CHAPTER VIII.

CHARLES ARNETTE TOWNE.

SOME MORAL AND

ON THE QUALIFICATIONS THAT ASSURE SUCCESS MENTAL TRAITS -HIS EARLY LIFE SCHOOL DAYS COLLEGE CAREER FIRST EFFORT IN POLITICS REVOLT AGAINST MACHINE METHODS -ELECTION TO CONGRESS HIS ELOQUENT PLEA ON THE MONEY QUESTION LEADER OF THE SILVER REPUBLICANS NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT

BY THE POPULIST CONVENTION- APPOINTMENT TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE RETIREMENT FROM POLITICAL LIFE.

OPPORTUNITY.

Success, as commonly understood, it seems to me, may be regarded as the result of a happy combination of opportunity

and qualification. I assign, therefore, a certain function to that which we call "luck"; for while qualification may improve original opportunities and may make secondary ones, it can never create the first one. Since, moreover, no man is responsible for his own inheritances, there is still another element of luck in that equipment of genius, talent, habit, and mental and moral predilections with which his conscious life commences.

The qualifications that chiefly assure success may be grouped as physical, temperamental, mental and moral good health, cheerfulness, intelligence, sincerity. With these a man will aim at right ends, study their requirements, persevere in their achievement, and make a noble use of results.

Chasst. Downl

HE best type of successful manhood is not necessarily that which accumulates the greatest wealth or occupies the most exalted position. A pirate, whether of the Spanish Main in old buccaneering days, or on the Stock Exchange of modern times, where men may rob and steal

without exposure to physical danger, may acquire great riches, and all too often the thrifty and shifty politician, who takes advantage of every changing public sentiment to advance a selfish interest, is landed in high office; but success so obtained never appeals to the higher and nobler nature in mankind. No poet who loves truth, and sings of justice and humanity, chants the praises of the success attendant upon the betrayal of either friends or principles, or glorifies the thrift that follows fawning.

In the struggle of life to the man of high aims and pure impulses, the greater measure of success may lie in present defeat, and the victory ultimately belong to the vanquished.

These statements seem commonplace enough, but no correct estimate of the life, labors, and achievements of Charles A. Towne can be made unless judgment is founded upon the basis of high ideals, a love of truth and justice, and a lofty and disinterested patriotism.

Possessed of great ability as an organizer, an advocate and a logician, with an intellect that can at once "snatch the essential grace of meaning" out of a business proposition, an involved question in the law, or detect a false thesis in political economy; a mind that deals in fundamental principles and conducts discussions on lofty grounds and for noble purposes; thus superbly equipped for a successful business career, he has rather chosen to cast his lot with the minority, and has devoted the best years of his life to the advancement of those ideas of government and public morality that seem to him essential to the preservation of the Republic.

The story of his life is the not uncommon one of the struggles and trials of a lad from poverty to a position of leadership in a great nation. Charles Judson Towne and Laura Fargo, his wife, were farmers in Oakland county, Michigan, in 1858, and here, in what was in those early days one of the substantial farmer homes of the community, Charles Arnette Towne was introduced to the world. Born at a time when human slavery was the burning topic of the day; when orators like Phillips, writers like Mrs. Stowe and Horace Greeley, poets like Whittier and Lowell, statesmen like Lincoln, and patriots like John Brown were stirring the conscience of the nation, focusing thought upon the great problem of the rights and privileges of human beings in their relations to each

other. The father was a follower of John C. Fremont "to the glorious defeat of 1856," one of the pioneers of the Republican party. Charles was literally born into the heat of that great contest, with all of his immediate surroundings influencing the development of his character. This may, to some extent, be responsible for that fine sense of justice, that regard for the rights of others, that sympathy for the oppressed, and the high ideals of honor and honesty that have been leading characteristics of his manhood.

In his school days, Charles was numbered among the best students in his books, but was always the acknowledged leader in declamation and amateur theatricals. Little Charlie Towne was ever in demand at church entertainments, and was the chief number at school exhibitions. So pronounced was this talent for public speaking, that at an early age people predicted a public career and a seat in Congress; but, coupled with a glib tongue and an easy presence before an audience, young Towne possessed that much rarer quality, a capacity for intense application to the task at hand. When lessons were hard the night would find him sitting with classics and mathematics, his open book upon his mother's lapboard, and a wet towel bound about his head to assist by its cooling influence in keeping the mind at work.

