Modern Americans Part 9

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

--WILLIAM TYLER PAGE.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

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 crus.h.i.+ng 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 mult.i.tude--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 cla.s.s. 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 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 s.p.a.cious 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, suns.h.i.+ne, and exercise, William soon grew into a st.u.r.dy, 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 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 "Cla.s.sical 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 soph.o.m.ore 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 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 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 cla.s.s, he entered the Union College of Law in Chicago where he was graduated at the age of twenty-three. Immediately he hung out his s.h.i.+ngle 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 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.

HENRY FORD

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 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 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 great nature lover or with his other good friend, Thomas A. Edison, with whom he is most congenial.