THE LIFE STORY
Born at Jacksonburg, Ohio, March 31, 1870, son of Gilbert and
Eliza Cox; educated in public schools; reared on farm; worked in
printer's office; taught country school; became newspaper
reporter; secretary to Congressman Sorg, 3d Ohio District;
bought Dayton Daily News, 1898, and Springfield Press Republic,
1903, forming News League of Ohio; member 61st and 62d Congress
(1909-13), 3d Ohio District; Governor of Ohio; elected in 1912,
defeated in 1914, elected in 1916 and 1918; now serving third
term; home, Trailsend, Dayton.
The family of Cox seems to have had its origin in England in the
generations gone, but its Americanism is of two centuries in
duration. At Freeboard, New Jersey, lived General James Cox, one
of the early speakers of the New Jersey House of Representatives
and later a member of Congress. Tillers of the soil and
artisans, the closer forbears attained to no distinction in
public life. To Ohio the family came sometime in the early years
of the last century, and at Jacksonburg the paternal
grandfather, Gilbert Cox, established himself. On the ancestral
farm of 160 acres, his son, Gilbert, Jr., lived, and on it James
M. Cox first saw the light of day. His uncles and aunts, for his
father was one of a family of thirteen, were of the people who
migrated westward. The youngest of a family of seven children,
he learned the routine of tasks of a boy on the farm. In the
little one-room country school he attended, his teachers found
him an ordinary pupil but with a fondness for newspaper reading.
Cox's first public job was the humble position of janitor in the
United Brethren Church, and even now his favorite reminiscence
is the difficulty he had in making the old wood stove function
properly. The thrifty farmers in those days were accustomed to
commute part of their dues in cord wood for the church, and
often the quality they supplied was not of the best. The boy
became a member of the Church, a membership which is still
retained.
At fifteen he left the elementary school to enter the Middletown
High School, living with his sister, Mrs. John Q. Baker, whose
husband was a teacher in the High School and owner of the
Middletown Signal. Board was paid in working as a printer's
devil until the apprenticeship was served and the county
newspaper business was mastered from both the counting room and
the editorial side. Upon completion of his high school course,
the young man passed the county examination and obtained a
position as teacher of the school he had in earlier years
attended, but a pedagogical career was not to his liking and he
returned to work on the Signal staff. He became also the local
correspondent for the Cincinnati Enquirer and attracted the
attention of the main office by a neat scoop which he landed
regarding a railroad wreck. Graduating into the reportorial
work, he became assistant telegraph and railroad editor of the
Enquirer. He retired from the newspaper life for a time to
become Secretary to Congressman Sorg, remaining in his capacity
until his 28th year, when he purchased the Dayton News, giving
$12,000 in notes and beginning with a capital of just $80. The
times were hard enough for the young chap with creditors
constantly upon him. Once his paper was forced to suspend by
reason of an unpaid bill, and the opposition paper heralded its
death. The struggling publisher retaliated with an "extra"
announcing its continuance. Then again there were plenty of
libel suits for the young editor-publisher, setting out to be a
reformer, and the ruling powers in the city strongly disapproved
his methods, but the militant editor brought readers and the
readers brought advertisers, and the venture became a success.
Five years from his first venture he bought the Springfield
Press Republic and the Springfield Democrat, combining the two
in the Evening News. Each is now housed in its own modern
newspaper building and each is highly prosperous as a business
institution, although the owner's supervision has been of a
general character.
His associates always speak of the "Cox luck" in politics, but
upon analysis it seems that it consists either of seizing or
making the opportunity. In 1908 his Congressional district,
originally Democratic, had become Republican, but a factional
quarrel breaking out in the opposition camps, the Governor took
the Democratic nomination and won out, again riding to victory
in the great landslide of 1910. In Congress his career afforded
him no opportunity to attain to high distinction, but he became
a member of the appropriations committee and there became most
deeply impressed with the waste in public funds and the
unbusinesslike methods of arriving at appropriations. One of his
services was the disclosure that the care of Civil War veterans
in the National Soldiers' Home at Dayton was shattered, and he
won the contest for increased allowances. The gratitude of the
veterans was expressed in a majority from the Home in his re-
election in 1910, thus breaking an historical precedent.
