquaint the people with the great men of any period and you have taught them the history of the period,” says Carlyle. Know the past, if possible; know the present by all means.

At first thought the reader may disagree with the authors in the list of characters chosen. He may think that many of America’s greatest men and women have been omitted while others of less importance have been given a place. In reply permit us to say that greatness of achievement has not been the only consideration in choosing the character studies. Not all great men and women 6 have life stories that appeal to children, and unless the stories do appeal, it is better to omit them until the children are older. Then, too, it seemed desirable to select persons in various fields of human activity, thus broadening the scope of the child’s knowledge.

The reader will observe that we have placed much stress upon the childhood experiences of the men and women studied, for the reason that children are to read the stories; and since they are sure to interpret what they read in terms of their own experiences, we must, as far as possible, record experiences that are common to all, namely, childhood experiences.

It is hoped that these stories have been so brought within the experiences of the pupils that they will be led to discuss them. Many of the stories were tried out with children in the University Training School and the enthusiastic discussions that followed were both interesting and helpful.

Lastly, and most important, the authors have attempted to inspire the pupils with a purpose to make the most of themselves. The lives of great men and women are sure to be an inspiration to the young. Since great men stand for great things they are sure to embody the latest and best in science, art, government, religion, and education. By studying the lives of these representative men and women it is hoped that the pupils will be stimulated to lofty purposes.

Acknowledgement is hereby made to The Bobbs-Merrill Co., publishers of Mr. Riley’s poems, for kind permission to republish “The Old Swimmin’-Hole”; and also, to the publishers of “The Story of a Pioneer”––Jordan; “The Story of My Life”––Keller; and the magazine “Success” for additional source material.

Chester M. Sanford
Grace A. Owen

CONTENTS

8

Pacific and Atlantic Photos

PRESIDENT COOLIDGE, MRS. COOLIDGE, AND SON, JOHN

As I begin this story, I am seated in an old-fashioned hotel in a small village nestled amid the hills of Vermont. I have come all the way from the broad prairies of Illinois that I might catch a little of the spirit of Calvin Coolidge.

In his autobiography, Mr. Coolidge wrote: “Vermont is my birthright. Here one gets close to Nature, in the mountains and in the brooks, the waters of which hurry to the sea; in the lakes that shine like silver in their green setting; in the fields tilled, not by machinery, but by the brain and hand of man. My folks are happy and contented. They belong to themselves, live within their income, and fear no man.”

Yes, and I have met the folks of whom he boasts, and in conversing with them it seems easy for my mind to go back to the time when Mr. Coolidge was a barefoot boy, roaming amid these beautiful hills. In fact, everything about this rugged New England state, with its farmhouses and barns that were built so many years ago, seems to carry one back to the early history of our country.

As I looked upon the little country schoolhouse to which Mr. Coolidge used to go, I thought of this story. One time, many years ago, there lived a schoolmaster who had this unique custom. Every time he met a boy who attended his school, he would lift his hat. When asked why he did this, he replied, “Who can tell but that 10 one of these boys will some day become the chief ruler of the land; and inasmuch as I cannot tell which one it will be, I must lift my hat to them all.”

Surely if a teacher were to slight any of the boys, it would be the one with freckles and red hair, for never before in the history of our great country have we had a red-headed president.

Let us go back then in our imagination forty-four years and visit the little red schoolhouse at Plymouth, Vermont, that was then better known as the “Notch.”

To reach Plymouth is not easy, for it is eleven miles from Ludlow, which is the nearest railroad station, and the road from Ludlow is rough and hilly. When we reach Plymouth, we are likely to drive by, for the town is so small it doesn’t seem possible that a future President could have been born in such an out-of-the-way place.

The first man we meet in Plymouth is John Calvin Coolidge, the father of our President. We soon learn that he keeps the village store, shoes horses, collects insurance premiums, and runs a small farm. In conversing with him, we discover that he is of staunch American stock––in fact, he reminds us that his ancestors came to America in 1630, just ten years after the Pilgrims landed. In 1880, his grandfather moved to the hill country that is now known as “Vermont,” and for four generations the Coolidges have lived on the same farm.

But, we are not so much interested in the father as in the son, who, we are told, is at school. As we approach 11 the little country school, we observe that it is recess, and the children are playing. Soon young Calvin is pointed out and we try to get acquainted with him, but he is silent and bashful. From his teacher we learn that he has few friends and no enemies. Unlike the average freckled, red-headed boy, he is rarely teased and never gets into a fight. He is so modest and minds his own business so well, that the other pupils are inclined to leave him by himself. Rarely does he play any games––not even marbles or baseball. Later in life he bought a pair of skates, but was never known to wear them but once.

Young Calvin had no brothers and only one sister, Abigail, who died when she was fifteen. His mother also died when he was a lad of twelve, but his stepmother was always very kind to him. His own mother, however, was his idol and even to this day, President Coolidge carries in one of his pockets a gun metal case that holds a picture of his mother. Calvin’s father, in speaking of his son, says that he was always a great hand to work. He continues, “When Calvin was a boy on the farm, if I was going away and there was anything I wanted him to do, I would tell him; but when I came back, I never thought of going to see whether it had been done. I knew it was done.”

The following incident shows that he could not bear to leave his work undone. “One night an aunt who was sleeping in the house heard a strange noise in the kitchen. Hurriedly she put on her kimona, and went downstairs to see what the commotion might be. There she found 12 little Calvin filling the wood box, for he had forgotten to do so the night before. She tried to persuade him to wait until morning, but he would not return to bed until the job was finished, declaring that he could sleep better if the wood box were filled.”

No doubt, were we to ask President Coolidge to recall some of his boyhood experiences on the farm, he would tell us how he slid off the old, white mare and broke his arm so badly that the bone stuck out through the flesh, and how long it took to bring the doctor eleven miles over the rough road from Ludlow to set it. Or, he might tell us about the wall-eyed cow that the hired man hit with a milking stool and so frightened her that he could never milk her again. Alas, for Calvin; this meant that he had to get up at five o’clock each morning to help with the milking.

After completing his work in the country school, Calvin attended the Black River Academy in Ludlow where he graduated at the age of eighteen.

One September morning, the next fall, Calvin’s father hitched up the old, bay mare and drove his son to Ludlow where the boy took the train for Amherst College. At that time, the college had an enrollment of only about four hundred students.

While in college, young Coolidge lived very modestly, paying only $2.50 a week for room and board. His nickname in college was “Cooley.” We were able to learn very little about his college days. From one of his professors, 13 we learned that he never took part in athletic sports, never danced, and attended but few of the social functions of the school. We were able, however, to find the following in the Amherst Olio, the school paper:

While in college, his favorite studies were debating, philosophy, history and the political sciences. His greatest achievement came when he was a Senior. The Sons of the American Revolution had offered a prize for the best essay on “The Principles of the American Revolution.” The contest was open to all college students of America. Coolidge won first place.

After graduating from college, young Coolidge returned to the farm and worked all summer. That fall he went to Northampton, a mill town in Massachusetts, 14 where he entered the law office of Hammond & Field. Here, under the guidance of two able lawyers, he studied so hard that within less than two years he was admitted to the Bar. As soon as he became a full-fledged lawyer, he organized the law firm of Coolidge & Hemenway.

From this point his advancement was steady and rapid. There were no jumps in his career. In 1900, we see him City Solicitor; in 1904, Clerk of Courts; in 1907-1908, a member of the State Legislature; and in 1910, Mayor of Northampton. In 1912, he was elected a member of the State Senate, and in 1914 was chosen President of the Senate. In 1916-1917-1918, he was Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and in 1919 was chosen Governor. He has been elected to every office for which he ever ran. This seems strange when we study him, for he is not considered a good speaker, does not resort to flattery, is a poor “mixer,” and is not attractive in appearance. But, possibly we are tired of the show-window type of politician, who does entirely too much talking. Those who know him best, admit that Coolidge has earned every promotion by attending strictly to the work he had in hand.

An event in 1919 made Governor Coolidge a National character. The Boston police force had organized a union and had planned to enter the American Federation of Labor. Edwin E. Curtis, Boston’s Chief of Police, declared they had no right to do this. Three-fourths of the policemen immediately went on a strike. The forces 15 of lawlessness broke loose and mob rule prevailed. Mr. Coolidge at once had nineteen leaders of the police force brought before him for trial. He held that the best interests of all the people could not tolerate any such conduct on the part of the policemen. His attitude was so sound and so firmly taken that he won the support of all law-abiding citizens. His position also met the approval of the Nation and at once he became a National figure.

While Mr. Coolidge was in Northampton, he married Grace Anna Goodhue, a teacher in the Clark School for the Deaf, at Northampton. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont. In many ways she is the exact opposite of the President; she is vivacious, attractive, tactful, and richly endowed socially. To this union have been born two sons, John and Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

When Mr. Harding was chosen President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge was elected Vice President. Upon the death of President Harding, Mr. Coolidge became President, and so faithfully did he discharge the duties of his office, that in 1924 he was chosen President by an overwhelming majority of the voters of the Nation.

The American people like President Coolidge because, like Lincoln, he belongs to the plain people. He understands and loves them; he is modest, sincere, and honorable. Even as a boy, he had a purpose, and willpower enough to carry it out. He works hard and speaks little, but when he does, the public listens to his wise counsel.

16

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

THOMAS A. EDISON (On left)
The Greatest Inventor of All Time

Suppose the Pilgrim fathers that landed at Plymouth Rock so many, many years ago should come back to earth, how many strange sights would greet them! No longer would they be permitted to ride in a slow, clumsy wagon, but, instead, would ride in an electric car. Furthermore, when night came, instead of the tallow candle, they would marvel at the brilliant electric lights. Wouldn’t it be fun to start the phonograph and watch them stare in astonishment as “the wooden box” talked to them? But the most fun would be to take them to the moving picture show and hear what they would say.

Odd as it seems at first, all these marvelous inventions, and many others, are the result of one man’s work; in fact, this man has thought out so many marvelous inventions that the whole world agrees that he is the greatest inventor that has ever lived. Should you like to hear the life story of one who is so truly great? I am sure you would, for in the best sense he is a self-made American.

But, you ask, what is a self-made American? He is one born in poverty who has had to struggle hard for everything he has ever had; one who has had to force his way to success through all sorts of obstacles.

This great inventor first saw the light of day in the humble home of a poor laboring man who lived in Milan, a small canal town in the state of Ohio. In 1854 when Thomas A. Edison, for that is his name, was seven years 18 of age, his parents moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where most of his boyhood days were spent.

As we should naturally expect, Thomas was sent to school, but his teachers did not understand him and his progress was very poor. Finally his mother took him out of school and taught him herself. This she was able to do, for, before she married, she was a successful school teacher in Canada.

Later in life, in speaking of his mother, he said: “I was always a careless boy, and with a mother of different mental caliber I should have probably turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness, were potent powers to keep me in the right path. I remember I never used to be able to get along at school. I don’t know why it was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that my teachers never sympathized with me, and that my father thought that I was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a dunce. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never misunderstood or misjudged me. My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had someone to live for, some one I must not disappoint. The memory of her will always be a blessing to me.”

When young Edison was twelve years of age, he became a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. That he was a wide-awake, energetic lad is shown by the following experience as told by himself.

“At the beginning of the Civil War I was slaving late and early at selling papers; but to tell the truth I was not making a fortune. I worked on so small a margin that I had to be mighty careful not to overload myself with papers that I could not sell. On the other hand, I could not afford to carry so few that I found myself sold out long before the end of the trip. To enable myself to hit the happy mean, I found a plan which turned out admirably. I made a friend of one of the compositors of the Free Press office, and persuaded him to show me every day a galley-proof of the most important news articles. From a study of its head-lines, I soon learned to gauge the value of the day’s news and its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably correct estimate of the number of papers I should need. As a rule I could dispose of about two hundred; but if there was any special news from the seat of war, the sale ran up to three hundred or over.

“Well, one day my compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the whole was taken up with a gigantic display head. It was the first report of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing––afterward called Shiloh, you know, and it gave the number of killed and wounded as sixty thousand men.

“I grasped the situation at once. Here was a chance for enormous sales, if only the people along the line could know what had happened! If only they could see the proof-slip I was then reading! Suddenly an idea occurred 20 to me. I rushed off to the telegraph operator and gravely made a proposition to him which he received just as gravely. He, on his part, was to wire to each of the principal stations on our route, asking the station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board, used for announcing the time of arrival and departure of trains, the news of the great battle, with its accompanying slaughter. This he was to do at once, while I, in return, agreed to supply him with current literature for nothing during the next six months from that date.

“This bargain struck, I began to bethink me how I was to get enough papers to make the grand coup I intended. I had very little cash, and, I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand copies of the Free Press on trust. I was not much surprised when my request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word, a point on which I was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I marched up stairs into the office of Wilbur F. Story himself and asked to see him. I told him who I was and that I wanted fifteen hundred copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, dark-eyed man stared at me for a moment and then scratched a few words on a slip of paper. ‘Take that down stairs,’ said he, ‘and you will get what you 21 want.’ And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt since.

“I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold them, and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made I usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I looked ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd filled the platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that they wanted my papers. Before we left, I had sold a hundred or two at five cents each. At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the ‘ante’ and sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to the wagon, which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to prevent any pilfering, and sold out every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church full of worshippers, and stopped to yell out my news. In ten seconds there was not a soul left in the meeting, all of the audience, including the parson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for copies of the precious paper.”

Though, as you will admit, Mr. Edison was a very successful newsboy, he was not satisfied merely to sell papers, so at the age of fifteen he began editing and publishing a paper of his own. To do this he purchased a 22 small hand printing press and fitted out, as best he could, a printing office in an old freight car.

The Grand Trunk Herald, as the paper was called, consisted of a single sheet printed on both sides, and sold for eight cents a month. When the paper was at the height of its popularity he sold five hundred copies each week, and realized a profit of forty-five dollars a month.

He might have continued in editorial work had not a sad mishap overtaken him. In addition to his editorial work he performed many experiments, for his was the soul of the inventor. These experiments were performed in the baggage car of the train. One day, as he was in the midst of one of these experiments, a sudden lurch of the train upset his bottle of phosphorous, setting the baggage car on fire. The conductor, a quick-tempered man, after putting out the fire, dumped young Edison’s precious printing press and apparatus out of the car and went on. This was a very sad experience for the lad, but the saddest part was the fact that, as the conductor threw Edison out he boxed his ears so severely that he was partially deaf ever after.

Now that young Edison had lost his job as newsboy, and could no longer print the Grand Trunk Herald, what was he to do? He decided, if possible, to get a position as telegraph operator. But, you ask, how did he learn to be a telegraph operator?

While yet a newsboy, he had saved the life of a child by snatching it from before a moving train. The father, 23 a telegraph operator, was so grateful to young Edison for saving his child that he offered to teach him telegraphy. This offer the lad eagerly accepted, and devoted every spare minute to his new task. From the first his progress was rapid, and when he lost his job as newsboy he applied for a position as telegraph operator and was given a job as night operator at Stratford Junction, Canada, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. He was now sixteen years of age.

Within a very few years Edison became a swift and competent operator, as the following incident will show. “Edison had been promised employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold, and his peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made something of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as he does today. So one raw, wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging to his legs, stalked into the superintendent’s room and said:

“‘Here I am’.

“The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said:

“‘Who are you?’

“‘Tom Edison.’

“‘And who on earth might Tom Edison be?’

“The young man explained that he had been ordered to report at the Boston office, and was finally told to sit down in the operating room, where his advent created much merriment. The operators made fun of him loudly 24 enough for him to hear. He didn’t care. A few minutes later a New York operator, noted for his swiftness, called up the Boston office. There was no one at liberty.

“‘Well,’ said the office chief, ‘let the new man try him.’

“Edison sat down and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in his clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them, and threw them on the floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in numbering and dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not writing out transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument, and faster and faster went Edison’s fingers, until the rapidity with which the messages came tumbling on the floor attracted the attention of the other operators, who, when their work was done, gathered around to witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and a half hours’ work there flashed from New York the salutation:

“‘Hello!’

“‘Hello yourself!’ ticked Edison.

“‘Who are you?’ rattled into the Boston office.

“‘Tom Edison.’

“‘You are the first man in the country’, ticked in the instrument, ‘that could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I’m proud to know you.’”

While employed as telegraph operator Edison’s inventive mind was hard at work. Accordingly, when but 25 seventeen years of age he invented the Duplex telegraph which made it possible “to send two messages in opposite directions on the same wire at the same time, without causing any confusion.”

Though a brilliant operator, young Edison found it difficult to hold a job, as he was always neglecting his regular work to “fool with experiments,” as his employers put it.

Accordingly, when twenty-one years of age, he found himself in New York City seeking work. Suppose we invite Mr. Edison to tell us of this dramatic period of his life.

“On the third day after my arrival, while sitting in the office of the Laws Gold Repeating Telegraph Company, the complicated general instrument for sending messages on all the lines suddenly came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys,––a boy from every broker in the street, rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker’s wire was out of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it.”

“One of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen down between the two gear wheels and stopped the instrument; but it was not very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge what the matter 26 was, George Laws, the inventor of the system, appeared on the scene, the most excited person I had seen. He demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man was speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the trouble was, and he said, ‘Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!’ I removed the spring and set the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men scattered through the financial district to set the instruments. In about two hours, things were working again. Mr. Laws came to ask my name and what I was doing. I told him and he asked me to come to his private office the following day. He asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I showed him how he could simplify things generally. He then requested that I should come next day. On arrival, he stated at once that he had decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary would be three hundred dollars a month.”

“This was such a violent jump from anything I had ever seen before, that it rather paralyzed me for a while. I thought it was too much to be lasting; but I determined to try and live up to that salary if twenty hours a day of hard work would do it.”

It is needless to say that he made good in the biggest and best sense of the word.

It was at this time that Mr. Edison, now twenty-one years of age, invented an electric stock ticker for which he received forty thousand dollars.

Always desiring to devote his entire time to inventive work, he now saw that with the aid of his forty thousand dollars it was possible to do so. Accordingly, a little later we see him constructing a laboratory one hundred feet long at Menlo Park, a little station twenty-five miles from Newark, New Jersey. Here for years, in company with his assistants, he has made inventions that have revolutionized the world.

Finally, in 1886, his business had so seriously outgrown his quarters that he built his present laboratories at Orange, New Jersey. These laboratories are now housed in two beautiful, four story brick buildings each sixty feet wide by one hundred feet long. In addition to these laboratories there are Edison factories located in various sections of the country.

Though now seventy years of age, he is devoting all his time and the time of his laboratory force in solving the great problems connected with the present war.

“A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complete tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well being of mankind.” ––Henry Ward Beecher.

28

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Inventor of the Telephone

There is in New York City a great building seven hundred and fifty feet high. It has fifty-three stories, and provides business homes for ten thousand persons.

If you had watched it rise from story to story, you would have been amazed at the tons of cable running from the basement towards the roof. You would have exclaimed in wonder over the miles upon miles of wire that extended from room to room. Suppose you had asked the purpose of these wires and cables. Do you know what the answer would have been? You would have been told that they were placed there so a person in any room of the building could talk to some one in any other room within the towering walls; to any one outside in the great city, and even to persons far away in Chicago and St. Louis. Then you would have said, “Of course, they are telephone wires.”

You use the telephone often, do you not? Probably if you were asked to say how many times you had talked over the telephone in your life, you would have to reply, “More than I can remember.”

Let us think about the messages we send along the telephone wires from day to day. They are for the most part of two kinds. We have friendly talks with persons we know well, and we give brief business orders at office and shop.

But if we were gunners in the army of our country we should be told by telephone just when, where, and how 30 we were to fire our guns. We would not see our target, but would shoot according to the directions of a commanding officer who knows what must be done and telephones his orders to us.

If we were acting with hundreds of persons in a great scene for a motion picture film, we should be told what to do by a man called the director. He could not make us all hear if we were out of doors and scattered about in groups, but he would telephone orders to his helpers. One of these would be with each large crowd of actors. Perhaps the telephones would be hanging on the side of a tree or set up in rude fashion on a box. Nevertheless, that would not interfere with their use and we should receive directions over them to do our part in the scene then being photographed.

These uses seem wonderful to us, but each year sees the telephone helping man more and more in strange and powerful ways. It is likely that we have just begun to know a little of what this great invention can do for us.

However, if we had been boys and girls in 1875 we should have known nothing about talking over a telephone, for that was the year when the public first heard that it was possible to send sounds of the human voice along a wire from one place to another.

There was a great fair in 1876. It was held in Philadelphia and was called the Centennial because it celebrated the one-hundredth birthday of our land. Persons came from foreign countries to attend the fair. Among 31 these visitors was a famous Brazilian gentleman. He was a man of great knowledge and was interested in inventions. His name was Don Pedro, and at that time he was Emperor of Brazil. Because he was the ruler of a country, the officers of the Centennial showed him every attention, and tried to make his visit alive with interest.

Late one afternoon they took him to the room where the judges were examining objects entered for exhibits. The judges were tired and wanted to go home. They did not care to listen to a young man standing before them. This young man was telling them that he had a new invention; it was a telephone, and would carry the sounds of the human voice by electricity. The judges did not believe this, and were about to dismiss the young man without even putting the receiver to their ears and seeing if he spoke the truth. Don Pedro stood in the doorway listening. He looked at the judges; he looked at the young man, and was disgusted and angered that an invention should not receive a fair trial. He stepped forward and as he did so looked squarely at the young man. To his surprise he recognized in him an acquaintance made while visiting in Boston.

At once Don Pedro examined the new instrument and then turning to the judges asked permission to make a trial of it himself. The young inventor went to the other end of the wire, which was in another room, and spoke into the transmitter some lines from a great poem. Don Pedro heard perfectly, and his praise changed the 32 mind of the judges. They decided to enter the invention as a “toy that might amuse the public.” This toy was the Bell telephone, the young inventor was Alexander Graham Bell, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the “toy” become the greatest attraction to visitors at the Centennial. This must have brought comfort to his heart, for Mr. Bell had been trying for some time to have people see what a convenience his invention would be.

He had first thought of the telephone while searching for some way to help deaf mutes to talk. His father and grandfather had both been voice teachers in Edinburgh and London, so when young Alexander came to America to seek his fortune it was natural he should teach methods of using the voice. But his pupils were unfortunate persons who could not talk because they were unable to hear the sounds of the voice. His father had worked out a plan for teaching the deaf, that the young man improved. It was based on observation of the position of the lips and other vocal organs, while uttering each sound. One by one the pupil learned the sounds by sight. Then he learned combinations of sounds and at last came to where he could “read the lips” and tell what a person was saying by looking at his moving lips.

So you see Alexander Graham Bell knew a great deal about the way we talk. He kept studying and working in his efforts to help his pupils, and his knowledge of the human ear gave him the first idea of his remarkable invention.

He thought if the small and thin ear drum could send thrills and vibrations through heavy bones, then it should be possible for a small piece of electrified iron to make an iron ear drum vibrate. In his imagination he saw two iron ear drums far apart but connected by an electrified wire. One end of the wire was to catch the vibrations of the sound, and the other was to reproduce them. He was sure he could make an instrument of this kind, for he said, “If I can make deaf mutes talk, I can make iron talk.”

One of his pupils helped him to do this by her words of sympathy and interest. She was a young girl named Mabel Hubbard. While still a baby she had lost her hearing, and consequently her speech, through an attack of scarlet fever. She was a bright, lovable girl, and had learned to talk through the teaching of Alexander Graham Bell. Her father was a man of great public spirit and the best friend Mr. Bell had in bringing the telephone before the public. Mabel Hubbard became the wife of her teacher, and encouraged him constantly to try and try again until his telephone would work.

Professor Bell made his first instrument in odd hours after he had finished teaching for the day. You may smile when you hear he used in making it an old cigar box, two hundred feet of wire, and two magnets taken from a toy fish pond. But this was because he was very poor and had scarcely any money to spend on materials for his experiments. But he kept on working, and after 34 the Centennial he was able to found a company and put his new invention on the market. The company had little money, so Mr. Bell lectured and explained his work. By this means he not only raised money, but established his name as the inventor of the telephone. There were a number of other students who had been thinking along the same lines as Mr. Bell, but he went farther than any one else and was the first to carry the sounds of the human voice by electricity.

