Book 3 — POLITICAL LEADERS.

Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich.

The republican leader in the senate, Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, was born in Foster, Rhode Island, November 6, 1841. After having received a common school and academy education, he became engaged in mercantile pursuits in Providence, being entirely successful therein. While a very young man, Mr. Aldrich became interested in the conduct and welfare of public schools. He became so prominent in connection with efforts looking to school improvements that in 1871 he was elected president of the Providence common council. In 1873 he was a member of the Rhode Island legislature, and at 1876 was its speaker. It was about this period that Mr. Aldrich began to take an active part in national politics, in consequence of which he was made member of congress in 1879, holding that office until 1883, when he resigned in order to take a seat in the senate. Since that time he has been more or less continuously in the public eye. He is chairman of the committee of rules of the Fiftieth congress, and is, as already stated, republican leader in the senate. While Mr. Aldrich is not a brilliant orator, he has a remarkable instinct for organization, and it is that faculty more than any other that has obtained for him the prominent position in the Republican party which is now his.

William Jennings Bryan.

William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Marion county, Illinois, March 19, 1860. He got an elementary education at home from his mother until he was ten, and then attended public school until his fifteenth year, studying thereafter for two years at Whipple academy, Jacksonville, which he left in order to enter Illinois college. During his college course he was prominent in literary and debating societies and on his graduation, in 1881, delivered the valedictory of his class. For the next two years he studied law in the Union law college, and in the office of Lyman Trumbull, and upon his admission to the bar began to practice at Jacksonville. In 1884 he removed to Lincoln, Nebraska, and became a member of the law firm of Talbot & Bryan. He soon became active in politics, his first public reputation being made in the campaign of 1888. In 1890 he was sent to congress. In 1892 he was renominated and again elected. In 1896 he was a delegate from Nebraska to the national convention of the Democratic party at Chicago, where his brilliant speech in defense of free silver caused his nomination as candidate to the presidency of the United States. After a most remarkable campaign he was defeated. He was a colonel of the Third Nebraska Volunteers during the Spanish-American war, and at its termination returned to Nebraska, resuming his political activities. He edits and publishes The Commoner, a weekly periodical, in which he sets forth his political principles. Mary E. Baird, of Perry, Illinois, whom he married in 1884, has borne him three children.

Arthur Pue Gorman.

There are very few people who begin political life as early as Arthur Pue Gorman. He was born March 11, 1839, and at thirteen years of age became a page in the United States senate. In 1866 he was appointed revenue collector in Maryland, which office he held until 1869, when U. S. Grant became president. From 1875 to 1879 he was state senator, and from 1881 to 1899 he was United States senator from Maryland. From 1869 to 1875 he was member of the Maryland House of Delegates. In spite of his limited schooling, he managed by wide and careful reading and practical experience to secure an education in general and in public matters in particular, which has procured for him the position of a notable political leader. It was largely through Mr. Gorman’s management that Grover Cleveland was elected to the presidency after an uninterrupted series of democratic defeats for a quarter of a century. Calmness of temper, courage, self-reliance and honesty are the qualities which he possesses, which, too, inspire respect and which win him triumphs. He is an able speaker and a master of parliamentary law. He has strikingly impressed himself upon national affairs, and his name has often been voiced in the press as a fit candidate for the presidency.

Marcus Alonzo Hanna.

Marcus Alonzo Hanna, one of the most prominent figures in national republican affairs, was born September 24, 1837, at New Lisbon (now Lisbon), Ohio. His father was a grocer in that village. Young Hanna was educated at local schools, and in the Western Reserve college and Kenyon college, Ohio. When not in school he was helping his father in the latter’s store, and cut short his academic course in order to clerk for his father, who had decided on opening a place of business in Cleveland. Until he was twenty he thus worked, receiving a small salary for so doing. In 1861 his father died, and young Hanna became heir to the business, which he continued to run until 1867. During that year he sold out and laid the foundations of the vast fortune which he now possesses. Mr. Hanna is interested in banks, railroads, mines of many sorts, especially coal, steamship lines, etc. At a comparatively early age he became interested in political questions, into the solving of which he threw himself with characteristic earnestness. For many years he has been chairman of the republican national committee, and in that capacity he secured the nomination of the late President McKinley, as well as obtaining a second term for him. Mr. Hanna is United States senator from Ohio, having been elected to that office in 1897. In his own words, his success may be explained thus: “I was never penniless, because I always saved. I was never hopeless, because I would not be discouraged, and I always felt assured that present endeavors would bring forth future fruit.”