Two years later he became the champion of the constitutional
amendments proposed by the Fourth Constitutional Convention of
Ohio, then sitting, and as such was unanimously nominated by his
party for Governor, on a platform which demanded a "new order"
of things in Ohio. As soon as he was nominated he took the
platform before the people for the adoption of the
constitutional amendments in a special September election. These
amendments included one providing for the initiative and
referendum of which he had been an advocate for years, and one
for the removal of officials failing to enforce the laws, giving
the Governor the weapon with which he established his law-
enforcement record. There was very little to the campaign in
that year, the historical Republican party splitting in two upon
the issue of progressiveness, and he was elected by an enormous
plurality. Facing the tasks imposed by the new constitution, the
Governor insisted upon legislative fulfillment of each popular
mandate, and in a busy session of three months he accomplished
his programme.
Aside from the legislation suggested by the amendments, his
greatest constructive step was the enactment of a budget system,
which sought to place the financial affairs of Ohio upon a
businesslike basis. Its worth as a saver of money and promoter
of efficiency has never been challenged. The previous Ohio
fiscal system had grown grossly archaic. Appropriations were
made by the Legislature to the departments in lump sums or in
the form of granting all receipts and balances, some of the
departments being maintained by the fees from interests they
regulated. Of the departments having receipts of their own, many
had deposits of their own in banks and their own checking
accounts, so that their funds never passed through the State
Treasury or through the hands of the State Auditor. Other
departments got much or little from the Legislature, depending
upon whether they had a gifted representative to appear for them
before the legislative finance committee. Institutions vied with
each other in providing the best entertainment to these
committees as they made their week-end junket trips over the
State during legislative sessions.
All this was changed in one sweeping stroke in the first
administration of Governor Cox. All receipts of all departments
now go into the State Treasury and none leave the treasury until
it is appropriated in specific sums for specific purposes within
specific departments. The state auditor has a check on every
expenditure.
The Ohio budget department is composed of one commissioner
appointed by the Governor, an assistant and a clerk. All
departmental requests for funds desired of the next succeeding
Legislature are filed with the Budget Commissioner, to be
brought before the Governor. He investigates all items,
ascertains the reasons for any increases that are asked, and
fixes the sums he deems proper. Also, he estimates what the
State revenues during the next biennium will be and prunes the
budget to come within the total of expected revenues. The budget
as prepared by the commissioner is submitted to the Governor,
who frequently makes changes of his own after advising with
department heads.
The Governor then presents the budget to the Legislature, which
refers it to the finance committees of the two houses. The
committees, and, in turn, the Legislature, have full authority
to make any alterations, increases or decreases, desired, but
the spellbinding by department representatives and wire-pulling
by lobbyists are reduced to a minimum because the Budget
Commissioner sits as the agent of the Governor at all sessions
of the finance committees and at all times is prepared to defend
the allowance he thinks a department should have.
The first budgetary appropriation bill repealed an existing
appropriation law. It reduced appropriations aggregating
$9,709,288 to $8,762,664, a saving of $946,624. Since that time
the Ohio budget system has effected savings of millions, not, of
course, in the sense that expenditures of the State government
now are less than in 1913--for they have increased as
governmental activities have enlarged--but in the sense that
expenditures each year have been vastly less than they would
have been without the budget plan of pruning and scaling down
demands of existing State departments with a view both to
general economy and avoidance of deficits.
The Ohio Budget and consequently its appropriation law
classifies expenditures in two divisions: (1) Operating expenses
and (2) Capital outlay (or permanent improvements).
Operating expenses are subdivided into personal service and
maintenance. Personal service in turn is divided into salaries
and wages, and maintenance into supplies, materials, equipment,
contract or open order service, and fixed charges and
contributions.
Elasticity of funds within departments is afforded by periodical
meetings of a board of control, composed of the Governor (who
may be and usually is represented by the Budget commissioner),
the State Auditor, the Attorney-General, and the chairmen of the
two legislative finance committees. If any new need develops
within departments, funds for the purpose may be provided by a
four-fifths vote of the board of control. Effort first is made
to transfer the needed funds from one classification to another
within the department. If no fund within the department has a
surplus, and the need is great enough, relief may be granted by
the emergency board, having the same membership as the board of
control, which has at its disposal an emergency fund for
contingencies arising between legislative sessions. Perfection
never has been claimed for the Ohio system. Governor Cox himself
realizes certain weaknesses in it and is making a fight now for
strengthening features, which, however, necessitate a change in
the constitution. One defect is that, regardless of probable
income, the Legislature may increase items in the budget (or
rather the appropriation bill based on the budget), and it may
make other appropriations in separate bills as it sees fit
without regard to prospective revenues.
