MEN OF AFFAIRS

Of the younger classical scholars in America, one of the best known is Professor Mitchell Carroll, of the George Washington University, Washington, D. C. Mr. Carroll was born in North Carolina and reared in Virginia. His father was Rev. John L. Carroll, D.D., a prominent Baptist minister. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Richmond College at the age of eighteen, being the youngest student of the college ever to attain this distinction. After some experience in teaching, he entered the Johns Hopkins University for the pursuit of graduate studies in Greek and Latin, where he was successively scholar and fellow, and in 1893 received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He has since passed some years in study abroad, one at the Universities of Leipsic and Berlin, the others in the American schools at Athens and in Rome. He was for two years Professor of Greek in Richmond College, and since 1899 has been head of the classical department in the George Washington University. He has taken a prominent part in the recent development of the University, especially in the promotion of scientific publications, of which he is Director.

DR. MITCHELL CARROLL

Professor Carroll is also one of the national secretaries of the Archaeological Institute of America, and has traveled extensively in its interests, founding affiliated societies of the Institute in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and in the Northwest. He holds membership in the American Philological Association and in many other learned societies.

Mr. Carroll is an official in the Calvary Baptist Church, of Washington, and is the teacher of the celebrated Vaughan class for young men, which is one of the largest and best organized young men’s classes in the world.

He is also a lecturer and an author. In addition to his contributions to the literature of classical philology, he has published two volumes on the history of Greek women, and was one of the editors of the “World’s Orators.”

In September, 1897, Mr. Carroll married Miss Caroline Moncure Benedict, daughter of Major E. D. Benedict, of Brooklyn. Their home, “Belair,” is in Cleveland Park, one of Washington’s loveliest suburbs.

Mr. Buffington is an excellent example of the generation that was bornafter industrial conditions in the South had been altered by the Civil War. He was born in 1863, in Huntingdon, West Virginia, his father belonging to a prominent family there, and his mother being a member of the Nicholas family, of Culpeper County, Virginia. After the close of the war, Mr. Buffington’s father moved his family to Covington, Kentucky, and he spent his youth in that city, studying in the public schools and at Chickering Institute, Cincinnati. In the year 1881 he entered Vanderbilt University, where he remained for two years, returning to Covington to engage in the manufacture of wire and nails. Close application to business, earnestness and an unlimited capacity for pushing his work along, built up the business, and in 1890 his company moved to larger quarters in Anderson, Indiana. After eight years of telling work in this new and enlarged field, Mr. Buffington was called to assume the directorship of the American Steel and Wire Company in Chicago, and a year later was made President of the Illinois Steel Company, the largest concern of its kind west of Pittsburg.

E. J. BUFFINGTON

Mrs. Buffington was Miss Drucilla Moore, daughter of Judge Laban T. Moore, of Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Their handsome home is in Evanston, where may be found quite a colony of Kentuckians.

It was eminently fitting that the most intimate friend of the late Sam Jones should succeed him as mayor of Toledo. Mr. Whitlock, while understanding better than any other man in Toledo the political beliefs of “Golden Rule Jones,” is, like him, a man of marked individuality, and will not be bound by the traditions of any man or party. Like Mr. Jones, he owes his nomination and election directly to the people and pays no allegiance to any political machine, boss or party. Like Jones, his only ambition is to make Toledo a city where the Golden Rule is really the governing principle and not merely an empty phrase; and to make the men of thecity realize and live up to the liberty and independence of their manhood. At the death of Jones, the corruptionists flocked to the city hall and endeavored to resume their old-time control of municipal affairs, but the common people, whom Jones had taught to recognize the rights and duties of citizenship, went unorganized, but solidly, to the polls and elected Brand Whitlock.

BRAND WHITLOCK

We know Mr. Whitlock by his literary work. He has been a newspaper man for years, and has published three successful novels—“The Thirteenth District,” a novel of politics; “Her Infinite Variety,” and “The Happy Average,” the last said to be autobiographical. He is also a lawyer and is a close student of current affairs. He is an idealist who believes in the present fulfillment of his dreams, and believes that all the problems of life, whether social or political, depend for their solution on the intelligence of the individual. To him the people are the foundation of public power and public officials but their hired servants. He maintains that the people can and should conduct their own government without the aid of political machines, and that representative government is possible in the present day. His only message to the people is that the power is theirs and that they should never allow any man or set of men to take it away from them. He makes no promises, simply pledging himself to represent the whole people.