Carter Henry Harrison, Jr.

Carter Henry Harrison, Jr., was born in Chicago, April 23, 1860. He is the son of the late Carter Henry Harrison, one of the builders of the City of Chicago, who was its mayor five times. Carter Henry Harrison, Jr., was educated in the public schools, in educational establishments in Altenburg, Germany, at St. Ignatius college, Chicago, and the Yale law school, from which he graduated in 1883. On December 14, 1887, he was married to Edith, daughter of Robert N. Ogden, of the Court of Appeals, New Orleans. He followed his father’s profession of law and the real estate business. He also was the publisher of the Chicago Times, 1891 and 1893; was elected mayor of Chicago as a democrat, April 6, 1897, 1899, 1901 and 1903. Mr. Harrison has the courage of vigorous opinions politically, municipally and in other ways. While some may differ from him as to his beliefs and methods, even these admit his possession of those qualities which enable him to successfully fulfil duties that are usually relegated to much older men.

Joseph Wingate Folk.

One of the most prominent and promising young men in the political life in the United States is Joseph Wingate Folk, who was elected governor of Missouri in the fall of 1904. Though Governor Folk’s rise has been a very rapid one, it has been the result of qualities which make for the most substantial and enduring kind of political success. Dominating factors of Governor Folk’s career have been honesty and a rigid performance of duty. For these he has courted defeat and failure, has even undergone danger to his life. He has refused to listen for a moment to some of the largest financial offers that have ever been made to tempt a servant of the people to betray his trust. Not only has the power of money, but also the corrupt personal influence of many able men, been brought to bear upon him in his work as circuit attorney in St. Louis. Many of his friends, even, endeavored to persuade him that his course of action toward the political leaders in St. Louis would result only in disaster to himself. But Governor Folk’s invariable answer was that he accepted public office for no other purpose than to do his duty.

The result has been a great surprise to both his friends and enemies, and the introduction of an uplifting influence in American politics. Governor Folk has won a great personal triumph in his election to the governorship of Missouri, and the indications are that he will rise to still greater heights. His prominence and influence are rendered all the more notable by the fact that he is only thirty-five years old, and rose from the position of an obscure lawyer to American leadership in the short space of four years.

Governor Folk was born in the town of Brownsville, Tenn., in 1869. He finished his college education at Vanderbilt University, where he was known as a clever, whole-souled young man who devoted much attention to his books, but by no means neglected athletics and the general life of a college boy. He was admitted to the bar in 1890, and began the practice of law in St. Louis, where for some years his experiences were those of the average struggling young attorney. During this period of his career he became a friend of Henry W. Hawes, who was afterward one of his bitterest political enemies. Hawes rapidly rose to a position of considerable power in St. Louis, and when, in 1900, he was asked by the Democratic boss of the city, Edward Butler, to suggest a likely man for the place of circuit attorney, he at once recommended his friend Folk. Butler knew very little of the young lawyer, but on the strength of Hawes’ word he accepted him as being sufficiently pliable to serve the corrupt uses of the political machine.

Folk was elected and immediately inaugurated the now celebrated campaign against the corrupt practices of both his political supporters and his enemies. It was the former who suffered chiefly in the execution of Governor Folk’s ideas as to his duty. They were at first astonished, then incensed, and finally panic-stricken. Many of those who helped to elect him to office were sent to prison. Others were compelled to take flight to avoid the same fate. The St. Louis political machine, one of the most corrupt in existence, was shattered. It was a herculean task which Governor Folk had mapped out for himself, but his courage, steadfastness and ability carried him to a triumphant conclusion of it, and now he stands before the country as a political leader of the highest type.