A Good Shoemaker Becomes Detroit’s Best Mayor and Michigan’s Greatest
Governor.
AN interview with Hon. Hazen S. Pingree, Governor of Michigan, was not
an easy thing to obtain. “Approachable?” Very. He was a great favorite
with newspaper men, but the most-sought-after man in Michigan. When
he arrived at the simply furnished room that served as his official
headquarters in Detroit, it was to find it bordered with a human
wainscoting, each anxious member of which was waiting patiently, or
otherwise, to ask some favor of the chief executive. As he entered
the room suddenly became quiet; for there was something about the
Governor’s powerful personality that compelled attention. But soon
each want, no matter how small, was attended to in his kindly but
straight-forward way.
An interesting medley of petitioners was present on the day of my
interview. The first was a widowed mother requesting a favor for her
son—a wreck of the Spanish-American war.
“I’ll do the best I can for you,” said the governor heartily as she
left the room—and everyone knew what that meant.
Next came a gayly-dressed young woman, with a bill from the mint of her
own imagination, which she asked the Governor to please push through
the legislature. She was patiently referred to the representative from
her district. Then a soldier stood before him with a transportation
snarl to untangle; a book agent; a broadcloth-coated dandy, and a
street laborer, each seeking help; and then a gaunt, ill-clad old
woman, who in broken English, with harrowing tears and gestures of
despair, laid her humble burdens in supplication before him. It was a
touching picture.
Hers was not a case to lay before the Governor of the State, but
she will never know it, poor woman, for the generous hand of the
great-hearted man slid quickly down to the nest of the golden eagle
that sent her gratefully away.
“You are not a native of the State you govern,” said I, as the Governor
leisurely seated himself for the interview.
“No; I was born in Denmark, Maine. My father owned a forty-acre farm,
and I was brought up there until I was about seventeen years old.”
“And you did——”
“Just what any one would do on a small farm; worked in summer and went
to school in the winter. Then I started out to make my own way in the
world, and the first work I found was in a cotton mill at Saco, Maine.
In 1860, I went to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and learned the trade of a
cutter in a shoe factory. Soon after that the war broke out.”
“And you enlisted?”
“Yes, I have two honorable discharges as a private. I value them more
than my position as governor.”
“How long were you in the war?”
“From 1862 until its close. I first enlisted in Company F, First
Massachusetts Heavy Artillery, and, with that regiment, took part in
the battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg Road, Harris Farm, Cold Harbor,
Spottsylvania Court House, North Anna and South Anna.”
“Then you know something of the horrors of war from your own
experience?”
“Yes; that is the reason I am an advocate of the universal peace
project.”
“You believe in that?”
“Decidedly; and, moreover, I believe that ten years from now every man
who calls himself a Christian will be ready to stand by the side of the
Emperor of Russia in his plea for peace.”
“Let us return to your experience in the war. Were you ever a prisoner?”
“Several others and myself were captured on May 25, 1864, by a squad
of Mosby’s men. We were confined five months at Andersonville; and
from there were taken to Salisbury prison in North Carolina, then to
Millen, Georgia, where we were exchanged in November, 1864. I rejoined
my regiment in front of Petersburg, and was in the expedition to Weldon
Railroad, the battles of Boynton Road, Petersburg, Sailors’ Creek,
Farmsville, and Appomattox.”
“And after the war?”
“I came to Detroit and obtained employment in a shoe factory. Soon
after that my partner and myself started one of our own. He had a
little less than a thousand dollars, and I had $460—left from my army
pay.”
“That seemed a large sum, I suppose?”
“Yes, and I thought if I could ever get to making fifty pairs of shoes
a day I would be perfectly happy.”
The number is amusingly small, when it is remembered that this factory,
the embryo of which he spoke, grew up under the Governor’s personal
supervision, until it is now one of the largest in the United States.
“But tell me, Governor, when you were starting out in life, did you
ever look forward to the career you have carved out for yourself?”
“No,” said he, with the promptness that characterizes all of his
speech; “I never had anything mapped out in my life. I did whatever
there happened to be for me to do, and let the result take care of
itself.”
“Is it the same with your political success, or is that the outgrowth
of youthful ambition?”