In the year 1877, the telephone was put into practical use for the public. It grew slowly. People did not realize how it could help them and they looked upon having a telephone as a luxury rather than a necessity. It was in the same year that the first long distance line was established. Today, when we can talk from Boston to San Francisco, it seems strange to read that the first long distance telephone reached only from Boston to Salem, a distance of sixteen miles. But then Mr. Bell thought twenty miles would be the limit at which it would be possible to send messages. So you see the Salem line was really quite long enough to satisfy the inventor, whose first instrument could convey sound only from the basement to the second story of a single building.

Before long the reward that follows struggles and trials came to Alexander Graham Bell. The telephone went around the world because so many countries adopted it. Japan was the first, but she was followed quickly 35 by others. It went to far off Abyssinia, where it is said the monkeys use the cables for swings and the elephants use the poles for scratching posts.

Mr. Bell saw his invention enter every field of activity. It brought him riches and honor, but, more than all, it became a servant of mankind, and he could feel he had given a blessing to every class of people.

OUR COUNTRY!

“And for your Country, boy, and for that Flag, never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, even though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that Flag. Remember, boy, that behind officers and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself; your Country, and you belong to Her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother.”

––Edward Everett Hale.

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Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

EX-PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Addressing the Home Defense League

A little boy lived in the greatest city of the United States. He looked out from the windows of his home and saw tall buildings rising, story upon story, until they seemed to meet the sky. He saw narrow streets that twisted and turned in the queerest manner. Through these streets crowds of people were forever hurrying.

There was no chance for this boy to run races, to play ball, to ride a horse, to row, or swim. He could not have a garden because the city lot on which his home stood was, like all the lots around it, just large enough for the house, so he had no yard.

Where could he play and exercise? He was not strong, and his loving parents wanted him to grow into a healthy, hearty boy. Can you guess what they did for him? They turned their back porch into a gymnasium. Here he could have great sport and some hard work too. Hard, because at first he was so delicate he could not do what other boys did. He tried to climb the long pole that hung from the ceiling, but would slip back and have to begin all over again. However, he did not give up, but kept on trying until one day he reached the top. How proud he was! He grew so daring that the neighbors were frightened, but his mother only said, “If the Lord hadn’t taken care of Theodore Roosevelt he would have been killed long ago.”

Fortunately not all his life was to be spent in the crowded city, for his parents bought a country home on Long Island overlooking Oyster Bay. Theodore went there in the summer and had a chance to live out of doors. He tramped the woods, knew all the birds, hunted coon, gathered walnuts, and fished in pools for minnows. But even with all these outdoor pastimes he was far from well. Often he had choking spells of asthma at night. Then his father would hitch a team of horses, wrap his little invalid boy up warmly, and, taking him in his arms, drive fifteen or twenty miles in the darkness. This was the only way he could get his breath.

Twice his father and mother took him to Europe in the hope of improving his health. A playmate remembers him as “a tall, thin lad with bright eyes, and legs like pipe-stems.” He was not able to go to school regularly, so missed the fun of being with other boys. Most of his studying was done at home under private teachers, and in this way he prepared for college.

Theodore Roosevelt spent four years at Harvard University and was graduated in 1880. It had been his aim to develop good health and a strong body, as well as to succeed in his studies. This was a struggle, but he won the fight, and, in speaking of himself at the time of his leaving college, he says: “I determined to be strong and well and did everything to make myself so. By the time I entered Harvard, I was able to take part in whatever sports I liked. I wrestled and sparred, and I ran a 39 great deal, and, although I never came in first, I got more out of the exercise than those who did, because I immensely enjoyed it and never injured myself.”

Some time after leaving college, the frontier life of the Wild West called him. The lonely and pathless plains thrilled him, and he became a ranchman. His new home was a log house called Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota. Here he raised his own chickens, grew his own vegetables, and got fresh meat with his gun. He bought cattle until he had thousands of head, all bearing the brand of a Maltese Cross. No fences confined these cattle, and sometimes they would wander for hundreds of miles. Twice a year it was the custom to round up all the Maltese herds for the purpose of branding the calves and “cutting out” the cattle which were fat enough to be shipped to market.

On these round-ups, Theodore Roosevelt did his share of the work. Often this meant he rode fifty miles in the morning before finding the cattle. By noon he and his cowboys would have driven many herds into one big herd moving towards a wagon that had come out from the ranch. This wagon brought food for the men, and Mr. Roosevelt has remarked, “No meals ever tasted better than those eaten out on the prairie.”

Dinner over, the work of branding and selecting could be done. Sometimes Mr. Roosevelt spent twenty-four hours at a stretch in the saddle, dismounting only to get a fresh pony. He did everything that his men 40 did, and endured the hardship as well as the pleasure of ranch life. Often during the round-up he slept in the snow, wrapped in blankets, with no tent to shield him from the freezing cold.

Although he kept Elkhorn Ranch for twelve years he gradually quit the cattle business and spent more and more time in New York City where he entered political life.

But his vacations always found him in the West where his greatest pleasure was hunting. He hunted all over his ranch and through the Rocky Mountains beyond. Frequently he would go off alone with only a slicker, some hardtack, and salt behind his saddle, and his horse and rifle as his only companions. Once he had no water to drink for twenty-four hours and then had to use some from a muddy pool. But such adventures were sport for him, and he liked to see how much exposure he could stand. Then he would return to the East, rested and refreshed.

When war between Spain and the United States was declared in 1898, Mr. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He resigned this office, saying, “I must get into the fight myself. It is a just war and the sooner we meet it, the better. Now that it has come I have no right to ask others to do the fighting while I stay at home.”

He decided to raise a regiment made up of men he had known in the West, together with adventure loving Easterners, and call them his “Rough Riders.” He 41 borrowed the name from the circus. The idea set the country aflame, and within a month the regiment was raised, equipped, and on Cuban soil. There was never a stranger group of men gathered together. Cowboys and Indians rode with eastern college boys and New York policemen. They were all ready to follow their leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. They were full-blooded Americans. They believed in their country, and they obeyed their leader, not because they had to do so but because it was right that they should obey.

The most important battle in which the Rough Riders engaged was that of San Juan Hill, July 1 and 2, 1898. This helped to decide the war. Roosevelt led the charge. His horse became entangled in a barb wire fence, but he jumped off, ran ahead, and still kept in front of his men. He lived up to his advice, “When in doubt, go ahead.”

At the close of the war, when the Rough Riders returned to the United States, they landed on Long Island and the country rang with applause. The men could talk of no one but their commander, Colonel Roosevelt. The last night in camp was given over to a great celebration, and when goodbyes were said, he told them, “Outside of my own family I shall always feel stronger ties exist between you and me than exist between me and anyone else on earth.”

After his bravery in the war, every one in the United States admired Theodore Roosevelt, and was glad to honor him. He was elected Governor of the State of 42 New York. Two years later, when William McKinley was made president, Roosevelt was chosen as vice-president. He had held this office but three months when President McKinley was killed, and Theodore Roosevelt became president of the country he loved to serve.

In 1904 he was elected president to succeed himself, and so for seven and one-half years he gave his energies to the greatest office in our country.

When his duties in the White House ended, he went on a long hunting trip to South Africa. There he killed many strange and savage animals. These he had mounted and sent home to government museums so they could be observed and studied.

Returning to the United States as a private citizen, he spent much time in writing, for he had always liked to set down his ideas and experiences. If you look in a library catalogue, you will find Theodore Roosevelt wrote more than twenty books during his life.

He died at his Sagamore Hill home in 1920, after a life of vigorous activity to the last.

So we see he was a cowboy, a hunter, an author, a soldier, and president, but it was not for any of these achievements alone that we honor Theodore Roosevelt. It is because he was first, last, and always, an American, eager to serve our country and follow its free flag.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Roosevelt’s Favorite Proverb.

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© International Film Co.

General John J. Pershing on a Favorite Mount

For two long years we in America watched the progress of the great European War. Again and again, as we read the accounts of battles in which thousands of the brightest, best educated young men in Europe were cut down, we ardently prayed that we in America might escape the scourge of war. Protected by the broad Atlantic, we hoped that we might not be drawn into this vortex of destruction.

Finally, all our hopes were blasted when Germany, with her sly submarines, began sinking our ships and drowning our citizens. As this was more than any honorable nation could endure, we, too, took up arms against Germany.

No sooner had we entered the war than the task of raising a large army was earnestly begun, and within a few weeks training camps were established in every part of our country. After raising the army the next most important task was to find a general big enough to lead it. In this hour of need the nation turned to General John Pershing, and asked him to lead our boys on the bloody battle fields of Europe.

As soon as he was chosen, General Pershing, better known as “Jack” Pershing, sailed for Europe. Days before he arrived the eyes of all Europe were turned in eager expectation, and as soon as he reached there, the people gave him a joyous welcome and extended to him 45 every possible courtesy. From the first, Europe liked General Pershing. Tall, broad shouldered, deep-chested, with frank, clear eyes, he impressed all with the fact that he was indeed a soldier.

The social life of London and Paris had small attraction for General Pershing; he was restless for the battle front that he might thoroughly learn the war game, so that he could better teach it to our American boys. For weeks, associating with French and English officers, he studied methods of modern warfare. As he was doing this a vast army of American boys landed in France, and it has now fallen to the lot of General Jack Pershing to lead these brave lads into the midst of the most deadly war of all time.

Who then is Jack Pershing? Where did he come from, and what has he done that should merit the confidence thus placed in him?

General Pershing was born in Linn County, Missouri, Sept. 13, 1860. As his parents were poor, young Jack, from very early in life, had to work hard. Able to attend school for only a few months each winter, the lad often longed for a better opportunity to get an education. Finally he was able to go for a term to the Normal School at Kirksville, Missouri. This was a proud day for him. But soon he had to quit school as his money had given out. Fortunately, he was able to pass the teacher’s examination, and soon began teaching a country school. Now that he had a taste of knowledge, he 46 resolved not to stop until he had secured a good education. Accordingly, he was soon back in the Normal School, where he was graduated at the age of twenty.

In less than a month after his graduation, he learned of a competitive examination for entrance into West Point Military Academy. With no rich or influential friends to help him, the young normal graduate had little hope of getting into West Point. So excellent, however, were his examination papers that the poor Missouri boy was readily accepted and soon became a student in this great Military Academy. How fortunate that he was a hard working student and passed that examination, otherwise America today would be without General Pershing.

Relieved of all financial burden, for the government paid all his expenses in West Point, he settled down to four years of hard work. So successful was he in this work that upon his graduation he was made senior cadet captain––the highest honor West Point can give to any student.

Immediately after graduation he was sent into New Mexico and Arizona to help settle Indian difficulties. Life among the cowboys and Indians was indeed exciting, but perhaps his most exciting experience was with an Apache Chief by the name of Geronimo. This old chief, with his group of warriors, had defied the entire United States for two years. Finally he fled into Mexico and young Pershing with his army was sent in pursuit. 47 Odd as it may seem, the old Indian chief took almost the same route through Mexico that Villa followed some thirty years later. No doubt General Pershing in his pursuit of Villa often thought of his experiences years before when after Geronimo and his warriors.

After spending several years in the Southwest, at the age of thirty, he was made Professor of Military Tactics in the University of Nebraska. Here he remained four years during which time, in addition to his work as teacher, he completed the law course in the University. His next promotion pleased him greatly, for he was chosen a professor in his old school, West Point, where he remained but one year when the Cuban War broke out. Immediately he felt his country’s call, and with the Tenth United States Cavalry sailed for Cuba.

No sooner did he land than he found himself in the thick of the war. Among the hardest battles he was in were those at San Juan Hill and Santiago de Cuba. Twice during this war he was recommended for brevet commissions “for personal gallantry, untiring energy, and faithfulness.” General Baldwin, under whom he served, had this to say of him, “I have been in many fights, through the Civil War, but Captain Pershing is the coolest man under fire I ever saw.”

At the close of the Cuban War he was made Commissioner of Insular Affairs with headquarters in Washington. Here he remained but a short time when again he 48 heard his country’s call and was sent to the far distant Philippine Islands.

The task assigned him was by no means easy. On Mindanao, one of the larger islands in the group, lived the Moros. So cruel and fierce were they that during all the years Spain held the Islands she had never attempted to civilize them. To Pershing was given the task of going back into the mountains and capturing these Moros. To him was assigned the most stubborn problem the Islands presented.

The best description of this Moro campaign is written by Rowland Thompson who says: “Up in the hills of western Mindanao some thirty miles from the sea, lies Lake Linao, and around it live one hundred thousand fierce, proud, uncivilized Mohammedans, a set of murderous farmers who loved a fight so well that they were willing at any time to die for the joy of combat, whose simple creed makes the killing of Christians a virtue.

“Pershing warned the hot-head of them all, the Sultan, if there were any further trouble he would destroy their stronghold. The Sultan in his fortress, with walls of earth and living bamboo forty feet thick, laughed at the warning. In two days his fortress was in ruins. So skillful was Pershing’s attack that he captured the stronghold with the loss of but two men.”

In a similar manner he later took stronghold after stronghold until finally all the Moros were conquered. Having subdued the Moros he was then made Governor 49 of the Island, holding the office until he was sent to help settle the bandit difficulty on the Mexican border.

In his journey from the Philippine Islands to the Mexican border, General Pershing was called upon to fight the hardest battle of his entire life. Leaving his wife and four children at the Presidio Hotel in San Francisco, he went to El Paso, Texas, to rent a house. While in El Paso he was shocked to get a telegram stating that the Presidio had burned and that his wife and three daughters had perished in the flames. Surely this was enough to crush an ordinary man, but again he showed the superior qualities of his manhood by bearing up bravely, and continuing faithfully to perform the responsible tasks assigned him.

Though the Mexican trouble did not give General Pershing a chance to show his ability to lead men under fire, it did give him ample opportunity to convince his countrymen that he possessed remarkable skill in rounding up and developing a large army.

During the World War, General Pershing was placed in command of the entire American Army in Europe and, through his wise council and able handling of his forces, was proclaimed one of the greatest officers who took part in this great war.

“Lafayette, we are here!”

––General Pershing at Lafayette’s Tomb.

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Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

EX-PRESIDENT WILLIAM H. TAFT
At His Son’s Wedding

Most great men have been born poor. For one in early life to struggle with poverty seems to prepare him in later years to struggle with the big problems that make men great.

To be born amid wealth too often has a softening effect. Pampered with all that money can buy, the rich lad looks to others rather than to his own efforts. Not so with William Howard Taft. Though he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as we sometimes say, and fortune smiled upon him, he was never spoiled; but on the contrary he early developed a capacity for hard work, and a willingness to take rather than avoid hard knocks. These, as we shall see, insured his success in later life.

Born as he was in a beautiful home in the aristocratic section of Cincinnati, his boyhood surroundings were almost ideal. Not only was his home provided with every comfort, but it also was one in which culture and refinement reigned. When you are told that young William’s father held the following positions, Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, Secretary of War under President Grant, Attorney General, Minister to Austria and to Russia, you will readily see that the lad’s home life was truly stimulating.

As you study the picture of Mr. Taft, you will observe that he is an extremely large man, weighing nearly 52 three hundred pounds. Unlike many men, he did not become fleshy in his maturer years, but from his boyhood has been large and, as the boys say, fat. When a mere lad he was a plump, chubby, roly-poly chap who was always liked because he was so good-natured. Can you guess the nicknames the other boys gave him? Sometimes they called him “Lubber,” but most of the time he was hailed simply as “Lub.” Big, over-grown boys are sure to be awkward, and “Lub” was no exception. If he started to run across a field with the other boys, he was sure to fall. When they turned to gather him up, they would fairly roll with laughter, declaring that he was too fat to see where he was stepping. The fact that when he fell he was sure “to land on his head,” caused the boys to call him “Lead-Head and Cotton-Body.”

When he entered the Woodward High School, the boys changed his nickname from “Lub” to “Old Bill” and later to plain “Bill.” In high school he was too fat to run, too slow for baseball, and didn’t care for football.

At seventeen he had graduated from high school and was about to enter Yale. Can you imagine him as he enters that great University? With beardless cheeks that were as red as an apple, and able to tip the scales at two hundred thirty pounds, he seemed indeed a giant. No longer was he chubby and awkward; he was now broad shouldered, tall and sure of step. His muscles were so firm that he was a hard antagonist for anyone.

Hardly had he entered school before he got “mixed up” in one of the many college rushes of those days. In that particular rush Taft went crashing through the sophomores like a catapult. One, a man of his own weight, leaped in front of him. Then Taft let forth a joyous roar and charged! He grappled with the other Ajax, lifted him bodily, and heaved him over his head. No wonder he got the nickname of “Bull Taft.”

Of course a chap capable of such a feat must join the football squad, said the fellows of the University. But Bill’s father back in Cincinnati had entirely different plans for the giant freshman. He was eager to have his son win his laurels in the classroom rather than on the gridiron. The father, while in Yale, had won honors, and why shouldn’t his son? Furthermore, Bill had some pride, for already his brother had carried away from Yale high honors in scholarship, and, if possible, Bill was not to be outdone by his brother. Accordingly, he settled down to four years of downright hard work, and “from day to day, lesson by lesson, he slowly made his way close to the head of the class.”

That he acquired, while in college, a relish for hard work is shown by the fact that as soon as he had graduated he undertook three jobs at the same time: he studied law in his father’s law office, carried the regular work of the Cincinnati Law School, and was court reporter for The Times Star of Cincinnati.

So rapid was his achievement that at the age of twenty-four he was made Internal Revenue Collector at a salary of $4500 a year. Surely this was a good salary for a man so young. But other promotions were destined to come in close succession; for, at the age of twenty-nine he was made Judge of the Superior Court of Ohio, and a year later was appointed by President Harrison Solicitor-General of the United States at a salary of $7000 a year.

After three years of service as a Solicitor-General, President Harrison made him Judge of the Federal Court of the Sixth Circuit that included Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. As judge of this court, several of the most famous cases in our history came before him, and in every case his power of analysis was so manifest, and his decision so just that the entire nation learned to look to him with confidence. Into his court came, on the one hand employers who were eager for every possible advantage, and were willing to crush labor in order to gain it; and on the other hand laborers who distrusted their employers and were morbid and resentful. To preside over a court where force was thus meeting force, where battle lines were distinctly drawn was no small task. Mr. Taft, however, since he was always fair and kind, since he possessed largeness of vision and pureness of soul, was big enough for the task.

At this time in Judge Taft’s life he seems to have had but one ambition––he desired to become a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. But while he was 55 eagerly looking in that direction, his nation was preparing other and greater tasks for him.

Far across the broad Pacific lie the Philippine Islands––more than three thousand of them. On these islands live eight million people. As a result of our war with Spain these islands came into our possession; but what were we to do with them? Representing as they did every stage of development from University graduates to Moro headhunters, the task of governing them was indeed difficult.

Who should be assigned this task? Where was a man big enough to bring order out of confusion and mould these widely divergent tribes into a unified colony?

President McKinley and those in authority with him finally decided that Judge Taft was the man for the place. Accordingly, he was soon seen on the broad Pacific hurrying to the task that awaited him. From island to island he and his commissioners journeyed studying conditions. Everywhere he found the people suspicious and eager to state their grievances. Naturally kind, frank and fair, he so won their confidence that he was soon able to direct their efforts. It is impossible here to tell of his remarkable work in the Islands. As Governor-General he greatly reduced the death rate by introducing sanitary conditions; he established and developed a free public school system, and, most important of all, he trained the Filipinos in the art of self government.

From Governor-General of the Philippines Mr. Taft was made Secretary of War. Fortunately, his experiences 56 in the Islands, in a peculiar manner, fitted him for this new responsibility; for, during his entire sojourn in the Philippines he had come in closest contact with the soldiers. As they at all times were his closest companions, he learned to understand them perfectly. Able to get their viewpoint on all matters pertaining to war, he was able to secure from the start the highest possible cooperation. His greatest single task as Secretary of War was to finish building the Panama Canal, and indeed this was a task; but the Big Man kept at the big job until finally it was completed.

But the crowning event in the life of this great man was his election to the presidency of the United States. Here he was the same frank, genuine man he had always been. Had he been more of a politician he, no doubt, would have gained greater popular favor, but, after all, the approval of the multitudes is not the highest goal to be sought. Above this is fidelity to duty, and this Mr. Taft always possessed in an unusual degree.

With the completion of his term in the White House he did not withdraw from active life as so many ex-presidents have done; on the contrary, he became at once a member of the faculty of his beloved Yale University.

During the great World War, Mr. Taft was made director of the American Red Cross Association, and in 1920 he became the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

To whom does Luther Burbank belong? Massachusetts, in old New England, claims him as her son. But far to the west, proud California, kissed by the majestic Pacific, declares that he more truly belongs to her. But why argue? A man whose life has so materially blessed mankind everywhere belongs to the whole world. Recently, in far way France, when the name of Mr. Burbank was spoken in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris, every member arose to his feet as a tribute of honor.

But why do we all claim Luther Burbank? Why is his name a household word in every country? Because, without him, the world today would no doubt be hungry.

Mr. Burbank was born almost beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument on the seventh day of March, 1849. When able to toddle about, his playmates were plants rather than animals. Oddly enough his first doll was a cactus plant that he carried about proudly until one day he fell and broke it.

As a boy he was not strong, and did not like the rougher sports. In school he was bashful, retiring, and serious. Though a good student he could neither recite well nor speak pieces, as he was afraid even of his own voice.

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Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

LUTHER BURBANK
World Famous Plant Wizard

When he was just a lad he was taken out of school and put to work in a plow factory that belonged to his uncle. But he did not like the factory. Often he longed for the out of doors with its plants and flowers. So strong was this desire for the out of doors that he left the factory and began truck gardening on a small scale; and it was while caring for this truck garden that he developed the Burbank potato, thus achieving his first success. So valuable was this discovery that the United States Department of Agriculture declares that the Burbank potato has added to the wealth of this country seventeen million dollars each year since this variety was developed.

When twenty-six years of age, Mr. Burbank decided that the climate and soil of far-away California were best suited to his work. Accordingly, with ten of his best potatoes, and his small savings, he started across the continent. When his journey was ended he found himself in a fertile but unimproved valley about fifty miles north of San Francisco. On either side of this beautiful valley were spurs of the Coast Range Mountains.

His first task was to find work, but as few people at that time lived in the region, jobs were hard to get. In speaking of this period of his life, Mr. Burbank says: “One day I heard that a man was building a house. I went to him and asked him for the job of shingling it. He asked me what I would do it for. The regular price was two dollars and a half a thousand, but I was so anxious for the work that I offered to do it for one dollar and seventy-five cents. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘come and begin tomorrow.’ But I had no shingling hammer and all the cash I had in the world was seventy-five cents, 60 which I at once expended in purchasing the necessary hammer. Next morning when I reached the job, my new hammer in hand, all ready to go to work, I was surprised and––what shall I say––dismayed, to find another man already at work, while the owner calmly came to me and said, ‘I guess you’ll have to let that job go, as this man here has undertaken to do it for one dollar a thousand.’

“How disappointed I was! I had spent my last cent, had a hammer that was no use to me now, and no job. But I kept a stiff upper lip and work soon came, and I’ve never been so hard up since.”

Mr. Harwood in describing this period in the life of Mr. Burbank says: “The man who was to become the foremost figure in the world in his line of work, and who was to pave the way by his own discoveries and creations for others of all lands to follow his footsteps, was a stranger in a strange land, close to starvation, penniless, beset by disease, hard by the gates of death. But never for an instant did this heroic figure lose hope, never did he abandon confidence in himself nor did he swerve from the path he had marked out. In the midst of all he kept an unshaken faith. He accepted the trials that came, not as a matter of course, not tamely, nor with any mock heroism, but as a passing necessity. His resolution was of iron, his will of steel, his heart of gold; he was fighting in the splendid armor of a clean life.”

As a result of his industry, in a few years, Mr. Burbank was able to buy four acres of land where he started a nursery. From the first this enterprise was successful. Upon this plot he built a modest home where he still resides. Here, and on a larger plot a few miles distant, all his remarkable experiments have been made.

Before we learn more about his achievements I am sure we should like to become better acquainted with the man. Suppose, then, we invite Professor Edward Wickson of the University of California, who knows him well, to tell us about him.

