USA > Vermont > Vermonters : a book of biographies > Part 7
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DORMAN BRIDGMAN EATON
By Dorman B. E. Kent
D ORMAN B. EATON was born in Hardwick, Vermont, June 27, 1823, the son of Nathaniel and Ruth (Bridg- man) Eaton. While still a young lad, his parents removed to Calais, Vermont, and there he grew to manhood. Between North Montpelier and East Calais, on the old Eaton farm, there stands today many a granite post which the boy, Dor- man Eaton, well nigh a century ago placed there with his own hands. Until he had reached the age of sixteen he at- tended the nearby school, and then his father, who took lit- tle stock in his ability, removed him from school and set him at work on the farm.
From 1839 to 1842, the record of his early years is similar to that of many an ambitious youth of that period. The can- dle burned long at night, as the lad studied diligently. In the fall of 1842, the son finally persuaded his father to allow him to enter a school at Danville. With a meal sack over his back, containing his belongings, he trudged the weary win- ter road, twenty-eight miles, to Danville. In 1843, he en- tered the University of Vermont. His father was a compara- tively well-to-do man, and he gave the son $200, when he left to take up his college duties. The father's complaint, however, con- cerning the cost of college training so displeased the son that although he took the money he never used a penny of it.
In September, 1843, Dorman B. Eaton walked into Burling- ton barefooted. He had slept two nights on the way at the homes of farmers, and his shoes giving out, he had thrown them away at Richmond. He must have been uncouth in his appearance, his manners and in every way, but he became a power in the land, a friend of, and a co-worker with every president from Abraham Lincoln to William Mckinley.
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He was graduated from the University of Vermont in 1848, nearly at the head of his class. Then he entered Harvard Law School, where for two years he pursued intensive studies, rarely sleeping more than five hours a night.
Judge William Kent, the son of the great Chancellor, learned of Eaton's budding ability, and with him he formed an early partnership. Eaton edited the Commentaries of Chancellor Kent, and it was a masterly work. Later, he be- came the administrator of a well-known estate, and in set- tling it he bought at auction property which made him later wealthy for his time.
The life of Dorman B. Eaton, like the life of many a man of his day, reads to some extent, perhaps, like a fairy story, but his life, like that of other highly successful men, was marked by ambition and inherent ability.
Dorman Eaton became the head and one of the founders of the Union League Club in New York City. All his life he fought Tammany Hall in the interest, as he believed, of better citizenship. In civil service reform, he performed his greatest service to his country. He was sent to Great Britain in 1866 and in 1872-73 to study civil service reform in that country, and he did his work well. He visited Europe again from 1875 to 1877 during the administration of President Hayes. He served as United States Civil Service Commissioner under Presidents Arthur and Cleveland.
Dorman B. Eaton was without question the father of civil service reform in this country. The first society for promoting it was held at his instigation at his home at 2 East Twenty- ninth Street in New York City, and there this notable reform may be said to have been born.
Not only was Dorman B. Eaton the father of Civil Service reform, but his services, also, in other reform movements in New York City were distinguished and engaged his attention until his death.
In the 1860's he drafted the health laws of New York City,
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and his influence aided in securing their passage at Albany. They were drastic for their time, but in accordance with the ideas and principles laid down by him in 1866, the public health ordinances of the municipalities of this country have been largely regulated.
He also drew up the regulations and the rules of the first paid fire department in this country.
Six feet, three inches in stature, with hair hanging nearly to his shoulders, he was a striking figure, widely known and generally recognized in New York City. He was ever cour- teous, kindly and genial; he ever lived for his people-his fellow men. All his life he was a reformer.
He passed away December 23, 1899.
GEORGE F. EDMUNDS
By Walter H. Crockett
N the winter of 1845-46, a tall slender Vermont youth, then eighteen years old, was spending the winter in Washington for the benefit of his health, and while in the national capitol continued his study of the law. While the young man was reading STEPHENS' PLEADINGS one day, in the Law Library of the United States Supreme Court, two lawyers seated themselves near him and began the discussion of a point of law, an explanation of which the young student had just read. With an apology he handed the book to one of the disputants, who thanked him courteously. The law student was George Franklin Edmunds, destined to be one of Ver- mont's most famous statesmen and a great constitutional law- yer. The attorney who thanked him was Daniel Webster, the most famous of American orators. Possibly this contact with
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one of America's greatest statesmen and one of the most fa- mous lawyers of the time may have influenced the young man in considering a public career.
