USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume III > Part 14
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Within the past twenty years the conflict between the industrial classes and capitalists has, while often reaching acute stages, been marked by many developments which recur to point
W. P. REND. a final solution. and has been notable for many ad-
justments of relatives that have brought honor to both parties in the contest. The progress of arbitration and the growth of "the spirit which sinks personal considerations and makes individual sacrifices for the general good," invoked by President Roosevelt in the settlement of the anthracite strike of 1902. are
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among the most valuable achievements of the American people dur- ing the last quarter century. The employment of arbitration in set- tling the difficulties between operators and mine workers may be said to have first been recognized as a practical method in an address sent out by a committee of miners and mine owners from Chicago in 1885. The important paragraphs of this address were as follows: "The undersigned committee believes that this convention will prove to be the inauguration of a new era for the settlement of the indus- trial question in our mining regions in accordance with intelligent reasoning, and based upon fair play and mutual justice.
"The history and experience of the past make it apparent to every intelligent and thoughtful mind that strikes and lockouts are false agencies and brutal resorts for the adjustment of the disputes and controversies arising between the employing capital and em- ployed labor. They have become evils of the greatest magnitude, not only to those immediately concerned in them but also to general society, being fruitful sources of public disturbance, riot and blood- shed. Sad illustrations of this truth are now being witnessed in cer- tain of our large cities, and in several of the mining and manufactur- ing centers of the country. These industrial conflicts generally in- volve waste of capital on the one hand and the impoverishment of labor on the other. They engender bitter feelings of prejudice and enmity, and enkindle the destructive passions of hate and revenge. bearing in their train the curses of widespread misery and wretched- ness. They are contrary to the true spirit of American institutions, and violate every principle of human justice and of Christian charity. "Apart and in conflict capital and labor became agents of evil. while united they create blessings of plenty and prosperity, and en- able man to utilize and enjoy the bounteous resources intended for his use and happiness by the Almighty.
"Capital represents the accumulation. or savings, of past labor, while labor is the most sacred part of the capital. Each has its re- spective duties and obligations toward the other. Capital is entitled to fair and just remuneration for its risks and its use, and must have security and protection, while labor, on the other hand, is as fully and justly entitled to reward for its toil and its sacrifices. Each is en- titled to its equitable share, and there is no law, either human or di- vine. to justify the one impoverishing and crushing the other. God
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tells us, 'The laborer is worthy of his hire,' and threatens the venge- ance of Heaven upon the oppressors of the poor.
"The question of what one should pay and the other receive in compensation can best be determined by friendly conferences, where intelligence and arbitration will take the place of the usual irrational and cruel methods of the past. It is evident that the general stand- ard of reward for labor has sunk too low, by reason of reductions that have taken place during the past few years, and that miners generally are receiving inadequate compensation in an employment full of toil and danger.
"It is equally true that the widespread depression of business, the over-production of coal, and the consequent severe competition have caused the capital invested in mines to yield little or no profitable returns. The constant reductions of wages that have lately taken place have afforded no relief to capital, and, indeed, have but tended to increase its embarrassments. Any reduction in labor in any coal field usually necessitates and generates a corresponding reduction in every other competitive coal field. If the price of labor in the United States was uniformly raised to the standard of three years ago the employers of labor would occupy toward each other the same relative position in point of competition as at present, such an advance would prove beneficial to their interests, as it would materially help to re- move the present general discontent of the miners in their employ- ment. However, such a general advance cannot be made at the present time from the fact that already contracts in many districts have been made between the coal operators and their miners which will last until next spring; also that contracts have been entered into with manufacturers and large consumers of coal which will continue in force up to the same time.
"The committee would therefore suggest and invite that another meeting shall take place at Pittsburg on December 15th next, where it is hoped there will be a full representation of miners and mine owners throughout the various states and territories, and where per- manent action may be taken, looking to the improvement of botlı interests.