In his 1919 message to the General Assembly, a Republican body,
the Governor urged submission to the people of an amendment to
the constitution providing that the Legislature shall have the
right to diminish any item in the executive budget by majority
vote or to strike out any item: that, however, it shall not be
privileged to increase any item or to add a new one unless it
makes legislative provision for sufficient revenue to meet the
added cost. Such an amendment was not submitted. Unless it is
done by an early legislature, adherents of Cox in Ohio say it
may be undertaken by initiative petition.
Good Roads
Another notable achievement of Governor Cox is the advance of
the Ohio highway system. Roads were in deplorable shape when he
became Governor. There was no hope for rural counties with small
tax duplicates, the ones in greatest need of good roads never
being able to lift themselves out of the mud except through
liberal state aid.
One of the Governor's first acts was a survey of road
conditions. A complete network of 10,000 miles of inter-county
roads was mapped out. It connected the eighty-eight county
seats. Of the 10,000 miles of inter-county highways, 3000 miles,
connecting the larger cities, were designated as main market
roads. The scheme of financing called for improvement of the
main market roads entirely at state expense, which the remainder
of the system was to be built on a fifty-fifty basis, the state
furnishing half the funds, and the county in which the road
lies, the other half.
All road improvement under the Cox administration has been given
such an impetus that the State, county and township programmes
to-day call for an expenditure of $30,000,000 annually,
including federal aid. Popular demand for highway improvement is
greater than the State Highway department and county
commissioners are able to meet.
Revitalizing the Schools
As a pupil in a one-room country school and as a teacher, he had
first knowledge of the shortcomings and possibilities of the
Ohio educational system. It was his firm conviction that the
country boy and girl should be given the same educational
advantages that accrued to those of the city.
The purpose of the Governor's school programme was to give Ohio
a co-ordinates system of State, county and district supervision,
to require normal or college training of all teachers, and,
above all, to pave the way for speedier centralization and
consolidation of the one-room district school. Results have been
beyond the expectations of school men, every breath and
opposition to the system has blown away, and it may truthfully
be said that it has become an idol of the people of the state.
The re-organization has stimulated interest in education in all
respects and has made possible a more recent establishment of a
state-wide teachers' pensions system and a complete revamping of
financial support of schools through a State and county aid
plan. Salaries of teachers have been increased the last six
years from a minimum of $40 a month to a statutory minimum of
$800 a school year. The teacher shortage occasioned by the war
will be solved without much delay in Ohio, as county and state
normal schools report prospective increases in attendance of
fifty to one hundred per cent or even greater for next year.
The time had come in 1913 when the little district school with
its narrow curriculum and crude methods of instruction did not
meet the needs and purposes of modern industrial and social life
in Ohio. It had not kept step with rural economic progress. In
the whole State it was the one evidence of retardation, an
institution of bygone days which had deteriorated instead of
having improved. The right of every child to educational
opportunities for development to the fullest extent of his
possibilities was not recognized by the State in the school
system as it existed at that time. Governor Cox, in his first
message to the general assembly in January, 1913, recommended
that a complete school survey be made. A survey commission was
created. To acquaint school patrons with the object of the
survey in progress and to get them to discuss in their own
communities the defects and the needs of the schools, November
14, 1913, was set apart as "School survey day" and a light
burned in every school building in the State that night.
Delegates were appointed to attend a state-wide educational
congress the next month, and in January, 1914, the Governor
called a special session to enact the rural school code.
The survey report disclosed that not half of the teachers of the
State ever had attended high school, nor had normal training.
Rural schools were mere stepping stones for young teachers
before securing positions in village and city schools,
agriculture was scarcely taught, schools were without equipment,
three-fourths of the buildings were twenty years old or older,
unsanitary, poorly lighted, without ventilation and
insufficiently heated.
With one stroke the new school code created county supervision
districts under the control of county boards, elected by the
presidents of village and township boards; provided for county
superintendents and supervisors over smaller districts within
the county; required academic and professional training of all
new teachers henceforth, and gave communities wider powers to
centralize and consolidate schools.
At present ninety-five per cent of the elementary teachers have
had professional training, and high school teachers are required
to be college graduates or have equivalent scholastic
attainment. The most common faults of class-room instruction
have been to a great extent eliminated. Standard methods of
presentation are being practices in an attempt to give to each
child opportunity for development of his possibilities.
A great stimulation of public school sentiment is manifested by
a closer co-operation and correlation of the school and the
home, resulting in boys' and girls' club work, achievement
courses, home projects and other school extension and community
activities; a growth of the feeling of responsibility to the
community on the part of the teacher; an attitude of greater
interest and responsibility of the boards of education toward
the school; a willingness of the people to vote money for new
school plants and enterprises; a growing demand for
consolidation and centralization; a better trained class of
teachers, increased school attendance, especially in high
schools where it has increased from fifty to one hundred per
cent.
