Benjamin F. Shiveley, of South Bend, Indiana, was born in St. Joseph County, Indiana, March 20, 1857. His early life was spent on a farm and he acquired the rudiments of his education in the common schools. He left the farm while still a mere youth, entered the Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso, and after a systematic course of study in that institution, he took up teaching, to which he devoted five years. In 1880 he settled in South Bend, where he was offered the editorship of the "Industrial Era," a newspaper devoted to the interests of the Greenback movement. In this way he got into politics, and went to Congress as the successor of W. H. Calkins, who resigned to campaign for the governorship. At that time Mr. Shiveley was only twenty-seven years old, and the youngest member of the House of Representatives.

At the end of his term Mr. Shiveley entered the Law School of the University of Michigan and graduated with the class of 1886. In the fall following his graduation, he was elected to Congress, this time for a full term. As a Congressman he served as a member of the House Committee on Banking and Currency. In the Fifty-first Congress he was a member of the Ways and Means Committee and was also a member of the Committee on Indian Depredation Claims.

Mr. Shiveley measures more than six feet in height, is a man of imposing physique, and has both a striking and a handsome countenance. He is a born orator, and is considered one of the most convincing and eloquent stump speakers in the State. Altogether Mr. Shiveley was elected to Congress four times by the people of his district. In 1892, which ended his last term as a representative from Indiana, he wrote an open letter to his constituents in which he announced that it was his intention to retire from public life and to accept no more nominations. The idol of the Democrats and the Greenback element as he was, Mr. Shiveley undoubtedly could have been re-elected by an increased majority if he had not persisted in his choice to remain in private life and continue his legal practice. In spite of repeatedly refusing nominations to office since that time, he has always been liberal with his services in the cause of Democracy and in every campaign has been in great demand as a stump speaker. His Indiana constituents consider him an ideal candidate for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with Mr. Bryan, and his name attracted favorable comment prior to the assembling of the Kansas City convention.

GEORGE FREDERICK WILLIAMS

The eminent Massachusetts Democrat, who is best known as George Fred. Williams, has been an interesting figure in American national politics for a number of years. He was born in 1851 in Germany, but was brought to America by his parents, who were both Germans, when but an infant. His father, who was a sailor, lost his life at sea when the boy was but ten years old, but left his family well provided for. In the panic of 1873 Mrs. Williams lost all her property, so that the young man had to complete his education by working his way through the schools he attended after that time. Mr. Williams is a highly-educated man, having studied at Dartmouth College, Heidelberg, Berlin and other European Universities. He got his law education with the money he saved from teaching school.

The home of the Williams family was at Dedham, Massachusetts, and, favorably known as he was there, young Williams soon had a good practice. At the time of the Bussey bridge disaster he settled many of the claims with the railway, and is said to have cleared $25,000 in the cases resulting. Soon after his admission to the bar he began to interest himself in politics. Until 1884 he was a Republican, but left that party on the nomination of Blaine for the Presidency. He became a "Mugwump," was a member of the Independent Convention in New York that endorsed Grover Cleveland, and was prominent in the Massachusetts campaign which followed. He was elected to Congress, and in 1896, as the Democratic candidate for the governorship of Massachusetts, made a good fight against impossible odds.

As a speaker Mr. Williams has few superiors. He was an important factor in the Democratic National Convention of 1896, being particularly conspicuous as a pronounced advocate of free silver coinage in a region of the East where such advocates in high places were far from numerous. Ever since the election of President McKinley in 1896 Mr. Williams has devoted himself and all his energies to the cause of silver, in his home State and elsewhere, bringing to the work an indefatigability which never knows what it is to be tired. In the recent Democratic Convention in Kansas City he was no less prominent, being recognized as one of the intimate friends and personal representatives of Mr. Bryan.