"The committee feels that this question of labor is one of vital importance and it must be met in a spirit of conciliation, and that
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the problems connected with it require studied thought, that it may be lead to some wise and happy solution.
"This is the first movement of a national character in America, taken with the intention of the establishment of labor conciliation, and while many practical difficulties may present themselves in retard- ing the attainment of the laudable end in view, it is to be hoped that at least an honest general effort shall be put forth by the oper- ators and miners.
"The intelligence and progress of the age demand this. Our material interests demand it. Common justice demands it. The in- ternal peace of our common country demands it. Respect for the dignity of American honor demands it. The security of capital de- mands it."
The first signer, and the actual writer of this address, was Col. William P. Rend, who, for many years has been one of the largest coal operators in the country, till recently owner of some of the largest mines in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and now owner of extensive collieries in southern Illinois. Those who have followed with anxiety the conflict between the industrial classes and capitalists within the past twenty years see in him one of the most broad, impartial and practical arbitrators who have entered the arena and had the bravery to attempt to do justice to both parties in the settlement of matters in dispute. In all respects, although energetic and positive, his character is one of remarkable poise, devoid of stub- born prejudice and personal spite. After he has examined a matter from all available standpoints and sources of information, he acts with conscientious decision and with the momentum of a great mov- ing body, but even in action if new developments have a direct bear- ing upon the point at issue he has the justice and the manliness to stop and consider whether his course is right or wrong. This trait is indicative of the greatest bravery which can be shown by the mod- ern leader of affairs-the willingness to learn from whatever source of information and the open acknowledgment of personal fallibility -and is the characteristic of Colonel Rend's character which has drawn to him countless supporters and friends and placed in his hands the power of untold good in the conciliation of those great in- terests whose unfortunate hostility is today the greatest threat to internal peace and security.
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The peculiarly inspiring and attractive traits of Colonel Rend's personality are perhaps a racial inheritance, as he is a native Irish- man, born in county Leitrim, on the Ioth of February. 1840. His father, Ambrose Rend, was a substantial farmer, while his mother, Elizabeth (Cline) Rend, was a daughter of Hugh Cline, for years steward of one of the greatest and most ancient estates in Ireland. When the boy was seven years of age his parents settled in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he received his education, graduating from its high school when seventeen. During this period of his schooling he had gained considerable experience in the dry goods line, and after his graduation from the Lowell high school he endeavored to find employment in New York. Failing, after quite a search, and finding his small means reduced to alarming proportions, he started for New Jersey with the determination to accept whatever offered in the line of honorable employment. Fortunately. on the day after his arrival on Jersey soil he secured the position of a teacher in New Brooklyn, which he held for twelve months. While on a visit to Baltimore he saw an advertisement for a teacher in the school district near West River, Anne Arundel county, Maryland, and from sev- enty applicants was selected for the position by the trustees. His scholars were generally the children of wealthy and prominent plan- tation owners, and as he made his home with one of these during the three years in which he taught here, he had the best of opportunities to observe the condition of southern life and study the southern character. While holding the position of teacher he continued his own classical studies, both privately and under the guidance of the president of St. John's College, an institution located ten miles from his residence and to which he resorted Saturday afternoons.
At the breaking out of the Civil war, which occurred at this period in Colonel Rend's life, his course was for a time problematic. He liked the southern people and his most intimate friends were slave- holders: but he disliked the institution of slavery itself and he ab- horred the doctrine of secession. Attachment to principle won the victory over personal friendship, and at the firing on Fort Sumter he resigned his position and shortly afterward vainly attempted to organize a Union company at Annapolis, Maryland. Going then to Washington he joined the Fourteenth New York Volunteers, with which he remained until the expiration of his term of enlistment,
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serving most of the time as a non-commissioned officer. With the Army of the Potomac he participated in the engagements at Han- over Court House, second Bull Run, Mechanicsville, Gaines Mills, Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and York- town. At the siege of Yorktown he was the first man in the regiment who was struck by a bullet, although not seriously wounded. At Malvern Hill, where the regiment lost one-third of its entire num- ber in killed and wounded, he escaped with the loss of a portion of his pants, and throughout the entire two years of his service his escapes were narrow and thrilling.
