them as clean and pure as the boys of any of you who sit before me to-day. It is in this city that the two who are of voting age will walk to the ballot box by the side of their father and cast their ballot for any man you name in this convention. It is true that in the soil of Illinois his parents sleep. I wish I knew that that mother of his who went to heaven not knowing that, by the grace of God, he was yet to be saved and redeemed and started to work to obliterate the liquor traffic in America-I wish I knew she were looking down from heaven upon us. I wish I knew that she were cognizant of the fact that in the hearts of hundreds of you now there was the determination that her boy, so saved, should carry the standard in this fight against the liquor traffic that nearly ruined his life. Perhaps she knows and that her spirit is with us.

THE TRUEST, BRAVEST VOICE

I have heard it said that John G. Woolley is the John the Baptist, that he must not expect a nomination, that he must take the reward of John the Baptist. I tell you, if he must take that reward, that Oliver W. Stewart will stand on any platform where he can get his feet to advocate to the last that we shall not turn our backs upon him while the world beheads him. (Applause.) I am for standing for a man who stands by our cause, and fifty years from now when the history is written of how the liquor traffic died in America, the historian will have to put in his history a paragraph somewhere, reading like this: 'The truest, bravest voice that was heard in all the world in the latter part of the nineteenth century was the voice of John G. Woolley.'

Put his name at the head of our ticket, and assure us of the tremendously energetic campaign that we will have.

so.

I do not stop to consider the effect on him personally. I have never done I suppose it will cost any man much to accept your nomination, and if there is any man whom it will not cost much, that man is unfit to receive it. It will cost him as much, I suppose, as it will any other man who may be named here. I am thinking not alone of men; men are nothing, principles are everything. (Applause.) All that I desire is that we have the campaigner upon our platform that will carry the truth before the American people. John G. Woolley can and will draw the fire of the enemy and I want him to do it. If he cannot stand the fire of the enemy, if we cannot stand it, then I say we ought to disband and retire from the field until we are ready. Give us him as our leader. Place upon your ticket that leader tried and true, John G. Woolley of every state. (Applause and three cheers for Woolley.)

A

CHAPTER XXV

Lives of Prohibition Candidates

JOHN G. WOOLLEY, of Illinois.

T the conclusion of the meeting of the convention in Chicago, its candidate for the Presidency, John G. Woolley, very modestly says, in the official organ of the party, The New Voice, in regard to his nomination for the presidency:

"The National Convention of the Prohibition party has voted to tender me its nomination for the Presidency. I did not seek it, I asked not for one vote from any state or any man. nor desire it. I believed in the convention; I believed in the platform; I believed in myself. I believed that, without a banner, or a plume, or a claque, as I was, I had to be nominated. To my friends who worked to that end, I offer here my sincere thanks. Toward my other friends, who tried with such spirit and sincerity for my defeat, I have not the slightest feeling of complaint.

These words, spoken in the greatest frankness, are typical of the man, and the party may well be proud to have as its leader one He is widely known over who is so frank, so clear, and so honest. the United States as a public speaker of fine presence and magnetic In fact, he is an orator of very high type. He is in the prime of life, vigorous, and in every way prepared to accept the onerous duties of his position as a candidate for a party which is no longer an element of minor importance in the campaign.

power.

John G. Woolley was born in the small town of Collinsville, near Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 15th of February, 1850. Edwin C. and Elizabeth K. H. Woolley, were among the first settlers of the state. He is an honored alumnus of the Ohio Wesleyan College of the class of 1871. Probably no institution in the Central West has turned out more men who have taken prominence in public

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affairs, both state and national, or have been leaders in great movements pertaining to the moral and religious welfare of the people, than has this university, situated in the beautiful City of Delaware. As many young men are wont to do upon completing a course in one of the smaller colleges or universities, he continued his studies at the University of Michigan (Ann Harbor), entering the law school of that institution and graduating in two years. He was admitted to the bar to practice in the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1873, and five years later he was practicing before the Supreme Court of Minnesota. In 1886 he appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States, and was admitted to practice. His career at law was honorable and successful. He says of himself that he "became a Christian and a party prohibitionist at the same instant," January 31, 1888, in the city of New York, where he joined the Church of the Strangers, which was then presided over by the late Dr. Deems. He immediately entered into active Christian work, and became intensely interested in the Prohibition movement. He displayed wonderful oratorical powers, and was sought for far and wide to deliver prohibition and temperance addresses. He has given himself almost entirely to the work since January, 1888, and has made many speeches, it being said that he averaged at least one speech a day. In 1892 he was invited by Lady Somerset to be her guest in England, and while there he spoke nearly every day during seven months of a tour in the cities of England, Scotland and Wales. In the following year the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, of Illinois, engaged him to deliver three hundred lectures in as many nights in sequence throughout the state, on the subject “Inalienable Rights." All the great conventions and meetings of the Prohibition party in recent years have had the benefit of Mr. Woolley's oratory, and he has been the means of adding largely to the influence of the party in all the states. Probably the most celebrated speech of his was that delivered in Madison Square Garden at the International Y. P. S. C. E. Convention in 1892, of which a distinguished man has said: "Now, Burke Cochran (the famous New