Joseph W. Bailey.
One of the most youthful members of the government’s gravest and
most august legislative body is Senator Joseph W. Bailey, a typical
representative of the biggest, the breeziest and the most untrammeled,
if not the most patriotic and progressive commonwealth in the Union. A
natural leader, an orator of plausibility and power and a politician
of resource and acumen, he is besides admittedly one of the ablest
constitutional lawyers in public life.
Though a native of Mississippi and a legal product of Cumberland
University, Tennessee, Senator Bailey is a Texan seemingly to the manner
born. He looks, speaks, thinks and feels Texas, and having won his spurs
so creditably in the congressional jousts his people have gratefully
recognized his talents by entrusting him with the higher responsibilities
of senator.
While Senator Bailey is a virile product of the present and coming
generation in the South he has not been inclined to relinquish the
habits, dress and thought of the passing regime and his picturesque
personality is doubtless as readily recognized by resident of and
visitor to Washington as any other public character of the times. In
no particular do his old-school propensities more emphatically display
themselves than in his native love for rural life and natural objects.
His chief hobby comprises the maintenance of an expansive estate whereon
he rears the sportive thoroughbred, so dear to the heart of the rural
Southerner, and whereon he spends in the open very much of his leisure
time.
Senator Bailey is a close student of men, politics and affairs, and
is of the South, social, though he has no taste for the conventional
society of the city.
James D. Porter.
For nearly half a century has the Honorable James D. Porter figured
eminently but modestly as a public servant politically, civilly and
commercially. A native of Tennessee, in which State he has spent nearly
all of his eventful life, he was born at Paris, in 1828, and was admitted
to the bar in 1859. With a disposition toward the public service, from
a State legislator he became a circuit judge, and from the bench he
ascended to the gubernatorial chair, which he was twice called upon to
occupy. His large and worthy talents coming to the notice of President
Cleveland, he was invited during his first term to serve as Assistant
Secretary of State, which he did with such satisfaction as to receive
during the President’s second term his credentials as the government’s
official representative to Chili, in which capacity he attracted
attention by his tactful reestablishment of friendly relations between
the two countries.
In the active commercial affairs of life he has been likewise prominent,
being sometime president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis
Railroad Company, and as a soldier of the gray he gallantly participated
in many of the fiercest conflicts of the war as Adjutant General under
General Frank Cheatham.
[Illustration:
HON. JOSEPH W. BAILEY.
]
In 1901 he was selected by virtue of his wide experience in affairs,
executive ability, character and attainments, as the most suitable head
of the great Peabody benefaction to the cause of Southern education,
and he is successfully rounding his period of long and devoted public
service to the administration of this popular munificence as President
of the Peabody Normal College and University of Nashville. With every
assurance of early success he is now engaged in raising from the State of
Tennessee, the City of Nashville, and by popular subscription, $250,000
which, when attained, will carry with it a permanent endowment of a
million dollars from the Peabody estate. President Porter is a man of
distinguished bearing and impressive address.
[Illustration:
JAMES D. PORTER.
]
Joseph W. Folk.
Missouri’s young governor has received probably more free and favorable
publicity than any other citizen of the Republic, and the public is so
well informed as to his life and record that anything said of him here
would be merely cumulative and by way of favorable repetition. It is
gratifying to command the approval of friends and partisans, but it is
a delicate and trying obligation to have to live up to the encomiums of
non-partisans and erstwhile opponents. With nothing but good said of
his ability and integrity, Governor Folk’s position in politics, which
now has a decided national aspect, presents a most interesting field of
speculation to the student of politics and affairs.
First coming into local prominence in St. Louis as an able and fearless
criminal prosecutor whom a powerful and never-before-thwarted partisan
political machine could not influence or intimidate, Governor Folk
developed into national prominence through his relentless warfare upon
the local boodling regime, his successes influencing municipal reforms
throughout the country and rendering him so strong with the masses of
statesmen regardless of political complexion, that they triumphantly
elevated him to the gubernatorial station in the face of an otherwise
astonishing landslide in the other direction.
[Illustration:
JOSEPH W. FOLK.
]
Governor Folk is a native of Brownsville, Tenn., where he was born about
thirty-seven years ago, and is a product of purely Southern environment,
rearing and education. Graduating from the Vanderbilt University law
school fifteen years ago, he started at about the lowest and roughest
rung of the ladder, a struggling young country lawyer in his native
town. In quest of opportunities more in keeping with his talents and
ambitions, he soon joined the large Tennessee colony in St. Louis, not
long thereafter attaining to some local notice as a political leader by
being elected president of the representative Democratic organization.
[Illustration:
WARREN A. CANDLER.
]
It is truly said that all great human successes are a combination of
fortuitous circumstance, and the genius to take advantage thereof.
Governor Folk’s mastery of a complicated local situation wherein he
represented a supposed hopeless political movement, turned seeming defeat
into a brilliant victory, and he was elected District Attorney, since
which time his record is known to the country at large.
Warren A. Candler.
A virile and dominant figure in Southern religious life is Rev. Warren
Akin Candler, youngest bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
Of a family probably second to none in Georgia from the standpoint of
the prominence of its sons in public life in that State to-day, Bishop
Candler was born forty-eight years ago in Carroll County. Educated
at Emory College, from which he graduated with first honors in 1875,
he immediately entered the ministry, ascending rapidly the ladder of
ecclesiastical promotion from the humblest rural circuit to the most
influential urban charge. From presiding elder of the Dahlonega and
Oxford districts he served for two years in the editorial field as
assistant editor of the _Christian Advocate_ in Nashville. In 1888 he
was called to the very large activity of presiding over the destinies
of Emory College, his _alma mater_, which institution enjoyed during
the decade of his administration its highest period of strength and
usefulness.
With a distinguished record in all vital departments of his church
labors, Bishop Candler’s early elevation to the bishopric when barely
past forty years of age was a merited and logical testimonial to his
eminent capacity for religious leadership and organization. This exalted
promotion came to him at the hands of the Baltimore Conference of 1898.
Besides being a pulpit orator of vigor and lucidity, Bishop Candler
is a luminous expositor of secular themes and has rounded out a very
busy career by producing several well-known religious and general
publications, including a “History of Sunday Schools,” “Georgia’s
Educational Work,” “Christus Auctor,” “High Living and High Lives,” and
“Great Revivals and the Great Republic.”
Bishop Candler’s official residence is Atlanta.
[Illustration:
RICHMOND PEARSON HOBSON.
]
Richmond Pearson Hobson, who contributes the following
thoughtful paper to the MAGAZINE, is so well known to our
readers that it is hardly necessary to say anything here by way
of comment upon his eventful history. Since his retirement from
the navy, Captain Hobson has devoted much attention to political
affairs, and it is safe to predict that his services to the
public will be marked by the earnestness and devotion to duty
which brought him his well-merited fame as an officer in the
United States navy.—ED.