Indiana Boy Obeyed Order of Merchant,
and His Successful Uphill Struggle
Landed Him in Senate.
James A. Hemenway, Senator from Indiana, found himself, at the age of
seventeen, confronted with the problem of supporting his mother, the
younger children of the family--and there were six of them--and himself.
His father had just died bankrupt, every cent of money and stick of
property having gone to pay the liabilities incurred by indorsing bad
notes.
Young Hemenway knew what hard work meant, for he had been used always to
toiling on the farm. It was difficult, however, to earn ready money in
Boonville, Indiana, where he was born in 1860, and so he was forced to
migrate to Iowa.
A relative living in Des Moines introduced him to the proprietor of a
dry-goods store, and Hemenway was promised a place. When he reported for
business next morning the manager looked him over and said:
"We've already a pretty big force of people. Do you see anything that
needs to be done?"
Hemenway looked around at the disorderly arrangement of the stock-room.
"I might fix this up," he said.
"All right. I'll try you out. Peel off your coat and pitch in."
Hemenway pitched in, and for eighteen months he continued at work in the
dry-goods store, sending home to Boonville every cent above his absolute
expenses. His living during this time cost him on an average two dollars a
week.
His next venture was on a farm in Kansas. He borrowed money enough to
start in with another brother, and both put in a hard spring and summer.
They had the prospect of a crop that would clear off their indebtedness
and leave them something ahead for other operations. A scorching drought
set in, however, blasted every stalk of grain and blade of grass on the
place and left them both broke.
All that was left to them were a team of horses and a yoke of oxen, and
they used these to haul meal and other provisions from Wichita out to the
dwellers on the frontier.
In 1880, Hemenway returned to Boonville as poor as he was when he set out
three years before. He managed to get a job in a livery stable caring for
horses; then he became a shipper in a tobacco factory. He also found time
to begin the study of law, and in this he was assisted by Judge George
Rhinehard, a jurist of local repute.
While he was still studying law, the Republicans of his district nominated
him to the office of public prosecutor. This was not done because they
thought Hemenway was specially fitted for the office, but because the
district was so overwhelmingly Democratic that there seemed to be no
chance of his election. His name was put on just to fill out the ticket.
"You can't get it," the campaign manager told him. "So you needn't go to
any bother. Some time, maybe, you'll get the nomination to something
within reach."
Hemenway refused to be a dummy, and as long as he was on the ticket he
thought it best to put up a fight, and he made such a stiff canvass that
he not only won out, but he carried a part of his ticket into office with
him. Then when he was in office he acquitted himself so well that he was
reelected, and in 1895 he was elected to Congress.
Hemenway made his greatest reputation as head of the Appropriations
Committee, and it was due to him that heads of departments were prevented
from exceeding their appropriations. They had been in the habit of asking
for a certain sum, and, when it was not granted, going ahead as though it
had been, exceeding their allowance and then calling on Congress to make
up the deficit. The practise had grown to dangerous limits, and Hemenway
forcibly put a stop to it.
In 1905 he was elected to the Senate, and he has already begun to make
himself felt in that body as a man of ability and forcefulness.