CHAPTER IV.
A Citizen

WHEN Roger Wolcott returned from Europe In 1875 at the age of twenty-eight, he was at the opening of active life. Handsome, a favorite In social life, of excellent ability and education, he was the only son of a successful business man. Under no necessity to work, with a love of letters and of outdoor life, he might, had he been of a different temper, have settled down, as a dilettante in literature or have given himself up to sport and pleasure. Such an alternative never occurred to him. There was that quality in him, which fortunately is in the great body of

American youth, that shrank from the thought of an aimless existence, and that esteemed a life of work and usefulness the only one worthy of a citizen of a republic or of manhood. The spirit of industry was in his blood, and the sense of duty and obligation to serve mankind had come down to him through generations of worthies. Whatever bit of work he under took he threw himself into with ardor and enthusiasm.

The firm of A. and A. Lawrence, after half a century of honorable success, had dissolved, and Mr. J. Huntington Wolcott, except for the care of his own property and his duty as a director of various corporations, had retired from business. A commercial career had, however, little interest for his son.

Roger Wolcott opened an office in Pemberton Square, from which he moved

later to the Suffolk Bank Building on Tremont Street, and entered upon the practice of law. The outlook was promising; he had many friends, and a persuasive way of stating a ease. His mind was well stored, clear, and accurate.

Society, however, is sensitive to conditions of character within it, and when the people feel that there is a young man of public spirit who is willing and able to take responsibilities, they gather around him and call him out to service.

Mr. Wolcott soon found that the papers upon his desk were not all strictly legal, and that not all the business hours of the day were given to the law.

As his father retired from this or that position, directors and stockholders discovered that the son was able to fill his father's place, and the young man often found himself in the midst of business

men of a former generation. He became a director of the Stark Mills, of the Boston and Providence Railroad, and of the New England Trust Company, a trustee of the Suffolk Savings Bank, and a vice-president of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company. He declined an offer to be treasurer of a large manufacturing company.

The public, social, and charitable organizations laid hold of him. He came into personal touch with the poor as a visitor of the Boston Provident Association and a member of the board of managers of the Boston Dispensary. As trustee of the Eye and Ear Infirmary and of the Massachusetts General Hospital he took an active interest in the administration of these institutions. As he passed from bed to bed In the surgical and medical wards, and then visited the insane asylum at Somer-

ville, his gentle courtesy, his frame glowing with health, and his bright word and smile were from week to week a happy memory to the patients.

When there was danger that the ancient landmark, the Old South Church, would be torn down, he was active in saving it; he presided at the meetings of the preservation committee, and was later a member of the Old South Corporation, He delivered a lecture in one of the Old South courses upon the historian Prescott. He found congenial employment as a trustee of the Boston Public Library, and gave much time to the work of the Social Science Association.

His interest in New England history caused the Massachusetts Genealogical Society to turn to him for literary services. He took much interest in the Massachusetts Historical Society, was active as a

member of committees, and wrote a memoir of James Murray Robbins and other papers.

He became a vestryman of King's Chapel, where he was a member and constant worshiper after his marriage.

When elected in 1885 as an overseer of Harvard College he was a young man to have received such honorable recognition. It was a grateful service to him, and he gave to the work his best thought and time. One incident gave him an opportunity to test his abilities in swaying a sensitive and critical audience. The overseers at the time felt that the students were given too great liberty, and resolved to urge upon the faculty rather stringent regulations as to hours and habits of work. The students and many members of the faculty thought that the proposed restrictions were unnecessary and unwise. A

feeling of mutual suspicion was aroused. Mr. Wolcott was asked to address a mass meeting of students and members of the faculty, to answer questions, and to explain the position of the overseers. It was not an easy task. His frankness, however, disarmed criticism, and his sense of humor and his quick repartees gained the sympathy of the students. The comment of "The Lampoon" tells the result: -