Being honorably discharged in 1863 he paid a brief visit to his old Lowell friends and while thus enjoying himself met the young lady who, a year later, became his wife. He located in Chicago dur- ing the latter part of the war, first securing a position as an out-sur- veyor for a railroad company locating a line from Madison, Wiscon- sin, to Winona, Minnesota. In the winter he returned to the city, intending to resume his surveying-which was congenial work-in the following spring, but securing a position as foreman of the freight depot of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company, he started a line of teams as a side issue to his regular employment. His team- ing business, however, developed to such proportions as to engage his entire time and proved the basis of his fortune and the substan- tial beginning of his career as one of the strong men of Chicago. With an energy. industry and clear business vision which met every situation he expanded his interests, he embarked in the coal trade in partnership with Edwin Walker, the well-known corporation attor- ney, which connection continued from 1882 to 1907. It was not long before the firm of W. P. Rend & Co. became the largest in the west engaged in the soft coal trade, they being the first to introduce in Chicago the far-famed Hocking Valley coal. The business so developed that at length the firm found it necessary to open up and operate mines in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Colonel Rend personally owned three of the largest mines in western Pennsylvania and valu- able properties of the same nature in Ohio, besides valuable oil wells in the Keystone state.
It is easy to understand how influential a factor such a man would prove in the settlement of disputes between the coal miners and operators of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where his invaluable serv-
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ices as an arbitrator have chiefly been required. He is a strong be- liever in arbitration and councils of arbitration, as opposed to lock- outs and strikes, and has for years been the most prominent advocate of such a policy in the country. In these states his efforts have been most beneficial in preventing these open ruptures and in softening the hostility between the two interests. In northern Illinois his name has also become all powerful in this reform. In pursuance of his life-long policy of conciliation and arbitration Colonel Rend has often come in conflict with the views and wishes of his fellow-opera- tors : but he has never swerved from his honorable course of mutual justice, so that there is no man in the country who today more fully enjoys the confidence of the coal miners of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois than Colonel Rend. He and Judge Thornton, who was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, and a former member of the Illinois supreme bench, served as a board of arbitration that settled many disputes in the coal industries, and in such manner that all parties were satisfied. Colonel Rend has recently sold his mining properties in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and is now owner and is operating extensive coal properties in southern Illinois.
The Colonel is also a strong advocate of the temperance cause, and, in religion, is a Catholic-free from prejudice and a stern hater of bigotry. Besides his meritorious war record he has a prominent place in the military annals of the Illinois National Guard, holding at one time the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Captain Israel Parsons Rumsey, for over forty years engaged in Chicago as a grain commission merchant and for the past five years senior member of the firm of Rumsey & Co., one
ISRAEL P. RUMSEY. of the largest receiving houses in this city, was born at Stafford, Genesee county, New York, on the 9th of February, 1836. Although the son of a farmer, he received a good academic education, and at the age of seventeen entered the drygoods store of Howard & Whitcomb, at Buffalo, New York. In April, 1857, being then twenty-one years of age, and having saved some money from his very modest wages, he went west and located at Keokuk, Iowa. The house by which he was employed became em- barrassed in the panic of 1857, and the firm sold the business to an uncle in the east, which proceeding left young Rumsey temporarily
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stranded. But, undaunted, he bought the delivery business of the largest morning paper in the place, for which he paid $100, and en- tered with confident enthusiasm into his new field. His hours of work commenced at one o'clock in the morning, and, as his collections had to be largely made in the day, his daily period of labor was long and strenuous. But the uncle to whom the store had been sold soon arrived and engaged him at an increased salary, placing him in charge of the hardware department with his former employers as clerks. The young man sold his newspaper business at a profit, so that he felt quite jubilant. In April, 1858, a year after coming to Keokuk, under orders from the proprietor, he removed the stock of hardware to Chicago and continued in that line for some months.