George F. Edmunds was born in Richmond, Vermont, February 1, 1828. Ill health compelled him to abandon his desire for a college education and he turned to the study of law .. Soon after he was admitted to the bar, he located in Burling- ton, where he soon built up a large and lucrative practice. He married Susan M. Lyman, a niece of George P. Marsh, scholar and diplomat. From 1855 to 1862, inclusive, he served in the Vermont Legislature, as a member of the House, and its Speaker, and in the Senate, as president pro tempore.
Following the death of United States Senator Solmon Foot, Governor Paul Dillingham appointed Mr. Edmunds to fill the vacancy. At the time of his appointment he was thirty-eight years old and the youngest member but one in the Senate. Less than two weeks after he had taken his seat, he spoke on a habeas corpus bill, and displayed profound legal knowledge in the discussion. Only twenty days after he entered the Senate, he delivered an argument on the admission of Colo- rado as a state, which drew a compliment from Charles Sum- mer. Before he had been in the Senate a year he was given charge of one of the famous measures of the Reconstruction Period, and Rhodes, the historian, quotes extracts from his speeches made at the time. There are few instances in the history of the Senate that show a member rising to prominence as quickly as did Mr. Edmunds. From 1872 until his retire- ment in 1891, he was chairman of the powerful Judiciary Committee with the exception of a period of two years when his political opponents were in control of the Senate.
With Senator Logan, Mr. Edmunds drafted the bill pro- viding for the resumption of specie payments, and with Sena- tor Thurman he framed the bill compelling transcontinental railroads to repay the government bonds lent during the construction period. He was one of the early advocates of
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civil service reform, and was the author of an act forbidding political assessments. His name is associated with laws for- bidding polygamy.
Following the election of 1876, the result of the presiden- tial contest was in doubt, and the dispute became so bitter that civil war was threatened, hardly a decade after the struggle between the North and the South had ended. The House, which was controlled by the Democrats, asked for the appoint- ment of a joint committee, which should provide some legal method for determining the result of the election. Senator Edmunds, as chairman of a special committee, reported a bill providing for an electoral commission, which he supported, although several Republican leaders opposed it. The bill was passed, the commission was appointed, consisting of five senators, five representatives and five justices of the Supreme Court, Mr. Edmunds being the first of the Senate members named. This commission declared that the Republican party had chosen a majority of the presidential electors, and Ruth- erford B. Hayes became President of the United States. Rhodes, the historian, declares that there are few sublimer legislative achievements in our history than the passage of the Electoral Count bill, and says that the chairmen of the two committees, having the measure in charge, Edmunds and Payne are entitled to the greatest credit. The fundamental sections of the anti-trust bill, to which John Sherman's name was given, were written by Senator Edmunds.
President Grant offered him the position of United States Minister to Great Britain, and both Presidents Hayes, and Arthur tendered him a place upon the United States Supreme Court bench, but he declined all these appointments.
In 1880, Vermont presented the name of George F. Ed- munds in the Republican National Convention as a presiden- tial candidate, and he received thirty-four votes on the first ballot. In the preliminary campaign of 1884, he received more active support for the presidential nomination than in 1880.
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One of the first public honors that came to Theodore Roose- velt was his election as an Edmunds delegate-at-large from New York. Roosevelt, then only twenty-five years old, called a meeting of the Edmunds delegates from New England and New York for a conference in New York City. In its account of the Republican National Convention of 1884, the NEW YORK TIMES said that nearly everybody soon learned to know Theodore Roosevelt, "for there is not a state headquarters which he has not visited in his canvass for Edmunds, and scarcely an influential delegate with whom he has not con- versed in a straightforward, manly way." The speech of Governor John D. Long of Massachusetts, nominating Ed- munds and the seconding speech of George William Curtis of New York were among the ablest delivered in the con- vention. On the first ballot Edmunds received ninety-three votes.