"Roger Wolcott, Esq., of Boston, who presented the overseers' view of the recent restriction votes at the college conference meeting, Tuesday evening, succeeded, as no one had before done at these meetings, in bringing the large body of students to look on matters as do the healthy, broad-minded, and successful members of the alumni (of whom Mr,. Wolcott is an excellent type). On his appearance on the platform, the mysterious 'Board of Over-

seers,' so long the butt of the 'Lampoon's' jokes, and the 'Crimson's' 'freshman' editorials, was materialized at once in a vigorous representative of the active alumni superior to both students and faculty, and able to carry out their reasonable demands. The throng of students that crowded the large lecture - room greeted him with long continued applause, and notwithstanding the attempts of one or two Harvard Union debaters to stir up a snarl near the close, Mr. Wolcott was frequently interrupted with applause, and left amid the unmistakable signs of goodwill in his audience."

In 1888, the development of the different departments of the university, especially of the Lawrence Scientific School, brought upon the overseers for the first time the question of the enlargement of the franchise, by which graduates of the

professional schools could be given the right to vote for overseers. Mr. Wolcott wrote and signed a report urging the enlargement of the franchise in such clear and effective argument and language, that later reports upon the subject have had little to add.

It might seem as if these were enough public interests to consume the time of a man who was trying to make his way in the law. Roger Wolcott was, however, a citizen who from boyhood had been impressed with a sense of duty to his country. As soon, therefore, as he reached the age of twenty-one, he took up the active duties of citizenship. He believed that all citizens should do their part, not only in voting, but in political work. He was active at the caucuses, and distributed ballots at the elections. He cast his vote with the utmost conscientiousness.

It was soon clear to those who were interested in good city government, that Roger Wolcott had In him the possibilities of excellent public service. Within two years of the time that he had begun work as a lawyer, he was nominated and elected a member of the common council of Boston. He was again elected, serving in 1877, 1878, and 1879, His consistency, courtesy, and fairmindedness so gained for him the confidence of men of all parties, that even then he was spoken of as a possible non-partisan candidate for mayor. In 1882, 1883, and 1884, he served in the lower house of the state legislature. He worked and spoke in the campaign of 1882 against the election of Benjamin F. Butler as governor.

As a member of the joint standing committee on public charitable institutions, he showed force in connection with

the Tewksbury Almshouse investigation by Governor Butler. Upon his retirement from the legislature, he had won the confidence of the whole house.

During these years, he had followed the course of the two great national parties. The Republican party, with which by inheritance and conviction he was allied, and which had been in power since the war, was showing the demoralizing influences of success. The narrow escape from defeat by the Democratic party led by Mr, Tilden in 1876, and the pure administration of President Hayes, had been helpful toward reform. To the upholders of pure government, and to the increasing body of mugwumps and independents, there was? however, ample cause for discontent. In 1880 Garfield and Arthur were elected.

During the next four years the condi-

tions in the party seemed to many to become worse. The management of the party was in the hands of men who? for political and financial Integrity,, had not the confidence of the country. The man who stood to many of the people as the most conspicuous representative of these elements was James G. Blaine, When, therefore, the Republican Convention of 1884 met and, in spite of the protest of a large number of delegates and the open statement that a fraction would bolt his nomination, Mr. Blaine was nominated, Mr. Wolcott refused to be one of those to support the nomination, Mr. Wolcott was a Republican whose loyalty to the party was not dependent upon the personality of the man at the head of the ticket. Four years before, when his friends were forming Bristow clubs before the national convention, he, though

he admired Mr. Bristow, and would have been glad to see him nominated, refused to join a club. He believed in giving the convention freedom of action in the choice of candidates. The nomination of Mr. Blame was to him, however, more than a question of personality, - there was an issue of morality. The support of the Republican candidate meant to him the support of unworthy and evil elements in the national government. His decision to break from his political associations caused him much distress. He believed then, as he did through life, that the American people have high moral standards, and that the party which expects to hold their confidence must not only have high principles in its platforms, but must select for its leaders men in whose political honesty and high character the people can trust. As a Republican, therefore,

