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W the attention of the country

ITH the Republican convention over,

was

turned to the Democratic gathering at San Francisco. The dominance of President Wilson, the emergence of Mr. McAdoo as the leading candidate, and the influence of Mr.

Bryan upon policies to be adopted-these furnished the principal phases of recent discussion within and without the Democratic party. It seemed likely the convention at San Francisco might be as interesting in its results as that at Chicago.

NOT FISHIN' MUCH. JUST KILLING. TIME From the Daily Ledger (Tacoma, Wash.)

LOOKS LIKE A RIGHT STURDY LITTLE PLANT From the Sun (Baltimore, Md.)

President, represents the best traditions and aspirations in American life. His present position is due to no one outstanding event of his career, but rather to an almost unbroken series of progressive events leading to a final goal. The eldest son of a typical American family of sturdy colonial qualities, he experienced the hardships of the pioneer and was thus disciplined in the school of necessity. Unspoiled by the ease of luxury, he learned to value the worth of self-helpfulness. His youth was spent in a rural community, the open door for healthy emulation in the varied interests, where neighborhood rivalries offer the discipline for leadership. His is the typical American career.

School Days

A barefoot boy, playing the part assigned to the eldest in a family of recognized standing in a community, he early learned the lessons of industry and application. A youth in the public schools he aspired to a higher education, which at that time pointed him. out as somewhat separate and apart from the neighborhood. As a student in a small unclassified college he was offered and accepted the leadership of his set in various college activities, such as the position of editor of the college paper, where he started his training for the ownership and editorship of one of the best newspapers in a small city in the country. Recently, in conversation with Dr. Amos R. Wells, editor of the Christian Endeavor World, he remarked, "If I have any facility for the work I am now doing, I owe it most to my training as editor of the college paper while a student in college." So it might be said of Senator Harding's success in this field.

His passion for achievement led him to many community interests, in most of which he excelled, such as the proverbial literary society and village band.

His school experience was that of the average country boy, where the winters only were spent in school, while the summers were passed at work on the farm. His sympathy for the toiler on farm and in factory is experimental rather than professional. He knows from experience farm life, having done all the work of the pioneer, clearing the forest, splitting the rails, "laying the worm" for the fences which he helped to build; attending the stock, and cultivating and harvesting the crops. This growing lad varied his labors by working at odd jobs, such as a hand laborer in helping to build the Toledo & Ohio Central Railroad that ran through his neighborhood; doing day's work where employment could be had, until he took up the work of the printing office.

One of the first steps for the talent of America's promising youth was then, as now, school teaching; and this young Harding took up. It has been said that it takes greater talent to succeed in the unorganized country school than it does to govern State. In this field, although his service was brief, he displayed successful leadership.

As Newspaper Proprietor

a

The American passion to become independent and self-reliant, or, in the language of the day, "one's own boss," soon led him to enter newspaper business, first as an employee, then as a responsible owner. His early experience in the newspaper business reminds us of the famous mountain climber, who, finding that his too late start prevented reaching the top before dark, prevailed on his companions to return for an earlier start in the morning to avoid the necessity of having to associate failure with the initial effort.

As the newspaper accounts of Senator Harding's career have fully explained, his newspaper, the Marion Daily Star, has attained remarkable success and more than local influence. Relating the

1

growth of this publication under Mr. Harding's direction, an authorized account of his life says:

The Star was a struggling daily paper, diminutive in size, in a struggling county-seat town of four thousand inhabitants. Young Harding yearned to possess it. Though it had had such a precarious existence that it was difficult to tell whether it were an asset or a liability, his father, having faith in the boy and wishing to gratify this supreme desire of his young ambition, lent his credit in assisting him in taking it over-the consideration being only the assumption of its indebtedness. The county was then Democratic, and this paper not even the official 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 bent his energies to the task of making the Star a beacon light which should shine out of the darkness, and to lift it out of the depths of all but bankruptcy and give it a financial standing above reproach.

The Star to-day is a prosperous, money-making plant. It could not be purchased at any price. It has the widest circulation of any newspaper in a city of 30,000 inhabitants in the Middle West. It 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 Mr. Harding's 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.

Destined for Public Life

Harding's talents, his tastes, his family and community associations, together with his location and the time of his growth, all combined to fit him for public life. He entered upon his public career as member of the upper chamber of the Ohio Legislature, to which he was reëlected. This quite natu

THE BIRTHPLACE OF SENATOR HARDING, NEAR BLOOMING GROVE, MORROW COUNTY, OHIO

rally led to the presidency of that body as the Lieutenant-Governor of the State. During these years his influence was extended to a wider constituency through his editorial work. His opinions were widely copied. Politically he was rapidly coming into recognition in a State where the leadership was in the hands of such men as McKinley, Hanna, and Foraker.

In 1910, owing to the outcropping of a nation-wide disaffection among Republicans, he met his first defeat, when he failed of election for Governor. This disappointment was not the loss of an office, but the failure of the election of a growingly popular leader.

In spite of his public decision to leave politics, two years later found him in the thickest of the fight for another Ohioan for President in a bitter campaign in which the unfortunate division of the party that year opened the way for Democratic success at the polls. Still two years later, in 1914, he became a contestant for the Senate and was nominated, defeating his former chief, Senator Foraker, in the first primary held for United States Senator in Ohio. To this position he was elected by over 100,000 majority.

A Loyal Party Man

Senator Harding stands out as a strong party man. He is a partisan Republican. He was born at the close of the Civil War and was cradled in the atmosphere which readily consecrated the birth and purpose of the Republican party, which became a passion to this youth, and to which through all the years he has given an unbroken fealty. His was the nature to be stirred by the stories of Lincoln and the war, and by such men as Blaine, for whom he was shouting before he was sixteen, and McKinley, Foraker, and Roosevelt.

His loyalty to Taft for reëlection in 1912 in the unfortunate division was misinterpreted by some critics as disloyalty to Roosevelt, and by the same critics as reactionism in policies. He declined, as hundreds of thousands of admirers of Roosevelt did, to join a third-party movement, not as disloyal to Roosevelt but as loyal to Taft and to his party. He had been one of the most consistent supporters of Roosevelt's progressive programs while President, and ventured criticism only in defense of Taft four years later.

In the Senate he has demonstrated his adherence to progressive legislation by hav