USA > New York > New York State's prominent and progressive men : an encyclopaedia of contemporaneous biography, Volume II > Part 6
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In addition to his office and court practice, Mr. Collin has found time to edit the ninth edition of the "Revised Statutes of the State of New York," which was published in 1896.
In politics Mr. Collin is a Democrat, and his influence in party councils has been considerable, though he has never been an office-seeker, and has held no public offices save those named. His legal practice has been of a high order, marked with gratifying success.
ROLAND RAY CONKLIN
"THE family of Conklin, or Conkling, as it is also spelled, is of Scotch origin, and at an early date was settled in this country in the eastern part of Long Island. Among its notable members in recent years was Roscoe Conkling, United States Senator from New York. In the last generation Joseph Okell Conklin was a prosperous manufacturer and wholesale dealer in furniture, at Dayton, Ohio. His wife, Julia Louise Conklin, was a native of Norwich, England, and was the daughter of a professor of literature and a member of a family of artists and engravers. She came to this country at the age of sixteen.
Of this parentage Roland Ray Conklin was born at Urbana, Illinois, on February 1, 1858. He was educated at school in the neighboring town of Champaign, and at the University of Illi- nois, being graduated from the latter institution in 1880. Ten years later the same university conferred upon him the degree of Master of Literature.
Mr. Conklin was thrown upon his own resources, not merely for continuing his education, but for supporting his very life, at the early age of fourteen. He assumed the responsibility with indomitable courage. By hard work he earned sufficient money, as an employee in a queen's-ware firm and as bookkeeper in a hardware house, to pay his way through two years of his college course. Then his funds were exhausted, and he was compelled to stay out of college for a year, to earn more money. This he did to such purpose that he was enabled, a year later, to reënter college and complete his course, entirely upon his own resources, without seeking financial assistance from any one.
On the day of his graduation this ambitious scholar had just one dollar and twenty cents left in his pocket. But he had
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no debts. Thereupon he borrowed fifty dollars from a friend, and went to Winfield, Kansas, where his brother was already successfully established as the publisher of a newspaper. He did not go there as a visitor or as an idler. His first thought was to get to work, and earn money to repay the loan and to sup- port himself. The very day after his arrival at Winfield, accord- ingly, he entered the real-estate and loan business, with a firm that afterward became well known all through the southern part of Kansas as Jarvis, Conklin & Co. At this time Kansas was being settled with great rapidity, and the business of the firm grew so rapidly that in a year it moved to Kansas City, Mis- souri, and was incorporated as the Jarvis-Conklin Mortgage Trust Company, with a capital of one million dollars. It con- tinued its career for twelve years, its headquarters being removed in 1893 to New York, and it was generally recognized as one of the most conservative and at the same time enterprising and successful companies engaged at that time in making loans on farm lands in the West.
The agricultural and financial depression of 1893, however, caused such a shrinkage of values, and such inability of farmers to pay their obligations, that a vast number of mortgages became unproductive and, for the time being, all but worthless. As a result, company after company that had been dealing in such securities was forced into bankruptcy or into some form of liqui- dation. The Jarvis-Conklin Company held its ground with stub- born resolution, surviving most of its rivals. But in the end, it, too, found the pressure too great to bear. It went into liquida- tion. Mr. Conklin and Mr. Jarvis were appointed its receivers, and they succeeded in effecting a reorganization in which the charter of the North American Trust Company was utilized. The mortgage business was closed up, and a general trust and banking business was begun.
The reorganized company soon commanded wide confidence, and entered upon a prosperous career. When the Spanish war brought about changed conditions in Cuba, and changed rela- tions of the United States toward that island, it was, in 1898, appointed fiscal agent of the United States government in Cuba. In that capacity it was the first United States company of the kind to establish offices and begin business in Cuba after the war.