At the end of twenty-five years of service in the Senate, in 1891, Mr. Edmunds resigned and for several years practiced law before the United States Supreme Court. One of the most famous cases that he argued was Pollack vs. Farmer's Loan and Trust Company, in which he won a verdict declaring uncon- stitutional the income tax act of 1894.
David S. Barry, Sergeant-at-Arms of the United States Sen- ate, and for many years, one of the best known Washington correspondents, writing of George F. Edmunds in his book, FORTY YEARS IN WASHINGTON said:
It is the popular opinion that no abler man, no man of more concrete knowledge, legal learning and experience in politics, has occupied a seat in the Senate. . . . He was the all around undisputed leader of his party. . . . The days of Edmunds and Thurman (a Democratic Senator from Ohio and an intimate friend of the Vermont Senator) were the days of the reputed glory of the United States Senate, so far as concerned the attainments and character of its individual members. No finer type of men ever existed in the Senate than this noted Yankee and his rugged, virile colleague from the Middle West. Each was an intense partisan,
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each was a brilliant lawyer, and each was a strong man mentally, physi- cally and otherwise.
On the occasion of the centenary of Edmund's birth, the NEW YORK TIMES declared: "In intellect no New England senator except Webster ever surpassed him."
It is no reflection upon the many distinguished men whom Vermont has sent into public life to say that George F. Ed- munds occupied the most commanding position of any man the commonwealth has sent to either branch of the American Congress.
THADDEUS FAIRBANKS
By Arthur F. Stone
S URELY if Vermont had an industrial Hall of Fame a prominent place would be accorded Thaddeus Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury, whose invention of the platform scale a century ago changed for all time the method of weighing merchandise that had been in universal use since the day that Abraham weighed the silver shekels in purchasing the burial ground from Ephron, the Hittite.
Though born in Brimfield, Massachusetts, January 17, 1796, the boy Thaddeus came to St. Johnsbury with his father, Major Joseph Fairbanks, in 1815, where he lived for three- score years and ten, beloved and honored by all who were privileged to know him. His father had bought for $300, five acres of land and the mill rights on Sleeper's river, and on this original site Fairbanks scales have been manufactured for more than one hundred years. In his teens the boy had shown an aptitude in the use of tools. After helping his father build the small grist mill and saw mill, he began mak-
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ing wagons, one of which may be seen today in the Fairbanks Museum at St. Johnsbury. A. small iron foundry was next built at the dam by the mill site. His older brother, Erastus, after a mercantile experience in several small towns in the vicinity-where his biographer naively says, "his commer- cial success though moderate was not satisfactory . . " came to St. Johnsbury to market the young inventor's products, which consisted of wagons, plows and stoves.
It is most interesting to note that the first patent of this great inventor was granted in 1826 for the exclusive right to manufacture and market cast-iron plows. At first, the farmers looked askance at this new "contraption," declaring that the plow would soon break in pieces and that the iron would poison the soil. Yet today modifications of the first iron plow ever invented are in use in all parts of the world. Among the various kinds of stoves that were made at this little foundry there was one with a "diving flue," so-called, for which Thad- deus Fairbanks received a patent several years before he dis- covered the principle of the platform scale. And about this time this versatile genius found the method of cooling now universally adopted in refrigeration. He secured a patent and then gave it away, having neither the time nor the money to develop a market for refrigerators. This patent was after- wards valued at a million dollars, and in the litigation which followed when others claimed the invention the court declared that conclusive evidence has been introduced of the priority of Mr. Fairbanks' invention.