“Mr. Burbank is of medium stature and rather slender form; light eyes and dark hair, now rapidly running to silver. His countenance is very mobile, lighting up quickly and as quickly receding to the seriousness of earnest attention, only to rekindle with a smile or relax into a laugh, if the subject be in the lighter vein. He is exceedingly quick in apprehension, seeming to anticipate the speaker, but never intruding upon his speech. There is always a suggestion of shyness in his manner, and there is ever present a deep respectfulness. He is frank, open-hearted, and out-spoken. All his actions are artless and quiet; even the modulations of his voice follow the lower keys.”

But, you ask, what marvelous things has this modest man done that should make his name a household word the world over?

All truly great people have high ideals that guide them in their work. The one ideal that guides Mr. 62 Burbank is his love for humanity. Naturally sympathetic, he cannot endure the thought of human suffering.

Since so much human misery is due to lack of food, to hunger, he has resolved if possible to make the world produce more bread. But how can he do this? If only he can get each head of wheat to produce just one additional grain then the problem will be solved––for then the wheat crop of this country will be increased five million two hundred thousand bushels. Year after year he worked at this task until finally each head of wheat actually did produce more grains. Now that he has succeeded in increasing the yield of wheat, he has resolved not to stop until the yield of all the cereals is increased in a like manner.

By what principle, then, does he accomplish these marvelous feats? What are his methods? Eager as we are to understand them, doubtless most of us must wait until we have learned a great deal about science, for his methods are extremely scientific.

Though unable to comprehend his methods, we are able to appreciate the results of his work. So marvelous are these results that they seem like fairy tales. For example, he has developed a white blackberry; but this is not all, he has developed blackberry plants so large that a single plant produces more than a bushel of berries.

I am sure that we all like strawberries so well that sometimes we have wished that the strawberry season were not so short; and in the future it will not be, 63 for he has produced plants that bear strawberries all summer.

Mr. Burbank, knowing that boys and girls are likely to hit their fingers cracking walnuts, has developed a walnut with a very thin shell, so thin in fact that the birds can break through it and help themselves to the meat. Now he has to thicken the shell again.

How should you like to eat a peach that had, instead of the ordinary stone, a fine almond in the center? In the future you may eat just such peaches, for Mr. Burbank has developed them.

Most of us have seen the ordinary cactus. We have been very careful, however, not to touch it as the spines are sure to prick us. It is interesting to know that the cactus is a desert plant––that, though millions of acres of arid land in the West can produce little else, they can produce enormous quantities of cactus. Unfortunately, these plants have always been useless as neither man nor beast would eat them. True, cattle liked them, but the cruel spines made the eating of them impossible.

As good pasture lands are so scarce in the West, Mr. Burbank wondered why a cactus could not be developed that had no spines. Accordingly, he began his work, and already has accomplished results far greater than he had expected. Not only has he developed spineless cactus, thus redeeming millions of acres of desert land for the use of animals, but he has also developed scores of varieties that are pleasing to the taste of man. Some 64 taste like the cantaloupe, others like the peach, and still others like the plum or pomegranate. Fortunately, they ripen at all times during the year and can be carried to every part of the country without decaying en route. Through the efforts of Mr. Burbank the hitherto worthless cactus has become the most promising fruit of the desert.

Just as Mr. Burbank has improved the wheat, the blackberry, the strawberry, the peach, and the cactus, so he has increased the yield and improved the quality of practically every cereal, fruit, and vegetable.

True, he has not made a great fortune for himself, but a knowledge that tens of thousands who otherwise might go hungry are, because of his efforts, fed, must give him a satisfaction that is far greater than money could give. And, after all, doesn’t true greatness lie in giving to others rather than in gathering to one’s self?

“And he gave it as his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”

––Dean Swift.

In the little Maryland village of Glen Echo, a frail, gentle old lady was taking leave of this world one April day, in the year 1912. She was greatly beloved and many friends from every state in the Union sent her words of comfort and cheer. They praised her noble work and called her “The Guardian Angel” of the suffering, but the little old lady looked into the faces of those about her and said, “I know of nothing remarkable that I have done.”

She was Clara Barton, the woman who brought the Red Cross to our country; but, being accustomed to working always for others, her labors did not seem great or unusual to her. Today we know she is one of the heroines of the world, for she believed in the brotherhood of man, and her aim was to relieve suffering humanity, irrespective of nationality or creed.

Her childhood was a happy, joyous one spent in the little village of North Oxford, Massachusetts. She was the youngest child of a large family, and her brothers and sisters were very proud of her because she learned so rapidly and because she was never afraid of anything. She would follow her oldest brother about the house with a slate, begging him to give her hard sums to do. Out of doors she was eager for adventure; her brother David often said, “Clara is never afraid, she can ride any colt on the farm,” and often he would throw her on the bare back of a young horse and cry, “Hold fast to the mane,” and away she would gallop over the fields.

66

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

CLARA BARTON
Founder of the American Red Cross

Winter evenings the family would gather about the great fireplace in the living room and listen to the father tell of his experiences on the battle fields of the Revolutionary War. He had been a soldier under the dashing General Anthony Wayne, called “Mad Anthony” Wayne, because of his reckless daring. Clara was thrilled by these stories of army life, and never tired of hearing her father recount them.

When Clara was eleven years of age, her brother David had a terrible fall, and for more than two years he was a helpless invalid. At once she became his nurse and he relied upon her for all manner of service, preferring her to his older sister or even his mother. “Clara is a born nurse,” said the family, as they saw the care she was giving the boy, and indeed she was. It was a joy to her to wait upon the sick, and she considered it no hardship to sacrifice herself.

When David was well, Clara went to school and prepared herself to teach. Her scholars found her an able teacher and liked her ways of instructing them. We know this to be true, because when she opened her first school she had only six pupils, but her fame spread so rapidly that when June came six hundred children had entered her classes and were much disappointed when they found she could not teach them all but had to have assistant teachers.

The strain of planning for so many pupils was too heavy for her, so she gave up teaching and took a position in the pension office at Washington. She was there at the beginning of the great war between the North and South, and at once felt it to be her duty to leave her work and minister to the wounded soldiers.

At first she busied herself in the hospitals at Washington, but she longed to go to the front and help on the battle fields. She told her father of her strong desire, and he said to her, “Go, if you feel it your duty to go! I know what soldiers are, and I know that every true soldier will respect you and your errand.”

At last our government gave her permission, and she went to the front as fearless as any officer in the army. Amid the rain of shot and shell she went about on errands of mercy. Then there was no organized relief for the soldiers, no Red Cross, no Y. M. C. A., no help of any kind except what kind persons here and there over the country tried to give. This was very little, when compared to the vast amount of suffering, but Clara Barton managed to gather supplies and money so that she was able to give assistance to both the boys in blue and the boys in gray. She saved many lives, she wrote countless letters home for wounded soldiers, and she stood alone by the death-bed of many a brave fellow, speaking words of comfort and cheer. Whenever anyone suggested that she was working beyond her strength, she would say, “It is my duty,” and go on regardless of her personal 69 welfare. One of her best friends, Miss Lucy Larcom, wrote of her as follows:

“We may catch a glimpse of her at Chantilly in the darkness of the rainy midnight, bending over a dying boy who took her supporting arm and soothing voice for his sister’s––or falling into a brief sleep on the wet ground in her tent, almost under the feet of flying cavalry; or riding in one of her trains of army-wagons towards another field, subduing by the way a band of mutinous teamsters into her firm friends and allies; or at the terrible battle at Antietam, where the regular army supplies did not arrive till three days afterward, furnishing from her wagons cordials and bandages for the wounded, making gruel for the fainting men from the meal in which her medicines had been packed, extracting with her own hand a bullet from the cheek of a wounded soldier, tending the fallen all day, with her throat parched and her face blackened by sulphurous smoke, and at night, when the surgeons were dismayed at finding themselves left with only one half-burnt candle, amid thousands of bleeding, dying men, illuming the field with candles and lanterns her forethought had supplied. No wonder they called her ‘The Angel of the Battle Field’.”

After the war, President Lincoln asked her to search for the thousands of men who were missing. She at once visited the prisons, helped the prisoners to regain their health, and get in touch with their families. Besides this, she searched the National Cemeteries and had grave 70 stones put over many of the graves telling who were buried there. This work took four years, and at the end of it she was so broken in health that she went abroad for a long rest.

While she was in Switzerland she heard first of the Red Cross Society and attended a meeting called to establish an International Society. Twenty-four nations were represented at the meeting, but the United States was not among that number. For some years it refused to join. Miss Barton devoted herself to showing our government that in joining the International Red Cross we would not be entangling ourselves in European affairs but would be working for the good of all men. At last, in 1887, she won her victory, and the United States signed the agreement of the Red Cross Society. This is called the Treaty of Geneva.

When the first meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland, there were persons present who found fault with the plan. They said the world should do away with warfare instead of caring for those it injured. But the Swiss President said it would take a long time for the world to learn to do without warfare. He believed the Red Cross would help to bring about the era of peace by caring for the afflicted and relieving the horror of war. The terrible struggle in Europe is showing us the truth of his words, for, when we hear about the frightful happenings, all the glory and grandeur of warfare fade away.

A man who sees far into the future, has written, “Some day the Red Cross will triumph over the cannon. The future belongs to all helpful powers, however humble, for two allies are theirs, suffering humanity and merciful God.”

Clara Barton, who also could look beyond her day, saw another use for the Red Cross besides war service. She said: “It need not apply to the battle field alone, but we should help all those who need our help.” So the American Red Cross passed an amendment to the effect that its work should apply to all suffering from fires, floods, famine, earthquake, and other forms of disaster. This amendment was finally adopted by all nations.

At the time of the Spanish War, Miss Barton was seventy years old, but she went to Cuba and did heroic work. When the Galveston flood occurred she was eighty, but she went to the stricken community and helped in every way. After giving up her active work, she retired to Glen Echo and spent the remainder of her days quietly, always interested in the great cause to which she had given her life.

We know what the American Red Cross does for our soldiers, and whenever we see its emblem we should think of Clara Barton, as a “Noble type of good, heroic womanhood; one who was kind, humane, and helpful to all peoples, one who longed for the time when suffering and horror should pass away.”

72

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

GEORGE W. GOETHALS
Builder of the Panama Canal

The men who worked on the Panama Canal used to sing this little song of their own composing:

Colonel George W. Goethals was the chief engineer of the canal, and when he arrived in Panama he found that many of the men were discontented. They felt they were not treated fairly. Now there were sixty-five thousand persons employed there, and Colonel Goethals knew that if they were not kept well and in good spirits the great work would never be completed. So he said he would be in his office every Sunday morning at seven o’clock. Then, any man or woman who had a complaint could come and tell him about it. He was so wise, and decided the cases with such fairness that the men came to believe in their new chief and were anxious to serve him.

It was when Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States that Colonel Goethals was sent to Panama. President Roosevelt was anxious to have our dream of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama come true, but many persons in our country as well as in other parts of the world told him it was foolish to spend money on such an 74 uncertain undertaking. They said the great slides of gravel and sand along the sides of the canal could never be stopped. They said the locks would never work. President Roosevelt paid no attention to these comments, but selected Colonel Goethals because he was sure he could build the canal.

Colonel Goethals cared as little as President Roosevelt for the opinion that the task was impossible. In fact, he told the President: “Say nothing to such doubting persons. By and by we will answer them with the canal.”

We know that he did give such an answer. He built the canal right through the red shifting hills of sand that threatened to slide down and choke his work. He cut away a jungle so the banks of the canal could be kept free and open. But best of all, he taught order to the men who worked under him, and they found out that he believed in them, he believed in the work that he was doing, and he believed in the Government of the United States. No wonder they made a song about him and praised his splendid leadership.

As his title tells us, Colonel Goethals belongs to the regular army. Until he was appointed as the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, no military man had been in charge there. The men working on the canal were performing civil duties, and in no way resembled soldiers. When they heard a regular army officer was coming down, they did not like the idea of having to obey just as if they were soldiers. Many of the foremen and officials told 75 their men they would have to spend their time saluting Colonel Goethals and standing at attention with their little fingers against the seams of their trousers.

During the first days of his stay in Panama, a banquet was given in honor of Colonel Goethals, for the men felt they must entertain their new chief, though they were not friendly to him.

At this banquet, they cheered the former engineer, John G. Stevens, and did not applaud Colonel Goethals when he appeared. However he was exceedingly polite and did not notice their bad manners. The men had expected to see him wear a full dress uniform, and you can imagine how surprised they were when they saw him dressed in citizens’ clothes. Never once while he was in Panama did Colonel Goethals appear in uniform.

After the banquet there was a program of speeches. Each speaker made cutting remarks about the new military control, but the Colonel did not seem to notice their insults. At last it was his time to speak. He said only a few words, but they changed the minds of his hearers. He told them they were all there to build the canal. They were working for their government, the United States of America. He wanted no salutes, but he wanted work. This pleased the men and they were ashamed of their impoliteness.

The Colonel’s first act was to organize the workmen into three divisions, the Atlantic, the Central, and the Pacific.

He put each under a superintendent. Then he stirred up contests between these divisions. He would tell the men on the Pacific division how rapidly the men on the Atlantic division were digging or putting in concrete. Of course, each division wanted to make the best showing, and the men were always eager to get the Canal Record, a small weekly newspaper, so they could read the scores of the different divisions. These scores grew to be more exciting than those of ball games, and the men worked hard and well.

They liked Colonel Goethals and whenever he went by they saluted him; not with the army salute which they had scorned, but by waving their hands, lifting their caps, and greeting him with a smile on their lips and in their eyes.

They felt free to talk to him because they knew he was their friend. Shortly after he started his Sunday morning office hours, some of the lowest paid men told him that their bosses swore at them all day and used the worst kind of language. At once he sent the following order out all over the Canal Zone.

PROFANE LANGUAGE

Culebra, C. Z. Aug. 4, 1911

Circular No. 400:

The use of profane or abusive language by foremen or others in authority, when addressing subordinates, will not be tolerated.

Geo. W. Goethals, 
Chairman and Chief Engineer. 

Some of the foreman did not talk much for a while, they had been so used to swearing, but the Colonel’s orders were obeyed.

The work then moved along smoothly and Colonel Goethals was looking forward to the end of his labors, when one day an engineer on the Panama Railroad paid no attention to the signals and let his train run into the rear coaches of another train, killing the conductor.

This engineer was drunk, and it is against the rules of any railroad for an intoxicated person to be in its employ. Colonel Goethals had the engineer arrested and put in jail. However, the man belonged to a labor union, and this union sent a committee demanding that he release the engineer by seven o’clock that evening. If he did not, they would order all the men working along the canal to strike. This meant that the work on the canal would stop, and it might be weeks before it would be resumed. They would wait, they said, for his answer until seven o’clock that evening. Colonel Goethals listened to the committee, then shook hands with them and went to his home.

Seven o’clock came, then eight. The committee was worried. They telephoned Colonel Goethals and asked for his answer. He replied in surprise that they had it. They said it had not reached them. He reminded them that they intended to strike at seven o’clock if the man was not released, and then said, “It is now eight o’clock; if you call the penitentiary, you will find the man is still there.”

The leaders did not want to strike. They had expected to make Colonel Goethals do what they wanted. Then they said, “Do you want to tie up the work down here, Colonel”?

“I am not tying it up,” he told them. “You are. You forget that this is not a private enterprise, but a government job.”

When asked what he was going to do, his answer was: “Any man not at work tomorrow morning will be given his transportation to the United States. He will go out on the first steamer and he will never come back.”

There was only one man who had failed to report, and he sent a doctor’s certificate saying he was too sick to work. There were no more strikes.

In May, 1913, a Congressman introduced a bill into the House of Representatives providing for the promotion of Colonel Goethals from Colonel to Major-General as a reward for his services in building the canal. At once Colonel Goethals wrote the gentleman saying he appreciated his kindness but he did not believe he should be singled out for such an honor. There were many men, he said, who had done great work in Panama, and they, as well as himself, felt repaid for their services not only by their salary but by the honor of being connected with such a wonderful task. He said also that the United States Government had educated and trained him so it was but right that it should have his services. The bill was withdrawn and Colonel Goethals was satisfied.

When we look at the life of this successful man it seems as if all the years before his going to the Canal Zone were but a preparation for the great feat that awaited him there. He was always eager to work, and when he was a little boy in New York City he earned his first money by doing errands. At that time he was eleven years of age, but by the time he was fifteen he was the cashier and bookkeeper in a market. Other boys spent their time playing ball, but he worked after school and every Saturday. He was paid five dollars a week. His first hope was to be a physician, but the steady indoor work had weakened his health and he decided to become a soldier. He thought the excellent military training would make him well and strong, so he passed the examinations for West Point Military Academy.

As he knew no one there, George Goethals’ entry into the famous school was but little noticed. However, as the months and years passed, every one there was proud to claim him as a pupil or classmate.

There are three great honors to be won at West Point. Any man who wins one of these is called an honor man, and the entire school looks up to him. The first honor is to have the highest grade as a student. The second is to be named a leader and an officer over all the rest of the class. The third is to be chosen for an office by one’s classmates because they like him. George W. Goethals won all three of these. He was an honor man in his studies; his teachers chose him as one of the four captains 80 taken from his class; and this same class elected him president in his senior year.

With such a school record it is not at all surprising that Colonel Goethals made steady progress in the army and so was considered by President Roosevelt to be the one person who could build the canal. Since its completion, this able soldier has continued to serve his country, and when President Wilson declared we were in a state of war with Germany, Colonel Goethals was among the first persons summoned to help plan and supervise the great war program; for at the root of his success lies loyalty,––loyalty to his work, to his fellow men, and to the Government of the United States.

On one of the more modest streets of Indianapolis there lived, in 1916, an invalid. He was a man sixty-two years of age, with a genial face that had not been hardened by his years of suffering. This man, though living in a modest home and a confirmed invalid, had the rare distinction of being the most beloved man in America. While all classes loved him, the children loved him most; and fortunately they did not wait until he was dead to show their love. One of the nice things they used to do was to send him post cards on his birthdays. Sometimes he would get, on a single birthday, as many as a thousand cards from school children in all parts of the country.

While he could not answer all these cards, he did his best to let them know that he appreciated their kindly attention, as the following letter shows:

“To the School Children of Indianapolis:

“You are conspirators––every one of you, that’s what you are! You have conspired to inform the general public of my birthday, and I am already so old that I want to forget all about it. But I will be magnanimous and forgive you, for I know that your intent is really friendly, and to have such friends as you are makes me––don’t care how old I am! In fact it makes me so glad and happy that I feel as absolutely young and spry as a very schoolboy––even as one of you––and so to all intents I am.

“Therefore let me be with you throughout the long, lovely day, and share your mingled joys and blessings with your parents and your teachers, and, in the words of little Tim Cratchit: ‘God bless us, every one.’

Ever gratefully and faithfully 
Your old friend, 
James Whitcomb Riley.” 

83

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
The “Hoosier” Poet

On one of his birthdays the school children of Indianapolis decided to march in a great throng by his house and greet him as he sat by his window in an invalid’s chair. To their sorrow, when this birthday came it rained hard all day––so hard that they could not think of going out in the storm. But in the high school was a group of pupils who decided that no storm could keep them from showing their love. Accordingly, early in the evening, in the pouring rain, they gathered about his home and in clear, ringing tones sang several of his beautiful poems that had been set to music. So delighted was the great poet that he invited them in and they packed his large sitting room. And what an hour they had together! As they sang he forgot his suffering and was young again. Before they left he recited several of his poems in such a pleasing and impressive manner that I am sure those present will never forget it. One of these, and one which is a great favorite, is entitled The Old Swimmin’-Hole.

Though Mr. Riley is no longer with us, he still has the same big place in our hearts. Why do we love him so? Is it not because he was able to reach our hearts as few have done; because he was able in all his poems to speak the word that we needed most?

James Whitcomb Riley was born at Greenfield, Indiana, in 1853. His father was a lawyer and farmer combined. While he did the legal work of the village, he also owned a farm at the edge of town. As he was a good speaker he was in constant demand in that part of the state to speak on all kinds of occasions. Generally, on these trips, he took young James along; thus it was that the lad acquired a desire to travel that it took years of his after life to satisfy.

It was from his mother that James received his talent for writing poetry. Though never a poet, she was exceedingly apt, as were all her people, in writing rhymes. The beautiful tributes that Riley, later in life, paid his mother show that she always understood and helped him.

Greenfield, during the boyhood days of Riley, was not the kind of town we think of as producing poets. There were no mountains to kindle the imagination, and no babbling brooks to encourage meditation. In every direction were broad stretches of level land largely covered with forests that still remained untouched. Between these forest stretches were patches of land that were cultivated by hand; for at that time there was but little farm machinery. The greatest single task of the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most frequented were the loafing places.

As there was very little in Greenfield for a lad to do, James’ father very often pressed him into service planting and cultivating corn, but he never liked it. While at first we are inclined to regret this, we wonder, had farm life appealed to him, whether he would have made a great poet.

Years later in speaking of his lack of experience in real farm life Mr. Riley says: “Sometimes some real country boy gives me the round turn on some farm points. For instance, here comes one slipping up to me, ‘You never lived on a farm,’ he says. ‘Why not’? says I. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘a turkey-cock gobbles, but he doesn’t ky-ouck as your poetry says.’ He has me right there. It’s the turkey-hen that ky-oucks. ‘Well, you’ll 87 never hear another turkey-cock of mine ky-ouckin,’ says I. But generally I hit on the right symbols. I get the frost on the pumpkin and the fodder in the shock; and I see the frost on the old axe they split the pumpkins with for feed, and I get the smell of the fodder and the cattle, so that it brings up the right picture in the mind of the reader.”

James never enjoyed his earlier experiences in school. When he should have been studying his history and arithmetic lessons he busied himself with writing rhymes. Later in life he was very sorry that he had not persevered in his regular school work. There were some things in school, however, that he did exceptionally well. Few boys in that part of the state could recite poetry as well as he, and he was always called on to speak pieces at the school entertainments. Though some of his teachers were inclined to neglect him, he had one teacher who understood him and took a great interest in him. The name of this teacher was Mr. Lee O. Harris, and Mr. Riley never tired of saying good things about him. The fact that Mr. Harris loved literature and had some poetic ability of his own made it possible for him to see in James powers that others did not see, and to encourage him when others discouraged him.

After leaving school James had some experiences that were so unusual and yet so very interesting that I am sure we should be delighted to have him, in his own delightful manner, tell us about them.

“I tried to read law with my father, but I didn’t seem to get anywhere. Forgot as diligently as I read; so what was the use. I had learned the sign-painter’s trade, but it was hardly what I wanted to do always, and my health was bad––very bad.

“A doctor here in Greenfield advised me to travel. But how in the world was I to travel without money. It was just at this time that the patent-medicine man came along. He needed a man, and I argued this way: ‘This man is a doctor, and if I must travel, better travel with a doctor.’ He had a fine team and a nice looking lot of fellows with him; so I plucked up courage to ask if I couldn’t go along and paint his advertisements for him.

“I rode out of town without saying goodbye to anyone, and though my patron wasn’t a doctor with a diploma, as I found out, he was a mighty fine man, and kind to his horses, which was a recommendation. He was a man of good habits, and the whole company was made up of good straight boys.

“My experience with him put an idea into my head–– a business idea, for a wonder––and the next year I went down to Anderson and went into partnership with a young fellow to travel. We organized a scheme of advertising with paint, and we called our business ‘The Graphic Company.’ We had five or six young fellows, all musicians, as well as handy painters, and we used to capture the towns with our music. One fellow could whistle like a nightingale, another sang like an angel, and another 89 played the banjo. I scuffled with the violin and guitar.

“Our only dissipation was clothes. We dressed loud. You could hear our clothes an incalculable distance. We had an idea it helped business. Our plan was to take one firm of each business in town, painting its advertisement on every road leading to town.

“You’ve heard the story about my traveling all over the state as a blind sign-painter? Well, that started this way: One day we were in a small town, and a great crowd was watching us in breathless wonder and curiosity; and one of our party said; ‘Riley, let me introduce you as a blind sign-painter.’ So just for the mischief I put on a crazy look in the eyes, and pretended to be blind. They led me carefully to the ladder, and handed me my brush and paints. It was great fun. I’d hear them saying as I worked, ‘That feller ain’t blind.’ ‘Yes he is; see his eyes.’ ‘No, he ain’t, I tell you; he’s playin’ off.’ ‘I tell you he is blind. Didn’t you see him fall over a box and spill all his paints?’