In the autumn following his arrival in Chicago Mr. Rumsey was employed by Flint & Wheeler, leading dealers in provisions and grain, and in 1860 organized the house of Finley, Hoyt & Rumsey. Just as Mr. Rumsey was coming to the front in that business, the Civil war loomed up, to the exclusion of all other considerations in the minds of men of true patriotic stock.
Under the first call of Governor Yates for 30,000 men in April, 1861, Mr. Rumsey assisted in the organization of Taylor's Chicago Battery. Early in June that command proceeded to Cairo, Illinois, and in July Mr. Rumsey was mustered into the service as junior second lieutenant of what became known as Company B. First Illinois Light Artillery. In November he participated in the battle of Bel- mont, Missouri, which was General Grant's first engagement of the Civil war. He afterward served as adjutant general for General W. H. L. Wallace, who died a few days after the battle of Shiloh, Ten- nessee, from wounds received April 6, 1863. As a unit of Sherman's great army he marched from Shiloh to Corinth, Mississippi, thence to Memphis, Tennessee, Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, and so on to Atlanta, Georgia, participating in all the battles and historic marches and campaigns of the memorable Fifteenth army corps. His brother, John W. Rumsey, was also a member of the famous Battery A, First Illinois Light Artillery, and was wounded at Resaca while commanding it.
In the fall of 1864, upon the return of the brother mentioned, from the front, the two formed a partnership in Chicago under the firm name of I. P. & J. W. Rumsey, first engaging in the flour and
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grain brokerage business, and two years afterward in receiving and shipping. Later the firm names were changed to Rumsey, Williams & Co. and I. P. Rumsey & Co., the latter title being retained until 1873, when William P. Walker joined the co-partnership, the house thus becoming Rumsey & Walker. This was followed by Rumsey & Buell, in 1882, and in 1889 Mr. Rumsey retired from the board with the intention of engaging in the manufacturing business, but in 1892 resumed his position in the old and familiar field by becoming the head of Rumsey, Lightner & Co. This name continued unchanged until 1902, although Mr. Lightner had been dead for six years, but in May of that year Mr. Rumsey purchased the interests of two of his partners, retained his connection with F. M. Bunch, added his son, Henry Axtell Rumsey, to the firm, and reorganized the business under the name of Rumsey & Co., as at present. Mr. Rumsey has -filled positions in the committees of the board, and twice was elected a director; was also one of the originators and until 1901 a large stockholder and vice president of the Cleveland Grain Company, and is still the owner of a number of elevators in Illinois.
Thus progressive and prominent in his business ventures, Mr. Rumsey has also made a name for himself as a citizen who considers it his duty to do his utmost to further the moral and civic progress of the city which he has chosen as his home. He has been especially earnest along the line of liquor reform, and in his insistence that high license is a powerful remedial agent for the best. Since its organiza- tion in 1877 he has been closely identified with the Citizens' League for the suppression of the sale of liquor to minors and drunkards, and has served as its president since 1883. To the ceaseless labors and vigilance of Captain Rumsey, more than any other man, is due the routing of the gamblers in Cook county during 1901, and their subsequent expulsion from Lake county. He is still first vice presi- dent of the Citizens' Association of the latter county. His latest achievement was the securing of the passage of a bill forbidding the establishment of liquor saloons within one and one-eighth miles of army posts or naval training stations, which was passed by the Illinois legislature of 1906-7.
Mr. Rumsey was active in the work of securing the site of the World's Fair for Chicago; has served as a member of the Shiloh Battlefield National Park Commission. and has long been prominent
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in the progress of the Presbyterian church. For nine years he was a member of the managing board of the Presbyterian Hospital, Chi- cago; was a trustee of the Presbyterian League, and served as chair- man of the committee that raised funds to build the Grace and Sixth Presbyterian churches, in which he was for many years an elder. Fraternally and socially he is identified with the George H. Thomas Post No. 5, G. A. R., the Loyal Legion Commandery of Illinois, and the Union League Club.