Though any one of the inventions that have been briefly described would have made this young man famous-and probably rich-it is, however, as the inventor of the platform scale that his name and fame will be perpetuated. The hemp "craze which swept over New England in 1829 and 1830 comes into the picture, for it was while weighing hemp that Thad- deus Fairbanks began to think of a better method than the crude and inaccurate method then in vogue. At that time
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the hemp was weighed by the old Roman steelyard suspended in a gallows frame. The scale consisted of a long stick of timber, which was the beam, from the short arm of which chains were hung that could be hooked around the axle of the cart to be weighed. Suspended from the long arm was a platform on which suitable weights were placed. The proc- ess of weighing was not only slow but often resulted in a variation of fifty pounds in the weight of the hemp. After many hours of thought the idea came to the young inventor of supporting a platform upon an "A" shaped lever, with the tip of the lever connected to the steelyard by a rod. In mak- ing the first scale a pit was dug, the lever suitably supported, the platform balanced upon two bearings in the center of the lever and level with the ground, being held in position by chains attached to posts. Some of these scales were made, and an agent engaged to start out and sell them to country mer- chants and farmers. The salesman was planning to take the stage at three o'clock in the morning on his first trip. While Mr. Fairbanks sat up to call him and start the fire for break- fast, he was thinking all the time how to improve the scale. It finally occurred to him that with two "A" shaped levers, or four straight levers meeting at the steelyard rod, or hanging from one that hung upon the steelyard rod, he could secure four knife-edge supports for his platform, from all of which the leverage as related to the steelyard beam might be the same. This was the birth of the platform scale, built in 1830 and patented a year later. At the centennial celebration of this notable event, held in St. Johnsbury in July, 1930, the original pattern of this now famous scale was lent by the Smithsonian Institution and was the most interesting object in the largest display of scales ever made in the world.
In 1830, the three brothers, Erastus, Thaddeus and Joseph, started the manufacture of scales under the firm name of E. and T. Fairbanks and Company, and this concern has entered the second century of its existence with no change of its name
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or its product. The oldest of the brothers, Erastus, was the first president of the company and later became one of Ver- mont's first citizens. He was one of the promoters and first presidents of the Connecticut and Passumpsic Rivers Railroad and twice governor of Vermont. Elected first in 1852, his last official act was to affix his signature to the bill that established the prohibition law of the state after many years of earnest agitation. Elected again in 1860, he became Vermont's first war governor; served with untiring diligence through the opening years of that great conflict and at the close of a highly successful administration declined to accept his salary-a rare tribute to his devotion to the commonwealth. One of his sons, Franklin Fairbanks, was Speaker of the House in 1872 and another son, Horace Fairbanks was governor of Vermont in 1876.
Joseph Fairbanks relinquished his law practice to enter the firm and had previously distinguished himself in the Vermont Legislature as a pioneer in promoting progressive educational methods. He wrote Washington Irving urging him to write a history of the United States, but the noted author wrote in- stead a life of Washington. Mr. Fairbanks wrote to a Boston paper to advocate a free public library and this was two years before the corner-stone of the institution was laid.
These three brothers founded St. Johnsbury Academy, Thaddeus being the most liberal donor, and their descendants have greatly enriched St. Johnsbury by establishing other public institutions including a museum and a library with an art gallery.
High honors were awarded Thaddeus Fairbanks for his in- vention and for modifications that later appeared in other scales. He received the Knightly Cross of the Imperial Order ... of Francis Joseph from the Austrian Emperor and was affec- tionately known ever after as Sir Thaddeus Fairbanks. From the far away kingdom of Siam came the next honor when the King awarded him the Decoration of Puspamala, or Golden
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Medal of the Kingdom of Siam. An Arabic order of high distinction-Nishan el Iptaka, Grade of Commander-was conferred upon him by the Bey of Tunis. For fifty-three years Sir Thaddeus Fairbanks gave his attention to the mechanical side of the business. During his long life he received thirty- two patents and died at the age of ninety at his St. Johnsbury home on April 12, 1886. His work at the scale was done. "In extreme but venerable age his 'puckered eyes, sagacious nose and hair of driven snow' commanded the respect which was profoundly intensified by familiar acquaintance, and among the monarchs of industrial art the name of Thaddeus Fairbanks must forever be pre-eminent."
DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER
By Zephine Humphrey Fahnestock
LTHOUGH Dorothy Canfield Fisher was born in Kansas, A' she has always spent so much time in Vermont and her ancestral roots go so deep in its soil that she is thoroughly identi- fied with the Green Mountain State.
Her great-great-grandfather, Israel Canfield, was one of the first settlers of Arlington in 1764; and at no time has the town been without Canfield residents. Her mother, Flavia Camp Can- field, likewise derived from a long line of Vermonters, her grandfather having been Deacon Barney of Rutland.