“Now, that’s all there was to it. I was a blind sign-painter one day and forgot it the next. We were all boys, and jokers, naturally enough, but not lawless. All were good fellows, all had nice homes and good people.”

When he had spent four years with “The Graphic Company” he accepted a position as reporter for a paper published at Anderson, Indiana. In addition to his reporting work he wrote many short poems in the Hoosier dialect that took well. So successful was his work on 90 this paper that Judge Martindale of the Indianapolis Journal offered him a position on that paper. About the first thing he now did was to write a series of Benjamin F. Johnson poems. In speaking of this series Mr. Riley said, “These all appeared with editorial comment, as if they came from an old Hoosier farmer of Boone County. They were so well received that I gathered them together in a little parchment volume, which I called, ‘The Old Swimmin’-Hole and ‘Leven More Poems’, my first book.”

This book met with immediate favor. Speakers from east to west quoted from it. All wanted to know who the author really was. Modest as Mr. Riley was, he had to confess that he had written the book. Other books followed in close succession until when he died he had written forty-two volumes. But people were not satisfied with reading his books merely, they wanted to see and hear him. He, therefore, began in a modest way to read his poems before audiences in his native state. So delighted were these audiences, for he was a charming reader as well as a capable writer, that urgent calls came from every state in the Union to come and read for them. For a number of years he traveled widely and appeared before thousands of audiences, but this kind of life never appealed to him.

Though he never married, Mr. Riley was always fond of the quiet of a modest home. Accordingly, the closing years of his life were spent in semi-retirement in his cozy home on Lockerbie Street, Indianapolis.

A little girl was traveling with her father and mother. They were going from a little town in Alabama to the city of Baltimore. The journey was long and, as the little girl was only six years old, she wanted toys and playthings with which to pass the time.

The kind conductor let her have his punch when he was not using it. She found that it was great fun to punch dozens of little holes in a piece of cardboard and she would touch each hole with one of her little fingers, but she did not count them because she had not learned how.

By and by a pleasant lady thought she would make a rag doll for the little traveler. She rolled two towels up in such a way that they looked very much like a doll, and the little girl eagerly took the new plaything in her arms. She rocked it and loved it; but something troubled her, for she kept feeling the doll’s face and holding it out to the friends who sat near her. They did not understand what was the matter.

Suddenly she jumped down and ran over to where her mother’s cape had been placed. This cape was trimmed with large beads. The little girl pulled off two beads and turning to her mother pointed once more to the doll’s face. Then her mother understood that her daughter wanted the doll to have eyes; so she sewed the beads firmly to the towel and the little girl was happy.

92

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

HELEN KELLER
“Hearing” Caruso Sing

Are you wondering why the little girl did not talk and tell what she wanted? She could not. Just think, she was six years old and could not speak a word! All she could do was to make a few queer sounds. Perhaps, too, you wonder why she was so anxious for the towel doll to have eyes. I think it was because although she herself was blind, she liked to fancy her doll had eyes that could see the beauties of the world. To be blind and speechless seems hard indeed, but besides lacking these two great gifts, this little girl was deaf. Think of it! She could not hear, she could not see, and she could not talk.

Yet this same little girl learned to talk. She learned to read, with her fingers, books printed for the blind in raised letters. She studied the same lessons that other children had in school, and she worked so hard that she was able to go to college.

Should you not like to hear Helen Keller, for that is the name of the little girl, tell about herself?

She says: “I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of Northern Alabama. I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition. They say I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from my mother’s lap and almost ran toward 94 them. The impulse gone, I fell down, and cried for her to take me in her arms.

“These happy days did not last long, for an illness came which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new born baby. The doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however, the fever left me, but I was never to see or hear again.”

From the time of her recovery until the journey of which we have been reading, Helen Keller lived in silence and darkness. This journey was undertaken in order to consult a famous physician who had cured many cases of blindness. Mr. and Mrs. Keller hoped this gentleman could help their child, and you can imagine how sad they were when he said he could do nothing. However, he sent them to consult Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who had taught many deaf children to speak. Dr. Bell played with Helen and she sat on his knee and fingered curiously his heavy gold watch. He not only advised her parents to get a special teacher for her, but told them of a school in Boston in which he thought they could find some one able to unlock the doors of knowledge for the little girl. This was in the summer, and the next March Miss Sullivan went to Alabama to be Helen Keller’s friend and teacher.

Let us read how the little girl felt when this kind, loving woman came. “On the afternoon of that eventful day I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant. I felt 95 approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand, as I supposed, to my mother. Some one took it and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me.

“The next morning my teacher gave me a doll. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word d-o-l-l. I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I at last succeeded I was flushed with pleasure and pride. In the days that followed I learned to spell a great many words with my fingers, among them were pin, hat, cup, sit, stand, and walk.

“But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.”

Months and years of happy companionship now came to pass for Helen Keller. Every winter she and her teacher went to Boston where they had greater chances for study than in the little southern town. Here Helen learned about snow for the first time and all her memories of her studies in these years are joined with remembrances of the merry times she had after school riding on a sled or toboggan and playing in the snow.

It was when Helen was ten years old that she learned to speak. This was a great and wonderful experience. Her teacher took her to a lady who had offered to teach her. It was not easy for a deaf child to learn to talk, and Miss Keller says:

“The lady passed my hands lightly over her face and let me feel the position of her tongue and lips when she made a sound. I was eager to imitate every motion, and in an hour had learned to make the sounds of M, P, A, S, T, I. In all I had eleven lessons. I shall never forget the surprise and delight I felt when I uttered my first connected sentence, ‘It is warm.’ After that my work was practise, practise, practise. Discouragement and weariness cast me down frequently; but the next moment the thought that I should soon be at home and show my loved ones what I could do spurred me on and I thought, ‘My little sister will understand me now.’ When I had made speech my own, I could not wait to go home. My eyes fill now as I think how my mother pressed me close to her, taking in every word I spoke, while little Mildred kissed my hand and danced.”

Now a new world was indeed open to the bright girl who was so anxious to learn. She finished studies similar to those taught in the eight grades of our schools and began to prepare for college. Miss Sullivan was still with her and, although she had for a tutor a kind, patient man who taught her algebra, geometry, and Greek, it was Miss Sullivan who sat beside her and talked into the girl’s hands the tutor’s explanations and made it possible for her to enter Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While at college Miss Keller, with Miss Sullivan, attended classes and followed the lessons through the 97 help of this noble teacher who gave some of her best years to training her pupil. College life brought many pleasures and interests into Helen Keller’s life, and when she finished her work there, it scarcely seemed possible that the bright, informed young woman had ever been kept a prisoner by darkness and silence.

Today Miss Keller often appears in public and tells to large audiences some of her thoughts and opinions. She is a pleasant-faced, rather serious woman and, while her voice has a hoarse sound, quite different from the usual tones of the human voice, it is possible to understand her very well indeed. Her teacher is still with her as a companion and it would be hard to say who has worked the harder in the past years of study, Miss Keller or her devoted friend.

Upon being asked what were her greatest pleasures Helen Keller named reading, outdoor sports, playing with her pet dogs, and meeting people. What she says about each of these pleasures is so interesting that you will surely be glad to read it and see, perhaps, if you and she, by any chance, think alike.

She says, “Books have meant so much more to me than to many others who can get knowledge through their eyes and ears. My book friends talk to me with no awkwardness, and I am never shut away from them; but reading is not my only amusement. I also enjoy canoeing and sailing. I like to walk on country roads. Whenever it is possible my dog accompanies 98 me on a sail or a walk. I have had many dog friends. They seem to understand me, and always keep close beside me when I am alone. I love their friendly ways, and the eloquent wag of their tails. I have often been asked, ‘Do not people bore you?’ I do not understand what that means. A hearty handshake or a friendly letter gives me genuine pleasure.”

But it has not always been easy for her to be cheerful and contented. She has had many struggles with sad thoughts when she thinks how she sits outside life’s gate and cannot enter into the light; cannot hear the music or enjoy the friendly speech of the world. When these gloomy ideas come to her mind she remembers, “There is joy in self-forgetfulness,” and tries to find her happiness in the lives of others.

There is a poem called “Darius Green and His Flying Machine.” In this poem Darius, a country boy says, “The birds can fly and why can’t I?” A Greek story, centuries old, tells how a certain man and his son made themselves wings of wax. They flew far out over the sea, but the warm sun melted the waxen wings, and the two flying men were drowned.

Today the aeroplanes cut through the air with great speed. There are many different designs, and daring young men are eager to manage these swift flying crafts.

However, it is but a short time since two American boys made the first successful flights in the United States and started a factory for building aeroplanes. Wilbur and Orville Wright lived in Dayton, Ohio. Their father was a minister, who spent his spare time working with tools. Once he invented a typewriter, but it was never put on the market. The boys were interested in his workshop, and while very young began to find their greatest pleasure in making things that would go.

It was in the year 1879, when Orville was eight years old, that his father brought home a toy that made a great impression on the boyish mind. It was called a heliocopter, but the Wright boys called it “the bat.” Made of bamboo, cork, and thin paper, it had two propellers that revolved in opposite directions by the untwining of rubber bands that controlled them. When thrown against the ceiling, it would hover in the air for a time. They made many models of this toy, but after a time they became tired of it and wanted to build something more difficult.

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Photograph from Dayton, Ohio, Journal

ORVILLE WRIGHT
Joint Inventor of the Aeroplane

Their first venture was a printing press; and when Orville was fifteen years of age, they were publishing a four-page paper called the Midget. They did all the work from editor to delivery boys.

Just about this time the bicycle craze passed over the country. Everyone rode a wheel. Automobiles were unknown, and the new machines, that could be ridden so fast along the highways, seemed a wonderful invention. The Wright brothers had no money to buy a bicycle, so they made one. You may laugh when you hear that they used a piece of old gas pipe for the frame, but nevertheless they succeeded in their undertaking and could ride as well on their home-made machine as their friends did on expensive, high-grade ones. No doubt they had many long rides and great sport with the bicycle they had built, but the Wright brothers always found their greatest pleasure in making things rather than in using them. Therefore, it did not seem strange to any one when they said they wanted something better than a bicycle; but when it became known that instead of riding rapidly over city streets and country roads they wanted to fly through the air like birds, the people were amazed and thought the two boys had lost their wits.

So to do this and buy materials with which to build their new machine, they opened a bicycle repair shop. It was in the shed back of this shop that they first made their models of air craft. They had no wealthy friends to back them with money. They had no chance to go abroad, where clever men were being urged by their governments to make experiments with what the world called “flying machines.” They were not able to go to college or to any school where they could obtain help in working out their plan, so they started in to study by themselves what the German, French, and English inventors had to say about the art of flying.

Seemingly, nothing discouraged them. Everywhere the newspapers and magazines were poking fun at mad inventors who thought men would some day soar through the air as birds do. There was a Professor Langley, a man much older than the Wright brothers, who finished a machine in 1896. It flew perfectly, on the sixth day of May in that year. The flight was made near Washington, D. C., along the Potomac river for the distance of about three-quarters of a mile. He made another successful flight in November. Then the United States Government urged him to build a full-sized machine, capable of carrying a man. He completed this machine in 1903 and attempted to launch it on the seventh day of October in that year. An accident caused the machine to fall into the Potomac. The aviator was thrown out and came near drowning. Professor Langley tried to 103 launch his machine again in December and the same accident occurred. The machine was broken. The newspapers made cruel fun of Professor Langley; he was criticized in the U. S. Congress; and overcome by grief at the failure of his great idea he tried no more. Two years later he died, crushed and broken in spirit.

But the Wright brothers did not let any such unkind comment hinder their work. They kept on studying the flight of birds. Lying flat on their backs they would watch birds for whole afternoons at a time, until at last they came to believe that a bird himself is really an aeroplane. The parts of the wings close to the body are supporting planes, while the portions that can be flapped are the propellers. Watch a hawk or a buzzard soaring and you will see they move their wings but little. They balance themselves on the rising currents of air. A hawk finds that on a clear warm day the air currents are high and rise with a rotary motion. That is why we see these birds go sailing round and round. When you see one poised above a steep hill on a damp, windy day you may be sure he is balancing himself in the air which rises from its slope and he will be able to glide down at will.

The Wright brothers were certain if they could balance a machine in the air they could make it go. To find out how to do this they made a difficult experiment with delicate sheets of metal balanced in a long tube. Through this tube steady currents of air were blown. The speed with which the currents were sent through the tube 104 was changed often, as well as the angles of sending. Over and over they did this, until they were sure of the same results each time. They knew how to plan the shape of a surface that would do what they wanted it to in the air, and they were soon ready to make a trial flight with their aeroplane.

The United States Weather Bureau told them the winds were strongest and steadiest at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and there they made their first test flights in 1900. That year they had only two minutes of actual sailing in the air. But they went back the next year and the next, learning more each time, and working untiringly.

One day Dr. Octave Chanute, the man who knew more than any one else in the United States about flying, appeared suddenly at Kitty Hawk. He watched them, and gave as his opinion that they had gone farther than any one else in this new art. Cheered by his words they began to work harder. Now that they could balance in the air they must make their machine go.

It took them a year to learn to turn a corner. During the years 1904 and 1905, they made 154 flights. At last they were ready, in 1909, to make a test for our government. The United States said it would pay $25,000 for a machine capable of going forty miles an hour. Every mile above this speed would be paid for at the rate of $2500 and for every mile less than this down to the rate of thirty-six miles an hour they would deduct 105 $2500 from the purchase money. The flight was to be in a measured course of five miles from Ft. Meyer to Alexandria, Va. It was not an easy flight, and it was considered to be more difficult than crossing the English Channel, a feat then engaging the attention of Europeans.

Orville Wright with one passenger made the flight in fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds, a rate of speed a little more than forty-two miles an hour. Army officers then went to him to learn how to manage the machine, for even then it was believed the greatest use of the aeroplane would be in war.

When Orville Wright was succeeding in this country, Wilbur Wright went to France with one of their machines. At first the French people laughed, made cartoons of him and his machine, even wrote a song about his effort; but he soon rose above all such petty and silly things. The French people began to see the progress the Americans were making and took hold of the new invention more rapidly than any other nation.

On the same trip, Wilbur Wright visited Italy, Germany, and England, making many flights and winning a large number of prizes. When he returned to this country he was overwhelmed with dinners, receptions, and medals. He made a great flight in New York City, encircling the Statue of Liberty in the harbor and flying from Governor’s Island to Grant’s Tomb and return, a distance of twenty-one miles.

Not long after these successes Wilbur died, and his brother Orville was left to go on with their plans. Orville still lives in Dayton, Ohio, and has a large factory given over to building aeroplanes.

Long before the outbreak of the great war he had said warfare could be carried on extensively in the air, and that we were realizing but a few of the uses of this new invention. Although he believes air travel will become quite an everyday happening, he does not expect it to take the place of the railroad or the steam boat. However, he hopes to see the government carry the mails by an aerial route, and to go quickly and easily to out-of-the-way places.

At present his greatest interest lies in making an aeroplane that is simple enough for any one to manage and at the same time can be sold at a low enough price for the average person to own. This may not seem possible to you, but remember no one ever believed the Wright boys would be able to fly, so it would not be strange if before many years aeroplanes were used as much as automobiles are today. In fact, Orville Wright says: “The time is not far distant when people will take their Sunday afternoon spins in their aeroplanes precisely as they do now in their automobiles. People need only to recover from the impression that it is a dangerous sport, instead of being, when adopted by rational persons, one of the safest. It is also far more comfortable. The driver of an automobile, even under the most favorable 107 circumstances, lives at a constant nerve tension. He must keep always on the lookout for obstructions in the road, for other automobiles, and for sudden emergencies. A long drive, therefore, is likely to be an exhausting operation. Now the aeroplane has a great future because this element of nerve tension is absent. The driver enjoys the proceeding as much as his passengers and probably more. Winds no longer terrorize the airman. He goes up except in the very bad days.”

Concluding he says: “Aeroplaning as a sport will attract women as well as men. Women make excellent passengers. I have never yet taken up one who was not extremely eager to repeat the experience. This fact will, of course, hasten the day when the aeroplane will be a great sporting and social diversion.”

“Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards rewarded by joy.”

––Dr. Johnson.

108

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

ROBERT E. PEARY
Discoverer of the North Pole

Robert E. Peary was born at Cresson Springs, Pennsylvania, May 6th, 1856. When he was but three years of age his father died and his young mother moved back to her old home at Portland, Maine. Here his boyhood days were spent in fishing and swimming in the bay, or in roaming over the hills and through the forests. True, the fields with their birds and flowers interested him to some extent, but the mighty ocean, heaving with its mysterious tides and beset with treacherous gales, interested him most. Never did he tire of the stories of danger and hardship as told by the sturdy, adventurous fishermen. So eager was he to learn the mysteries of the mighty deep that he would sit for hours at a time listening to the sailors as they explained the tides and shifting winds. Little did he realize in those early days that this was precisely the knowledge that he would later need in his work as an arctic explorer.

But the fishermen were not his only teachers; for so faithful was he in his regular school work that, at the age of seventeen, he was ready to enter college. Bowdoin, the oldest and best known college in the state, was chosen. Upon his graduation, at the age of twenty-one, he was ready to start in life. But where should he go and what should he do? Odd as it then seemed to his friends, he chose the little village of Fryeburg, away back amid the mountains of Maine. Here he hung out his 110 sign as land surveyor. As practically no one in that little town wanted land surveyed, he had much leisure time which he spent in long hikes over the mountains and along the trout streams. This experience further fitted him for his tasks as an arctic explorer.

That he had always been an energetic student was shown by his success in passing the United States Civil Service examination which he took at the age of twenty-five. This examination, given by the Navy Department, was for the purpose of choosing civil engineers. Out of forty who took the examination only four passed, and Mr. Peary was the youngest of the four.

As soon as he had won the rank of Lieutenant, his first task was to estimate carefully the cost of building a huge pier at Key West, Florida. When the estimate was handed in, the contractors said that it could not be built for that amount. Since Lieutenant Peary insisted that it could, the government told him to engineer the building of the pier himself. This he did so skillfully that he saved for the government thirty thousand dollars.

So brilliant was this success that he was sent to Nicaragua to engineer the survey for the Inter-Oceanic Canal. Here his experience in equipping an expedition, and in managing half-civilized men, further fitted him for his great work in the north land.

Prior to this time he seems never to have thought of arctic explorations, for he writes: “One evening in one of 111 my favorite haunts, an old book store in Washington, I came upon a fugitive paper on the Inland Ice of Greenland. A chord, which as a boy had vibrated intensely in me at the reading of Kane’s wonderful book, was touched again. I read all I could upon the subject, noted the conflicting experiences of the explorers, and felt that I must see for myself what the truth was of this great mysterious interior.” Then it was, as he tells us later, that he caught the “Arctic Fever” which he never got over until he had discovered the North Pole. As a result of this fever he has made nine trips into the north land, and these expeditions have consumed so much time that, though he had been married twenty-one years when he reached the Pole, only three of these years had been spent in the quiet of his home with his family.

Interested as we are in all these expeditions, we are most interested, I am sure, in the one in which he reached his goal.

Embarked on the good ship Roosevelt, his expedition had no trouble in reaching Etah Fiord on the north coast of Greenland. This place interests us because it is the northernmost Eskimo village and is within seven hundred miles of the Pole.

In speaking of these Eskimos, Mr. Peary says: “There are now between two hundred and twenty and two hundred and thirty in the tribe. They are savages, but they are not savage; they are without government, but they are not lawless; they are utterly uneducated according 112 to our standard, yet they exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence. In temperament like children, with a child’s delight in little things, they are nevertheless enduring as the most mature of civilized men and women, and the best of them are faithful unto death. Without religion and having no idea of God, they will share their last meal with anyone who is hungry. They have no vices, no intoxicants, and no bad habits––not even gambling. Altogether they are a people unique upon the face of the earth.”

In his journeys into the far North Mr. Peary enjoyed many a walrus hunt. How should you like to hunt walruses? Before you answer read the following description of a walrus hunt:

“Walrus-hunting is the best sport in the shooting line that I know. There is something doing when you tackle a herd of fifty-odd, weighing between one and two tons each, that go for you whether wounded or not; that can punch a hole through eight inches of young ice; that try to get into the boat to get at or upset you,––we could never make out which, and didn’t care, as the result to us would have been the same,––or else try to raise your boat and stave holes in it.

“Getting in a mix-up with a herd, when every man in the whale-boat is standing by to repel boarders, hitting them over the head with oars, boat-hooks, axes, and yelling like a cheering section at a football game to try to scare them off; with the rifles going like young Gatling 113 guns, and the walruses bellowing from pain and anger, coming to the surface with mad rushes, sending the water up in the air till you would think a flock of geysers was turned loose in your immediate vicinity––oh, it’s great!”

The Roosevelt after leaving Etah Fiord was able to go as far north as Cape Sheridan, about 500 miles from the North Pole. Here, on February 15, 1909, the little party left the ship for the long journey over a wide waste of ice. The army that was to fight the bitter polar cold was made up of six white men, one negro, fifty-nine Eskimos, one hundred forty dogs, and twenty-three sledges.

For the first hundred miles after leaving the ship they were forced to cut their way through vast stretches of jagged ice. After twenty-four days of struggle, only twenty-four men remained; all the others having been sent back. These twenty-four, however, were the freshest and strongest. On they battled, always sending back the weakest. Finally, when but two degrees from the Pole, only the negro, four Eskimos, Mr. Peary and forty dogs remained.

Suppose we ask Mr. Peary, in his own language, to describe the final dash to the pole.

“This was that for which I had worked for thirty-two years; for which I had trained myself as for a race. For success now, in spite of my fifty-three years, I felt trim-fit for the demands of the coming days and eager to 114 be on the trail. As for my party, my equipment, and my supplies, I was in shape beyond my fondest dreams of earlier years. My party was as loyal and responsive to my will as the fingers of my right hand. Two of them had been my companions to the farthest point three years before. Two others were in Clark’s division, which had such a narrow escape at that time, and were now willing to go anywhere. My dogs were the very best. Almost all were powerful males, hard as nails and in good spirits. My supplies were ample for forty days.

“I decided that I should strain every nerve to make five marches of fifteen miles each, crowding these marches in such a way as to bring us to the end of the fifth long enough before noon to permit the immediate taking of an observation for latitude.”

Usually these marches were for ten or twelve hours, and the distance covered averaged about twenty-five miles. The dangers encountered are suggested by the following: “Near the end of the march I came upon a lead which was just opening. It was ten yards wide directly in front of me, but a few yards to the east was an apparently good crossing where the single crack was divided into several. I signaled to the sledges to hurry; then, running to the place, I had time to pick a road across the moving ice cakes and return to help teams across before the lead widened so as to be impassable. This passage was effected by my jumping from one cake to another, picking the way, and making sure that the 115 cake would not tilt under the weight of the dogs and the sledge, returning to the former cake where the dogs were, encouraging the dogs ahead while the driver steered the sledge across from cake to cake, and threw his weight from one side to the other so that it could not overturn. We got the sledges across several cracks so wide that while the dogs had no trouble in jumping, the men had to be pretty active in order to follow the long sledges.”

Luckily at the end of the fifth march they were less than two miles from the pole. Should you like to know how Mr. Peary felt at this eventful hour?

“Of course, I had many sensations that made sleep impossible for hours, despite my utter fatigue––the sensations of a lifetime; but I have no room for them here. The first thirty hours at the Pole were spent in taking observations; in going some ten miles beyond our camp, and some eight miles to the right of it; in taking photographs, planting my flags, depositing my records, studying the horizon with my telescope for possible land, and searching for a place to make a sounding. Ten hours after our arrival the clouds cleared before a light breeze from our left, and from that time until our departure on the afternoon of April 7th the weather was cloudless and flawless. The coldest temperature during the thirty hours was thirty-three degrees below zero, and the warmest twelve below.”

Thus it was that after the nations of the world had sent out over five hundred expeditions in search of the 116 North Pole, an American, educated in Old New England, schooled in hardship in the United States Navy, planted “Old Glory” at the northernmost point of this mighty world. To Admiral Peary, then, is conceded the greatest scientific triumph of the century and April sixth, 1909, is a memorable day in the history of America and the world.

