452 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS not clearly see the real abuse and wrong and evil which, these leaders of the crusades are picturing to the people, and may not take part in the initiation and carrying on of that move- ment ; but generally it will be found that the statesman mod- erates his expressions, sees the practical difficulties and does not imitate the fury of the eloquence of those with whose work he sympathizes/' Here Mr. Taft stands forth, not as a reactionary, bnt as a safe and sane progressive. In this he is in accord with the mass of his fellow countrymen. And from even a cursory glance at the history of his fore- bears, we should expect to find in Mr. Taft these qualities of statesmanship, of reverence for law, of conservative progress in all things that pertain to the welfare of our nation and its people. His ancestry through both parents goes bac^ to the little colony of people who settled in Massachusetts in the early part of the seventeenth century. He was bom at CSn- cinnati, Ohio, September 15, 1857, his father being Alphonso Taft, an able lawyer and a distinguished public servant After preparing for college in the high school of his home city he entered the class of 1878 at Yale, graduating second in a class of one hundred and twenty-one. Though fitted by his muscular equipment for athletic sports, he eschewed these and devoted himself to acquiring scholastic honors. After his graduation he began the study of law in his father's office, at the same time doing court reporting for his brother's paper, his salary being six dollars a week. He did his work so well that another publisher employed him for the same duties at twenty-five dollars a week. He combined the work of reading and reporting that he might get both the the- ory and the practice of the law. He was graduated from the Cincinnati Law School in 1880, dividing first honors with an- other, and was admitted to the bar the same year. Almost immediately he was made assistant prosecuting attorney of Hamilton County. In 1881 he was appointed internal revenue collector for the first Ohio district. Although the salary of this office was $4,500 a year, he resigned at the end of ten months that he might give his entire time to the practice of
