PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD

Southland Times, Issue 18853, 19 June 1920, Page 8

PEOPLE OF THE PERIOD

PEN PORTRAITS OF PROMINENT ) PERSONALITIES. 1 I (By Criticus.) I 6 i No. 38. WARREN G. HARDING. Enthusiastic Republicans who support tne candidature of Senator Warren George Harding of Ohio state emphatically that he is of the McKinley type. Mr McKinley also hailed from Ohio and the State’s writers carry their views regarding the similarity of the two men even to their physiognomies. The two men have much in common as far as looks are concerned but there is no likeness. Both show a stem countenance, but McKinley’s lace was harder and hardly as determined looking as that of the Republican nominee. He is a man in his middle age, active and ambitious, and he will approach the electors with the recommendation of the Old Guard of the Party. People in this part of the world have had little opportunity of learning much .about (he Republican nominee and I feci, therefore, that it is best to let Mr Harding’s friends speak for him, by quoting liberally from a bulletin issued as part of the election campaign. j Warren G. Harding, United States senaI tor from Ohio, we arc told, was born on ! his grandfather’s farm, where his father I then resided, just outside the village of Blooming Grove, Morrow County, Ohio, , November 2, 18Go. Ho was the eldest of i eight children, some of whom have achieved | more than ordinary distinction; one in ’ medicine, one as a public school instruc- : tor, and one as a missionary in a foreign | field. He is the son of George T. Harding, | then the young village doctor who found no night too dark and dreary and no journey i too long to travel the almost impassable 1 roads of that day to go to the relief of a suffering patient, however poor and unable to pay for the services rendered. ■a®®®® The Hardings are of good old colonial stock coming originally from Scotland, settling first in Connecticut, removing later to the Ayoming Valley, Pa., where some of them were massacred and others fought in the .Revolutionary war. The mother of Warren, Phoebe Dickerson, was tlescended from an old-time Dutch family, the Van Kirks; .-o that in Warren G. Harding is found the blending of the blood of the hardy Holland Dutch and the fearless, alert and lib-erty-loving Scotch. The country round about was mostly woodland when Warren was born. His grandfather owned a small tract of land and was neither better nor worse off than his neighbours. They were all engaged in cutting away the timber and transforming a primitive forest into cultivated farms. In those early days every child must contribute his share of toil in overcoming the obstacles of nature in this transforming process. As Warren grew up, he learned to fell trees, chop wood, split rails, plant and hoe corn and do all things incident to farm life when crops were raised between roots and stumps and the labours of the farm were performed by hand. He early acquired the habit of industry. No fabled goddess hovered over the chamber when he was born. He was just a natural, healthy robust boy-, of humble but honest and pious parentage, endowed with the supremest gifts of nature —good, hard, common sense, a rugged constitution, a sunny disposition and a heart full of the milk of human kindness. it was not all toil in those days, and Warren delighted in all the country anti village sports. None better than he loved to haunt the old swimming-pool in Whetstone Creek, which ran near by, and none could dive deeper or swim further. Among his school-fellows on the village green he was a i rime favourite and the leader of the

, gang. At sixteen he was a man both in . .stature and strength ; the older boys dared i not bally him. and he would not permit .'them to impose on the younger lads. In (lie contentions which inevitably arise on i the playground, he early developed those : traits of leadership and conciliation \vhi'-h I have been characteristic of him ever sine; l , t He attended the village school until four--1 teen years of age. when he entered the Ohio 1 Central College of Ilheria, from which he was graduated, standing high in scholarship; and it was there, its editor of the col Lge paper, that lie first displayed a talent for journalism. Like nio.-t aspiring young linen of that age he was obliged lo stop 1 for a time now and then and earn the ; money with which to pursue Ids college I courre, At one time we find him cutting irorn. At another painting his neighbours’ i barns. At still nnotlver. driving a team | anti helping to grade the roadbed of the T. I and O. Railroad, which was then huild- ; ing through that eommuuit.y. At. the age ! of seventeen we find him leaching a district, sciiool and "tooting it horn" in the "brass band” of the village. One of his ! fellow musicians, who is now at the head of a great manufacturing concern, and who , has since sat with him on various boards of directors, recounts that the band om-e took the third prize at a tournament ; and ' he adds that ‘‘should Senator Harding be . elected President of the United States it ; would not cause him half the pride which | he felt on that occasion when we came I home with the third prize for our musical I proficiency.” At odd times he worked in j the little printing-office in the village. He i seemed to love the odour of printer's ink • and to have a passion for everything per- ‘ (aiding to a newspaper office, even down I to the minutest detail of t lie mechanical i equipment. He became an exf>err typeset - ' ter by hand anti when the linotype was I firsl introduced be learned to operate the j machine. lie is a practical pressman, Job | printer, and as a make-up man he has few ! equals. The “luck-piece” he carries as a | Senator of the United States is the old prin- , ters’ rule he used when he was yet “sticking ! tvpc.” The Marion Star is the senator’s idol. ; The pet child of his youth anti the pride of his nrmhi'-od. When he was nineteen, having completed his college course, his ■ father. Dr Harding, seeking a wider field, removed to Marion, Ohio, the county seat of an adjoining county, where he still reside?, and, despite his seventy-six years, is in active practice of his profession. The Star was a struggling daily paper, diminutive in size, in a struggling county-seat town of 4000 inhabit ants. Young Harding yearned to pos.sp.--s it. Though it had had such a precarious existence that it was diffi--1 cult, to tell whether it were an asset, or a liability, his father, having faith in the hoy i and wishing to gratify this supreme desire i of his young ambition, lent, hLs credit in i assisting him in taking it over—the conj sideration being only (he assumption of its j indebtedness. The county was then Demo- | cratio, anti this paper not oven the official j organ of the minority party. With the enthusiasm of youth, and the inspiration of one who has his foot upon the first rung of the ladder of his ambition, the young man I bent his energies to the task of making the i Star a bearon-light which should shine out i of the darkness,, and to lift it out of the I depths of all hut bankruptcy and give it i a financial standing above reproach. He i lived with it, by day, and often far into the night. He dreamed of it. At times he performed every function from “devil” to the managing editor. Thorny ] was the road and sometimes the coffers I were so depleted that it was necessary to I request advertisers to make advance payi rnents of hills in order to keep the entcrj prise afloat. But the story of how I it grew and expanded, ultimately outgrowing and taking over its competitor is too I long to be written here. It is the same j old story of love, devotion, energy, rej f'turcefulnes.s and determination winning 1 against all odds and coming out triumphant 1 in the end. The Star to-day is a prosperi ous money-making plant. It could not be | purchased at any price. It has the widest | circulation of any newspaper in a city of l 30,000 inhabitants in the Middle West. It I is quoted more often than any other paper outside the great cities. It has not only