THE AMERICAN’S CREED

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States, a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

––William Tyler Page.

In the summer of 1880 three speakers were advertised to deliver democratic addresses at a farmers’ picnic to be held in a grove near Salem, Illinois. When the eventful hour arrived, the only person present to hear the speeches was the owner of the grove. For an hour the speakers waited but no one else came. While each was disappointed and humiliated, it was a crushing blow to the young man who was to speak third on the list. This was his home community, and his own neighbors and townsmen had thus ignored him.

For six years he had been away to school, and during all that time he made a special study of public speaking. So good was he in the art of speaking that his college had heaped many honors upon him. He was chosen one of the speakers on graduation day, and most important of all, he had been chosen to represent his college in the annual oratorical contest with the other colleges of the state. Now, after all these honors, he had come back to his home vicinity, and for some mysterious reason the people would not hear him. Surely this was enough to dampen the ardor of any ordinary young man and put an end to his speaking career.

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Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
The Great Commoner

It was a hot August day in 1914. On every road entering a beautiful Indiana city, strings of automobiles were seen hurrying to the city. Farmers, busy as they were, forgot their work and hastened to the city. Merchants, too, had locked their stores and refused to sell goods. Why all the excitement? At the edge of the city, in a huge steel auditorium that seated thousands, the people were gathering––and such a multitude––people as far as the eye could see. Soon the speaker of the afternoon was introduced. For two hours he held that vast throng as no other man in America and possibly in the world could have done. So magnetic was his personality and so genuine his appeal that the people forgot the heat and gave him the closest possible attention.

Odd as it may seem, the speaker before this vast Chautauqua throng was the same man that, years before, had tried to speak near Salem when no one would hear him. Why the difference? What had he done that had made the people so eager to see and hear him?

To answer these questions it will be necessary to study his life. Mr. Bryan was born at Salem, Illinois, March 19, 1860. Though he is of Irish descent, his ancestors have lived in this country for more than a hundred years. Through all these years the Bryans have belonged to the middle class. While none of them have been very rich, on the other hand none have been extremely poor. Though members of the family have entered practically every profession, more have engaged in farming than in all the other professions combined.

Fortunately for Mr. Bryan, most of his boyhood was spent on a farm. When he was but six years of age his 120 father purchased a farm six miles from Salem. It was indeed an eventful day for young William when they moved to the large farm with its spacious farm house and broad lawns. From the first the animals interested him most. William’s father, seeing this, built a small deer park. Here the deer, unmolested by dogs or hunters, became so tame that the lad never tired of petting and feeding them.

With the abundant, nutritious food of the farm, with plenty of fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, William soon grew into a sturdy, broad-shouldered, deep-chested lad. Those who knew him best say that while the other boys always had their pockets filled with keys, strings, and tops, his were sure to be filled with cookies and doughnuts.

William’s first day in school was indeed eventful. Ten years old and large for his age, he seemed out of place in the first grade where the pupils were so much younger and smaller. Soon, however, the teacher discovered that he did not belong in this grade. Though he had never been at school, his faithful mother had taught him to read so well that he at once took his place with pupils of his own age.

After five years in the public school of Salem he was sent to Jacksonville, Illinois, where he attended Whipple Academy. From the Academy he entered Illinois College, also in Jacksonville. Mr. Bryan says that the thing that most impressed him in college was his tussle with Latin and Greek. From the first these dead 121 languages did not appeal to him. Again and again he pleaded with his parents to be permitted to drop these studies but they insisted on his taking the “Classical Course.”

Though he was of ideal size and build for football and baseball, neither appealed to him. The only forms of athletics that he liked were running and jumping. Only once was he able to carry away a prize. This was when he won the broad jump with twelve feet and four inches as the distance covered.

It was in speaking contests of all kinds that young Bryan took the deepest interest. When he was but a green freshman in the Academy, he had the courage to enter the declamatory contest. No one worked harder, but in spite of his best efforts he was given a place next to the foot of the list. Unwilling to yield to discouragement, he tried again the next year. This time he got third place.

The following September he entered college, and during his freshman year took part in two contests, getting second place in each. During his sophomore year, he had the satisfaction of winning first place in declamation. Then it was that he made his boldest effort. He delivered an oration that he himself had written, and again won first place. After these successes it was not to be wondered at that his college elected him to represent the school in the intercollegiate oratorical contest. Pitted against the ablest contestants of the other colleges of the 122 state, he was able to win second place, for which he received a prize of fifty dollars.

Suppose Mr. Bryan had decided when he lost his first three contests never to try again, thus yielding to defeat, do you think he ever could have become the famous orator that he now is?

From Mr. Bryan’s picture we see that he is a large, good-natured, friendly man. Should you like to know how he looked when he was a young fellow? If you should, the following from the pen of the lady who afterward became his wife will interest you.

“I saw him first in the parlors of the young ladies’ school which I attended in Jacksonville. He entered the room with several other students, was taller than the rest, and attracted my attention at once. His face was pale and thin; a pair of keen dark eyes looked out from beneath heavy brows; his nose was prominent, too large to look well, I thought; a broad, thin-lipped mouth, and a square chin, completed the contour of his face.

“He was neat, though not fastidious in dress, and stood firmly and with dignity. I noted particularly his hair and his smile, the former black in color, plentiful, fine in quality, and parted distressingly straight; the latter expansive and expressive.

“In later years his smile has been the subject of considerable comment, but the well rounded cheeks of Mr. Bryan now check its outward march. No one has seen the real breadth of his smile who did not see it in the 123 early days. Upon one occasion a heartless observer was heard to remark, ‘That man can whisper in his own ear,’ but this was a cruel exaggeration.”

Upon his graduation from Illinois College at the head of his class, he entered the Union College of Law in Chicago where he was graduated at the age of twenty-three. Immediately he hung out his shingle in Jacksonville, and waited for clients. Month after month he impatiently waited until finally it dawned upon him that among the old established lawyers of Jacksonville there was no room for an ambitious beginner. Then it was that he remembered the advice of Horace Greeley, “Young man, go West.”

Accordingly, with his talented young wife he went to Lincoln, Nebraska. Here fortune smiled upon him, for so rapidly did he make a place for himself that at the age of thirty he was chosen to represent his district in Congress.

If any of you have ever seen the United States Congress in session you will realize that Mr. Bryan must have been very much younger than most of the congressmen. Keen, quick, and eager to learn, the young Congressman made the most of every opportunity during the four years he was in Congress.

In 1896, or when Mr. Bryan was thirty-six years of age, his greatest opportunity came. Then it was that the Democratic party conferred upon him the highest honor within its power by selecting him as its candidate 124 for president. Though defeated in 1896, so great was the confidence the party had in him, that twice afterward his party asked him to run for president. Since he was defeated every time, it is only natural to ask what there is about him, after all, that is so great. Though the American people differ widely in their answers to the above query, most of them admit that he towers above the rank and file of American politicians in his pronounced Christian integrity, in his willingness to sacrifice for the sake of principle, and in his ability to move men with speech, for no doubt he is one of the greatest orators this continent has ever produced.

“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

––W. J. Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech.

In the year 1879, there was a sixteen year old boy living in the country near Detroit, Michigan. He was not fond of farm work but nevertheless he did his share in helping his father, who was a thrifty farmer. Day after day, this boy trudged back and forth two and one-half miles each way to the school house. In his spare hours when he was not farming, he had fitted up a work shop for his own use. There was a vise, a bow-string driven lathe and a rudely built forge. He had made these tools himself and was very proud of them. When he was only a small boy, he had made his first tool by taking one of his grandmother’s knitting needles, heating it red hot and plunging it into a bar of soap as he bent it into shape. Then he added a wooden handle that he had whittled and the tool was done.

As soon as he had something with which to work, he began to take to pieces all manner of things just for the fun of putting them together again. He says: “I must have taken apart and put together more than a thousand clocks and watches.” He thought it would be a fine thing to be able to make many good watches, and to make them all alike. He never realized this dream, but in later life he did make a good automobile, he made many of them, and he made them all alike.

126

Courtesy of Ford Motor Company

HENRY FORD
In His First Motor Car

His first step towards this great business undertaking happened before he was seventeen years of age, when he left his father’s farm and went to Detroit to work as a mechanic in a shop. He never returned to the farm, although for a time he lived on some land his father had given to him, and conducted a lumber business. All the time he was experimenting, and he wanted to make something that would go. By the time he was twenty-one years of age, he had built a farm locomotive mounted on cast-iron wheels taken from a mowing machine. It was not designed for any particular use, but was to serve as a general farm tractor, and he had great sport running it up and down the meadow while the cows fled in terror.

From that time his chief interest was in building wagons to be run by motors. His health was always good, he worked unceasingly, and slept just as little as possible, and at last, in 1893, he made what people called then, a wagon driven by gas; today we call it an automobile. It ran but was not a great success, and the public made fun of the inventor. This wagon driven by gas was the first Ford automobile and the man who invented it was Henry Ford. He had married and lived in a little house in Bagley Street, Detroit, Michigan. He was employed by the Edison Company, but he had a workshop of his own in his barn. There he built his first motor car. For material he used nothing but junk, as he had no money with which to buy costly materials for experiments.

Henry Ford does not know the word discouragement, so after his first failure he built another car and in 1898 128 placed it on the road. It was better than the first one, but there were still difficulties to be overcome. People laughed more than ever, and Detroit thought him mildly insane on the subject of “little buggies driven by gas,” as the newspapers called them. Then one day, when no one was paying any especial attention to him, Henry Ford made a car that would run on level ground, would run up and down hill, and go backward and forward. His problem was solved, and he began to make automobiles. Today he is the head of the Ford Motor Company which has its largest factory in Highland Park, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, not more than fifteen miles from his birthplace.

At the Highland Park plant, one thousand times a day a newborn car pushes open a door by itself and goes out into the world. At once these cars are loaded on trains and sent away, for the plant has no storage and there are always more orders than can be filled. The Ford cars are used by many persons, they are all made alike and they are made in large numbers. Henry Ford’s old dream about making watches has come true, only he makes automobiles instead of timepieces.

In his great factory the most improved machinery is used, and the business is run on a profit-sharing plan, which means that the daily pay of the men in his employ increases as the profit of the plant increases. A just amount is paid to each workman and Mr. Ford says: “If a man can make himself of any use at all, put him 129 on, give him his chance and if he tries to do the right thing, we can find a living for him any way.” Eight hours is the length of the working day with extra pay for overtime work. The wages in the Ford factories have always been above what is generally paid so there are always many persons who want to work there.

However, Henry Ford has two other great interests besides automobiles. They are boys and birds. His only child is a bright and earnest boy but Mr. Ford does not forget other boys in doing for his own. There are always a dozen or more boys that he is training and helping to prepare for life, thus giving to the world strong, helpful citizens.

As for birds, he has built two hundred bird houses in the grounds of his home. They are heated with electricity in winter so as to keep the birds’ drinking water from freezing, and by a clever arrangement of tubes, food can be sent electrically to each little house. Recently Mr. Ford brought from England three hundred and eighty song birds not native to the United States. They settled down and built nests in his trees and shrubbery. He hopes to have them increase and add to the beauty of our natural life.

His interest in birds and out of door life has been strengthened by his long friendship with John Burroughs, the naturalist, and the two have had many tramps and camping trips together. These excursions are Mr. Ford’s vacations and he likes to take them with this 130 great nature lover or with his other good friend, Thomas A. Edison, with whom he is most congenial.

Having no bad habits, perfect health, never being tired, willing to listen to others, able to decide quickly, and world-wide in his interests, Henry Ford is one of the twentieth century’s greatest public-spirited business men. No better illustration can be found than the fact that although Mr. Ford did not believe in war and was a man of peace, yet when the United States entered the World War, he hastened to Washington, offered his great factory to the government to make war supplies, and began running night and day to furnish our country with war-time necessities. If some one wished to choose for him a coat of arms they should select, “A file and hammer crossed, a warm, glowing heart placed above them,” while the words,

should be written underneath. This should be sufficient to describe the nature of the kindly, frank and unassuming man, who, with a large amount of money coming in each month, cares nothing for it as money but wishes to use it to promote the good will of the world.

Late one afternoon a tired judge was seated at his bench in the city of Denver. The docket showed that the next case to be brought before him was one for stealing. Anxiously he waited for the hardened criminals to be brought in, when lo and behold! three boys hardly in their teens were brought before him.

When asked what they had stolen, they replied, “Pigeons.” Beside the boys stood the old man whose pigeons had been stolen. To say that he was angry was putting it mildly.

As the boys described the pigeon loft and how they came to steal the pigeons, the judge became very absent-minded; for his mind went back to the time when he himself was a boy and had been in a crowd that had stolen pigeons. Odd as it may seem, the judge’s old gang had, years before, visited this same pigeon loft and stolen from this same old man. Little wonder then that the judge had a warm place in his heart for the boys who were now in trouble.

But the old man had been annoyed for months, had watched hours to catch the boys, and now that he had caught them, surely they should be punished severely. He was sure the boys should be sent to prison.

What should the judge do under the circumstances? Certainly he must see that the pigeons were protected, for they were fancy stock and the old man made his living by raising them.

132

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

BEN B. LINDSEY
“The Kids’ Judge”

Would sending the three boys to prison protect the old man and his pigeons? No, for no doubt the boys belonged to a gang, and unless the whole gang were caught, the thefts would continue. For a long time the judge studied the matter until finally he told the boys, that if they would go out and bring in the other members of the gang, he would be “white” with them; he would give them a square deal.

The boys eyed the judge critically. Did he mean what he was saying? The boys liked his looks, for he was young and not much larger than themselves. Then, too, he did not talk down at them from the bench, but had left his bench, sat among them, and talked like one of them.

It wasn’t long before the boys were convinced that the judge was their friend. He understood them, and his heart was in the right place, as they put it. Accordingly, they went out and brought in the other members of the gang. In his talk with the gang, the judge was as kind and frank as he had been when talking with the three boys the day before. He told the boys how the old man made his living by raising pigeons, and he asked them whether they thought it was square for them to steal his pigeons. They agreed that it was not.

Then he told the gang how the old man and the police had caught the three boys stealing the pigeons, 134 and he asked them whether they thought it would help matters to send the boys to prison. As this remedy did not appeal to the gang the judge asked what should be done. After some discussion, the members of the gang agreed that the best thing to do was to give the judge their word of honor that they would never molest the pigeon loft again. Thus it was that the old man’s rights were protected and at the same time the boys were saved from the disgrace of a prison sentence.

The above is but one among hundreds of instances in which Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Denver has shown that he is indeed the boy’s friend. Since he is the boy’s friend, all boys are interested in his life.

Since he was born in Tennessee in 1869, it is not difficult for us to figure that he is now in the prime of life. As he looks back over his boyhood days he admits that he can recall little else than hardship. His father, who had been an officer in the Confederate army, died when Ben was about eighteen years of age. Before the war the Lindseys had been in comfortable circumstances, but so great were the ravages of war that at its close the family had lost everything. Ben, therefore, was born in poverty. So severe were the hardships in the South that the Lindseys came north and finally settled in Denver, Colorado. When Ben was twelve, the family was so poor that the lad could not go to school. Forced to work while yet so young, he had to pick up any odd jobs that came his way. For a time he was messenger 135 boy, and then he managed a newspaper route. Since he was once a newsboy, is it any wonder that he understood newsboys? It is also interesting to know that he afterward became a judge in the same city in which he used to peddle newspapers.

Though Ben could not attend day school, he did go to night school regularly. As he was not robust, it was difficult, however, for the lad after delivering messages all day to settle down to hard study in a night school. But Ben liked books and was not afraid of hard work.

A little later he secured employment in a real-estate office. Here he had some leisure time. Can you guess what he did with it? Did you know that about the best way to learn whether or not a boy is destined to become a great man is to find out what he does with his leisure hours? Ben, now a young man, spent his time in studying law. To play games or go to shows would have been much more interesting than studying great law books, but he was determined to climb regardless of the cost. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-four, he was made a “full-fledged” lawyer.

In his practice of law there was nothing exceptional until at the age of thirty-two he was made county judge. For weeks he discharged the usual duties connected with his office until one evening a case came before the court that changed his entire life. The story is as follows:

“The hour was late; the calendar was long, and Judge Lindsey was sitting overtime. Weary of the weary work, 136 everybody was forcing the machinery of the law to grind through at top speed the dull routine of justice. All sorts of cases go before this court, grand and petty, civil and criminal, complicated and simple. The petty larceny case was plain; it could be disposed of in no time. A theft had been committed; no doubt of that. Had the prisoner at the bar done it? The sleepy policeman had his witnesses on hand and they swore out a case. There was no doubt about it; hardly any denial. The law prescribed precisely what was to be done to such ‘cases,’ and the bored judge ordered that that thing be done. That was all. In the same breath with which he pronounced sentence, the court called for the ‘next case,’ and the shift was under way, when something happened, something out of the ordinary.

“A cry! an old woman’s shriek, rang out of the rear of the room. There was nothing so very extraordinary about that. Our courts are held in public; and every now and then somebody makes a disturbance such as this old woman made when she rose now with that cry on her lips and, tearing her hair and rending her garments, began to beat her head against the wall. It was the duty of the bailiff to put the person out, and that officer in this court moved to do his duty.

“But Judge Lindsey upheld the woman, saying: ‘I had noticed her before. As my eye wandered during the evening it had fallen several times on her, crouched there among the back benches, and I remember I thought how 137 like a cave dweller she looked. I didn’t connect her with the case, any case. I didn’t think of her in any human relationship whatever. For that matter, I hadn’t considered the larceny case in any human way. And there’s the point: I was a judge, judging ‘cases’ according to the ‘law,’ till the cave dweller’s mother-cry startled me into humanity. It was an awful cry, a terrible sight, and I was stunned. I looked at the prisoner again, but with new eyes now, and I saw the boy, an Italian boy. A thief? No. A bad boy? Perhaps, but not a lost criminal.

“‘I called him back, and I had the old woman brought before me. Comforting and quieting her, I talked with the two together, as mother and son this time, and I found that they had a home. It made me shudder. I had been about to send that boy to a prison among criminals when he had a home and a mother to go to. And that was the law! The fact that that boy had a good home; the circumstances which led him to––not steal, but ‘swipe’ something; the likelihood of his not doing it again––these were ‘evidence’ pertinent, nay, vital, to his case.

“‘Yet the law did not require the production of such evidence. The law? Justice? I stopped the machinery of justice to pull that boy out of its grinders. But he was guilty; what was to be done with him? I didn’t know. I said I would take care of him myself, but I didn’t know what I meant to do, except to visit him and his mother at their home. And I did visit them, often, and––well, we––his mother and I, with the boy helping––we 138 saved the boy, and today he is a fine young fellow, industrious, self-respecting, and a friend of the Court.’”

So deep was the impression that this case made upon Judge Lindsey that he could not keep from thinking about it. As he thought, he made up his mind that boys and girls should not be tried in the same court with grown people. He also concluded that in trying a boy the important thing was not what he had done, but why he had done it. To discover and remove the cause of the crime was of much greater importance than punishing him after the crime had been committed.

Furthermore, he thought it very wrong to put a boy in a prison with hardened criminals. He looked upon the prison not as a place where men are made better but as a school of vice. To send a boy to prison, then, must be the last resort.

While it was not hard for Judge Lindsey to see all these things, it was difficult indeed for him to make the people of Denver see them. Gradually, however, he carried on his campaign of enlightenment until today Denver is pointed out as one of a few cities that knows how successfully to handle its boys. With its excellent juvenile court and its sane probation laws it has blazed the path for other cities to follow.

And to whom are these changes due? We answer, to the man who by dint of hard work struggled all the way from newsboy on the streets to judge on the bench––Ben B. Lindsey.

Two sisters and a brother lived with their parents in the country near what is now the town of Beloit, Wisconsin. They had many pleasures in their free, healthy life, and they were all fond of writing down in diaries accounts of their plays, their hopes, and their plans. One day the older of the two girls wrote:

“I once thought I should like to be Queen Victoria’s maid of honor; then I wanted to go and live in Cuba; next I made up my mind that I would be an artist; next that I would be a mighty hunter of the prairies––but now I suppose I am to be a music teacher, simply that and nothing more.”

She never became any of these things, but she did grow into such a wise and noble woman that the entire world recognized the good she did and was glad to honor her. The little girl’s name was Frances Willard, and the great office that was hers in later life was the presidency of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

Frances’ father and mother moved to Wisconsin from the State of New York when their children were very small. Then the new home seemed to be in the wilderness, and the family were indeed pioneers. Frances had a genius for planning the most exciting games. She was always the leader of the three, and delighted in organizing her willing playmates into Indian bands, or into daring sailors of unknown seas. The other two children called her Frank, and were glad to have her “think up” wonderful plays.

140

FRANCES E. WILLARD
Founder of the
World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

One day long before Frances was twelve years of age her sister wrote in her journal, “Frank said we might as well have a ship if we did live on shore; so we took a hen coop pointed at the top, put a big plank across it, and stood up, one at each end, with an old rake handle apiece to steer with. Up and down we went, slow when it was a calm sea and fast when there was a storm, until the old hen clucked and the chickens all ran in and we had a lively time. Frank was captain and I was mate. We made out charts of the sea, rules about how to navigate when it was good weather and how when it was bad. We put up a sail made of an old sheet and had great fun, until I fell off and hurt me.”

So you see they must have had many daring adventures. Frances longed for a horse to ride, but there was none the children could have. This did not discourage her in the least. She wanted to ride and so she decided to train their pet calf. The calf’s name was Dime, and Frances said, “Dime is an unusually smart calf, she can be trained so we can ride her.” So she proceeded to do it and the children rode Dime to their hearts’ content.

But all of their play was not out of doors. Mr. and Mrs. Willard had brought with them from their old home many books, and the children liked to spend hours reading in their library. The father and mother taught them and encouraged them to study. Frances liked to 142 write, and, as she was a neat and orderly girl, she did not want her books and papers disturbed. In her sister Mary’s journal we read how she managed to have her belongings untouched:

“Today Frank gave me half her dog Frisk that she bought lately, and for her pay I made a promise which mother witnessed and here it is:

“I, Mary Willard, promise never to touch anything lying or being upon Frank Willard’s writing desk which father gave her. I promise never to ask either by speaking, writing, or signing, or in any other way, any person or body to take off or put on anything on said stand and desk without special permission from said Frank Willard. I promise never to touch anything which may be in something upon her stand and desk. I promise never to put anything on it or in anything on it; I promise if I am writing or doing anything else at her desk to go away the moment she tells me to. If I break the promise I will let the said F. W. come into my room and go to my trunk or go into any place where I keep my things and take anything of mine she likes. All this I promise unless entirely different arrangements are made. These things I promise upon my most sacred honor.”

As Frances grew older she longed to travel. She had a great desire to take a large part in the work of the world; but this did not seem possible for two reasons. First, she had no money, and in the second place, she lived in such an out of the way settlement that a journey 143 to the great cities of the world seemed to be nothing but a pleasant dream that would never come true.

Once in one of these moments of longing, she wrote,

This was her first poem, and she grew very fond of writing and then reading aloud her own efforts. The children printed a paper, and Frances was the editor. While writing articles to appear in it she would often retire to a seat high up in a favorite tree. On the tree she hung a sign,

“The Eagle’s Nest
Beware.”

You may be sure the other children left her undisturbed until her important writing was finished.

But it was not long before Frances went out into the world of which she dreamed and wrote, for she was not eighteen years old when she began teaching. This experience gave her great pleasure. She liked her 144 pupils and was earnest and enthusiastic. There were two questions that she kept always before her pupils: “What are you going to be in the world, and what are you going to do?” Every one who ever had Frances Willard for his teacher heard these two questions many times, and numerous young people were influenced by her to lead earnest, helpful lives.

During one of her summer vacations, she made the acquaintance of a warm-hearted, generous girl who became one of her closest friends. This young girl, of about the same age as Frances Willard, had no mother. Her father, who was exceedingly wealthy, was deeply immersed in his business, so his daughter was glad to have her new friend with her often.

