The Wyoming Tribune

SKETCH OF TOM JOHNSON

Tom Johnson, mayor of Cleveland and Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio, was born July 18, 1854, in Scott county, Ky. His ancestors were the illustrious family of Johnsons of Madison county, Va.

When only a lad he was living with his parents in Louisville, where he received a common school education.

At the age of 15 he was errand boy, clerk and assistant in all work in the office of the Louisville Street Railway company. There he learned the details of the business. It was the beginning of the art of amassing a fortune out of the despised nickel.

The boy learned everything about horse railroading, track laying, railroad politics, securing rights of way and getting the good will of hostile aldermen and would-be reformers. Before he was 21 Johnson had all the intricacies of country rapid transit at his fingers' ends.

He invented a new nickel-in-the-slot box for street cars running in suburban towns without a conductor, where passengers are few and dividends invisible.

Next he invented an automatic switch, then the patent high steel rail now used on all great lines.

Had success been as swift as Mercury she could not have escaped from Tom Johnson. The man had made up his mind to win, and he did.

After having difficulty in securing the kind of rails he wanted to use for his railways, he started two steel works of his own. Money seemed to seek him out, and his bank account swelled to immense proportions. This was a great contrast to his early life, which was spent in laying in ambush for the wolf that was always prowling about the door.

Unlike other manufacturers and capitalists Johnson became an anti-protectionist. His rivals in the iron business were astonished. They could not understand why he opposed a tariff to enhance his profits.

His answer was to announce that he was not only a tariff reformer but an out and out free trader.

He had read "Progress and Poverty," met Henry George, its author, and like old John Bunyan, had seen a great light. So he became a single taxer.

He would have been considered crazy but for his extraordinary success in business. He was courageous and apparently afraid of nothing living or dead.

He ran for Congress on the single tax ticket and in the campaign of 1890 he was sent to Congress by 3,400 majority. That the Western Reserve wise men were paralyzed did not express the situation of that day.