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Upon the reorganization of the company in 1896, Mr. Conklin was chosen its vice-president, and through his business per- spicacity and energy he contributed largely to its success. He remained in intimate connection with it and held the office named in it until June, 1899. At that time its success was established beyond doubt or question, and Mr. Conklin, feeling the need of freedom from the confining duties of his official position, resigned his office. He did not, however, by any means retire from business. On the contrary, he devoted himself all the more earnestly to other important enterprises, including a num- ber of financial operations connected with the rehabilitation and development of the resources of the island of Cuba. To these he brought his old-time energy, and in them he has attained a marked measure of success.
Mr. Conklin is now a director of the North American Trust Company, the Ogden Street Railway Company, the Bear River Irrigation Company, the Waukesha Water Company, and the Augusta Railway and Electric Company, of which last-named he is also vice-president. He has taken no public part in political matters, contenting himself with the duties and privileges of an intelligent private citizen. He has traveled much throughout the world, having made many visits to Europe, and is exception- ally well informed concerning all that is of general interest to mankind. He has a library of three thousand well-selected and valuable books, and has cultivated his literary tastes and abili- ties to a high degree.
Mr. Conklin is a member of numerous social organizations, including the Colonial Club and Lawyers' Club of New York, the Chicago Club of Chicago, and the Baltimore Country Club of Baltimore.
He was married in Paris, France, in the spring of 1898, to Miss Mary Macfadden. They have one child, Julia Cecilia Conklin.
Willian If . Cook
WILLIAM WILSON COOK
AN N interesting study is to be found in the fluctuations and vibrations of population in the United States, from East to West and from West back to East again.
Thus in 1832 John P. Cook removed from Cayuga County, New York, to what was then the remote West, and settled at Hillsdale, Michigan, his wife being from the same county in New York State. He was a banker and merchant, and became prom- inent in the history of the State of Michigan. As a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1850, the convention that framed the present Constitution of Michigan, he was chairman of the Committee on Corporations. To him, on April 16, 1858, at Hillsdale, was born the subject of this sketch, William Wilson Cook. The boy was prepared for college at local schools, and then sent to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. There he pursued his studies with a special view to becoming a lawyer, and was graduated from the classical course in 1880 and from the law department in 1882.
Thus equipped, Mr. Cook returned to the home of his fore- fathers. Immediately after graduation he located in New York city, and with that city he has ever since been identified. He at once entered upon the studies and practice of his profession. The first years of his life in New York were devoted almost ex- clusively to mastering the law of corporations, it having been his definite purpose from the beginning to study and practise that branch of the law. In time he acquired a reputation as an au- thority on corporation law, and his counsel was sought in com- plicated and difficult matters. He was particularly engaged in connection with the reorganization of street-railway systems in their expansion and transformation into electric railways. He
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became proficient in corporation mortgage deeds of trust and in the issue of stocks and bonds, and became known as a safe ad- viser in the conservative financing of large and growing proper- ties. As general counsel for the Commercial Cable Company and the Postal Telegraph Company, and as personal counsel for John W. Mackay, he devised and carried out the plan by which the former company absorbed the latter company in 1897, and issued its twenty-million-dollar mortgage, to become due in five hundred years, and covering cable and telegraph lines extending from California to Europe. These American mortgage bonds, exchangeable into English debenture stock, to be sold in Europe only, and payable, principal and interest, in London in English sterling, while still secured by an American mortgage, occupy a unique position among corporate securities. It was under Mr. Cook's advice that the Haiti Cable Company, in 1896, laid its submarine cable from New York city to Haiti, a distance of fif- teen hundred miles, at an expense of one million five hundred thou- sand dollars, in the face of an injunction suit instituted by the United States government at the instance of the Attorney-Gen- eral. This injunction suit was for the purpose of preventing the laying and the operation of the cable, the government claiming that a permit from it was first necessary, and at the same time refusing to grant the permit. The company proceeded to lay the cable, however, and subsequently the government withdrew its suit. This cable proved to be of much importance to the government during the war with Spain.
Mr. Cook is well known as the author of " Cook on Corpora- tions," a standard law treatise in three volumes of over three thousand pages. It was first issued in 1887, and has now run through four large editions, the early editions being known as "Cook on Stock and Stock-holders." Mr. Cook has never held nor sought political office. He believes that there is no perma- nent occupation higher than that of a trusted counselor.