One day she thought, “How splendid it would be for us to go abroad.” To think was to act with her, and almost before Frances knew it they had started for Europe. They remained there three years and during that time visited many remote places seldom seen by the average person traveling in foreign lands. Frances Willard wrote many accounts of their experiences which were published in American magazines.

Upon her return to the United States she lectured about her journey and became such an excellent public speaker that every one wanted to hear her on any subject she chose, so she continued to lecture after she ceased giving her travel talks. It is estimated that she spoke on an average of once a day for ten years.

Meanwhile, she was made president of a college for young ladies in the town of Evanston, Illinois. Later she became a member of the faculty of Northwestern University in the same community. Here she brought wonderful help to her students, and they said of her that she was so interesting “she turned common things to gold.”

But her life was not to be given entirely to teaching, and after a few years she was drawn into the temperance work. This was then in its beginning. Liquor was sold freely in every state, and there were no laws regulating its sale or distribution.

Miss Willard saw the sorrow and suffering caused by intemperance and she determined to war against this great evil. Her first work was done with what was called the Woman’s Crusade. Bands of women met and prayed in front of saloons. Often they asked to hold brief services in the saloons and then they urged men to give up drinking. Going to these places and praying in public was distasteful to her, but Miss Willard felt she must do so.

Soon, because of her zeal, the Chicago branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union gave her an office. From that time she rose rapidly from office to office in the great organization until she was made World President of the International W. C. T. U. in 1879. She brought the necessity for temperance before the people of the United States as they had never seen it 146 before, and always she said to them with tongue and pen, “Temperance is necessary for God and Home and Native Land.”

She went over the entire country speaking to thousands of persons and turning their thoughts toward the great cause. Little by little she gained ground, made progress, and could say of the spread of interest: “It was like the fire we used to kindle on the western prairie, a match and a wisp of dry grass was all that was needed, and behold the magnificent spectacle of a prairie on fire, sweeping across the landscape swift as a thousand untrained steeds and no more to be captured than a hurricane.”

Today the results of Frances Willard’s work are seen in the great and growing interest in prohibition. What was to her a dream is coming to pass; what she hoped for will, in all probability, soon be a reality, and her great achievement lies in having made the question, “Shall we permit our homes and our country to be ruined by intemperance?” one of national importance, a question that every citizen of the United States must answer.

In Statuary Hall of our Nation’s Capitol, where stand the statues of those persons whose deeds have earned them the right to fame and honor, there is only one statue of a woman. That woman is Frances E. Willard.

Not so many years ago a little girl, living in a small Illinois town, had a strange dream. She was quite a little girl; just old enough to be in the second grade at school, nevertheless she always remembered that dream. She says, “I dreamed that every one in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. The village street remained as usual, the village blacksmith shop was ‘all there,’ even a glowing fire upon the forge, and the anvil in its customary place near the door, but no human being was within sight. They had all gone around the edge of the hill to the village cemetery, and I alone remained in the deserted world. I stood in the blacksmith shop pondering on how to begin, and never once knew how, although I fully realized that the affairs of the world could not be resumed until at least one wheel should be made and something started.”

The little girl dreamed this dream more than once, but she never made the wagon wheel. However, when she was a grown woman she founded and built up something that has become a great force for good in the largest city of her native state.

Perhaps you are wondering what she did. She went to live in one of the poorest and most wretched parts of Chicago. There she furnished her house exactly as she would if it had been in some beautiful street. She called her home a Settlement, and invited her neighbors to come in daily for comfort and cheer.

148

JANE ADDAMS
Founder of Hull House, Chicago

In her description of the street in which she lived she says,

“Halsted Street is thirty-two miles long, and one of the great thoroughfares of Chicago. Polk street crosses it midway between the stock yards to the south and the ship building yards to the north. For the six miles between these two industries the street is lined with shops of butchers and grocers, with dingy and gorgeous saloons, and places for the sale of ready-made clothing. Once this was the suburbs, but the city has grown steadily and this site has corners on three or four foreign colonies.”

It was in the year 1899 that Jane Addams, for that is the name of the little girl who dreamed she was to make a wagon wheel and help start something in the world, began living in Halsted Street, and named her home Hull House after the first owner.

In those early days people asked her over and over why she had come to live in Halsted Street when she could afford to live among richer people.

One old man used to shake his head and say it was the strangest thing he had ever known. However, there came a time when he thought it was most natural for the settlement to be there to feed the hungry, care for the sick, give pleasure to the young and comfort to the aged.

From the very first Miss Addams and her helpers made their neighbors understand that they were ready to do even the humblest services. They took care of children and nursed the sick. They even washed the dishes and cleaned the house for some of the poor foreign women who had to work all night scrubbing big office buildings.

Besides helping in true neighborly fashion, they brought many joys to the people about them. Some of these were quite by chance, as once when an old Italian woman cried with pleasure over a bunch of red roses that she saw at a reception Miss Addams gave. She was surprised, she said, that they had been “brought so fresh all the way from Italy.” No one could make her believe they had been grown in Chicago. She had lived there six years and never seen any, but in Italy they bloomed everywhere all summer.

Now the sad thing about this story was that during all the six years of her stay in Chicago she had lived within ten blocks of a flower store, and one car fare would have been enough to take her to one of Chicago’s beautiful public parks. No one had ever told her about them, and so all she knew of the city was the dirty street in which she lived.

Miss Addams learned that most of the foreigners were as helpless as this woman in finding anything to bring them pleasure. So Hull House became a place where hundreds of persons went. Some joined classes 151 and studied, but at first it was for social purposes that the Settlement was used the most.

The people lived in tiny, crowded rooms and the only place they had to gather in celebration of weddings and birthdays, and meet each other was the saloon halls. These halls could be rented for a very small sum with the understanding that the company would spend much money at the saloon bar. Because of this custom many a party that started out quiet and orderly ended with great disorder. So you can see that every one would be glad to have Hull House where they could go and enjoy themselves comfortably with their friends.

A day at Hull House is most interesting. In the morning come many little children to the Kindergarten. They are followed by older children who come to afternoon classes, while in the evening every room is filled with grown persons who meet in some form of study, club or social life.

But if you should go there now you would find instead of one building, with which Miss Addams began, thirteen buildings and forty persons living there to help to teach anyone who may come to Hull House.

There are classes in foreign languages, and one may study in the night classes almost any subject that is taught in a high school. Besides these classes there are concerts and plays. Hull House has a theater of its own, and the boys and girls of the neighborhood act out their favorite dramas there. One story that has been 152 told frequently shows the kind of plays the boys and girls make. Almost every one thinks this play was given in the Hull House Theater but Miss Addams writes:

I have told the story you have reference to several times. It is about a settlement boys’ club, not at Hull House, who were asked to write a play on the origin of the American flag. They were told the climax must come in the third act, etc., but were given no outline.

The play was as follows: The first act was at “the darkest hour of the American Revolution.” A sentry walking up and down in front of the camp, says to a soldier: “Aint it fierce? We aint got no flag for this here Revolution.” And the soldier replies: “Yes, aint it fierce?” That is the end of the first act. Second act: The same soldier appears before George Washington and says: “Aint it fierce? We aint got no flag for this here Revolution.” And George Washington replies: “Yes, aint it fierce?” and that is the end of the second act. Third Act: George Washington went to call on Betsy Ross, who lived on Arch Street in Philadelphia, and said: “Mistress Ross, aint it fierce? We aint got no flag for this here Revolution,” and Betsy Ross replied: “Yes, aint it fierce? Hold the baby and I will make one.”

I sometimes tell this with a little more elaboration but I have given you what the boys actually wrote. Of course, it has always been detailed in the line of a funny story and cannot be taken too seriously.

Very sincerely yours, 
JANE ADDAMS 

Is it not wonderful what Miss Addams has done for the people who had no comfort or care? Perhaps she has but kept a promise she made to her father when she was only seven years of age.

They were driving through the poor, mean streets of her native town of Cedarville, Illinois. She had never seen this particular part of the town before, and 153 asked her father many times why persons lived in such dreadful places. He tried to tell her what it meant to be very poor. She listened eagerly and then exclaimed, “When I grow up, I am going to live in a great, big house right among horrid little houses like these.”

In her “big house” on Halsted Street many lives have been brightened and thousands have found the help that started them upon useful careers.

Jane Addams is one of the noblest women our country has had, and she has been honored by Chicago and the entire United States for her life of service.

A member of the English Parliament called her “the only saint America has produced,” while an enthusiastic Chicago man, when asked to name the greatest living man in America, answered, “Jane Addams.”

When in Chicago, try to go out to Hull House and visit for an afternoon or evening. There are so many kinds of activities going on all the time you can see what you like best, whether it be gymnastics, acting, music, pottery, carpentery, or any of the literary or industrial pursuits.

Later on you will want to read the book Miss Addams has written of her experience called, “Twenty Years of Hull House.”

“The union of hearts, the union of hands, and the flag of our Union forever.”

––G. P. Morris.

154

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

JOHN MITCHELL
President of the United Mine Workers

Have you ever thought how common it is for the persons who work for others to think that they do not have enough pay for what they do? The boy who mows the lawn wants more than the landlady is willing to pay. Thus it was in 1902 when thousands of coal miners in Pennsylvania became dissatisfied with their wages and started a great movement to force their employers to pay them more.

On one side were the rich men who owned the mines. They, eager to make as much money for themselves as possible, were not willing to pay the miners fair wages. Furthermore, they would not spend money to make the mines safe for the men who worked in them. Accordingly, the living conditions among the miners were wretched indeed. Poorly paid, they were forced to dwell in houses that were little more than huts, and were required to live on the coarsest fare. So dangerous were the mines that accidents were of almost daily occurrence; yet nothing could be done as the miners were without a leader. True, labor agitators came and with silver speech aroused the miners, but they did not tell them what to do.

For a long time the battle cloud grew darker until finally the whole nation became alarmed. So grave was the situation that Theodore Roosevelt, then president, was asked to help avert the crisis that seemed inevitable. 156 At once the president left Washington for the scene of conflict. Day after day he sought among the sullen, half-crazed men for some solution of the difficulty, until finally he discovered a man big enough to bring order out of confusion.

Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in speaking of this discovery, says: “From the inferno of the coal-strike dates the cementing of those ties of friendship and comradeship which have bound John Mitchell and Theodore Roosevelt. The president, plunging into the heart of the strike, sought and found the man whose hand held the pulse of events. He found him, haggard and white with the strain of a great exhaustion, upheld by the inspiration of a great purpose, and forthwith John Mitchell, coal-miner, son of a coal-miner, came into a place in the Roosevelt esteem which few men have equaled and no man surpassed. When at the White House conference of American governors, the president invited as guests of honor those five Americans who, in his judgment, ranked foremost in current progress, John Mitchell, the labor man, was high in the quintette.” To have a plain coal-miner thus honored by the President of the United States is so exceptional that we cannot help wondering what there was about Mr. Mitchell that earned for him such distinction. To discover the source of his greatness it is necessary to study his life.

John Mitchell was born in the cottage of a humble coal-miner at Braidwood, Illinois, in 1870. In those 157 days Braidwood was a dreary, dirty mining town almost surrounded by broad stretches of swamp.

When John was but three years of age his mother died. His stepmother, who no doubt meant well, was not affectionate; on the contrary she was very severe. As they were very poor she had to take in washings, and day after day it fell to John’s lot to help his stepmother with the washings.

When he was six years of age, his father, the only real friend he had in the world, was brought home dead, killed in a mine disaster. In speaking of this period in his life Mr. Mitchell says: “The poverty and hardships that followed were marked by one circumstance that is imprinted indelibly upon my memory and which has had an impelling influence upon my whole life. My father had served a full term of enlistment as a volunteer in the Civil War. When he was discharged from the army he brought home with him his soldier’s clothes, and I remember so well that when we had not sufficient bed clothing to keep us warm in the cold winter nights, I would arise and get the heavy soldier’s coat and spread it over my little half-brother and myself. When we were snug and warm beneath it I would feel so happy and proud that my father had been an American soldier. And through all the years that have passed since then I have felt that same pride in the memory of my father, and in the love of country which, along with a good name, was our sole heritage from him.”

When John was about ten, his stepmother married again. From the first his stepfather did not like him, and soon he became so cruel that the boy’s heart was completely broken. With no home, with no one who cared for him, the big world seemed cold indeed.

Finally, unable to stand the abuse of his stepfather longer, he gathered his few belongings in a small bundle and started out to make his own way in the world. For a boy of only ten this was by no means easy. From house to house he asked for work until finally a farmer gave him a job. Though the hours were long and the work heavy, John stuck to it for more than a year when he went to a mine in Braidwood and got a job as breaker boy. Here he remained until he was twelve when he decided to go west. With no money and no friends he worked his way by slow stages all the way from Illinois to Colorado. He had hoped that mining conditions would be much better in Colorado, but found them even worse than they had been in Illinois. Unable to earn enough to supply the bare necessities of life, the miners were suffering hardship and want.

Thus surrounded by misery, John, though but a lad, found himself trying to think out ways of helping these unfortunate men and their families, for he could not believe that it was right for them to suffer as they did.

Finally conditions in Colorado became so bad that John, then twenty years of age, decided to return to Spring Valley, Illinois. Here, for the first time in his 159 life, he saw a labor union so conducted that it was a force. The members of this union, all working men, met each week and discussed matters that were of interest to all. After discussing the topics they passed resolutions which they presented to the mine owners. In this way they were able to secure better wages, shorter hours of work, and safer mines in which to work.

In these labor meetings young Mitchell took an active part and soon developed ability as a public speaker. From the first his advancement in the ranks of organized labor was rapid, so rapid in fact that at thirty we find Mitchell president of the United Mine Workers of America. At the time he became president the organization had but about forty thousand members, but under his skillful leadership it grew until in 1908 its membership numbered over three hundred thousand men. Mr. Mitchell is still in the prime of life and is one of our most skillful and trusted labor leaders.

Better to appreciate the worth of the man, let us consider the following tribute to him: “He chose to use this unusual ability for the many rather than for himself alone. It seemed better to him that many thousands should eat more and better bread each day than that he should have for himself ease and luxury.

“Andrew Carnegie, beginning as John Mitchell did, in poverty and ignorance, made himself one of the foremost men of his time in the finance of the world. Behind him lies, as the result of his life work, a better system of 160 refining steel, innumerable libraries––his gifts, and bearing his name,––a hundred millionaires and more––his one-time lieutenants––and personal wealth so great as to tax his gigantic intellect to find means for its expenditure.

“John Mitchell, in a life much shorter, leaves behind him not a better system of refining steel, not a hundred millionaires, not innumerable libraries with his name in stone over the doors, but better living conditions for four hundred thousand miners––more wages, fewer hours of labor, less dangerous mine conditions, far-reaching laws for greater safety, a better understanding between capital and labor.”

“Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument,––not of oppression and terror––but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.”

––Daniel Webster.

A pleasant-faced little woman was talking to many persons in a great hall. She wore a dark dress. On the front of it were three white stars joined by slender chains. In the center of each one was a blue letter. The first letter was V, the second was P, and the third was L. Their meaning is Volunteer Prison League.

The little woman was Maude Ballington Booth, and she was explaining the work of this league, for she founded it. She said that she had come from England to the United States many years ago. Upon reaching here one of the first places she visited was a great prison in California. There she saw so much sadness and misery that she could not rest until she did something to help the men and women who were shut behind iron bars.

She began her work by holding a meeting in Sing Sing Prison on the Hudson River in the State of New York. She told the men that she was their friend and believed in them. She declared that there was no one so cast down or disgraced that he could not rise and make something of himself, if he would only try. Many of the men who heard Mrs. Booth that day had no families and had even lost trace of all their relatives. She said they could write her letters and she would answer. They had never before had any one treat them so kindly, and so letters by the hundred reached Mrs. Booth. One young man scarcely more than a boy, wrote her thanking her for the kind letter she had sent him. He called her “Little Mother.” Soon this title became known, and all up and down the prisons of the United States men came to talk of the Little Mother and look for her coming; for her first work in Sing Sing Prison was so successful that she went from state to state organizing Volunteer Prison Leagues.

162

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

MAUDE BALLINGTON BOOTH
Founder of the Volunteer Prison League

It is not always easy to do right even when one is well, happy, and in his own home. Think, then, how hard a task the men in prison found it when they became members of the new league! The day a man joined, he had given to him a white button with a blue star and in the middle of the star was “Look Up and Hope.” He promised to do five things:

1. He would pray every morning and night.

2. He would read faithfully in the little Day Book the league sent him.

3. No bad language should soil his lips.

4. He would keep the rules of the prison.

5. He would try to encourage others, too, in right doing, and when possible get new members for the league.

From the moment a man put on a button, his guards and fellow prisoners watched to see if he would keep his promise. A framed copy of what he promised to do was hung in his cell as a daily reminder. If a man was strong enough to accept these five conditions, he came to be a changed person. He wanted to do right, and he 164 looked forward to the time when he would be free and could once more try anew in the big world.

Many persons told Mrs. Booth her plan would never work, but one by one men began to prove that it did. First there were dozens, then there were hundreds of men returning to their homes or going out to succeed in the business world.

By and by Mrs. Booth saw there should be places where the men with no families could go when they left prison. So she started “Hope Halls.” These are homes in the different large cities of the United States. The Volunteer Prison League has officers who manage them but the general public is never told where these houses are.

In bygone days many men upon leaving prison have been led away by old evil companions. Others have found no place to stay and no work open for them because a cold, unthinking public had called them “jail birds.” Mrs. Booth wanted these men to have a chance. Today a man who belongs to the league can, upon leaving prison, be directed to the nearest Hope Hall. There he can stay in comfortable quarters until he gets work. Kind friends help him and many business firms have come to take the word of the manager of Hope Hall. They give the man work and he goes out to take his place as a man among men.

Mrs. Booth has given her life to building up this league, and for many years earned all the money that 165 was needed for running expenses. She did this by writing, and speaking in public. Everywhere she went the people listened to her story and many were glad to help her.

Although we claim her as an American, Maude Ballington Booth was born in a pretty little English village. Her father was the rector of the little church, and her mother was a loving woman devoted to her home. She died when Maude was fifteen years of age and on the moss-covered stone that marks her grave are the words: “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever.”

From such a home the young girl went to London. There she met Ballington Booth, son of General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. They were married and she came to the United States with him to interest Americans in the cause of the Salvation Army. This was a hard task. Oftentimes the army was jeered openly. The Booths were actually stoned while holding meetings in the streets. But this did not stop them. Their work grew, and at last they founded the Volunteers of America and became the head of this order.

The busiest persons generally have time to do many things. So it was with Maude Ballington Booth, for she wrote a number of books about her work with prisoners, as well as lovely fairy tales for her little boy and girl. These children missed their mother very much 166 when she went away to speak, so the next best thing to having her at home was to have the stories she made for them. These stories were sure to have accounts of pet animals in them, suggesting to the Booth children their own pets, and the following description of Snowball shows how well Mrs. Booth could picture the feelings of an insulted pussy cat.

“The three children seated themselves by the stately white cat; slowly the ragged coat was opened and out sprang a frisky plebeian kitten right under the Angora’s aristocratic nose. What a picture it was. The little black kitten startled and dazed by the light and warmth, and a great prince of a cat towering over her. Snowball was frozen into an attitude of horror at the unexpected apparition. Every hair stood erect and his back looked like a deformed hunch, while his yellow eyes flashed fire.

“‘Naughty, naughty Snowball,’ called Baby, when the cats had gazed at each other for a full minute. ‘It’s little, and it’s cold and it’s hungry.’

“Whatever he thought of Baby’s reproof, Snowball did think it was time to act, and like a flash the white paw darted at the offending kitten’s ear, and, I am ashamed to say, he spit most crossly in its frightened little face, then at one bound he sprang to the mantle-piece and sat there growling. The children looked dismayed; the little kitten stood looking up at its unsociable host with a sweet, questioning little face, uttering mild little mews of protest in answer to his thunderous growls.

“Then Brown Eyes’ wrath broke, and folding the kitten in loving arms, he said to Snowball, ‘You bad, ungrateful ill natured cat, I am surprised at you, petted and cuddled and fed on good things, you turn and spit at a poor little kitten, who only looked up into your face and asked you to love it. We’ll go away and leave you. You can stay there, and we’ll get a saucer of cream for this kitten who is far nicer than you, cross cat; you bad cat, we’ll leave you to yourself.’

“Left to himself Snowball repented but, alas! the door was shut. The merry voices that resounded through the house did not call him, while through the still room sounded the voice of his taunting enemy, that hateful clock, the words of which his conscience could so well interpret, ‘Cross cat, bad cat, bad cat.’”

For years Mrs. Booth went from place to place throughout the United States raising money for the Volunteer Prison League, but when her father died he left her a small fortune. Now she uses this money for the great cause she loves, and is spared the hard work of traveling and speaking. Those who have heard her, remember a small woman with a soft, beautiful voice. This voice urged the world not to look at trouble and failure, but to lend a helping hand to men and women who want to lead a better life by following the stars of hope.

168

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

ANDREW CARNEGIE
Founder of Many Libraries

Have you a library in your town? What is it called? Should you like to know why Andrew Carnegie decided to spend millions and millions of dollars in building beautiful libraries in this country and Scotland? I should like to tell you, for the story is very interesting.

Mr. Carnegie was born in far away Scotland in the year 1835. His father was a poor man who earned his living by weaving linen by hand. Soon machines were invented for the weaving of linen. As these machines could weave more cheaply, those who had made a living by hand weaving were thrown out of work. “Andie’s” father was thus thrown out of employment and, hardly knowing which way to turn, decided to come to America.

Accordingly, when Andie was seven years of age, in company with his parents and brother, he came to this land of promise. In a land so large, it was not an easy matter for them to decide where to live. Finally they decided to settle in Allegheny City, just across the river from Pittsburg.

After the home was settled, one of the first questions to be solved was, whether Andie should go to school or go to work. But what could a boy so small do? He could be a bobbin boy in a big factory, he was told. So as bobbin boy, we soon see him earning his first money. Can you guess what his first wages were? From early 170 morning until late at night he worked and, for a whole week’s work received but one dollar and twenty cents.

So faithful and energetic was he, that he was soon promoted to engine-boy at a salary of a dollar and eighty cents a week. While the increase in salary pleased him, the work was not so pleasant, for he had to work in a damp cellar away from fresh air and sunlight. Then, too, he was alone most of the time.

It was while he was engine-boy that an event happened that caused him later in life to build libraries. Suppose we invite Mr. Carnegie, in his own language, to tell us about it.

“There were no fine libraries then, but in Allegheny City, where I lived, there was a Colonel Anderson, who was well-to-do and of a philanthropic turn. He announced, about the time I first began to work, that he would be in his library at home, every Saturday, ready to lend books to working boys and men. He had only about four hundred volumes, but I doubt if ever so few books were put to better use. Only one who has longed, as I did, for Saturday to come, that the spring of knowledge might be opened anew to him, can imagine what Colonel Anderson did for me and other boys of Allegheny City. Quite a number of them have risen to eminence, and I think their rise can be traced easily to this splendid opportunity.”

No doubt it was the kindness of Colonel Anderson that prompted Mr. Carnegie, later in life, to bestow his wealth for the founding of libraries.

Since the work as engine-boy had never appealed to Andie, he was delighted when another promotion was earned. This time he was made messenger boy in a telegraph office in Pittsburg at a salary of two dollars and fifty cents a week. In speaking of this period Mr. Carnegie said: “If you want an idea as to heaven on earth, imagine what it is to be taken from a dark cellar, where I fired the boiler from morning until night, and dropped into an office, where light shone from all sides, with books, papers, and pencils in profusion around me, and oh, the tick of those mysterious brass instruments on the desk, annihilating space and conveying intelligence to the world. This was my first glimpse of paradise, and I walked on air.”

Fortunately, the man in charge of the office, a Scotchman by the name of James Reid, took a liking to the Scotch lad and began to help him by teaching him telegraphy. Accordingly, during the leisure moments when Andie had no messages to deliver he studied so diligently that in a remarkably short time he became a skillful telegraph operator.

At this time his father died, leaving the support of the family to Andie. To support them he must earn more money, and so he left his job as messenger boy to become a telegraph operator on the Pennsylvania railroad. While thus engaged as an operator he invented a system of train dispatching that, each year, saved the company thousands of dollars. This invention attracted 172 the attention of the railroad officials to young Carnegie, and he was made private secretary to Colonel Scott, vice-president of the road, and a little later was made superintendent of the Western division of the Pennsylvania railroad, all before he was thirty years of age.