School administration is much more efficient as is demonstrated
by a uniform course of study for elementary and high schools,
vitalized by its articulation with the industrial activities of
the community, county uniformity of textbooks, selection and
correlation of textbook material and its adaptation to the
varying interests and needs of childhood, uniform system of
reports and records, and the like.
School centers have been made to coincide with social and
business centers. Convenient districts have been formed around
centers of population. village and surrounding rural districts
have been united in accordance with the trend of the community
interests and activities. Weak districts have been eliminated by
the transfer of their territory to other districts, thereby
strengthening property valuations.
A centralized school in Ohio was almost a novelty in 1914. A
year ago there were 310 centralized (township) schools and 599
consolidated (embracing several contiguous districts) schools,
and the number has been materially swelled during the year.
Seventy of the eighty-eight counties now have such schools and
the trend is toward them throughout the State. One such school
replaces, on the average, eight one-room schools. They have
brought to the rural pupils trained teachers, well-equipped
buildings, courses of study related to the interests of the farm
and home by being well-balanced between the cultural and
vocational. They have made it possible for the country boy who
remains on the farm to obtain a high school education in his own
community that is directly related to his needs. Scientific
agriculture under trained instructors is taught in all of these
schools. The possibilities of the farm and of rural life are
thus revealed to the boy and he will be equipped with knowledge
necessary to the scientific performance of his work. From the
farm instead of the law office and the counting room will come
those who know what the needs and interests of the farmer are
and who will be qualified to represent those interests.
While the system still may be said to be in its infancy, the
progress of transformation of Ohio schools under it has been
nothing short of wonderful, and unending results may be expected
of it.
This extensive legislation had aroused many prejudices
particularly, in the rural sections, of which his opponent,
Congressman Frank B. Willis, took advantage. The bold challenge
of the Governor to his opponent was stated by him on the
platform in many parts of Ohio "Which law will you repeal?" The
question was never answered, but the tide of opposition to the
changes swept Governor Cox out of office, although he ran many
thousands ahead of his associates. In the succeeding sessions of
the General Assembly popular sentiment began once more to swing
to Governor Cox and two years later he was re-elected by a small
plurality. Improvement in the various laws was sought during his
next term, but the shadow of the world war was already beginning
to fall, and the greater part of his efforts were devoted to
preparation for Ohio's part.
In general administration the Governor's supporters are fond of
saying that he met successfully
In his first term a flood,
In his second term a war,
In his third term reconstruction.
The flood story was the one that really introduced him first to
the country at large. Ohio was hit by a calamity greater than
any that had befallen a state. Columbus, Dayton, Marietta,
Hamilton and other cities were under water for days, many
villages were almost washed off the map, and hundreds of lives
and untold millions of property were lost. Bridges everywhere
were washed out and transportation was practically at a
standstill. The eyes of the State and Country were on the then
untried Governor Cox. He met the situation in a manner that will
never be forgotten in Ohio. The Ohio National Guard was called
out, stricken communities were placed under martial law,
civilian relief armies under the command of mayors and other
designated leaders organized everywhere, Ohio's motor truck,
automobile and other facilities commandeered, and the work of
feeding, clothing, cleaning up and rehabilitation carried on
from the beginning with astounding efficiency.
The New York World at that time said of him:
"The man who has dominated the situation in Ohio is Governor
Cox. He has been not only chief magistrate and commander-in-
chief, but the head of the life-saving service, the greatest
provider of food and clothing the State has ever known, the
principal health officer, the sanest counselor, the severest
disciplinarian, the kindest philanthropist and best reporter. He
has performed incredible labors in all these fields, and his
illuminating dispatches to the World at the close of the heart-
breaking days have given a clearer vision of conditions than
could be had from any other source. Reared on a farm, educated
in the public schools, a printer by trade, a successful
publisher and editor of newspapers, a great Governor and a
reported who gets his story into the first edition, James M. Cox
excites and is herewith offered assurance of the World's most
distinguished consideration."
The flood revealed the necessity for conservancy legislation and
the measure recommended by the Governor was enacted to give
local communities the right to protect themselves.
The time has gone by when in Ohio the major things in the
programme of Governor Cox can be attacked successfully before
the people of the State. He does not claim perfection.
Suggestion as to improvement has found him ready to listen.
There is still a short time for him to serve, but the public
judgment has been made up, and Buckeye citizens, without regard
to party affiliation, says that he has been a "good Governor."