Hazen S. Pingree was born in Denmark, Maine, August 30, 1840. Until he was fourteen years of age the Governor of Michigan worked hard on his father's small farm. Attending school in winter, he gained a fair education. When not laboring on the farm he found employment in cotton mills. Seeking more steady work, Mr. Pingree went to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and entered a shoe factory there where he learned the trade of a cutter. When the war began, young Pingree enlisted at once, and was enrolled in the Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. He has an unblemished military record. After the close of the war Mr. Pingree went to Detroit and engaged in the shoe business. This business was successful and grew until today his establishment is the largest boot and shoe factory in the West, employing 700 persons.

Mr. Pingree's entrance into politics was in 1889 when Detroit was a Democratic city by majorities ranging from four to five thousand. A Republican Mayor was wanted and Pingree was nominated and elected by a surprisingly large majority. He served the city of Detroit in this office four terms. In 1896 Mr. Pingree was elected Governor of his State.

Both as a city and State executive Mr. Pingree has been identified with various reforms, and his rapid rise in national prominence has made him conspicuous above the average. Often he is named as a possible future candidate for the Presidency, and his friends believe that his well-known sympathies with the people would give him great strength. He has been called an enemy to corporations and trusts, invariably standing on the side of the people. One of Mr. Pingree's most famous undertakings was the allotment of public lands for cultivation by the worthy poor and unemployed of Detroit, during the period of his Mayoralty. Several hundred acres were thus allotted, seeds were furnished and the resulting crops became the property of those who had cultivated the land. The remarkable success of this novel idea resulted in its initiation in many other cities and gained for its originator the nick-name of "Potato-patch Pingree."

During his Governorship of the State of Michigan, Mr. Pingree has continued his reform policies. He is an opponent of inequality in taxation, the improper use of railway passes and federal patronage to influence legislation and oppressive business methods by corporations. In all of these subjects he has been prominent as an advocate of corrective legislation.

RICHARD FRANKLIN PETTIGREW

Richard Franklin Pettigrew, the famous radical Silver Republican Senator from South Dakota, was born in Ludlow, Vermont, July 26, 1848, his father being a merchant of that place. When the future political leader was six years old, the family removed to Rock County, Wisconsin, settling first in Union and then in Evansville in the same township. He prepared for college in the Evansville Academy, and in 1866 went to Beloit and entered the college there. He started to work his way through the course by taking care of one of the college buildings. While so engaged his father died and he was compelled to return home and assume the management of the farm, thus cutting his college course to two years. Young Pettigrew, however, did not relax his studies. For one term he taught school near home, and another win ter he was similarly employed near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He spent the spring of 1869 in the law school of the University of Wisconsin, and thus finished his school education,

In July, 1869, Mr. Pettigrew went to Dakota as a laborer in the employ of a United States deputy surveyor. The route led them to the present site of Sioux Falls, and the young man then and there decided to make that part of the West his home. Having been admitted to the bar at Janesville, Wisconsin, in 1870, as soon as spring opened he started for Sioux Falls again, arriving there, after weeks of delay by bad roads and high water, with just 25 cents in his pocket.

Mr. Pettigrew at once engaged in the surveying and real estate business. He opened a law office in 1872 and has been engaged in the practice of his profession in Sioux Falls ever since. He was elected to the Dakota Legislature as a member of the Council in 1877 and 1879. He was a delegate to the Forty-seventh Congress from Dakota Territory, and came back to the Council in 1884. He was a member of the South Dakota Constitutional Convention in 1883, and was chairman of the Committee on Public Indebtedness, framing the provisions of the constitution on that subject. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1889 when South Dakota was admitted to the Union, and was reelected in 1895. His term of service will expire March 3, 1901.