grown with the development of the city, but has kept in advance. It has been always a "booster” and never a- "knocker”; but in all of his political career not a line has ever appeared in the Star boosting his own candidacy. Always conservative, always fearless, it has fought for high ideals and won its way to a place of prestige and power; and the guiding spirit is, and was, Senator Harding. There has never been a strike or threatened strike in the Star office. His employees found him always liberal and ever generous and they love him as a brother. Alter he had established his paper on a firm foundation he organised a stock company, distributing shares to each of his employees, and he and they still own it. Mr Harding is closely identified with many large business enterprises. Since he took over the Star, Marion has grown from a country town of 4000 inhabitants to a flourishing manufacturing city of 30,000, and he has been a prime factor in this industrial development. He has been a "booster” for every new industry which has located there, taking shares of stock in each to the limit of his ability. Because of his recognised business sagacity he has been made, at one time or another, a member of the Board of Directors of most of these enterprises, lending has counsel and advice, and in turn gathering much valuable information concerning the difficulties which beset the various lines of industry. He is at present a director of a bank, director of several large manufacturing plants, and is also a trustee of the Trinity Baptist Church, of which he is a member, and upon whose services he is a regular attendant when in the city. However, we are told, he has managed to get out of the town often enough to see a bit of the world.

During the last score of years Senator Harding has been three times abroad, visiting most of the European countries, not on pleasure bent, but to study at close range their systems of government and the economic problems with which wo have to dealsuch as tariff, the standard of wages paid to labour in the different countries and the varied conditions surrounding their mode of life; but always he has returned with a deeper love for his own land and a firmer conviction that its form of government is the best which was ever devised by man. After his election to the United States Senate, and before taking his seat, he visited the Hawaiian Islands to get some first-hand information upon the production and distribution of sugar. He has spoken many times in almost every State of the Union, addressing now a wool-growers’ association, now a farmers’ institute, now a convention of steel and ironmasters, and now an association of miners or of railroad employees, c<r a combination of labourers from some other branch t>f industry, thus familiarising himself with the needs of every section and with the thoughts and hopes and aspirations of all classes and conditions of men. Having himself climbed the ladder from the lowest rung, he has given an attentive ear and careful thought to the claims and problems of men in every station of life. Mr Harding has twice represented the Thirteenth Senatorial District of Ohio in the State Legislature, served one term as lieutenantgovernor, refusing to stand for re-election; ■inti he is now nearing the close of his first term as United States Senator from Ohio. The account continues; When he came into this wider sphere of action his experience in ihe State legislature served a good purpose and he speedily rose to a commanding place. His fund of knowledge and his wide experience with men and affaire gave him a comprehensive grasp of the problems with which the public service has to deal; and on his firs! entrance into the arena it became

apparent to his fellow' senators that he was no novice, but one well qualified to render valuable service; and his utterances on the floor n: the Senate have invariably commanded respectful attention. Senator Harding has ever the courage of his convictions, even though his stand should engender serious opposition, saith this bulletin issued by his agents. He early advocated preparedness while others were clamouring for peace at any price. He sponsored the hill for preparedness which had the endorsement of Colonel Roosevelt, and he was so closely associated with him during i<s nendeney that it came to be widely rumoured through the press that Colonel Roosevelt regarded him as the coming man of I <l2O. Two years after the schism which resulted in turning Ohio into a Democratic -ante in 1912, Senator Harding was elected to (he L 7 nited States Senate by a majority of more than 100,000, running 73,000 ahead -if !he next highest on the ticket. In the b ".ate he stood to the party leaders and on t’-e Peace Treaty he was in the steps of : uiator l odge at every turn in the game. Senator Herding is a sound party man and ! - will probably have a better chance of i -v-ping it united than would have any of Ids opponents for the party's nomination.