In 1867 Captain Rumsey married Miss Mary M. Axtell, of Batavia, New York, and their children are as follows: Juliet Lay (wife of Rev. Grant Stroh, Muskogee, Oklahoma), Minnie May, Henry Axtell, Wallace Donelson and Lucy Ransom (Mrs. William A. Holt, Oconto, Wisconsin). For the past twenty years the pleasant family residence has been in Lake Forest.
Wallace Donelson Rumsey, treasurer of the Belden Manufactur- ing Company, manufacturers of various wires and cordage used in WALLACE D. telephone and electrical devices, is a son of the veteran commission merchant, Israel P. Rumsey.
RUMSEY.
He was born in Chicago, on the 16th of February, 1880, and received his education at Lake Forest Academy and the university itself, as well as at Williams College, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1903. After leaving college, he returned to Chicago, and, joining the Belden Manufacturing Company, in the organization of which his father was a prominent factor, it being organized in 1902, he was elected treasurer of the concern, a posi- tion which he still holds.
On June 6, 1907, Mr. Rumsey married Miss Edna Lake, of Menasha, Wisconsin, daughter of Franklin D. Lake, treasurer of the Menasha Woodenware Company, and prominent in the business, social and church affairs of that beautiful little city. Mr. Rumsey himself is widely known in similar circles in Chicago, being a member of the University Club and Loyal Legion, of Chicago; of the Winter Club, Lake Forest, and the Chi Psi fraternity, connected with Lake Forest University. They are members of the Fourth Presbyterian church. They have a son, born May 5, 1908, and named David Lake.
The Belden Manufacturing Company, with which Mr. Rumsey is identified in a business way, has its plant at No. 194 Michigan street, and is one of the growing industries of the city, with the fol-
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lowing officers: Joseph C. Belden, president; Newell B. Parsons, vice president ; Wallace D. Rumsey, treasurer, and Harold E. Wil- kins, secretary. The original capital of the concern in 1902 was $50,000, these figures having since been increased to $200,000. In the unusual growth of the business indicated by this increase the treasurer of the company has proved an influential factor.
Joseph Rosenbaum is one of the veteran and leading commission merchants of Chicago, dealing both in live stock and grain, and is also an old and honored soldier of the Civil war,
JOSEPH ROSENBAUM. having been elected department commander of the state by the encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic which met at Quincy, Illinois, in May, 1908. Mr. Rosen- baum is a Bavarian, his birth at Munich, in the famous military kingdom of Germany, occurring on the Ist of April, 1838. The cir- cumstances attending his coming to the United States, as a bright and ambitious boy of twelve, had a direct and a strong bearing upon a prominent phase of his after life. His father's activity was so evi- dent in the revolutionary movement of 1848 that the authorities, dominated by Prussia, fixed his penalty at death in case he did not leave the country within two days. Prussia had obtained constitu- tional government, and the revolution was largely an effort of the progressive element of young men to obtain the same rights for the other kingdoms and principalities, which afterward became United Germany under a constitutional monarch. The revolution was tem- porarily crushed, but resulted in driving from the country many young Germans of unusual ability. A majority of them finally set- tled in the west, among whom were the late gifted statesman and man of letters, Carl Schurz, and Governor Salomon, of Wisconsin, a great figure in the civic and military annals of that state. Mr. Rosenbaum's father had truly a noble company when he fled his Fatherland in 1848, and founded a new home in that western fron- tier town of Dubuque, Iowa. In 1850, after he had fairly estab- lished a means of livelihood in that place, his daughter and his two sons, Morris and Joseph, joined him in the far west of the United States. The events of this troublous period in the family life made a deep impression on the latter, especially the military atmosphere which was more than normally prominent in Bavaria during the revo- lutionary period.
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