and for what he believed to be the best interests of the Republican party, he voted for the candidate in whose political integrity he had confidence, Grover Cleveland. This action of Mr. Wolcott was significant. He was not by nature or taste an independent; he believed in political parties; he was a strong Republican, and indorsed the general principles of the Republican party. He had been steadily gaining in influence in the party in Massachusetts, had won many friends, and had so conducted himself in office as to make promotion almost certain if he stood by the party. He had begun to catch the eye of the public. Political office as such had no attractions for him; but as a means of public service he esteemed public office. However, to him the issue was plain and his duty clear. He had plenty of useful work ahead, and no one by taste

and education was better fitted to be a happy private citizen. He declined to be a candidate for Congress on the Independent-Democratic ticket, when an. election was almost sure. He still claimed to be a good Republican. At the next caucus his vote was protested, but he pressed his claim, and was so far successful that he was sent in 1885 from ward II, Boston, as an alternate delegate to the next Republican State Convention, and as a delegate took part in its proceedings.

At this time, the health of his father, Mr. J. Huntington Wolcott, was beginning to fail, and Mrs. Wolcott had been delicate for years. In fact, life had not been the same to them since Huntington's death, and they both looked upon Roger, their only son, as the support and comfort of their declining years. With what filial piety he gave himself to that service is

familiar to all who knew them. His devotion to his parents is, perhaps, the most beautiful feature of his whole life. So complete was it, that some of his intimate friends were at times disposed to chafe, feeling that he was unduly hampered in the prosecution of interests which might lead to his future influence or position.

When he was asked to run as a Republican candidate for mayor of Boston, with a probability of election, he declined on account of his father's health. Besides taking the full responsibility of his father's affairs, he attended to all the petty questions of the household and the estate at Blue Hill. No public business was so pressing that it could draw him away from anything which he felt would be of pleasure or comfort to his parents. In fact, it may be said that during the last few years of his father's life, Roger considered his

father's comfort his chief business, and all other duties, private, professional, or public, subordinate to that.

The quiet hours passed with his parents gave him opportunity for reading and writing. In 1887 he wrote for the " Transcript" a careful article on the Constitution adopted in 1787. He was very fond of poetry, and learned much by heart, which he repeated with deep feeling. His reading of the Bible was most tender and impressive. As his father's strength waned, Roger's devotion became more and more complete, until he seemed to fill the offices of doctor, chaplain, and nurse; and when the end came in 1891 and the care ceased, it was, with all its relief, as if one great privilege of his life had been taken from him.

In 1884 the election of Mr. Cleveland,

the first Democratic President since the civil war, was a warning to the Republican party that a new generation was rising, that certain old Issues dear to the Republicans were dead, and that there was discontent with the leadership of the party. The country was tired of eloquent platforms and wanted men, Mr, Cleveland soon showed himself to be a man of force, and struck out in lines that drew the attention of the thoughtful young men of the country. The impression was abroad, certainly in some of the Eastern States, that the Republican party was hidebound, that it insisted on an unreasonable tariff, that it was governed by the corporations, and especially that, being in the hands of men like Senator Quay of Pennsylvania, who was at that time chairman of the national Republican committee, nothing in the way of high principle or strong leader-

ship on the great Issues could be expected of it. The Republican party and its management In Massachusetts seemed to reflect something of the same spirit, Massachusetts had ever since the war been reckoned as a Republican stronghold, but there had risen from the ranks of the once despised Democratic party a young Harvard man, William E. Russell, who, by his election as Governor in 1890, won a great Democratic victory. It was clear that he had been elected by the votes of men who once voted the Republican ticket or by young men who, of Republican parentage, were rising up to make a new Democratic party. Again Russell was elected, and young men like John F. Andrew and Sherman Hoar, sons of great Republican leaders of the war, were going to Congress as Democrats.

It was time that something should be

done to stem the tide by the younger men of the Republican party who believed in a forward movement and higher political standards. Beginning with an informal gathering, the Republican Club of Massachusetts was formed; its list of members soon fan into the hundreds. The critical question was whom should they select as their standard-bearer; who among the younger Republicans had the courage and tact, the position and force, to call the attention of the people to the movement and to show them that they too had a leader.

