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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 1908)
The Omaha Sunday PART III. For all the News THE OMAHA DEE HALF-TOME SECTION PAGES 1 TO 4. Best tiT. West VOL. XXXVII NO. 34. OMAHA, SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 9, 1908. SINGLE COPY FIVE CENTS. Bee ANDREW W. GRIFFEN RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE VETERAN Forty Years of Active Work and Two and One-Half Million Miles of Travel in the Railway Mail Cars Leaves Him Hale, Hearty and Tull of the Keen Zest of Vigorous Life IF SOMEONE had approached Edward Griffen. a atald Pennsyl vania Quaker, In the year of our Lord 1650, and told hlni that one of his defendants 2 60 years later would be whirling through the country at the rate of fifty miles an hour and attending to the work of distributing tens of thousands of letters in the conveyance while going at this terrific Bpeed, the good old Quaker would doubtlebs have looked upon the person as a child of Satan. He would have folded his hands solemnly on the baggy front of his homespun trousers; he would have set his firm lips In a line still firmer than before; he would have looked solemnly upon the ground and then perhaps have raised his pious eyes still more solemnly toward ' heaven. And then he might have murmured a devout prayer that the Lord should have mercy upon the poor mis guided person who was being assailed by the arrows of the devil and being Inspired with evil thoughts by demons of wickedness. , However, all this Is aside from the main part of this narration. It Is, In the words of Kipling, "another story." Nevertheless. It is an interesting part of the life of Andrew W. Griffen, a resident of Omaha since 1867, and a railway mall clerk for more than forty years. More will be said about' hlB ancestor, the pious Edward, In the course of this biography. A branch of the descendants of Edward Orlffen were living on a farm near Ypsllantl, Mich., In the year of our Lord 1845. On July 25 of that year the son was born who was to be such a faithful servant of Uncle Sam in the railway mall service. JThe early life of Andrew was the ordinary life of the farm boy, filled to overflowing of chores, work and school. The boy was ambitious. He applied himself diligently to his books and made the mcst of his small advantages. Having completed the course offered In the country, he entered the schools of the neighboring town of Ypsllantl and then took up the course in the normal college located there. Working on the farm in the summer and going to school in the winter, he com pleted three years of normal training and was nearly fitted for teach ing school, which was the goal of his ambitions then. Omaha Won Him Early His uncle, Joel T. Orlffen, had settled in the young town ot Omaha, and in the summer1 of 1867 the young man came west to visit him. He liked Nebraska at once and told his uncle that his citizenship in the young commonwealth could be secured by getting him a position. His uncle had some influence, the proper machinery was set in motion, and young Griffen was appointed a railway mail clerk on the Union Pacific. He was one of the seven who were ap pointed when the railway mail service was first put into .operation west of the Missouri river. The other six were Q. B. Bail, N. M. Dickinson, A. C. Noteware, Captain Moore, L. M. Moe and J. P. Reynolds. Mr. Griffen is the only one of the seven who is still in the service. His record, is more than that, for he has been on the same run Omaha to Cheyenne almost continuously since the year 1867. At his home, 661 South Twenty-sixth avenue, Mr. Griffen told some reminiscences of early days in the service and drew a compari son between the days that are gone and the present. "They called ua 'route agents' in the early days," he said. "We occupied a little space inxa combination car which was less than one third of the small car. At one end of this space was a line of boxes in which we distributed the papers and at the right-hand side were several jrows of boxes for letters. "There was only one man In a car and I don't think the entire mail on the run from Omaha to Cheyenne weighed BOO pounds. I remember I used o get through with my work almost by. the time we reached Papllllon, Just a few miles, out of Omaha, and the rest of the run was pretty much of a loafing Job. Coming back from the west the mall was so light I could sometimes carry it all myself "Compare that day with the present Now there are 127 men on the Omaha-Cheyenne run. Twenty-one of these go out every day in place of one in 1867. There are about ten big cars heavily loaded with mall going out of Omaha every day over the Union Pacific to Cheyenne in place of the small part of the one car as In 1867. Work Was Light Then "I had very little distributing to do in tnose days, me dis tributing was