Dorothy herself entered the world at Lawrence, Kansas, where her father, James Hulme Canfield, was at that time (1879) professor in the Kansas State University. Her childhood and early youth were spent partly in mid-western college towns, partly in Paris where her talented mother went to study art, partly in long visits to Arlington. Her education was there-
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fore drawn from varied sources. She received her A.B. at Ohio State University during the period of her father's presidency there. For her doctor's degree she studied at the Sorbonne, and also at Columbia University where her father was then librarian. From all these diverse experiences she was later to spin and weave the strong, rich fabric of her books.
Her early intellectual interest, however, was in Romance languages ; and her first book was a study of Corneille and Racine, her second a text book written with George Carpenter. She seemed about to commit herself to a scholarly career. Then, in 1907, she married John Fisher, and abruptly and completely her life made a new turn.
The two young people, uncommonly congenial, courageous and sincere, weighed the respective advantages of a brilliant, sophisticated environment and that of the country. Deliberately and with open eyes, they chose the latter.
About two miles from Arlington, on land which the Can- fields had always owned, in fact only a stone's throw from the brook where the first Canfields had settled, a little old house stood vacant. Here, after a honeymoon spent with a tent on the top of Red Mountain, the Fishers began the serious, beautiful business of finding and living "the good life." It was not long before stories and papers, reflecting their experi- ence and observation, appeared in magazines.
Thorough Vermonter though she had become, Dorothy re- tained her love for the European countries where so much of her girlhood had been passed. In 1909, she and her husband spent several months in France; and, in 1912, after the publica- tion of her first novel THE SQUIRREL CAGE, they and their three-year-old daughter spent a winter in Rome. The latter sojourn resulted in an acquaintance with Madame Montessori and the writing by Dorothy of two books on the education of children: THE MONTESSORI MOTHER and MOTHERS AND CHIL- DREN.
When, in 1914, the Great War broke out, the little Arlington
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family felt that it had been personally invaded. There were by this time two children, the younger of whom was too small to leave home; and, moreover, three books were about to appear: HILLSBORO PEOPLE, THE BENT TWIG, and THE REAL MOTIVE. But, in the spring of 1916, unable to endure aloofness any longer, John Fisher enlisted in the Ambulance Service; and, later in the summer, Dorothy, having finished yet another book, UNDERSTOOD BETSY, took the two children and followed her husband to France. Here, until the spring of 1919, they devoted themselves to the most strenuous kind of war work.
John, greatly distinguishing himself, was given ever more and more responsibility and ended by being a captain in the Ameri- can Army. At one time he had charge of a training camp in the War Zone, and here Dorothy joined him and ran the com- missary department. But, for the most part, she and the children stayed in Paris where she helped organize a printing press for blinded soldiers, or in the south of France where she established a Convalescent Home for children. During these difficult years she also contrived to write HOME FIRES IN FRANCE and THE DAY OF GLORY.
How tired and disillusioned she and her husband were when they came home may be realized by readers of THE DEEPENING STREAM. But Vermont ministered to them, and the brave re- siliency of their own spirits stood them in good stead. Dorothy's reputation as a novel writer was now so well established that her public clamored. In 1920 she began to write again, and in 1921, THE BRIMMING CUP was published.
She had been always increasingly in demand on public plat- forms, either as a reader of her own stories or a speaker on education; and in 1921 she was appointed a member of the Vermont State Board of Education. This meant that she was away from home more than she desired and far busier than she ought to be; but she gave dynamic service for several years, managing also to write ROUGH-HEWN and RAW MATERIAL, and make a translation of Papini's LIFE OF CHRIST. Then she re-
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signed from the State Board and once more went abroad, this time to rest.
Since 1923, her books have followed fast: THE HOME-MAKER, MADE-TO-ORDER STORIES, HER SON'S WIFE, WHY STOP LEARN- ING ?; and now, after a pause, THE DEEPENING STREAM.
In 1928, she was appointed one of the judges of the Book- of-the-Month Club.
All these statistics give little idea of the real value of Dorothy Canfield Fisher to the state of Vermont; but that is probably everywhere appreciated. Vermonters are proud of her interna- tional fame and of the fact that her books have been translated into many languages; but their love is deeper than their pride, and what she is to them counts even more importantly than what she does. Certainly it is true that the little house on the hillside, with pine forests about it and Red Mountain loom- ing above, encloses as warmly vibrant a bit of human experience as our state has ever known.
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