USA > South Carolina > History of South Carolina > Part 23
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Mr. Wannamaker was born in those dark and troublons days when sadness and sorrow and poverty without hope enshrouded the land. A deep serious- ness was therefore his from birth, which now, re- fined into great moral earnestness, is a striking char- acteristic of the man. But he readily assumes the role of fun-maker, and no man enjoys innocent fun more than he. But the influences that came into his life at this time from what he saw and felt and endured were abiding and remain a determining force in his later life, his character, and his amhi- tions. For in spite of the poverty and privation and sadly changed conditions in the home, he found in his father and mother no bitterness, no despair of defeat. Here was too much work to be done and loo great a chance to labor for the common good. In Mr. Wannamaker's noblest ideals, his passionate sympathy with the suffering and oppressed, his con- stant insistence that every one must have a chance, those who know him best believe they see the flowering of those early, seemingly unhappy sur- roundings.
Soon after the war, the boy's father, who had heen reared in comfortable wealth, educated at the best southern universities, and after marriage had come into possession of his handsome estate from which he could live in comfortable ease. found himself suddenly, through no fault of his, forced to earn a living for his growing family in the sweat of his hrow. Without complaint he gave up his property to settle his debt of honor and became a school teacher in a nearby county. But his own people needed him, and he returned to aid them-mainstay and leader in their distressed state. He toiled by day as a carpenter, served as magistrate (trial jus- tice) 'when that office, properly manned, became a
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tower of refuge for the oppressed whites of the state, and worked constantly for the great cause of regaining for his people the control of their govern- ment. At nights he read law by the light of stump lightwood gathered from fields in icy weather by his little son John Skottowe and his daughter Mary. What wonder that the boy manifested towards his parents all during their lives the greatest love and reverence and that he still cherishes for their memory an abiding devotion. He felt proud to serve his heroic father, whose life to him was an inspira- tion, and whose example of unselfish service is still to him a model. He saw him a returned soldier suf- fering for others, denying himself without complaint, . and at nights pondering books. And the gentle mother was ever his cheerful co-worker.
Meanwhile the boy became the confidant of his devoted mother and listencd eagerly to her story of the deeds of southern heroes and of the sufferings of his people. She read to him the Bible and other good books; and through her he early dedicated himself to a life of unselfish service in the causes of his fellow man. His father was working in order that political oppression and injustice might cease ; he, too, would work for something fine. He only dimly knew what liberty and justice were, but he vowed he would learn. And he did not wait for great chances. To this day his younger brothers recall how in those lean years, while the father was struggling to his later supremacy in the law, and when Santa Claus did not have much for them, this older brother managed from sales of vegetables from his garden, or of pigs he had raised, to save up money enough to play a generous Santa Claus. But he never let them know that the real Santa Claus had not done it all. This generosity, self- concealing and unostentatious always, has been a characteristic of Mr. Wannamaker all his days. Whether it be to brother and sister, to son and daughter, niece and nephew, friend and relative, acquaintance in business trouble, he is lavish in his generosity, and neither expects nor wants return. He gets his great joy in giving every day of the year, and most of all does he find happiness in giv- ing his very life for others.
And so this son of honorable parents, who lived in the fear of God and brought up their children to believe that work is ennobling and character the most precious possession of man, that only such qualities as cowardice and selfishness are base and contemptible, reached his youth conscious and proud of his moral inheritance. He cherished his ambi- tions and his hopes; he had his visions and his dreams. He had not been a wide reader, but he had read history and biography and he admired those men who during their lives had unselfishly served their fellows and who had actually accom- plished something, and these he made his heroes to be followed. His home environment of the early years had matured him before his time; he still had clear memories of those specter days of Recon- struction. He had learned to work earnestly and with all his power, and with the future ever in view. Characteristic of him throughout his life is this habit of putting his whole soul into whatever he undertakes. He refuses to admit defeat so long as there remains a glimmer of a chance to snatch stic-
cess out of its very teeth. Friends remember, for example, his great baseball pitching and his leader- ship as the captain of the team that followed him in confidence. Characteristic is the fact that he took up the burden of pitching at a crisis in a big game when the regular pitcher was "going bad." But Mr. Wannamaker was the "first" pitcher thereafter. The same spirit of defiance of obstacles and diffi- culties is manifested in his refusal to be overcome by sickness and suffering. Friends recall that they have seen him make his porters bear him in a chair to his railroad office while he choked down groans from the killing pain of inflammatory rheumatism in order that he might do his soul-grinding duties in the service of the public and in the fulfillment of his obligations to his employers. Duty he has always believed to be sacred, and he has always acted on this principle.