There is one thing of which Mr. Whitlock allows himself to be proud. It is the Juvenile Court Bill, of Ohio, which he drew and was greatly instrumental in having passed by the legislature. It provides for a separate court for the hearing of children under sixteen, and it is Mr. Whitlock’s earnest hope that a state “junior republic” may be the final outcome of the work.

Dr. W. M. L. Coplin is another Southerner who has attained distinction in the city of Brotherly Love. He was born in Bridgeport, West Virginia, in 1864. He was educated at Lindsay Military Academy, Fairmont State Normal School, Mt. Union College, and later at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, from which institution he graduated in 1886. After practicing his profession for nine years, he accepted the position of Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology in the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained one year. He then returned to Philadelphia to assume the duties of a similar chair in the Jefferson Medical College and to become Director of the Laboratories of the Jefferson Medical College Hospital, positions which he still occupies. He has held professorships in three medical colleges and a number of national, state and municipal positions. For the last ten years he has devoted his entire time to teaching and departmental organization, in which he has shown peculiarly successful capabilities.

Dr. Coplin is an ardent research worker, and has conducted numerous investigations along scientific lines; his experiments have rendered themedical world invaluable aid in solving some of its most difficult problems. He is a voluminous writer on subjects connected with Pathology, Bacteriology and Sanitation, and is widely known by his contributions to magazines. The fourth edition of his Manual of Pathology has just been issued, and the Manual of Practical Hygiene is in process of revision.

DR. W. M. L. COPLIN

In November, 1905, the mayor of Philadelphia bestowed upon Dr. Coplinthe highest honors which his adopted city could tender a physician—the appointment of Director of the Department of Public Health and Charities, a position for which he is peculiarly fitted, on account of his rare administrative qualifications.

Probably the most uplifting tendency of the times is that looking towards the nationalization of instruction in the universities of the chief countries of the world, shown by the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford; the Roosevelt Chair of American Institutions at the University of Berlin, endowed by an American banker; Mr. Stillman’s million-dollar gift to the Beaux Arts in Paris and the American Academy of Art at Rome; the Hyde foundation for Harvard professors at the Sorbonne; the Baron de Coubertin’s prizes at Princeton, Leland Stanford and Tulane Universities; the Duc de Loubat’s foundation for the study of American Antiquities at the National College of France; and the opening, in the University of Paris, of a department for the study of the History and Outlines of American Law.

CHARLES F. BEACH, JR.

The Paris Law School has five thousand students—about seven times as many as our largest law schools—and they are drawn from every country in Europe. The effect of such instruction on such a large and influential body of opinion can scarcely be estimated. The lecturer chosen for this course by the University was Mr. Charles Fisk Beach, Jr., who had already discharged similar duties in an American law school and whose writings on American economic topics have been widely quoted. Mr. Beach was born in Kentucky, fifty-two years ago, and is a graduate of Centre College. After completing a law course at Columbia University he went abroad and studied at the University of Paris. He then returned to his native country and began the practice of law, paying especial attention to railway and corporation law, and acting as counsel for various corporations and lecturing on Civil Law and Equity Jurisprudence.

In 1896 he established himself as consultation lawyer counsel in London and Paris, this experience further adding to his fitness for the post to which he was chosen by the French university. Mr. Beach’s first year’s work proved so successful that the university extended its scope to include American institutions as well as the history and general outline of our legal system. His field of efforts has been extended also to include alternate lectures at Paris and Lille the first half of the term and at Bordeaux and Toulouse the latter half.

At the time of the great expansion of American commercial, financial and political influence in Europe, and especially just now, when efforts are being made to induce trading in American securities on the Paris Bourse and to influence French investment in America, this phase of educational reciprocity, conducing to a better understanding of our institutions, promotes the welfare of the world, and particularly our own special interests abroad.

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