They turned to Roger Wolcott at the time that his father's death left him free to enter public life again, and he became the first president of the Young Men's Republican Club of Massachusetts, now the Republican Club of Massachusetts.

In January, 1891, the club had its first public dinner. Upon the president de-

volved the duty of striking the first note and of revealing to the public the motives and objects of the club. Were there in him and the members the elements of leadership? It must be borne in mind that, although there was much discontent in some quarters, the public conscience had not yet been aroused, and men with political futures had not spoken in clear tones. The speech of Roger Wolcott, unconscious as he was of the fact, marked his entrance into public life and a new political era, at least for the State of Massachusetts. In truth, some waves of his strong voice swept through the country. The speech is prophetic; its characteristics are the characteristics that were his to the end. It was the word of a high-minded man who was in earnest; it rang true; it revealed a full confidence in the intelligence and character of the Ameri-

can people; it appealed, not to their passions, but to their consciences and high traditions. After expressing the loyalty of the club to Republican principles and recalling the great deeds of the party In and since the war, he said: -

"Such memories are a curse If they serve but to unnerve the arm and to slacken effort. Unless they be an Incentive to lofty courage and noble emulation, they become by contrast a stigma to the present generation and brand It as unworthy of that which Is so rapidly passing away.

" No word of mine shall ever be uttered to depreciate that robust and virile independence in politics which holds country and honor above party, which while acting within party lines ever strives to secure the best in men and measures, and, often buffeted and defeated, never ceases to

wage war upon dishonesty and chicanery, using party as a weapon but never wearing it as a yoke.

"But the independent who prides himself upon being a total abstainer, until the clay of election, from all lot or part in. political movements, should be treated as those who skulk when the bugle sounds. It was not the arduous rigors of the Alps nor the repeated assaults of Rome's trained legions that broke the nerve of Hannibal's victorious army, but the soft vices of Capua, where sloth and ease took the place of vigilance and strife, and the sutler's tent supplanted the general's guidon in the soldier's affection.

"Is this to be the fate of the Republican party? It must not be. It must make its appeal, as of old, to the intelligence and patriotism of the country. It must rally to its standard the recruit and drum out

the mercenary. The loss of thousands of votes in this State was due to the Pennsylvanian who is still chairman of the national committee. . . .

"The Empire State substitutes a Hill for an Evarts in her highest office, and when he takes his seat in the Senate he will present an interesting subject for comparison with his able and upright Republican predecessor. . . .

"We look to the Republican party as the bulwark against the menace of irrational silver legislation. This battle is not yet fought out to an issue. . . . Congress may put a false bottom in the quart pot or bore out the core of a pound weight and fill it with cement, and declare that the new measures shall still be called a quart or a pound, and this may satisfy him who sells, but no power on earth can make him who buys satisfied therewith. In like

manner, Congress may say, not without a sacrifice of national honor, that seventy or eighty or ninety cents' worth of silver shall be called a dollar, but in the exchanges of the world this fiat money dictum will have just about as much effect as a paper blockade. On this issue the position of the Republican party must be sharply defined.

"We believe that wherever, through bribery, intimidation, or fraud, elections fail to express the will of the legally qualified voters, there is a failure of republican government. The menace to the cause of free government embodied in ' blocks of five' is as real as that lurking in the shotgun or the tissue ballot.

"More than it has yet done is expected of the Republican party in the reform of civil service. It requires no very close study of American politics to reveal the

fact that the dispensation of party patronage has done more to corrupt and imbitter elections, to squander the time of those in office, to demoralize those who aspire to office, and to wreck the fortunes, of individuals, of administrations, and of parties, than almost any other cause. . . .

"These are some of the questions on which we believe the position of the Republican party to be more sound and enlightened than that of the Democratic; and for this reason we are content to sit here to-night as members and guests and well-wishers of the Republican club of Massachusetts."

After this speech Roger Wolcott and his young followers were an element to be reckoned with in the political life of Massachusetts.

Roger Wolcott Home

Table of Contents

CHAPTER IV.A Citizen

CHAPTER IV.
A Citizen