At fifteen years of age the youth faced a crisis. Few men would have enjoyed more than he the chances of a college education, and few would have used the opportunity more faithfully. For Mr. Wannamaker comes of intellectual stock, possesses himself great mentality and a genuine love of learn- ing. And he had his ambitions. But the boy made at fifteen the great renunciation, and made it in his characteristic way-out of consideration for others. He had two younger brothers, four and six years, re- spectively, behind him. The father was growing gray; the soul-racking years that he had passed through in war and Reconstruction were telling on him. One cannot always keep up one's youthful cheer. The great cause had been won, but the sec- tion was still poor, and prospects were not bright. Cotton, the only source of prosperity, was selling for almost nothing, and the country seemed doomed to long-continued depression. Slavery was gone, but its dire effects in many forms remained to curse and discourage the people. Public schools were wretched. And so Mr. Wannamaker quietly made up his mind; he would go to work, and perhaps some day he might after all attend college, or, better still, help his younger brothers to do so.
And out into the world he went. And what has he done? To those who know the inner life of this man and the things he has accomplished his life story is an inspiration. From his unfinished gram- mar school course he passed into a railroad office and learned telegraphy and agency work. His first position was an unimportant one, but he looked up- on it as merely the first rung of a ladder he meant to climb. At this time in his loneliness he formed the habit of reading much at nights, which he has kept up all his busy life. Reading at night became finally his sole recreation. To it he attributes his remarkable reserve power. Though his body may be worn out, his mind remains alert.
Forced after a few years, through the untimely death of his father, to become head of the family before reaching manhood, he willingly took up the burden, was promoted to the responsible, but la- borions, position of railway agent at St. Matthews, his home town, and did his work so well that he established the reputation of being the most efficient and popular agent this busy town has ever had. And no fatherless children ever had a kinder, more sympathetic protector or a more willing provider
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for their futures than did his younger brothers and sister.
Fortunately for Mr. Wannamaker, heads of rail- 'roads in those days were dull-eyed, and they saw in him nothing more than a capable, hard-working servant. His intelligent fellow townsmen, however, realized the power, the energy, and, above all, the character of their fellow citizen; and when they suddenly offered him the cashiership of their little decrepit bank, that had been a victim of misfor- tune, he had insight enough to see his chance and take it. This was the turning point in his life. He left the railroad service for all time; but to this day he retains a keen interest in the men who are doing the work that he did for so many years. His sympathy for toilers everywhere is genuine and great, for it springs from both his nature and his experience.
The bank responded to his master touch as does the parched blade of grass to rain, and in a short time, in spite of its serious handicap, it developed into a thriving institution. Long ago Mr. Wanna- maker was made president of the bank, and he has made it serve the needs of his people in a unique way, tide them through dark and perilous days, and it stands today, vastly increased in capital and resources, a financial stronghold and a monument to his ability and integrity. As a banker, Mr. Wanna- maker is progressive, but sane and safe, and has won a state and national reputation. He has just closed a successful term as president of the South Caro- lina State Bankers' Association ; he numbers among his friends and admirers bankers all over the country and has often been called into consultation by fel- low bankers and government officials in matters of grave importance.
But Mr. Wannamaker was too public-spirited to confine his interests to mere business. The affairs of the little town needed attention. Moral and health conditions were not the best. Water was had, lighting was poor, sanitation was neglected. He headed a reform ticket and was elected mayor. With courage and energy he long administered the affairs of the town with the same conscientious fidelity and business sagacity and broadmindedness that he displayed in his bank. Municipal lighting and water plants, drained swamps, improved streets, hundreds of shade trees were some of the benefits to the town of his administration. There was bet- ter health and a far better moral atmosphere, for his ideal was to make the place a clean, healthy, and happy home for good people.
Akin to this conspicuons public service is Mr. Wannamaker's part in securing and later setting up Calhoun County, of which St. Matthews is the seat. An ardent believer in small counties and ir: the prin- ciple of local self-government, he took up and or- ganized the fight to gain this county after it had repeatedly failed. It was in this bitterly fought struggle that there was clearly revealed both to him and to others his remarkable ability to lead a canse. to overcome all obstacles, and to hold out to the bitter end for what he believes right. If he is ever defeated, it will be through wearing himself out whipping the forces that oppose him. True to his campaign promises, as chairman of the first hoard of county commissioners he helped to start the
county off with a good court house and jail built and furnished by the Town of St. Matthews with- out cost to the county. He soon came into great demand as a speaker in other new-county fights.
While engaged in such public work he came to see the great possibilities of his section and de- termined to take advantage of his opportunities. He now found and accepted the opportunity to become a great merchant. With Mr. T. A. Amaker, an able business man and a gentleman of established char- acter, he acquired ownership of the merchant firm of Banks & Wimberly, that had to change hands through the death of its active head. The firm is now known as the Banks and Wimberly Company. With characteristic energy and far-sightedness, Mr. Wannamaker threw himself into his new venture, with the result that this firm has become one of the largest retail houses in the state; its business has been enormous. Before the World war, for instance, it imported potash annually on a contract with a great German firm and became one of the greatest distributors of fertilizer in the South. In his mer- cantile business Mr. Wannamaker's established repu- tation for integrity and the good-will of his fellow men, won and held by unselfishness and kindness, have naturally stood him in good stead.