done at what they called 'D. P. O.'s' or distributing postoffices. We put all the mall for Utah, for example, In one pack age. This was distributed in Salt Lake City and sent out from there. "We used to catch bags of mall at small stations as they do today. Of course, the bags were only light and we caught them with our own arms, Instead of using a big iron arm as they do today. This might seem hard to do while a train is going at a good speed, but itwAs easy when you knew how. The trick was not to try to stop the bag, but merely to reach out at the proper time and give it a yank toward the car. The speed of the train was sufficient to send It whining Into the car and striking against the back of the car. "The trip from Omaha to Cheyenne then took about twenty-six hours. Now we' make it on the Overland in Just about half that time. We made a trip every seven days. Our pay was 11,000 a year. Today we make the trip twice every twelve days." In 1869 Mr. Griffen was transferred for about a year to the Chicago-Iowa City run. With him were transferred T. N. Vail, who afterward became general superintendent of the entire railway mall serlce. Also there was Daniel Kennlson. On the Chicago-Iowa City A ,' r """" ANDREW W. GRIFFEN. I remember seeing a hunting party of Indians pursuing the animals In his hand. This was Thomas Cahoon. a Union Pacific conductor. on a very cold winter day. They would ride up beside the buffalo on their ponies and discharge their revolvers into them. It was an interesting and very picturesque sight. The cold air made the breath of the buffalo freeze on their shaggy hides and the steam coming in clouds from their fiery nostrils gave them the appearance of small engines. . "I saw the interesting sight ot a man carrying his own scalp He was brought back from Lodge Pole, Neb., where he had been fishing with some others. The Indians had attacked him. taken the scalp without killing him and escaped. The hank of hair was re-' covered.' He suffered fearfully from the pain of the injury." Mr., Griff en's service is remarkable not alone from the chrono logical standpoint. Expressed in the number of miles he has traveled In mall cars it foots up to about 2,500,000 miles and is being in creased right along at the rate of 5.000 milea a month. It is an easy matter to figure how many times around the earth this equals or how many trips to the moon could have been taken had Mr. Griffen confined his Journeying exclusively to a line of railway built from the earth to that satellite. A remarkable feature of his service is that he has never been in an accident. Walt a moment, though, that is not quite the truth. Once, it is true, one wheel of one truck of the car he was in left the track at a switch when the train was nearly at a standstill and caused a delay of nearly half an hour. Mr. Griffen feels himself fairly fortunate lu having traveled two and a half million miles right behind an express engine without sustain ing a scratch of bodily injury. Thus has come true the wonderful thing which the pious Quaker, Edward 'Griffen, who lived in, the good old days, would have viewed as Impossible. This swift moving workl is now prac tically run by a machinery which he from his stolid standpoint would have branded as an abomination and the creation of the devil him self. However, Mr. Griffen is proud of that same old ancestpr. It is a facetious saying, but one which contains much truth, that a man ought to choose his ancestors with greut.care. Certain it is that one could not possibly choose a better ancestor than a Quaker. Edward Griffen was ope of the staunchest of that much persecuted but steadfastly devout sect. He lived In the days when it was considered a virtue to punish anyone who had the audacity to be a Quaker and the persecution was the more pleasant to cowards, because it was against the principles of Die Quakers to make resistance. Record of An Ancestor Edward Griffen was born In 1602 and when he was 30 years of age he emigrated to the new world, sailing from London on October 24, 1632, on the ship Abraham for Virginia. In this country he was one of the earliest members of the Quakers, or Society of Friends, and took a leading part In their deliberations and in their passive resistance of the persecutions devised against them. His same was one of those signed to the "Remonstrance of the inhabi tants of Flushing, Long Island, against the law against Quakers to Governor Petrus Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam." A part of this document reads as follows: ' "Right Honorable: You have been pleased to send unto us a certalne prohibition or command that wee shoulde not receive or entertaine any of those people called Quakers, because they are sup posed to bee by some seduceive of the people. For our part wue cannot condemn them in this case, neither can wee stretch out our