FREDERICK GLEASON CORNING
MONG the practically new industries and professions which modern civilization has summoned into being is the call- ing of the mining engineer. In olden times the miner was a mere empirical prospector, searching for precious metals in cur- sory fashion and extracting them from the gravel or the ore by primitive methods. To-day he is, or he gets the assistance of, a trained scientist, at once a chemist, an assayer, a metallurgist, a geologist, and a civil engineer; and all the resources of sci- ence are brought to bear upon the various phases of the work. There is no more strictly scientific business in the world to-day than mining, and especially the mining of the precious metals.
Conspicuous among the successful mining engineers of this city is Frederick Gleason Corning, the scion of a somewhat dis- tinguished New England stock. He was born in Brooklyn on March 27, 1857, and received his early education in Poughkeep- sie, on the Hudson. Then he went abroad with his family to pursue his studies further, and became a student in the famous Polytechnic School at Stuttgart, Germany. There he devoted himself to the practical sciences and especially to engineering. After leaving Stuttgart he went to Saxony and entered the Royal School of Mines at Freiberg, where he made the most careful study of metallurgy and mining engineering. In 1879 he was graduated there with high honors, and then he came home to begin the practice of his profession.
He established himself at Leadville, Colorado, then the busiest mining town on the continent. He there gained both expe- rience and pecuniary recompense for his labors, and assured himself that he had made no mistake in the choice of his pro- fession. But it was not in his plan to settle down there for
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long. In a year or two he was off visiting professionally various other mining camps in Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, California, and Arizona, always with satisfaction to those whose interests he represented. Nor were his activities confined to this country. He presently went to various South American states, and then to Central America and Mexico, to examine and report, as an expert, upon mines in the interests of New York and foreign capitalists.
His first trip to Peru and Bolivia was made in 1884, to the old mines of Tipuani, on the eastern slope of the Andes, which had been worked by the Spanish Conquistadors centuries ago, and by the Incas for ages before that. He also explored the famous Hualgayoc district in Peru, first scientifically described by Alex- ander von Humboldt. His journeys extended into Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. To the last-named country he made sev- eral trips for the purpose of examining the Panama Canal, the results of his observations being afterward published in this country and attracting much expert and popular attention. Later he spent some months in exploring the mining region on the Principulca River in Nicaragua, being the first American engineer to do so. In recent years his expert practice has led him into the gold-fields of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, and Ontario.
Besides his professional practice, Mr. Corning is now president of four important mining corporations (among the stock-holders of which are some of the best financiers of the United States), to wit: the San Cristobal Gold-Mines Company of Zacatecas, Mexico ; the Guanajuato Consolidated Mining and Milling Com- pany; the Exploration Syndicate ; and the Zacatecas (Mexico) Gold-Mines Company, which owns an area of nearly one square mile. He is a member of the Society of American Engineers, and has been a frequent contributor to the best mining and scientific journals, a number of his essays having been reprinted in book form under the title of "Papers from the Notes of an Engineer." He has also made a number of inventions in cable and electric traction and mining machinery, upon which he has secured patents.
Edward I Cragin
EDWARD FRANKLIN CRAGIN
E' IDWARD FRANKLIN CRAGIN, for more than twenty- five years a resident of Chicago, is a native of Providence, Rhode Island. His father, Benjamin Cragin, Jr., was a descen- dant of the Cragin family, for two hundred years resident in Massachusetts. Mr. Cragin was educated at the Providence High School, finishing his collegiate course with the assistance of pri- vate teachers in Chicago.
While New York was preparing for 1887's centennial celebra- tion of the inauguration of Washington, Mr. Cragin conceived the idea that Chicago and other centers should depart from the program of the Eastern metropolis. Under the organization which he perfected, meetings were held simultaneously in several thou- sand cities and towns. For originating and carrying out this plan Mr. Cragin received an elaborate gold-medal from the lead- ing citizens of Chicago. The history of these celebrations in Chicago and the other cities was perpetuated in a handsome vol- ume published by voluntary subscription-indeed, all the money for those celebrations was procured by Mr. Cragin in that way.
