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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 to103launch 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 tube104was 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 deduct105$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.
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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 favorable107circumstances, 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.
108Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.ROBERT E. PEARYDiscoverer of the North Pole
Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.ROBERT E. PEARYDiscoverer of the North Pole
109ROBERT E. PEARY
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 his110sign 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 of111my 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 shipRoosevelt, 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 according112to 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 Gatling113guns, 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!”
TheRooseveltafter 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 to114be 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 the115cake 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 the116North 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.
117WILLIAM 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 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.
118Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYANThe Great Commoner
Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYANThe Great Commoner
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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 his120father 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 dead121languages 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 the122state, 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 the123early 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 candidate124for 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.
125HENRY 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.
126Courtesy of Ford Motor CompanyHENRY FORDIn His First Motor Car
Courtesy of Ford Motor CompanyHENRY FORDIn His First Motor Car
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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 1898128placed 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 him129on, 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 this130great 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,
“I love,I build,I give.”
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.
131BEN B. LINDSEY
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.
132Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.BEN B. LINDSEY“The Kids’ Judge”
Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.BEN B. LINDSEY“The Kids’ Judge”
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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,134and 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 messenger135boy, 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,136everybody 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 how137like 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––we138saved 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 notwhathe had done, butwhyhe 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.