No. 2 DEMOCRACY'S LEADERS- Alton Brooks Parker. UFE AND SERVICES OF THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. ¦ Alton Brooks Parker, the Democratic candidate for President, is of Revolutionary stock. His great grandfather, John Parker, born in Worces ter, Massachusetts, 1751, was one of the "embattled farmers" who "fired the shot heard round the world," at Concord. He was a farmer, and left his plow in 1776 to serve in the patriot army which Washington commanded. When the republic was established he returned to his farm but not alone, for he brought with him a wife he had married, the "daughter of the regiment," so called because of her devotion to it and in which her father, Lieutenant Temple, was an officer. This John Parker lived out his life on his farm at Worcester, respected by his neighbors, a man of independence, intelligence and industry. A son was born to him to whom was given the name of John, who, reaching manhood, married Betsy Brooks, of Worcester, and went to Cortland, Cortland County, State of New York, where . he bought a farm. From his wife there came the middle name the Presidential candi date bears. This John Parker was recognized by his neighbors as a highly educated man, who greatly mourned that the struggle for life on his farm prevented him from giving to his sons and daughters the same advantages of education he had enjoyed. He had a son, John Brooks, on whose shoulders early devolved the conduct of the Cortland farm. Of little scholastic training, John Brooks was a studious man who read widely and deeply and preached in his family the truths of the value of an education, until he bred in his son, Alton Brooks, a burning desire for learning. THE BIRTHPLACE. On this farm, yet in the possession of the Parker family, Alton Brooks was 'born on May 14, 1852. On his father's farm he labored as soon as his young limbs were fit, until he was twelve years old, during three of the winters of which years he attended the district school of the vicinage. In his thirteenth year he entered Cortland Academy. It is a fact wort y ^ notice as having influence on young Alton's developing character a ^ as making for that self-reliance which is his characteristic, that the tui 10 fees required were earned by him without recourse to his fathers pu • When he was about thirteen there occurred an incident, small in i se , which, however, had a marked influence upon his life. His father was summoned as a juryman to the county court. The lad Alton accompanied him to the court house and witnessed the trial of a case at law for the first time in his life. It so happened that the case was one of unusual im portance and on one side was engaged a lawyer of repute from a neighbor ing city. As the wondering lad listened to this distinguished pleader his imagination was captured. His career was marked out for him when his emulation was stirred by this man of golden words. As he drove back to his home with his father he announced that he intended to be a lawyer. .It would appear that the father knew his son and fully appreciated that trait of steadfastness of purpose which has ever been marked in him, for he regarded the announcement as a decision which was not likely to be changed. So plans to this end were at once laid. The father could not contribute to the expense to be incurred but he c»uld and did encourage the determination. EARLY STRUGGLES. Beyond the Academy was the Normal School and Cornell University with its higher branches of study and the Albany Law School, to be reached and passed in the struggle to enter the ranks of lawyers. Money must be earned to meet the expenses. When the Academy days were over, young Alton Brooks was compelled to devote his time to teaching school to earn the money required. He began at Virgil in Cortland County. But money came slowly. He was compelled to abandon the idea, of a course at Cor nell, but the Normal School was possible. From Virgil he went to Bing- hamton, Broome County, where he taught in the public school and between the two earned the money that carried him through the Normal School. Finishing his term he went to Rochester, in Ulster County, to teach school at $3 per day, to earn the money to pursue his course at the Albany Law School. It was while at Rochester that he won his wife, Mary Lee Schoon- maker, and made the friendship of Augustus Schoonmaker, of Kingston, a lawyer of distinction, who was attracted to the struggling young man. While he taught school he read law under the advice and direction of this friend, and when he had completed his two years' course at the Albany Law School' he entered the office of his friend first as a student and then as managing clerk. On his admission to the bar, he began practice a't once taking as a partner a young lawyer named Kenyon. Clients came perhaps slowly, at first, but came nevertheless. This translation from an aspiring boy to a full-fledged lawyer had been accomplished in seven years — a period of struggle, of privation, of incessant labor with head and hands, but never with lessening of purpose. HIS POLITICAL CAREER. Young lawyers in country towns and inland cities are early drawn into politics. In s.uch towns in very young men the sense of citizenship is large and the duties and responsibilities imposed by American citizenship are taken seriously. In this Alton Brooks Parker differed in no way from other young men, but it would seem as if he did in the struggle of his political convictions. He was constitutionally a Democrat — from early years a profound student in the Jeffersonian school of thought. Early then he was found active in the affairs of the Democratic Party of the town. And it is a tribute to his qualities that from the beginning of his participation he was counseled with, was efficient in the matters of organization and a delegate to the conventions of his district and county. He early won county fame and personal strength. In 1875, when he was but twenty- three years old, believing that his friend had been unfairly deprived of his office of County Judge, without consultation with that friend, he set about the enterprise of securing for Judge Schoonmaker the nomination of State Senator. He set about it single handed in the beginning, traveling the county, pleading the cause of his friend and organizing the friends of that friend. His labors, regarded in the beginning as futile, bore results. The Judge was nominated and elected. But there was another result which had not been anticipated by the young man. His labor for his friend had made him a marked man in the county. In his efforts to make friends for Judge Schoonmaker he had made friends for himself. This was manifest two years later when he was made a candidate for the office of surrogate of the county. A hard political battle followed the nomination. A disappointed contestant withdrew from the convention, in fluencing as many as he could to follow him into a support of the Republican candidate for the office. Yet, though the Democratic county ticket as a whole was defeated, young Parker was elected by a secure majority. In the years following he became, in real fact, the Democratic leader of the county, and under his leadership Democratic victory became the habit of the county. Six years later, dr in 1883, he was renominated and elected though he was opposed by the strongest Republican of his day. In a total vote of 15,600 