After he had established well this firm, Mr. Wan- namaker realized that there was a great opportunity for farming on a big scale in a thoroughly business- like way. He had always held the vocation of fari- ing in affectionate esteem. He loves the fields, the woods, the birds and flowers. He delights to smell the upturned soil, to behold the seed given to the earth and watch for the little plant to come peeping up from the darkness into light. In pious devotion to the memory of his parents, he managed long ago, through sacrifice, to get possession of one of their old home places, which they had been forced to part with through misfortune, and he has devoted much time and money to bring it back into its old-time beauty. And so the transition to farming was easy. Business man that he was, he organized a corpora- tion, acquired land, and managed the farm as a business undertaking. Succeeding in this venture, he passed over to farming on his personal account. Today he is one of the largest planters of cotton in his state. Only careful organization and business efficiency make it possible for him to manage his many large farms. He has developed fine seed, has experimented with fertilizers on various kinds of soil, and has kept ahreast of the best thought and most progressive ideas on farming.
While carrying on all this work, Mr. Wanna- maker has never slackened in energy nor lost hold of the details of his many undertakings through over- work. In spite of severe illness at times, which he overcomes more by will power than medical treat- ment, he has been able to look personally after all of his business and has found time in addition for various sorts of benevolent and public welfare work. He is a great Sunday school worker, a beloved Sun- day school teacher; he enters sympathetically and boyishly into the games of his pupils when he takes them at his own expense on camping outings and fishing expeditions. He is a faithful attendant at the services of his church. in which he is an elder. is a trustee of a college, has worked zealously and
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successfully for wholesale banking reforms. was an untiring worker in recent war causes, in which he made an enviable record as an organizer. His hun- dreds of negro tenants and laborers know that they may come to him at any time for help when in trouble, and he has never turned his back on white or colored man who worthily sought his help. In his giving he is always generous, but he does not let his right hand know what his left hand gives.
Fortunately for Mr. Wannamaker he married, while still struggling in the early years of his career. Lillian Bruce Salley, a noble woman willing to share his cherished ambitions and peculiarly fitted to aid him greatly to realize them. To her constant and willing co-operation he attributes much of what he has been able to do, and to her faithful, wise guard- ing of his often over-taxed physical powers he eer- tainly owes his ability to "carrry on"-even his very life. A devoted mother of their four promising chil- dren, Francis, Jennie, Ella and Frances, she shares with him the joyous task of rearing them aright, and delights in seeing provided for them the educa- tion that will fit them to play well a roble part in this world of work and thought and service. His one son, Francis Marion, who was one of the young- est commissioned officers in the American army, has recently returned to join his father in business after being graduated from one of the best known south- orn colleges of liberal arts and a great northern college of business.
Thus, at the close of hostilities, Mr. Wannamaker, to all appearances, stood on the eve of great pros- perity. Clearly he was so sitnated as easily to reach life's summit, which he had been climbing laboriously for years with others in his arms; and he was surely entitled, after a peaceful enjoyment of honorably earned triumphs and the love and esteem of all who knew him, to make a restful descent to his stepping- off point. He had worked and labored enough for the public and for others connected with him to carn now the golden fruit at the hands of the dis- penser of this world's rewards. A shining future lay clear before him, and the purple flag of success beckoned him on to the goal of great wealth only a little way ahead. Beyond a doubt, he saw clearly his opportunity and felt himself more than able to take full advantage of it; he needed only to reach his hand out in order to get masses of gold. Events have shown that he saw and realized more clearly than thousands of others the chances for business that would follow the war. His predictions as to the cotton situation, which he shouted from the house- top that his fellows might hear and heed, have been confirmed in a startling, indeed almost uncanny, way. When cotton was lowest his confidence in its ulti- mate rise to forty cents was strongest. He could have made millions; many, relying on his clear com- prehension of the situation, have reaned golden harvests, while others openly bemourn their failure to appreciate this man's grasp of the situation.
Furthermore, his own mercantile business, that had through; his skill and good business sense weathered the storms of 1914 and later, was ready to leap ahead through the power of his great dynamo of energy and could easily have earned him a hand- some fortune on its cotton branch alone. By dint of his leadership and the confidence he enjoyed in the
minds of all people, his firm occupied a strategic position and its success was assured. The same thing may be said of his other personal business enter- prises as well as his great farming interests.