bands against them to punnlsh. bannish or persecute them, for out of Christ God is a consuming fire and it is a fiaiful thing to fall Into the hands of the living God. Wee desire therefore In tills cate not to Judge lest wee be Judged, neither to condemn lest wee Uj condemned, but rather let every man stand and fall to his owns malster. Wee are bound by the law to doe good unto all men, espe cially to those of the householde of faith." The document ends thus: "Therefore, if any of these said personnes come in love unto us we cannot in consequence lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse Into our towne and houses as God shall per suade our consciences, and ln this wee are true subjects both .of church and state, 'and wee are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evill to no man and this according to the pattent and character of our towne given unto us in the name of the state generall, which wee are not willing to infringe and violate, but shall houlde to our pattent and shall remalne your humble supjects and the inhabitants of Vllshlng. "Written this 27th of December, in the yeare 1637, by mee, "EDWARD HEART, Clerlcus." Fifteen large books contain the history of the Griffens during the last 800 years. These were compiled by Mr. Griffen and repre sent the work of years. It is a hobby of his in which he spends much of his spare time. Typewritten copy covering twenty large pages relates the history of Edward Griffen alone. Mr. Griffen has in his fifteen books the names of hundreds of members of -the family, with the dates of their birth and death, dates of their marriage, with names, dates of birth and of death of their wives. Mr. Griffen married Miss Mary E. Holllster in Rochester, Mich., January 11, 1871. They have three children, two girls and a boy. Mr. Griffen carries his sixty-three years . with the vigor of a man of forty. He is still one of the best men in the service and doesn't think of retiring. ASHINGTON, Feb. 8. How did a blind man ever get lntq the United ' States senate? For that matter, how did a blind man ever have the courage to pick out that particular career and to make it the object of his greatest ambition T There is one answer to both questions. He did It by being Thomas P. Gore. Being Thomas P. Gore means a good many thlncu It means heinsr 87 Years old. in Derfect run were also at hat time Captain White, later general superintend- of ,ndomltabie wU1 and unllmlted energy. It means being by turns a good fighter and a gen- Ambition Led Blind Man W Into the Senate Chamber ent. and Walter L. Hunt, also prominent later In railway mall circles. When Mr. Griffen was transferred again in 1870 It was to be come chle'f clerk of the Omaha district, succeeding James D. Stacy. This was before the days of the civil service. After holding this place for five years ie was put back on his run, In which he has continued up to-the present time with scarcely a break in the con tinuity of bis service. Viewing the service from the mountain height of forty years Mr. Griffen declares It has undergone a marvelous development. "It is a wonderful system even to one in whom familiarity might be supposed to breed contempt," he says. "I remember well the poorly provided, poorly built bumpy little cars with their loose couplings that we bounced along In forty years ago. And I look with wonder at the great machine that grinds out a grist hundreds of times greater than was ground out forty years ago, and still runs so much more smoothly and accurately than that early machine of the mail service. v How the Country Has Grown erous conciliator. It means the ability to get and to keep friends. It means, moreover, having had a good mind to start with and having given It twenty-five years of almost unexampled training. And if that isn't enough to explain the senatorshlp, It means hav ing Mrs. Thomas P. Gore for a wife and helpmeet. When the present senator was only 7 or 8 years old he was accidentally struck in the left eye by a stick which a comoanion threw down. The whole thing was an accident, the stick re bounding and striking him under part of the eye ball. Some Injury to the optic nerve resulted and the sight gradually failed in that eye. When he was 11 years old and a page in the Mississippi senate he was born and brought up In that state he bought an air gun to take home to his brother for a Christmas present. Some of "And yet the development In the service is no more wonderful .the children at the hotel where he was living than the development in the country here In the west. When I re member the bare and barren and uninhabited country through which we ran in the '60s and then look at the present country, dotted with prosperous towns and villages, covered with fertile farms and fairly Stippled with the dwellings, the barns, the granaries, of happy, healthy, wealthy farmers, I