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 polit ical 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.

EDWARD OLIVER WOLCOTT

Edward Oliver Wolcott, of Colorado, was born in Long Meadow, Mass., March 26, 1848. He comes from the Wolcotts of New England, and can boast a kindred line of statesmen, soldiers and patriots as proud as New England can claim. He is a lineal descendant of the original Henry Wolcott, one of the first colonists of Connecticut, who settled at Windsor in 1630. Mr. Wolcott is one of eleven children of the Rev. Samuel Wolcott, D. D., who was famous as a Congregational minister. On his mother's side Senator Wolcott has a worthy ancestry. His mother was Miss Harriet Pope, daughter of Jonathan Adams Pope, for many years a resident of Norwich. Mr. Pope was a cotton merchant and perhaps knew more about and had more to do with developing the cotton-spinning industry than any other man in New England.

Senator Wolcott served for a few months as a private in the One Hundred and Fiftieth regiment of Ohio Volunteers in 1864. He entered Yale College in 1866, but did not graduate. He graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1871 and removed to Colorado to join his brother, Henry R. Wolcott, who had been two years in that State. Mr. Wolcott first taught school at Blackhawk, a little mining camp, at the salary of $50 per month, and at the same time was hard at work in the study of the law. He did not like the school room and a little later went to Georgetown, where he edited a newspaper and continued in the practice of law. As his practice increased he gave up journalism and in 1876 he was elected District Attorney. Mr. Wolcott served his constituents well, and rising rapidly in prominence as a successful practitioner more lucrative things came to him. He became interested in mines and railways, first as an attorney for their interests and then as an investor. Finally in 1889 he was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican, and re-elected six years later. His term will expire March 3, 1901. Senator Wolcott was one of the members of the commission appointed by President McKinley to negotiate in the interest of bimetallism with the European governments soon after his election and wrote a most interesting report of his work. He was also temporary chairman of the Republican National Convention of 1900 in Philadelphia, which renominated Mr. McKinley for the Presidency.