Even those who knew Mr. Wannamaker best at that time expected to see him relieve himself of the many extra duties he had felt himself hound through patriotic and philanthropie motives to as- sume during the times of great stress and to plunge with the enthusiasm and energy of his earlier days into the great struggle of commerce and business which he enjoys, as does every great fighter. But again, as so often in his life, Mr. Wannamaker acted in his characteristically unselfish way. To the surprise of those who underestimated the great golden vein in his character, he has seemed to show an utter contempt for personal aggrandizement and his personal welfare; he stepped aside from the course of the full current of prosperity that was about to lift him on its erest. Instead, with utter abandonment of personal interests, he suddenly threw himself with all the power of his remarkable personality into the patriotic effort to bring to this section the great blessings of economic prosperity and liberty, and to effect the removal of longstanding and shameful conditions. For his is not a nature that could possibly find contentment in personal wealth and luxury, even honorably attained, in the mere admiration of his fellows through the recognition of his business ability and far-sightedness. He sees ever in the South the barefoot child, the bent old man, the sad-faced woman toiling in the cotton fields. He feels with poorly clad and poorly housed white and black people the chilling hlasts of winter, against which they have no protection, and he shares with them the stinging sense of injustice and deprivation in the lack of joys and deserved comforts. He is tortured through a sense of shame over the poor schools of our rural communities, and his great heart grieves over the death of little children who are born to wither. away in unsanitary homes or to die from drinking poison water. Against this back- ground he sees a glorious vision, that of the rebuilt rural South, where people shall have joy and com- fort, and where in happiness they shall work and add to the happiness and comfort of mankind.
For Mr. Wannamaker is in a very real sense a philosopher. True, he has devoted much of his spare time to reading and study and has acquired a wide knowledge of technical business, economics, and history. But his impelling impulses have always come to him from his reflections on his own clear observations of life and human nature. He has hecome, then, a thinking philanthropist, a practical idealist, and he has long been, above all, a Christian in a very real sense. Unlike a Pilate who cherishes only an intellectual interest in truth and can ask of the Master what it is without waiting for an an- swer, Mr. Wannamaker believes in Christian truth made real as the Master has showed it to be in the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this living of the truth Mr. Wannamaker has always found his greatest source of contentment.
It was, then, this noble ambition and this great vision, with a sustaining belief that it can be realized. which prompted Mr. Wannamaker to assume the leadership in his state of the so-called cotton move-
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ment. And as he worked in this effort he kept secing greater and greater possibilities in case it could be made successful. When others faltered or grew cold he kindled in them anew a blaze of en- thusiasm from his own ever-burning fire, for with him the movement assumed the nature of a great cause, and he became inspired with, and has been sustained by, a sacred zeal in its defense and promo- tion. It is not merely a price for cotton that he thinks of; it is people and people's happiness or wretchedness that fill his thoughts.
His phenomenal success in his own state and his influence that radiated to all sections of the cotton- growing South made possible the movement to es- tablish the American Cotton Association, and his election to the head of the association was natural. No cause has ever had a more devoted, unselfish, untiring leader, and few have had a wiser or a more successful one, if obstacles to be overcome are taken into consideration. In his work as president of the association, as protagonist of its aims and objects, and as interpreter of its nature, Mr. Wannamaker has not only renounced sure opportunities for great wealth, but he has actually spent without reckoning large sums of money earned by him through labo- rious years of toil, and far more than he ought to expend or can afford to spend. At great financial sacrifice through neglect of his personal business that needed his attention at a critical moment, he has devoted almost all his time and attention to the work of the association since its organization without pay, has traveled thousands of miles in its interest at his own expense, and has actually personally fur- nished to a great extent the large sums needed to finance the central organization. Good. able men, to be sure, are working with him in beautiful har- mony of purpose and common devotion to the cause, but the sinews of war for headquarters have so far come largely out of his pockets, and they are feel- ing the drain; for Mr. Wannamaker is not a wealthy man. Only those intimately acquainted with the work know the enormous amount to be done daily in order to carry out the plans of the association and the resulting heavy expenses. Surely others will come to his aid as soon as they understand. Furthermore, he has in this work of love worn out his physical powers, and he often continues to go when his physician urges him to spare his overworked body. Without the least thought of using his in- fluence for any sort of personal gain, either financial or political, he refuses to allow his friends to give him positions of honor, or to listen to their urgings to accept office of any kind. And just as he per- sonally stays clear of politics, so he vows the robes of this association shall never be stained or its heart diseased by the blighting bane of politics.
What wonder that Mr. Wannamaker has stirred the South as have few business men, has quickly achieved a national reputation as leader of what was looked upon as a forlorn hope. Under him this movement has developed into an association of great power, and Mr. Wannamaker has the good fortune to see already dawning the fulfillment of his great vision. In spite of his personal sacrifices, in spite of all the hardships which he has endured in behalf of the "cause," in his well-founded confidence in
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