he was re-elected by a majority of about 1,400. During these years he was recognized as the representative Democrat, was sent as a dele gate to the State Conventions of 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1883. And all these years he was devoting himself industriously to the practice of his pro fession, acquiring a reputation as a lawyer, never permitting himself to be dis tracted into political office holding. That he occupied the position of surro gate was not a contradiction of this fact, nor a violation of the rule he had laid down for himself, for that office was within the line of his profession. IN STATE POLITICS. In the meantime his fame as an earnest Democrat and a leader of resourcefulness, energy and astuteness had spread beyond the confines of his county and had attracted the attention of the State leaders of the y, Tilden, Manning, Lamont, et al. There was a desire to make use o ^ and he was solicited to take the nomination of Secretary of btate. offer was made by the element which could have influenced the nominal . but he declined it upon the ground that it would be an interruption in career as a lawyer to which he was devoted. In 1885, however, he did con sent to take the management of the State campaign as Chairman 01 Executive Committee of the State Central Committee. In that year jjayin B Hill, who had been elected Lieutenant-Governor in 1882, was nominated for Governor. But he who had been nominated for Lieutenant-Governoi with him, had peremptorily declined to run. This, with other adverse circumstances, made the outlook far from promising. The young advocai took the position of campaign manager against his inclinations but as matter of duty. His campaign began in gloom but ended gloriously. A more brilliant one was never waged. The enemy was confident and aggressive and bent on conducting an offensive campaign. But ten days had not passed before the young Ulster County lawyer had put his opponents on the defensive and kept them on it to the end, with the result that in November, the ticket he championed was elected by a substantial majority. Then he went back to his law books. The year previous to this when President Cleveland assumed the Ex ecutive Chair at Washington, he had sent for Parker and offered him the position of Fourth Assistant Postmaster General. This he had declined for the same reason he had given for the declination of the Secretaryship of State of New York. Indeed that very year of 1885 he had teen solicited by powerful forces to permit the use of his name for the nomination for Lieutenant-Governor. And this he had declined for the same reason. However, his conduct of the campaign in 1885 may be said to have been the end of his political career in the State. Shortly after election' he was ap pointed to the Supreme Court bench to fill a vacancy occasioned by the sudden death of Judge Theodoric Westbrook, of Kingston. In the following year he was nominated for a full term of fourteen years as Supreme Court Justice. He was unanimously elected because, for the first and last time in the history of the judicial district, the opposing party made no nomination for Supreme Court Judge. From the moment he ascended the bench he kept himself aloof from politics. He conceived that parti cination in politics did not comport with the dignity of the judicial robes. Though his interest in the affairs of the State was unabated he studiously refrained from a single act which the censorious could have termed political participation. But this did not prevent in 1891 the urgency upon the part of certain forces that he permit his name to be used for the nomination for Governor, and, in deed, for United States Senator. But he declined, and in such a manner as ended the discussion of both. In 1897 a vacancy occurred in the office of Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, the highest judicial office in the State. This was in the line of his profession and of his ambition. So when his name was proposed for the high office he made no protest. He was nominated without opposition. The year previously the Republican Party had carried the. State by 212,000 plurality. The outlook for the Demo crats seemed almost hopeless, yet Judge Parker received a plurality of 60,000. He assumed the dignities of that office in the same spirit he had occupied the Supreme Court bench. Resolutely he kept himself from all political participation. Yet in 1892 there was a demand within the State of New York, that was most formidable, that he should be nominated for Governor. Indeed, it required strenuous labor upon the part of his friends to prevent his nomination, for the cry came from the Democratic hosts not from the leaders. There was not a moment up to that of the nomination that was made, that the convention could not have been swept for him if the effort to prevent it had been relaxed. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. The Presidential candidate is now a man of fifty-two years, but he does not look his age by ten of them. He is a handsome specimen of man hood, standing six feet in his shoes and weighing 196 pounds. Of adipose tissue on his great frame there is none. His muscles are like steel and he moves with a light step, easily and gracefully, muscles and nerves in prompt obedience to* will. His hair is' of reddish color, his eyes a hazel brown and his skin wears that reddish tinge which shows he is not unacquainted with the open air and the rays of the sun. His nose is aquiline and ag- gsessive. So is his chin in its breadth and thrust forward, conveying the impression of great will power, dogged adherence to a purpose once formed. His eyes are kindly in their expression and yet keen and searching in their glance. Frankness of glance, of manner and of speech is an assuring charac teristic which strikes the person coming into contact with him. Mental and moral honesty, sincerity and earnestness of purpose, courage and bravery, firmness and force are attributes that person will not fail to observe. And withal there is simplicity, courtesy, suavity and kindliness. Judge Parker's mind is energetic and enterprising — his processes, largely of analysis and of constructive logic. They are rapid, for he thinks rapidly and pro foundly and with great concentrating power. His intellect is the govern ing force of the man. Method and orderliness are characteristic in the operation of his mind. Sometimes he seems to reach conclusions, on impulse, but it is quite certain that the question, on which a conclusion or a judgment has been made has been subjected to a searching analysis before he has expressed an opinion upon it. He is a conservative in the habit of his mind. He believes in the power and capacity of the people to govern themselves and that all government should be by the people,^ that the sovereign power of State should be vested in the people and the government administered through the elected agents of the people. This belfef leads him to stand firmly for a strict construction of the Constitution which is the people's own expression ; for the preservation of popular rights against all aggressions; for the widest possible liberty of the individual; against special privileges as taking from the people what is their possession nd which they have no right to yield up; for the scrupulous observance f the functions of each branch of the government and against