It was while he was superintendent of the railroad that Mr. Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping car, came to him with the invention. Mr. Carnegie listened to a description of the proposed cars. He saw that the idea was good and adopted it at once. Thus it was that on Mr. Carnegie’s division of the Pennsylvania railroad the first sleeping cars in the United States were run.

Prior to this time all the railroad bridges had been made of wood; but it occurred to Carnegie that bridges should be made of steel, rather than wood. Accordingly, he organized the Keystone Bridge Company that built the first steel bridge across the Ohio River. As the bridge business grew, Mr. Carnegie decided that he could make more money by making his own steel for the bridges. To do this he organized a company and built the Union Iron Mills. So profitable were these mills that in a short time he purchased the Edgar Thompson Steel Rail Mill and the Homestead Steel Works. Gradually his business grew until in 1901, when he retired, his payroll exceeded eighteen million dollars a year, and he received two hundred and fifty millions for his share of the business.

But, I hear you ask, “How could he earn so much money? How did he get the money to start these great 173 enterprises?” From the first he was economical and saved every penny possible; and fortunately for him his investments were always profitable, as the following examples will show.

When he was a telegraph operator, his friend, Mr. Scott, urged him to buy ten shares in the Adams Express Company for six hundred dollars. As Mr. Carnegie was able to get together but five hundred dollars, Mr. Scott lent him the extra hundred, and the investment was made. Soon these shares were yielding large dividends, which Mr. Carnegie carefully saved.

Already I have told you how Mr. Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping car, came to Mr. Carnegie to get him to try out these cars. So enthusiastic was Mr. Carnegie over the invention, that he organized the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company, and borrowed money from every possible source to finance the enterprise. Here, too, he met with a degree of success that was far beyond his fondest expectations.

Suppose we invite Mr. Carnegie to tell us about his third investment. He says: “In company with several others, I purchased the now famous Story farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each 174 week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We purchased the farm for forty thousand dollars, and so small was our faith in the ability of the earth to yield, for any considerable time, the hundred barrels per day which the property was then producing that we decided to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, one million dollars.

“Unfortunately for us, the pond leaked fearfully. Evaporation also caused much loss, but we continued to run the oil in to make the loss good day by day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this fashion. Our experience with the farm is worth reciting: its value rose to five million dollars, and one year it paid in cash dividends one million dollars.” Surely this was a very profitable investment.

But most of Mr. Carnegie’s money was made in the steel business, and, you ask how this was done.

Prior to 1868 the process of making iron into steel had been extremely expensive. In that year Mr. Carnegie introduced a method for making steel known as the Bessemer process. For years his mills had a monopoly of the process; and, as it reduced the cost of making steel by more than half, he made vast sums of money.

About all rich men two questions are always asked: How did they get their money, and what did they do with it?

While Mr. Carnegie may be justly criticized for some of the methods he adopted in getting his money, few can criticize the beautiful spirit that he has shown in giving it away. So liberal has he been that in a single year he gave away one hundred and twelve million dollars. Some of his more notable gifts are $22,000,000 for the Carnegie Institution in Washington, $24,000,000 for the Carnegie Institution in Pittsburg, $15,000,000 for Teachers’ Pensions, $10,000,000 for Scotch Universities, and $70,000,000 for libraries.

In the northern part of Scotland is a large and beautiful mansion known as Skibo Castle. This was Mr. Carnegie’s country estate, and here he and his wife and daughter lived in comparative quiet. In his late years, as in boyhood days, he loved to tread on the free heather of his beloved country. As the years multiplied, his sympathies gradually enlarged and his vision broadened. Though some, as they grow old, become sour and crabbed, Mr. Carnegie became increasingly optimistic and youthful in spirit, until death claimed him.

“He is never alone that hath a good book.”

176

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

DR. ANNA SHAW
Honorary President, Woman’s National Suffrage Association

When Anna Shaw was four years old, her mother left Scotland with her family of small children and started for America to join her husband. After a few days’ sail, a fearful storm arose and the ship returned with great difficulty to Queenstown. This was the first impressive experience of Anna’s life, and she was destined to live through many exciting ones. Finally, another ship started on the long voyage across the Atlantic and this time the family reached the shores of our country and met the husband and father. Anna remembers his joy over their reunion.

But the next event that stands out clearly in her mind occurred after they had lived in the United States for a year or more. Her parents did not believe in slavery, and were anxious to help runaway slaves gain a place of safety and freedom. They had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin aloud to their children, so Anna was not surprised when one day she went into the cellar on an errand and found a negro woman hiding there. The little girl was greatly excited and anxious to know just how the woman came there and where she was going. But when she told her parents of her discovery they became alarmed lest she might, through her interest, say things before strangers that would disclose their secret. Therefore they kept her away from the cellar on one excuse or another, and although Anna was sure her home sheltered many slaves 178 on their journey to a free land, she never again saw one or knew anything about the system that helped these suffering persons.

The Shaw home was in a small Massachusetts town, and there was much happening to engage the attention of the children. Anna recalls the first money she ever earned. The amount was twenty-five cents, and she was paid that for riding in a Fourth of July celebration. After this seemingly great sum of money was hers, she and a small sister decided to spend some of it. They bought a banana, which was to them a strange and wonderful fruit, but they did not like it because they did not know how to eat it. They gave it away to a boy who quickly removed the peel and enjoyed eating the fruit. They were amazed, for they had tried to eat it just as they bought it from the dealer. When Anna saw their gift eaten so rapidly she was astonished and disappointed.

This incident was to be one of the last memories of her New England home, for the family moved to Northern Michigan and became pioneers. For toys she received at Christmas a small saw and an axe. These were typical of the life she was to lead for a number of years. Unlike many girls of her age, she had no time to play with dolls or sew; she was forced to do a man’s work in helping with the new home.

Her father was a kind, gentle man, but very much of a dreamer. He did not realize that things must be done 179 promptly if a family is to have food and shelter. Once he spent weeks reading and planning what kinds of grains would be best to sow, but long before he had decided, the planting season was over, the young crops were up, and the Shaws had none. The mother was not strong, yet she did an immense amount of work. As she had been highly trained in sewing, she made the clothing for the entire family. The two older girls, Eleanor and Mary, did the housework and this left Anna and her brother to do the rough outdoor work. Together they accomplished this and many other tasks. They even made a set of furniture for their simple cabin home.

Indians were all about through the woods, and once while out playing Anna saw a band of them going towards her home. She hurried back to see her mother giving them food. This they took with no thanks and departed. But later in the year they returned and brought Mrs. Shaw a large supply of venison to show her they appreciated her kindness.

Another time a number of Indians stopped at the Shaw cabin, and they had been drinking whiskey. They demanded food, and it was prepared for them. Meanwhile Anna and her brother, fearful lest the liquor might excite their guests, managed to go to the attic and let down a rope from the gable window. With it they drew up all their firearms, one by one. Then at long intervals, members of the family would slip away and hide 180 upstairs where they knew they would be safe unless the Indians set fire to the house.

The hungry guests ate up everything, then stretched themselves out and fell into a drunken sleep. The Shaw children watched them all night through cracks in the attic floor, and when morning came were glad to see the Indians sneak away as if they were ashamed.

Many hardships came to the little family. Their cow died, and for an entire winter they had no milk. They had no coffee either, but made something they called coffee out of dried peas and burned rye. Anna was always cold; she cannot remember that the house was ever warm enough to be comfortable; still she enjoyed life and made up her mind to go to college, to be a preacher, and to be worth one hundred thousand dollars. She named this amount because it seemed so unlikely she would ever have any money. Often she would steal away and preach in the woods to an imaginary audience.

When she was fifteen years of age she began to teach school. She had but fourteen pupils, and they learned to read from whatever books they could find. The result was that their text books were almanacs and hymn books. For teaching she was paid two dollars a week and board. This latter did not amount to much, as often all she had for her luncheon was a piece of raw salt pork. Her salary was not paid promptly either, as the school authorities had to wait until the dog tax was 181 collected because it was from this fund that the teacher’s salary was drawn.

The largest salary Anna Shaw ever received for teaching was one hundred and fifty-six dollars a year, so at last she stopped and started to learn the trade of sewing. This was very distasteful to her, and she determined she would not earn her living with the needle. What she wanted to do was to preach. Finally she had a chance to give her first sermon, and her brother-in-law, who owned the county newspaper, printed this notice:

“A young girl named Anna Shaw preached at Ashton yesterday. Her real friends deprecate the course she is pursuing.”

This did not discourage Anna Shaw, for she kept on working and in 1873 managed to enter Albion College in Albion, Michigan. She had earned a little money to pay her way, and she intended to get the rest by preaching. Her family disapproved so strongly of this step that they had nothing to do with her, and it was some years before they became reconciled and good feeling was once more established between them and the bright young woman.

Anna was twenty-five when she entered college, and she had had so much experience in her pioneer home she seemed much older. Every Sunday she preached in mission churches to congregations composed chiefly of 182 Indians who sat listening solemnly, while their papooses were hung along the walls in their queer little Indian cradles.

From Albion College, Anna Shaw went to Boston Theological School, and after a hard struggle with poverty, was graduated from this institution as a minister. She had given to her for her field of labor a little church on Cape Cod, that part of Massachusetts that seems to stretch forth to meet the sea. Here she was the minister for seven years. The members of her church liked her, and she was always busy helping them in every way, from preaching funeral sermons and performing marriage ceremonies to helping settle neighborhood quarrels.

There were many amusing episodes in her life. One over which she has laughed many times was her purchase of a horse. She wanted a horse gentle and safe for a woman, so when she went to look at one that had been offered her the only question she asked was, “Is she safe for a woman?” The family who owned her said she was, so Miss Shaw bought her. When the errand boy at the Shaw residence went out to the barn to hitch up the new horse, the creature kicked so that the boy ran from the building thoroughly frightened. However, Miss Shaw went into the stall and harnessed the horse easily. Soon she discovered the truth; the horse was safe for women, she liked them, but she would not let a man or boy come near her. The only way she could be outwitted was 183 when the errand boy put on a sunbonnet and long circular cloak of Miss Shaw’s. Even then the horse would eye him suspiciously, but did not kick. Miss Shaw thought she had made a most peculiar purchase, but she became fond of Daisy, as the horse was called, just as she did of every person and thing in her parish.

At last, feeling the need of more training, in order to do good in the world, she went to a medical school, and after serious study became Dr. Anna Shaw. While there she became interested in the cause of Woman’s Suffrage. At that time only a few persons believed that women, as well as men, should have the right to vote, and anyone saying they should was criticized severely.

Dr. Shaw went to work for this cause with great energy and steadfastness of purpose. From 1888 to 1906 she was closely associated with Miss Susan B. Anthony who was then the head of the suffrage movement. When Miss Anthony passed away, Dr. Shaw became one of the great leaders. In 1906 only four states had granted suffrage to women,

Suddenly all over the United States women became interested in this cause to which a few devoted women had already given years of their lives, and in 1910 Washington 184 was added to the small list of states where women had equal political rights with men. Then in quick succession came

By 1917 women also had the right to vote for president and all offices except the judiciary, in Illinois, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Michigan. At that time there was partial suffrage for women in Arkansas, New Mexico, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Florida and Ohio. In some of these states just mentioned, women voted for very few offices, but still they had a slight voice in the affairs of their state, and a large number of states refused women all voting rights. They were Texas, Missouri, Alabama, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maine, Indiana, Delaware and Virginia.

Dr. Shaw’s life dream was realized when woman was given the right to vote on all questions in every state in 185 the union by an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Dr. Shaw died in the service of her country at Washington, in 1918.

Like so many of America’s noble men and women, the secret of Anna Shaw’s life has been service to others,––doing good to her fellowmen and working always for human justice.

186

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON and WIFE
Founder of the Boy Scout Movement

How many boys of ten years of age know what they want to do when they are grown? Surely there are some boys of that age who have planned their future work or at least have dreamed about it. But how many ever do in later life just what they had thought of doing when in the fourth grade of the public school? Not many, you may be sure. However, some years ago there was a boy living in England who had decided on his life work by the time his tenth birthday passed. What is more, he carried out his plans with great success. Today you may read many of his books and look at interesting pictures he has drawn of wild animals that are as familiar to him as are the pets most boys and girls have in their homes. More than this, if a boy belongs to the Boy Scouts, he is a member of an organization that this man helped to found in the United States.

Ernest Thompson Seton was born in the northern part of England. His family moved to Canada, but he attended school in England and did not stay in America for any length of time until his schooling was completed. His name was originally Ernest E. Thompson Seton, but some years ago he changed it by turning the last two names around and putting a hyphen between them. As he has written under both names, persons sometimes wonder if there are two men who love the out of doors and write with pleasure of their open air experiences.

Mr. Thompson Seton’s wish was to spend a large part of his life tramping over the country studying animals and learning woodcraft. The rest of the time he would write and make pictures of what he had seen. He felt he could stay within doors only part of each year. So as soon as he finished school and returned to the province of Manitoba he went to work in the fields. It did not take him long to earn enough money to live on during the winter, as his wants were few; then he set out to tramp all over the province. He watched the birds; he learned the ways of all the animals and could tell wonderful stories of their instinct and cunning. When he did live under a roof for a few weeks, he was always busy drawing pictures of his friends in the open or writing down accounts of their lives. One of his best known books was published in 1898 and was called, “Wild Animals I Have Known.” This brought him to the attention of many readers; but he had been helping make books long before this one, for when the Century Dictionary was published he drew for it more than a thousand pictures of the animals that he had watched and studied.

In the course of his life he has been a hunter, a day laborer, a scientist, a naturalist, and an artist. At the same time he has been able to carry out his plan of spending the greater part of each year out of doors. Loving a free active life from his earliest boyhood, it is not strange that Ernest Thompson Seton was the first man to organize the Boy Scouts in America. In the Outlook 189 for July 23, 1910, he tells the story in a most interesting manner. He says:

“My friend John Moale, a rich man, had bought several thousand acres of abandoned farm lands near Boston in the year 1900. This he made into a beautiful park, all for his own enjoyment. Around this park he built a strong fence twelve feet high so that no one could get into the park. His prospects of peace and happiness were excellent. But the neighbors resented his coming. He had fenced in a lot of open ground that had been the common cow-pasture of the adjoining village. He had taken from the boys their nutting-ground, and forbidden the usual summer picnics. He was an outsider, a rich man despoiling the very poor, and they set about making it unpleasant for him.

“They destroyed his fences, they stoned his notice-boards until they fell, and they painted shocking pictures on his gates. Mr. Moale, a peace-loving man, rebuilt the fences and restored the notice-boards only to have them torn down again and again.

“All summer this had been going on, so I learned on visiting Mr. Moale in September. Finally I said to him: ‘Let me try my hand on these boys.’ He was ready for anything, and gave me a free hand. I bought two tents, three old Indian teepees, and two canoes. I got some bows and arrows and a target.

“Then I got a gang of men to make a campground by the lake on my friend’s grounds. On this 190 I set up the tents and teepees in the form of an Indian village.

“Now I went to the local school house and got permission to talk to the boys for five minutes. ‘Now boys,’ I said, ‘Mr. Moale invites you all to come to the Indian village on his land next Friday, after school, to camp with him there until Monday morning. We will have all the grub you can eat, all the canoes necessary, and everything to have a jolly time in camp.’

“At first the boys were bashful and suspicious, but finally they accepted the invitation, and at 4:30 forty-two boys arrived in high glee.

“‘Say, Mister, kin we holler?’

“‘Yes, all you want to.’

“‘Kin we take our clothes off?’

“As the weather was warm I said, ‘Yes, every stitch, if you like.’ And soon they were a mob of naked, howling savages, tearing through the woods, jumping into the lake, or pelting each other with mud.”

After supper, Mr. Thompson Seton tells us, the boys gathered around the camp fire while he told them one Indian story after another. For two days the boys ate, swam, canoed, and, what was most important of all, they became acquainted with the two men. There was no harm done the boats, teepees, or outfit other than fair wear and tear during that camping, and before it was over Mr. Moale, instead of having a gang of bandits to combat the year round, had now a guard of staunch 191 friends, ready to fight his battles and look out for his interests when he was away.

That was the beginning of it. Every boy in the village is now a member of the tribe, and three other bands have been formed in the neighborhood. All this was in 1900. Since then thousands of workers have become interested and the work has spread, until today the Boy Scouts of America is one of the best known organizations of the country.

One reason for the growth of the Boy Scout movement is the fact that scouting usually makes boys cleaner and more manly than they were before. Should you like to know the Scout Laws that they learn and practice? The first law is this: “A scout is trustworthy.” This means a scout’s honor is to be trusted. Boy Scouts everywhere make a great deal of the word honor. The following story shows the scout’s idea of honor: “A little newsboy boarded a crowded car the other night with a very large bundle of papers, and the conductor, with coarse good-nature, tried to favor him by not taking his fare, although of course he could not do this without cheating the railway. The boy looked at him with indignation, and could not believe that he was the conductor. He went all through the car hunting for the real conductor to whom he might pay his fare.”

“A scout is loyal,” is the second law. Loyalty is another word that is dear to the scout. Have you ever heard a scout say bad things about his scout master or about his 192 fellow scouts behind their backs? Not very often, I am sure. If a scout has anything to say against any one, he goes directly to him and talks it over. The Scout Law explains loyalty saying: “He is loyal to all to whom loyalty is due, his scout leader, his home and parents and country.” He must stick to them through thick and thin against any one who is their enemy, or whoever talks badly of them.

Have you ever seen the scouts salute the flag? The smiling faces and beaming eyes show that they love the flag dearly. Few can sing better than the scouts, for they mean every word they sing.

The instant our nation entered the great world war the Boy Scouts offered themselves to their country to do whatever the president asked. Since most of them were too young to enlist, it was at first thought that they could not do much. As the months passed, however, the boys have found one task after another, until now they are so busy that they put to shame many older people.

Then, too, the Boy Scouts have worked so silently, without making a fuss about what they were doing. In many of our large cities they have planted “war gardens” on every vacant lot they could get. In most cases all they raised in these gardens was given to the Red Cross. Furthermore, they have been the best friends the farmers have had. These scouts in large numbers have left their comfortable city homes to work on farms. They have 193 not asked for the easy, pleasant jobs, but have been willing to do the thing that needed to be done most whether it was pleasant or not. Have you ever wondered who put up the thousands of posters asking the people to save food and buy bonds? In many cases this work has been done by the scouts.

The Boy Scout has been able to do so much because he is taught to be brave. The coward has no place among the scouts. The lad who is not willing to rough it soon drops out. Long hikes, coarse food, and hard work try the stuff that’s in a boy. If he can stand up to all these he is sure to develop the endurance that makes him brave.

As soon as the war began, the educated young men of our country went to the officers’ training camps to learn to become officers. After thousands of these young men who had tried to become officers had failed, the people began to wonder what the trouble was. Finally they asked the great army officers who had examined them, and received this answer: “Your young men are slouchy; slouchy in the way they hold their shoulders, slouchy in the way they walk, slouchy in their use of the English language, slouchy in the way they think.” Should you like to know how the young men who had once been scouts fared? Almost without exception they passed, for the training they had received as scouts had cured them of much of their slouchiness.

A scout is not only brave but he is also courteous and helpful to others. Nothing delights a scout more than 194 to be able to help a child or an old man or woman across a busy street. For these little services he must not receive tips. Major Powell, the great English Scout organizer, tells of a little fellow who came to his house on an errand. When offered a tip the lad put up his hand to the salute and said, “No, thank you, sir, I am a Boy Scout.”

About the hardest thing a scout is expected to do is to smile and whistle under all circumstances. “The punishment for swearing or using bad language is, for each offense, a mug of cold cold water poured down the offender’s sleeves by the other scouts.”

Much more could be written in favor of the Boy Scouts. They are a body of boys of whom we are proud. And we shall ever be grateful to Ernest Thompson Seton for his noble work in organizing the Boy Scouts in America.

“Be Prepared”

It was a stormy, rainy day in New York City. We wanted to visit some of the great stores and shops, but were afraid of the bad weather.

Our friends who lived in the city laughed at us. They said: “This is just the kind of a day to go to Wanamakers. We will take the subway to the basement door and never be in the wet at all.”

So we hurried to the underground railroad that runs beneath the busy streets, and were soon riding away in a fast express train. On we went in the darkness, through winding tunnels to the other end of the city. At last we stopped at a brilliantly lighted platform and were told that this was our destination. Leaving the train we did not ascend to the street, but went through great doors into a large room that was as light as day. Elevators took us up, up, from floor to floor. And what did we see, I hear you ask. We saw everything one could wish to buy. We saw everything we had ever dreamed of purchasing. We saw many beautiful things of which we had never heard, and we felt as if we were visiting a magic palace.

At noon we ate our lunch in a pleasant restaurant up at the very top of the enormous building. It was quiet and peaceful, and we were glad to rest. When we were through, we found an attractive little concert hall where many persons were listening to a deep-toned organ.

196

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

JOHN WANAMAKER (On left)
Great Merchant and Philanthropist

We were told we were welcome to sit down and hear the sweet music. An hour passed before we were ready to leave. Then we continued our sightseeing, and it was late in the afternoon before we were ready to go home. We returned the same way we had come and when we were once more far up town in our own familiar street the rain had just stopped. Then we realized we had been in doors all day long and known nothing of the storm. It had indeed been just the kind of a day to go to Wanamakers.

And what is Wanamakers? It is the name of two great stores, one in New York City and the other in Philadelphia. The owner, John Wanamaker, is the man who first thought of selling all manner of articles in one store, and so built what we call today a department store.

No one who knew John Wanamaker when he was a boy thought he had any better chances than any other boy among his playmates, and no one foretold that he would become a great merchant.

A plain two story house in Philadelphia was his early home. There he lived with his father and mother. His father was a brick maker, and while John was very small he would help his father by turning the bricks over so they would dry evenly. His father died in 1852. John was just fourteen, and he went to work in a book store. His wages were $1.50 a week, but he managed to save a little. His mother encouraged him and he says of her, “Her smile was a bit of heaven and it never faded out of her face till her dying day.”

Although at first the boy earned but little to help this good mother, he soon was able to care for her in a way beyond his highest hopes.

What caused him to succeed? His capital! “But,” you say, “he had no money; he was poor.” True, his capital was not money. Let us see what it was. A few words will tell us. He had good health, good habits, a clean mind, thriftiness, and a tireless devotion to whatever he thought to be his duty.

He worked hard outside of business hours, improving himself for any opportunity that might come. And one came when he was twenty-one years of age.

The directors of the Philadelphia Y. M. C. A. were looking for a young man to become Secretary of the Association. They were anxious to secure an earnest energetic person who would make a great success, for it was the first time that such a position as Y. M. C. A. secretary had been established. They selected John Wanamaker and paid him $1,000 a year.

He went to work with a will, and everyone felt that he more than earned his salary. All the time he was saving, just as he had been doing when he worked in the book store. He had great hopes and plans. When he had saved $2000 he and a friend of his own age started a business of their own. Their store was named Oak Hall and they sold men’s clothing. At that time business houses did not advertise in the newspapers as they do today. Neither were signboards used. Just imagine 199 how puzzled the good folk of Philadelphia were when, one morning, they saw great billboards all over their peaceful city. On these were two letters, W. & B. No one knew what these letters meant. Everyone was guessing, and it was not until Oak Hall was opened that the public learned that W. & B. stood for Wanamaker & Brown, the name of the new firm.

Their first day’s business brought in thirty-eight dollars. John Wanamaker himself delivered the goods in a wheel barrow. Then he hurried to a newspaper office and spent the entire thirty-eight dollars for advertising. After reading of the wonderful goods on sale there, customers poured into Oak Hall. They bought, too, for again John Wanamaker had spent his money wisely. He had hired the highest paid clerk in Philadelphia to manage the sales room, which meant that each customer was waited upon well and went away pleased, ready to tell his friends about the new store.

What do you suppose was told the oftenest? Probably you would not guess, because today all business houses have followed the plan that was used first in Oak Hall.