realize that I have witnessed one of the most marvelous developments that has ever occurred on this earth. "We used to pass many emigrant trains even after the Union Pacific was completed. Many of the towns were in tne wild and woolly and wicked stage, filled with bad men, treacherous Indians, the riff-raff of the world, the scum of society. All this has vanished away and given place to one of the best governed commonwealths the world has ever seen. . "There were large garrisons in some of the western forts in those days and much of the mall we carried was for the soldiers. At Fort Sedgwick on the Platte river Just across from Julesburg there was a big gr rrisqn. Other forts along the line were Fort Fred Steele and Fort Sanders. Fort Kearney was south of the river and we did not see much of it. though troops were stationed there in 1H67. Some troops were also stationed at Fort Mcpherson, but the main body was at Fori" Sedgwick. The old forts have been abandoned many years. The only one now remaining is Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne. It vat built In 1867 and is now maintained as a brigade post, being one ot the most Important in the west ".We saw great herds ot buffaloa the plain's In the early days. wanted to see it work and naturally an 11-year-old boy did not need to be asked twice. While he was showing it off the rod it fired kept catching in the barrel, so finally having placed it in position young Gore squinted down the barrel with his good eye, of course to see if everything was all right that time. Somehew or other the gun wen t off and so did part of his right eye. Ot course, the sight was destroyed. An op eration was performed, the front of the eyeball removed and a false eye substituted. Owing to the fact that not all the eyeball was taken away the glass eye moves so naturally that many per sons never suspect that It is not the real thing. Since he was 11 years old Thomas P. Gore has not been able to read a word. For a few years he could distinguish outlines of some objects, but since he was 15 or 16 he has lost even that power. At 11 he was too young to have acquired a' trade, a profession or even an education. After he lost his sight he promptly decided on the edu cation as first necessity and set about getting one. He went through the public schools, then the normal school, then the Cumberland university at Lebanon, Tenn. One of his earlier schoolmates accompanied .him to Lebanon and read to him. Every bit of his work was done this way. He was valedictorian of his class a4. one of six who were graduated with highest honors. When he left college he went to Jackson, Miss., for six months to learn to read with his fingers. He even bought two books in Braille type, .Long fellow's poems and the Constitution ot the United States. But getting his learning through his fingers was too tedious a method to suit a man so eager, so fairly covetous of knowledge as young Gore was. The two books for the blind with which he supplied himself then have not grown into a library. Ho never bought a third and he's not very certain of the whereabouts of the original two. He has a library all right enough, but it isn't composed of books for the blind. He cannot read one word in the volumes with which he has surrounded himself; yet he knows their contents with a thoroughness which would make most men seem, lu contrast, to be strangers to their own bookshelves. Not only does he know their contents, he knows their outside also. As he would recognize the face of a friend by passing his hand over It, so he can recognize his books by mere touch. He loves to have a book in his hands. When ever he is being read to he wants to hold a book himself. When he Is getting his ideas Into shape for a speech he goes oft Into a room by himself but takes a book to hold. It may not be a book from which he is going to quote, but it will be a book he cares for, and a book, too, that he likes Ahe feel of; for he is especially sensitive to cerY&ln bindings.. His wife says that books are his one dissipa tion. He neither smokes nor drinks. But be goes to a bookstore as a needle to a magnet and always succumbs to that one temptation of buying more and yet more volumes. How does he make himself master of their con tents? There's where you have a hint of the man himself. - No man who was not thoroughly likeable could ever in this world have managed to do what Sena tor Gore has accomplished, no matter how much he might have wanted it. Never, that Is unless he had been ready to pay exhorbitantly for it, and Gore is not a rich man. A schoolmate read him through college. A brother became his law partner. Another is his secretary. His wife Is something of all three, be sides being a good deal more. But neither a mu's schoolmates nor his broth ers, nor even his wife, can throw in their lives with his to that extent