Soon after, Mr. Cragin was called upon to take charge of the movement to obtain the World's Fair for Chicago. He organ- ized State associations in Chicago from over thirty States, and saw to it that Senators and Congressmen were visited at their homes in the interest of Chicago. As a result, when Congress assembled, eighty per cent. of the Senators and Representatives were pledged to vote for Chicago or some point west of the Alleghanies.
So signal was Mr. Cragin's success in the above movement that he was asked to take up the Nicaragua Canal enterprise. He thereupon took to Nicaragua a party of contractors of the
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Chicago Drainage Canal, which, in the amount of rock and earth excavated, practically was of the same size as the con- templated transisthmian waterway. Mr. Cragin paid their expenses from their homes to and through Nicaragua and back. To his gratification, they stated upon their return that they were pleased with the entire situation and would be willing to under- take the construction of the canal. Mr. Cragin made a second trip to Nicaragua a year later, and, with the assistance of Edward Eyre, procured the concession known under their joint names. In the spring of 1899 Mr. Cragin organized the Trust Company of America, placing its capital stock and surplus of five million dollars in more than forty American cities. Mr. Cragin has been identified with the raising of large sums in connection with re- ligious work, having been associated for twenty-five years with the late Dwight L. Moody in Chicago. Mr. Moody was one of his closest friends. Soon after General Horace Porter was elected president of the Grant Monument Association, he accepted the late George M. Pullman's advice to obtain Mr. Cragin's assis- tance in raising the fund needed by the association. Mr. Cragin visited New York and laid out the plans, and the necessary four hundred thousand dollars was raised. For this Mr. Cragin received the official thanks of General Porter and the Grant Monument Association.
Mr. Cragin was one of the originators of the Union League Club of Chicago, and chairman of the committee that organized the Congregational Club of that city. He also projected and formed the Columbian Sunday Association.
Mr. Cragin recently went before the New Jersey Riparian Commission and asked for the space between Liberty and Ellis islands, in New York Bay, on which to establish a group of grain-elevators and what might be called a freight clearing- house. The commission gave him a lease of the submerged territory for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, with the privi- lege of purchase. Mr. Cragin is arranging for facilities for unloading from vessels directly into freight-cars and from the freight-cars directly into the vessels. When his plans are carried out as contemplated, the Empire City will be without a rival as a tide-water terminal.
Slack
SILAS CHAPMAN CROFT
B RITISH and German blood mingle in the veins of the sub- ject of the present sketch. His mother was of Puritan origin. His great-great-grandfather came from North Germany, and settled in New York. His great-grandfather, born in Goshen, New York, did good service in the patriot army of the Revolu- tion. His father, now reaching to fourscore years and ten in age, is still living at Peekskill, New York. In the neighboring county of Putnam, Silas Chapman Croft was born on October 11, 1848. His early years were spent upon the old farm. At the age of twenty years he became a clerk in New York city. In 1874 he became a member of the firm of Croft Brothers, carpet dealers, in this city, and carried on that business with marked success for many years, retiring from it only to devote all his atten- tion to the public service. Accuracy, promptness, and unfailing integrity were the rules of his business life, assuring prosperity and the respect of all with whom he came in contact.
Mr. Croft's interest in politics began even before he was a voter. He was, in his boyhood, both from inheritance and from intelligent conviction, a strong Republican, and to that party he has ever since given unwavering allegiance. His father was an outspoken abolitionist when that name was a word of reproach, and afterward one of the most stalwart Republicans. The boy heard the political issues of the stirring war-times discussed by men of conviction, and grew up with equally earnest convictions. Often urged to change his politics for the sake of business ad- vancement, he unhesitatingly declined. Through years of local party defeat he held his ground, fought bravely and fairly, and thus won leadership in his own party, and the respect of his opponents.