He was graduated from the Owosso High School in 1875. His graduating oration was on agriculture, this being the last of several he had prepared, and it was pushed through under high pressure during the last days of the term. This faculty of speedy preparation has distinguished his work through life; the ability to formulate in a brief time the study and thought of years. His exhaustive speech on the currency, made the summer following his election to Congress, was prepared in four days, and his famous speech in the Senate on January 28, 1901, was written in forty-eight hours.

Towne's course in college was not markedly brilliant in scholarship, though he was a good, all-round student, especially good in the classics, and leading his section in history and political economy. It was as a debater and an organizer that he won his chief laurels. Like many of the great men of the nation, his reading was careful and his selection wise. The library held much more of value to him than the class room; indeed, the class work was supplemented by library

work, giving a broader and better foundation than ever comes to the scholar who follows too closely in the beaten track of the college curriculum.

Towne was the leader of independent college politics. By adroit management, keeping his forces intact, and creating dissension in the ranks of the enemy, he was able to hold the minority in control like a skillful general managing a campaign. It was here that his power as a leader of men was first manifest. Perhaps there is no better test of a man's qualification for leadership than this acknowledged supremacy in a university numbering two thousand of the brightest boys that the country produces. He was graduated in 1881, and was selected as class orator. Eight years later, while a young and unknown lawyer in Chicago, the Alumni Association of his university extended an invitation to him to deliver the annual oration at commencement time, a most distinguished and unusual compliment, showing better than words the mark the young man made in his college course; this position having been filled by Senator Cushman K. Davis, Charles Dudley Warner, and other eminent statesmen and scholars of the country.

Mr. Towne's first effort in politics was in 1876, when, a lad of seventeen, he made a few speeches in Ottawa county. He spoke again in the state campaign of 1878, but his real introduction into the work was at Owosso, Michigan, where the family lived during the campaign of 1880. It was to be his first vote, and he was intensely interested in the issues of the contest. He volunteered his services to the local committee; an appointment was made, but, through the negligence of the managers, no hall was engaged. Nothing daunted by this, young Towne secured a dry goods box, carried it to the principal corner of the city, and, mounting it, delivered to the people who had gathered to hear him an address that created more comment than any other of the local campaign. How well I recall him as he stood there above the crowd in the dim light of the street, his pale face, his large, expressive eye, and his ringing voice, as he spoke in fierce denunciation of the policy and history of the opposition. The fine conviction as to his duty; the resolve to do it and bear his part in the responsibilities of republican government, were already manifest in him. From this day on, it was merely a question

of time until he should have the ear of the nation, some cause that should enlist his sympathies in behalf of the people and in defense of the tradition of the government that he loved.

After graduation, Mr. Towne secured a clerkship in the capitol at Lansing. For four years he held this position, carrying on at the same time the study of the law at home nights, but these things did not claim all his time. He took an active interest in politics, and during campaigns was sent to the most difficult appointments in the county. In 1884 the State Republican, the leading Republican newspaper of the state, suggested him for Congress from that district.

In 1887 he married Miss Maud Wiley of Lansing. Mr. Towne was then living in Marquette, Michigan. The following year he moved to Chicago, but the change proved disastrous, and in the summer of 1890 he settled in Duluth, Minnesota. Arriving there without an acquaintance in the city, and without means, he soon won his way into the confidence and affections of the people. Two years after his arrival he was offered the Republican nomination for mayor, but refused it. For four years he continued in the practice of the law, establishing a reputation for honesty and fair dealing, known as an attorney who scorned to become a party to questionable suits at law or tricky practices in politics.

In 1894 he headed a revolt against the machine politics in control of the Republican party in St. Louis county and Duluth, wrested the city and county from their grasp, and accepted the nomination to Congress in a district at that time. represented by a Democrat. Mr. Towne managed his own. campaign, and, despite the opposition of the Republican ring, without funds to carry on the canvass, with a district as large as the state of Indiana, with poor facilities for transportation, and two other candidates in the field, he was elected by a plurality of almost ten thousand votes.

Mr. Towne was now thirty-six years old, and though he had been a Republican all his life, and had engaged in active work since his seventeenth year, this was the first time he had accepted a nomination to office. With this election commences his career as a public man.

About this time the depreciation of silver and the general fall of prices turned attention to the study of finance. With characteristic energy Mr. Towne went into the subject. He