unless there is something more than sympathy to keep them going. In this case., there is more; there is admiration and affection two sentiments which the blind senator seems to inspire wherever he goes. Nothing would be further from the truth than to picture him as a semi-dependent drag upon his friends. Some imaginative correspondents have described his wife as his inseparable companion, going wherever he goes, sitting upon the platform during his campaign speeches and either leading or follow4ns him around constantly. That's all nonsense The other day when a Bee reporter called at the hotel where Senator Gore lives in Washington the senator had gone off to New York on business, and, according to his custom, he had gone all by himself. He almost Invariably travels alone. He has made a cafpulgn tour of half a dozen states and done it quite alone. That's the kind of man he is. A man who has learned to depend first ot all on himself and then on others. The stories of his wife campaigning with him are not true. She explains quite simply that she would have liked to go with him, but that "travel ing costs twice as much for two as for one and I felt that we could not afford It." It is not by being constantly with him that she contributes her share to her husband's success, but by reading to him. He has the courage and the will for everything else, but that is the thing others must do. Before Oklahoma was admitted, when, as Mrs. Gore says, "we knew statehood was coming," they spent months reading and studying works on economics and constitutional law and history. When the time came tor the campaign for the sen atorshlp the trained memory of the blind candi date was stored with facts which he had at his absolute command. As a rule, all he needed to do when be wanted to prepare a speech was to go into a quiet room with a book In his hand and cogitate, as he calls it He is an inveterate worker. When he Is not gaining knowledge through being read to he is assimilating it by cogitation. Sometimes, out ot mlslaken kindness, people rob him of the time be wants to spend at the latter occupation. Another man could surround himself with books and papers so that anybody could see that he was occupied. But they see Gore sitting by himself on the train or in a hotel and think he must be in need of entertainment, which they pro ceed to supply. "And I didn't have any time to cogitate!" will be his lament laUr to his vita, Not that he doesn't want companionship. ,It 1b only when he has a speech on hand, or some thing of that sort that he objects to having his cogitation interfered with. He is a good fellow among men and is also, by kls wife's own account, fond of the ladles. But his one insatiable passion is for reading. Science, especially the science of government, eco nomic subjects and, above all, the Bible and masterpieces of oratory, these are the things h cares most for. But although he loyes to hear the Bible read, he is "not much of a church goer." Through bis hearing and hlB speaking h does all his work. He never writes anything him self. He did learn to use a typewriter, but never liked it and depends altogether on dictation. , He can sign his name, but It is not a triumph of legi bility. Ears and a tongue seem to be enough for him. Every morning his wife reads the dally paper to blm and anything else that he needs. His younger brother, Dixie Gore, is his private secretary and goes through his correspondence as any one's sec retary would. Even people who are not blind dictate their replies Just as Senator Gore does. The difference is that he keeps in his mind, always at his com mand, a hundred times as much exact information as most seeing persons keep in their minds. In his home town, Lawton, Senator Gore goes and comes without any escort whatever. In Wash ington, however, he has not begun to go about alone. There are wide, automobile-Infested drive ways to be crossed around the capitol, whose en trances also are complicated' medleys ot steps and archways, swinging doors and preoccupied pedes trians. He has the subtle sense of perception which Is not uncommon in the blind. Sometimes when he Is walking alone he will sense the nearness of steps or a wall or some object. In his home town the telephone and telegraph poles are along the edge of the sidewalk. Often when walking with his wll'a he will put out his hand and touch one of these poles as unerringly as if he had eyes to see them. He says that It Is something he cannot ex plain and something that he can neither control nor depend npon. "If I should try to feel the nearness of ob jects," he says, "I could not do It. I can't depend npon feeling it, anyway. I might walk a dozen flights of steps for once that I would know enough not to." It Isn't to be wondered at that Senator Gore is not an enthusiast on the subject of outdoor Continued on Page Four.), ,