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His first political appointment came to him on December 21, 1895, when Mayor Strong made him a commissioner in the De- partment of Public Charities, and he was elected president of the board. That was a "reform " administration, and there were abuses to correct and improved methods to introduce. For two years Mr. Croft performed his duties with the same devo- tion, integrity, attention to detail, and consequent success that had marked his business career. He made an enviable record for himself, and contributed much to the general favor with which the administration was regarded by the public.
On September 28, 1897, he resigned his place to accept from the President of the United States the appointment of Surveyor of the Port of New York, upon the duties of which office he en- tered on October 1 following. As surveyor he is the head of a staff of nearly one thousand men, whose activities he directs in a manner which commands their respect and loyalty and their earnest cooperation in performing the business of the public. His efforts have been largely toward a reduction of the cost of the office without diminution of its efficiency, and in this he has succeeded to a noteworthy degree. He remains an influential and trusted leader and counselor of his party, and is esteemed by friends and opponents alike as a fine example of the true American citizen.
Mr. Croft is a member of the Republican Club, the Harlem Republican Club, the Harlem Club, the Royal Arcanum, the order of Free Masons, and various other political and social or- ganizations. He is an enthusiastic believer in the present and future greatness of New York as the commercial capital of the nation, and directs earnest efforts toward keeping the city in that proud position.
Et. buikshank
EDWIN ALLEN CRUIKSHANK
E' DWIN ALLEN CRUIKSHANK was born in New York, on August 11, 1843. His grandfather, William Cruikshank, born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1760, and the pioneer of his family in this country, made his home for many years at No. 40 Greenwich Street, New York, then a fine residence region. Mr. James Cruikshank was born in 1804 in New York city, and lived to be nearly ninety-two. He saw many changes in the city as he looked back to the time before railroads and steamboats were invented, and the only means of communication between New York and Brooklyn were the periagua and horse boat, and under his directions the first piers were built on the North River. He made a study of real estate in New York city, as well as its water-front, and was considered one of the best experts in that line to be found. His son, the subject of this sketch, followed in his footsteps, entering business at the early age of thirteen, after receiving the educational advantages offered by the public schools. Between his school life and his final settling down to business, he was a member of the Thirteenth Regiment of the New York National Guard, in Brooklyn, and as such went to the front and served in the field during the Civil War; he was also a lieutenant in the Eighty-ninth Regiment, and also a mem- ber of the old Volunteer Fire Department.
The real-estate office of his father, which he entered, was one of the oldest and best known in the city. It had been started in 1794 by William Cruikshank, at No. 40 Greenwich Street, as an adjunct to his business as a grocer, for the purpose of renting and collecting ground-rents and wharfage for such of his clients as lived out of town. From 1794 to 1831 it was conducted at No. 40 Greenwich Street, under the name of William Cruik-
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shank. From 1831 to 1865 it was conducted at Nos. 40-48 Greenwich Street, under the name of James Cruikshank. From 1865 to 1875 it was at Nos. 55 and 68 Broadway, under the style of William & E. A. Cruikshank, with branch offices also at Broadway and Thirty-third Street, and Broadway and Forty- fourth Street. Since 1875 it has been known as E. A. Cruik- shank & Co., with headquarters successively at Nos. 68, 163, 176, and now 141 Broadway.
This firm conducts a general real-estate business in all branches. To this day it has charge of estates which were in charge of Mr. Cruikshank's grandfather a century ago, and its clients are to be found in all parts of the country and in Europe. Mr. Cruikshank's knowledge of wharf and pier property is second to none; his long experience in real estate has ranked him among the best experts, and he has been engaged in the division of the largest estates in the city. He is also a director of the Real Estate Trust Company, and of the New York Plate Glass Insurance Company.
Mr. Cruikshank has held no political office. He was a member of the committee on the centennial celebration of Washington's inauguration ; he was one of the original founders of the Real Estate Exchange, of which he was treasurer, vice-president, and president, and has been associated with other public movements of a non-political character. He married Susie Hinchman, and has one child, Susie, the wife of E. W. Snyder of Bayonne, New Jersey.
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