You will be surprised when you hear that it was the custom of having one price for a garment and sticking to it that caused the most talk. This price was marked plainly on a tag attached to the article to be sold, and any one could see it. Before this, clothing merchants had not marked their goods, but tried to get as much as 200 possible from a customer. Often one suit of clothes had a dozen prices on the same day. So you can see what a change the energetic young man made. He did more than this. Because he wanted to please the public, he said if any customer was not satisfied he could return his purchase and receive his money back. This was a startling idea, but it worked, and made many friends for the young firm.

Their store waked up Philadelphia. Every week some new advertising appeared. Once great balloons were sent up from the roof. Stamped on each one was the statement that any one who found the balloon and returned it to Oak Hall would receive a suit of clothes. You can imagine how the people hunted for those balloons. One was found five months afterward in a cranberry swamp. The frightened farmer who saw it swaying to and fro thought at first that some strange animal was hiding there. You may be sure he was glad to hurry to Oak Hall with his prize and get the promised suit of clothes.

John Wanamaker kept on economizing and saving, for he wanted a bigger business. Then the idea came to him of selling many kinds of goods under one roof, and the modern department store was born. The store, though small at first, gradually grew until it finally became the largest in Philadelphia. Then it was that he decided to build an even larger one in New York City.

Today there are department stores throughout our country in every city and town. We like them and take them as a matter of course. But let us remember they had their beginning in the idea of this boy from Philadelphia.

His success looks very great to us, but it was built up step by step. He says it is due “to thinking, toiling, and trusting in God.” This seems to sum up his life. Besides business, his interest in religious affairs has always been great. He has given of his wealth to many noble charities and helpful organizations. In Philadelphia he built a great building for a Sunday School alone. Thousands of persons attend this school each Sunday and there are classes there during the week for those who have had to leave school at an early age. He has remembered the Y. M. C. A. and, perhaps because of his early work with it, has been unusually generous in giving buildings to struggling associations. He even built one in the far away city of Madras, India, thus stretching out his influence for good nearly around the world.

But while he has had thought for those far away, he has also cared for the people who work for him. His stores were the first to have an entire holiday on Saturday during the hot days of summer. This was done so the men and women could leave the crowded city, if they wished, on Friday evening, and have a vacation of two full days in the country or at the seashore.

Then, too, he has encouraged the various departments of the stores to form clubs and musical societies. At 202 times there have been two bands in the New York store, one composed of men and the other of women. They have rooms and hours in which to practice.

Besides playing and singing, some of the clubs study English, foreign languages, and many other subjects. It is possible for every person employed in one of the Wanamaker stores to add to his stock of knowledge through this club life.

Some years ago John Wanamaker began giving a pension to those who had served him for a certain length of time. This plan has since been followed by other firms because it promotes faithfulness and interest in the business.

This interest makes each one connected with the store realize he is a part of it. Perhaps this is shown best by the way pensioned men and women responded to Mr. Wanamaker’s call in 1917, after so many men had left to join the army and navy. They went back to take the places of those who had gone, feeling that in so doing they were serving their country.

There was one fine old Scotchman past eighty years of age living in New York who had been forty-four years in the employ of Wanamaker. He had been on the pension roll for some time and was enjoying old age quietly. When he heard the call from his former employer, he went down to work as eagerly as a boy, glad he was strong and sturdy enough to do his part in keeping the great store open to serve the public.

Is it not a fine thing to be able to develop such spirit and energy among thousands of persons? Surely the mother of the boy who turned bricks for his father would rejoice if she could read her son’s record. He has become one of the greatest business men of his day; he served our country well as Postmaster General but most of all he has given each year more and more time and money to help make the world better.

Can we not say of him that, while he has always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable way, he has tried to remember that the object of life is to do good?

204

Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

EX-PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born at Staunton, Virginia, December 28, 1856. At that time Staunton was a town of five thousand inhabitants, situated in the beautiful and famous Valley of Virginia. Woodrow’s father, a thoroughly trained and able preacher, was pastor of the Southern Presbyterian Church of the city.

When Woodrow was two years of age the family moved to Augusta, Georgia. In those days Augusta, a city of fifteen thousand people, was one of the leading manufacturing cities of the South. With its great railroad shops, furnaces, rolling mills, and cotton mills, it was indeed a hive of industry.

As a boy Woodrow was called “Tommy” by his playmates; but as he grew into manhood he dropped his given name and signed himself––Woodrow Wilson. His mother was a Woodrow, and by signing his name Woodrow Wilson he hoped to do equal honor to each parent.

During Woodrow’s boyhood days, the Civil War storm-cloud was gathering; and when he was five years of age it broke in all its fury. Fortunately for him, Augusta was far removed from the scenes of conflict. Never can he remember having seen troops of southern soldiers marching through the streets of the city. Only once was he thoroughly frightened. When General Sherman was on his famous march to the sea, word came that he was about to capture Augusta. Immediately the 206 few men who were left in the city, for most of them had gone to war, gathered all sorts of fire arms and marched forth to meet the enemy. All night they lay on their arms, but greatly to their relief the foe never came.

Naturally enough the most vivid memories young Woodrow had of the war were those in connection with the scarcity of food. Before the war the people of the South had never thought of eating cow peas, as they were thought to be fit only for cattle; but so scarce did food become that Woodrow had to eat so much cow pea soup that even yet, whenever he thinks of it, he feels the old time disgust.

Two things that happened immediately at the close of the war made a deep impression upon the lad who was then nine years of age. All through the war the president of the Southern Confederacy was, as you know, Jefferson Davis. Imagine young Woodrow’s surprise when he saw the former president marched through the streets of Augusta, a prisoner of war, guarded by Federal soldiers. They were on their way to Fortress Monroe. During the war Woodrow, as we have already said, saw very little of the Confederate soldiers; but as soon as peace was declared, the Union soldiers took possession of the city, even occupying his father’s church as a temporary barracks. The hardships suffered during the few years immediately at the close of the war were even greater than those during the war itself.

A thrilling event in the life of the lad was the day when Augusta had its first street cars. The bob-tail cars, with their red, purple, and green lights, and drawn by mules, afforded all sorts of fun for the boys. To make scissors by laying two pins crosswise on the rail for the cars to pass over was one of their most pleasant pastimes.

In those days there were no free public schools with their beautiful buildings for Woodrow to attend, so he was sent to a private school that was held in rooms over the post office. With Professor Derry, who was in charge of the school, spanking was the favorite form of punishment. While Woodrow and his chums differed very decidedly with the Professor’s views regarding spanking, the boys were never able to convince him that their views were right. Finally, the lads discovered that pads made from the cotton that grew in the fields on every side of the city served them well whenever the evil day of punishment arrived. After they had made this discovery they were more reconciled to the Professor’s views.

The best chum Woodrow had was his father. Busy as he was with the cares of his large church, he never was so occupied that he could not find time to chum with his boy. For hours at a time he would read to his son the worth-while things that Woodrow enjoyed hearing. Then, too, the busy pastor was in the habit of taking a day off each week to stroll with Woodrow in field, factory, or wood as the case might be. On these long strolls the father and son talked over many of the problems that 208 were of interest to the lad. Little wonder, then, with such comradeship, that Woodrow rapidly developed along right lines.

Like all boys, he was fond of building air castles. Dwelling much in the realm of fancy, he imagined that he occupied all sorts of positions and did remarkable things.

Mr. William Hale in his excellent story of the life of Wilson describes one of these flights of the imagination as follows: “Thus for months he was an Admiral of the Navy, and in that character wrote out daily reports to the Navy Department.

“His main achievement in this capacity was the discovery and destruction of a nest of pirates in the Southern Pacific Ocean. It appears that the government, along with all the people of the country, had been terrified by the mysterious disappearance of ships setting sail from or expected at our western ports. Vessels would set out with their precious freight never to be heard from again, swallowed up in the bosom of an ocean on which no known war raged, no known storm swept.

“Admiral Wilson was ordered to investigate with his fleet; after an eventful cruise they overtook, one night, a piratical looking craft with black hull and rakish rig. Again and again the chase eluded the Admiral. Finally, the pursuit led the fleet to the neighborhood of an island uncharted and hitherto unknown. Circumnavigation seemed to prove it bare and uninhabited, with no visible 209 harbor. There was, however, a narrow inlet that seemed to end at an abrupt wall of rock a few fathoms inland. Something, however, finally led the Admiral to send a boat into this inlet––and it was discovered that it was the cunningly contrived entrance to a spacious bay; the island really being a sort of atoll. Here lay the ships of the outlawed enemy and the dismantled hulls of many of the ships they had captured. And it may be believed that the brave American tars, under the leadership of the courageous Admiral, played a truly heroic part in the destruction of the pirates and the succor of such of their victims as survived.”

Thus he dreamed dreams, studied, and chummed with his father until the eventful day arrived when he must go away to college. But where should he go? What college should he attend? A small Presbyterian college in the South was chosen. Before the end of the first year he was taken sick and had to leave college. Then it was that he decided to go to Princeton University, a decision that had much to do with his future career. Life in Princeton proved to be just the stimulus that he needed. Here, surrounded by the keenest, most alert young men of the country, he developed rapidly. Interested in every school activity, from baseball to debating, he won for himself a prominent place in the student body. So great was his thirst for knowledge, however, that his graduation from Princeton did not satisfy him. Accordingly, he next went to the University of Virginia where 210 he was graduated from the law school in 1881. But even this did not satisfy, so he spent two years in Johns Hopkins University, receiving in 1885 the degree of Ph.D., the highest degree that any university can give.

Thus equipped, he became a professor first in Bryn Mawr College, then in Wesleyan University, and finally in Princeton. So pronounced was his success as professor in his beloved university that in 1902 he was made President of Princeton. So able was his leadership in Princeton that the state of New Jersey called him to be its governor. Could a University President make a good governor? The politicians were very much in doubt. It is needless to say that all watched him with deepest concern. Soon, however, it became apparent even to the most skeptical that he was destined to be New Jersey’s ablest governor. Gradually, because of his strength, his popularity grew until the eyes of all the nation were fastened upon him. From the governor’s chair he rose to the highest honor the Nation could bestow, he was elected to the Presidency of the United States.

Little did he realize when he accepted this honor that with it would come the heaviest burdens that any president save Abraham Lincoln had been called upon to bear. For eight long years he patiently bore those burdens and heroically faced every responsibility. Great as were the demands made upon him, he always proved himself equal to the emergency.

The last three years of his service as President found him dealing with problems of the Great World War, and at its conclusion he was one of the leading figures in the making of the final treaty of peace between the warring nations.

To take part in the treaty-making, Mr. Wilson twice went to Paris. It was the first time a president of the United States had ever traveled beyond the borders of our own country.

At the expiration of his term of office, Mr. Wilson took up the practice of law, at Washington.

“To such a task we dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

––President Wilson’s War Message.

212

MARK TWAIN
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

“Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water. You got to go all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there’s a spunk-water stump, and just as it’s midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in it and say:

and then walk away quick eleven steps, with your eyes shut and then turn round three times and walk home without speaking to anybody. Because if you do speak, the charm’s busted.

“I’ve took off thousands of warts that way, Huck. I play with frogs so much that I’ve always got considerable warts. Sometimes I take ’em off with a bean.”

“Yes, a bean’s good. I’ve done that.”

“But say, Huck, how do you cure ’em with dead cats?”

By this time, doubtless you are saying, “Oh, I know from what book you are quoting. I have Tom Sawyer at home and Huckleberry Finn, too. I read them over and over.”

But would you not like to know something about the man, who could write so understandingly of boys? Suppose we read the story of his life and see if we can decide what gave him his wide knowledge of games and adventures, of boyish larks and youthful troubles.

We must go for his earliest experiences to a town on the Mississippi, one hundred miles from St. Louis. In the year 1839, the Clemens family moved to Hannibal from a still smaller town in Missouri, named Florida. The youngest child in the Clemens family was four years old. He was named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. For eight years this boy roved over the hills and through the woods with his playmates. There was a cave near Hannibal. Many strange creatures were said to hide in its depths. Also, there was Bear Creek where the boys went swimming. Young Sam tried hard to learn to swim. Several times he was dragged ashore just in time to save his life, but at last he learned to swim better than any of his friends.

Then there was the river, the broad Mississippi.

“It was the river that meant more to him than all the rest. Its charm was permanent. It was the path of adventure, the gateway to the world. The river with its islands, its great slow moving rafts, its marvelous steamboats that were like fairyland, and its stately current going to the sea. How it held him! He would sit by it for hours and dream. He would venture out on it in a surreptitiously borrowed boat, when he was barely strong enough to lift an oar out of the water.”

We are told that when Sam Clemens was only nine years of age he managed to board one of the river steamers. He hid under a boat on the upper deck. After the steamer started he sat watching the shore slip past. Then came a heavy rain and a wet, shivering, little boy was 215 found by one of the crew. At the next stop he was put ashore and relatives, who lived there, took him home, and so ended his first journey upon the river.

Years later he became a pilot on a Mississippi river boat and made many trips from New Orleans up the river and back. Such a trip required thirty-five days.

While acting as a river pilot, Samuel Clemens heard the name, “Mark Twain.” An old riverman had used it as an assumed name, taking the term from the cry of the boatmen as they tested the depth of the river. Samuel Clemens had an intense love of joking and fun, so when he first began to write, he suddenly thought it would be amusing to sign some name other than his own. Therefore, he signed his articles “Mark Twain.” This name clung to him, and many persons forgot or never knew that his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Accordingly, in the river of his boyhood love, he found the name by which the world knows today one of the foremost American authors. Yet, in those early days in Hannibal, he had no idea of writing. Indeed, his days were so busy it is not likely he thought much of the future at all. He was the leader of a band of boys that played Bandit, Pirate and Indian. Sam Clemens was always chief. He led the way to the caves whose chambers reached far back under the cliffs and even, perhaps, under the river itself.

When he was a man, Mr. Clemens wrote two books telling of these early days in Hannibal. “The Adventures 216 of Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” “Tom Sawyer” was himself, and the incidents in the book all had their foundation in the days of his boyhood. The cave, as you may know, plays an important part in the latter story. In “Tom Sawyer,” Indian Joe dies in the cave. There was an Indian Joe in Hannibal and while he did not die in the cave, he was lost there for days and was living on bats when found. This incident made a strong impression on young Samuel Clemens and he never forgot it. It was in the Clemen’s house that Tom gave the cat pain-killer; there, too, that he induced a crowd of boys to white-wash the fence all one Saturday morning. It was at the Clemens’ home, too, that a small boy in his night clothes came tumbling down from an over-hung trellis upon the merry crowd cooling taffy in the snow.

Such happenings were part of young Sam’s life. He lived the out-of-doors and, when grown to manhood, he could recall all the sports and pleasures of those days. He cherished the memory of his boyhood friends and so wrote of “Huck” Finn, making him like Tom Blakenship, one of the riotous, freedom-loving members of Sam Clemens’ band.

These boys crowded many adventures into a few years. Hannibal was the scene of stormy times. Black slaves were sold in the open market. Desperadoes roamed the streets. Lawlessness was everywhere and it was not strange that the residents of Hannibal did not think Sam Clemens amounted to much and prophesied that he would 217 never grow up to follow a respectable calling.

Yet when his father died, Sam went to work in his brother’s printing shop. Printed matter began to interest him. Then one day, in the dusty street of Hannibal, this half-grown, lively boy picked up a scrap of paper. A leaf torn from a history! Where did it come from? No one knows.

Books were not plentiful then in that little town. Yet, on this paper the fun-loving Sam Clemens read for the first time of Joan of Arc, the wondrous maid who led the French to victory. He had never heard of her. He had read no history, nor had he had an active interest in books. Studying there in the village street, reading the few lines of the marvelous story of the Maid of Orleans, there was created in him an interest that went with him throughout life.

He was by turn a printer, a pilot, a pioneer, a soldier, a miner, a newspaper reporter, a lecturer, but at last he found his true place. He became a writer and wrote books that continue to delight thousands upon thousands of readers. His life went into his books. Just as he drew upon his early days in Hannibal for the material in “Huckleberry Finn” and The “Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” so he used all of his experiences. He wrote “Life Upon The Mississippi,” a record of his days as a pilot; “Roughing It,” a story of a mining camp; “The Jumping Frog,” a western story that made his fame throughout the United States; “Innocents Abroad,” a 218 tale of his experiences abroad, and “The Life Of Joan Of Arc,” a beautiful story that was always the author’s favorite.

During the last years of his life, Mark Twain passed the winters in Bermuda and there he was, as ever, the friend of children. There was a pretty, little girl at his hotel named Margaret, who was twelve years old. She and Mr. Clemens went everywhere together and, on one excursion, he found a beautiful, little shell. The two halves came apart in his hand. He gave one of them to Margaret and said, “Now dear, sometime or other in the future, I shall run across you somewhere, and it may turn out that it is not you at all, but will be some girl that only resembles you. I shall be saying to myself, ‘I know that this is Margaret by the look of her, but I don’t know for sure whether this is my Margaret or somebody else’s;’ but, no matter, I can soon find out, for I shall take my half shell out of my packet and say, ‘I think you are my Margaret, but I am not certain; if you are my Margaret you can produce the other half of the shell.’”

After that Margaret played the new game often and she tried to catch him without his half of the shell, but Mark Twain writes, “I always defeated that game, wherefore, she came to recognize, at last, that I was not only old, but very smart.”

Mark Twain had lived 74 years when the close of his life here came April 20, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut. Once he wrote in one of his humorous moments, “Let us 219 endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” When his life here ended, tributes were received from every land. He was mourned as few men have ever been. Why? Because he knew people; he loved them and interested them. Because, in his most famous days he still remained at heart the boy who played beside the river and loved the surging, restless flow of the mighty current.

220

© Baker Art Gallery.

EX-PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING

On the Saturday morning after election day in November, 1920, a crowd of people stood waiting in the railway station in Marion, Ohio. They were there to say goodbye to President-elect and Mrs. Harding, who were starting on a vacation journey; for, after the stirring times of the long campaign, they needed rest.

When the conductor of the train asked Mr. Harding if he should make fast time, the President-elect replied: “Go slow; I have been going too fast for the past two weeks.”

It was not at all strange that so many should meet to say a fond farewell, for nearly everyone in Marion seems to like Mr. Harding. As we asked his fellow townsmen the reason for this affection, we were surprised that nearly all gave the same reason. They said: “We like him because he is genuine, frank, fair.” “He is generous, considerate, and knows how to be a good neighbor.” Indeed this spirit of neighborliness was shown clearly during the campaign preceding his election, when Mr. Harding decided to remain in Marion and meet his friends on the front porch of his own home. Because of this decision the Republican campaign of 1920 will long be known as “The Front Porch Campaign.” To this front porch came many thousand men and women from every section of our broad land to meet Mr. and Mrs. Harding.

Had you been one of these pilgrims, you would have met a man over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a deep chest. Though he is not bald, his hair is exceptionally gray for a man of his age. He has the rare faculty of making you comfortable in his presence. While, with his deep blue eyes, he looks you squarely in the face as he talks to you, his look is so kindly that you feel at ease.

After this brief but delightful interview, you join an expectant multitude that has assembled on the lawn. Suddenly all eyes turn to the porch. Here stands Mr. Harding, gracious, dignified, serious. Breathlessly each awaits his first utterance. With a well modulated voice he addresses the multitude as he would speak to a group of friends. Soon you are listening as though he were speaking only to you. With no tendency to bicker he discusses the problems of government in a manner that reveals his clearness of vision and pureness of soul. All too soon the address is ended and the crowd begins to scatter. As each wends his way, the remark that is most frequently heard is this: “I like him and I’m sure we can trust him.”

Now that you have met him and heard him speak I am sure you will want to learn more about his life.

On November second, in the year the great Civil War closed, Mr. Harding was born in Corsica, Ohio. How old, then, is he? Most of his boyhood days, however, were spent in Caledonia, Ohio, where his father was the 223 village Doctor. In addition to practicing medicine he owned the Caledonian Argus, a typical village newspaper.

Since all boys of eleven must have at least a little spending money, Warren, as Mr. Harding was then called, found that setting type was his easiest way to earn pin money.

The first year Warren worked on the Argus, the circus came to town and brought Hi Henry’s Band. Warren and another boy helped with unusual faithfulness and speed that day. They knew the paper had free tickets for the circus. Of course they would be given tickets. They planned what a glorious time they would have and, as long as the tickets did not cost anything, they could spend some of their hard earned money on side shows and ice cream. Noon came and no one had mentioned the circus tickets. The afternoon passed slowly; two o’clock, no tickets; three o’clock, no tickets; four, five, six o’clock, and no mention of the circus. Two indignant boys held counsel. Then as night fell, they went to the editor and demanded two tickets as their right. The tickets were forthcoming and two pleased boys went to the circus.

Perhaps the glories of Hi Henry’s Band aroused the citizens of Caledonia. At any rate a band of fifteen pieces was afterwards organized there. An old harness maker, who liked to have the boys play about his shop, was an expert on the valve trombone. He showed his frequent visitor, Warren Harding, how to play the instrument; 224 then Warren learned the tenor horn and became a full-fledged member of the Caledonia Band. Only those of you who have lived in a small town can know how important the band is. It gives concerts in front of the court house or on the square. It plays at rallies, picnics, shows, and leads in parades. So when Warren Harding joined the Caledonia Band, he felt quite grown up and impressive, perhaps more so than when he was elected President.

Not until 1882 did Dr. Harding trade his farm and move to Marion. His son had by that time been graduated from the Ohio Central College. Like many another young man of those days, he taught a term of school after leaving college. But he did not plan to remain a teacher. For a time he thought of the law as a profession, and also made some efforts to sell insurance. But his early knowledge of a printing office and the making of a newspaper influenced his tastes and desires.

His father had acquired an interest in the Marion Star, a struggling Republican paper in the county seat. Warren Harding became the editor. He had held this office only two weeks when he went to Chicago to the Republican National Convention hoping to see James G. Blaine nominated for the Presidency. While he was in Chicago, his father sold the Star and so upon his return Warren Harding, a Republican, became a reporter on the Marion Mirror, the Democratic paper.

In those days, the admirers of James G. Blaine wore 225 high, gray felt hats. Warren Harding wore his when he went about Marion gathering news for the Democratic paper. Soon this annoyed the editor of the Mirror and young Harding was told he must stop wearing his “Blaine” hat. He refused, and so lost his job on the paper.

The night of election day, when Cleveland was elected President, Warren Harding and two old Caledonia friends decided to buy the Marion Star. That was the beginning of an ownership that has lasted ever since. There were plenty of hard days for the young editor but with prophetic insight he wrote and published in the Star:

“The Star is _not_ going to change hands but is both going to go and grow.”

Friends laugh and joke about the hard struggles of the Marion Star and the difficulties of the editor to make the paper go. They tell of times when Editor Harding didn’t have money enough to pay the help. Nevertheless, he made the paper both go and grow, and these hardships only endeared him the more to the citizens of Marion. In the end he overcame all difficulties and his fellow citizens felt proud of his success.

Warren Harding had a strong sense of fairness and justice. When he had been editor but a short time, he wrote out his newspaper creed. Today, any reporter, who enters the service of the Marion Star, has given to him the following rules, which the President of our Country believes should be followed:

Thus we see that President Harding has spent most of his life in newspaper work. Here, as we can readily see, he has gained the intimate knowledge of people that has made him genuinely human.

But his training for the Presidency by no means stopped here. For twenty years he has taken an active part in the problems of State and Nation. When only thirty-five years of age he was elected a member of the Ohio Legislature. As a member of this body, his efforts were so successful and so thoroughly appreciated that he was later chosen to Represent Ohio in the United States Senate. In this strategic position he did not lose an opportunity to acquaint himself with the complex problems of National Government. Little did he then realize that all this knowledge was fitting him to become the Head of the Nation. Such is the mystery of life.

“A large upstanding man. A man of great virility. A man of undoubted courage. An honest man, honest with himself and with the public. A man of good judgment and entire practicality. A generous, kind-hearted, and thoughtful man. Thoughtful of his subordinates, generous to his adversaries, and cordial to his equals. A man whose head has not been turned by the honors thrust upon him. A plain, everyday, practical man without illusions or visionary ideas. A man that is a supporter of stable government. A man intensely American in his instinct.”

ADDENDA

Note: The following pages are intended for a record of additional facts concerning the lives of these eminent Americans.

ADDENDA

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