OSCAR PHELPS AUSTIN
AUSTIN, OSCAR PHELPS, farmer's son, statistician, reporter, newspaper correspondent, editor and author, was born in Kendall county, Illinois. His father, Benjamin Austin, was a farmer who removed from Illinois to Nebraska, where he continued in agricultural life and was elected to the state legislature. He was a man of industry, integrity and Christian character. He married Emeline M. Phelps, daughter of Dudley and Ladema Phelps, of New York. Oscar Phelps Austin was brought up on his father's farm and by hard work as a boy and youth attained excellent health and a strong constitution, enabling him to continue equally hard work, first as a soldier in the Union army during the closing year of the Civil war, and then in his chosen field as a literary worker. He was given the few advantages for school attendance open to boys of his circumstances, but never attended the higher academies or a college. Early in life he became a member of the Methodist church. He left the farm in 1871 and went to Chicago as a newspaper reporter, removing to Cincinnati in 1873 and continuing as a reporter until 1881, when he went to Washington, District of Columbia, as correspondent for Metropolitan dailies. He also became an editor, a ^Titer for magazines and the author of numerous statistical books. He was appointed on May 9, 1897, chief of the Bureau of Statistics in the treasury department, and was transferred in 1903 to the Department of Commerce and Labor. He was also appointed an instructor in Interstate and Foreign Commerce in Columbian (now George Washington) university. He was employed by the Republican national committees of 1892 and 1896 to edit campaign documents; was elected a member of the Academy of Political and Social Science; of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; of the International Colonial Institute; of the International Union for Comparative Jurisprudence and Political Economy; of the Washington Economic Society; and secretary of the National Geographic Society and associate editor of the magazine.
