USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volume VII > Part 33
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Dr. Senn traveled extensively and was a close and appreciative observer outside the domain of his profession. Thus he was enabled to make also valuable contributions to general as well as technical lit- erature, and among his more notable published works of a literary order may be mentioned the following: "Around the World via Siberia," "Around the World via India," (a medical tour), "Our National Recreation Parks," "A Thunder Storm Before Santiago de Cuba," "In the Heart of the Arctics," "Around the Southern Continents," "Tahiti, the Island Paradise," and "Around Africa via Lisbon."
In the city of Chicago a noble and consistent monument will perpet- nate the name and memory of Dr. Senn, this being the Nicholas Senn High School, erected on the north side of the city, at a cost of $750,000, and to afford accommodation for two thousand students. Besides the great and honored name and reputation which shall long survive him, Dr. Senn left a widow and two sons. Mrs. Senn was the wise and gra- cious comforter and assistant of the Doctor throughout his remarkable career, and their sons are well upholding the prestige of the name which they bear, both being representative physicians and surgeons of Chi- cago, where the devoted mother still maintains her home. In the year
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1868 was solemnized the marriage of Dr. Senn to Miss Aurelia S. Mill- hauser, who was born at Blairsville, Indiana county, Pennsylvania, and whose gentle and gracious personality has endeared her to all who have come within the sphere of her influence. In her supreme loss and be- reavement she finds the greatest measure of consolation and compensa- tion in the hallowed memories that cluster about the years of long association with her devoted husband during a companionship that was ever ideal in its every relation.
EMANUEL J. SENN, M. D. With the success and eminence of his father as his inspiration and guide, Dr. Emanuel J. Senn, the older of the two surviving children, has himself gained prominence in the medical profession, and is one of the ablest physicians and surgeons of the city of Chicago.
Emanuel J. Senn was born at Elmore, Fond du Lac county, Wiscon- sin, November 18, 1869. When he was about five years of age the family moved to the city of Milwaukee, where he entered the public schools and continued until he had finished his course in the high school. He was a student at Muhlenberg College at Allentown, Pennsylvania, and in prep- aration for his chosen profession entered Rush Medical College at Chi- cago, where he was graduated as a member of the class of 1893. For one year he served as interne at St. Joseph's Hospital, and has since been engaged in active practice in Chicago, as a specialist in surgery. Dr. E. J. Senn is associate professor of surgery in Rush Medical College and is attending surgeon at the German Hospital. He holds membership in the Chicago Medical Society, the Chicago Surgical Society, the Illinois State Medical Society, the Mississippi Valley Medical Society, and the American Medical Association. In politics he has always maintained an independent attitude. Dr. Senn is an active member of the Wisconsin Society of Chicago, and belongs to the Chicago Athletic Club. In April, 1900, Dr. Senn married Alys Laroussini of New Orleans.
WILLIAM N. SENN, M. D. The younger of the two sons who have fol- lowed in the footsteps of their honored father, the late Nicholas Senn, William N. Senn, was born in the city of Milwaukee, June 1, 1876. Both by inclination and liberal educational advantages, he was thoroughly equipped for the profession in which he has gained distinctive rank. He studied in the Racine College, the public schools of Milwaukee, and graduated from the historic Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachu- setts. Entering Rush Medical College he was graduated M. D. with the class of 1900, and through two years after his graduation served as interne in the Presbyterian Hospital. He completed his post graduate studies in the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1903.
Dr. William N. Senn has gained high rank as a surgeon, and has specialized in the treatment of the genito-urinary organs. He is asso-
A.& Ealing
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ciate professor of surgery at Rush Medical College, having held that position for seven years, and has been surgeon at St. Joseph's Hospital. Dr. Senn is a member of the Chicago Medical Society, the American Medical Association, the American Military Surgeons' Association, American College of Surgery, and the American Genito-Urinary Sur- geons Association. Dr. Senn served four months as a medical officer during the Spanish-American war, and at the present time is surgeon of the United States Reserve Corps, with the rank of first lieutenant. He is a Republican in politics, and has membership in the University Club of Chicago, the Chicago Yacht Club, of the Sigma Nu Club, and his loyalty to his native state is indicated by his affiliations with the Wis- consin Society of Chicago. In the time-honored Masonic fraternity, Dr. Senn has taken thirty-two degrees of the Scottish Rite, and is affiliated with Lincoln Park Lodge No. 311, A. F. & A. M., and with the Illinois Consistory. His church is the Protestant Episcopal.
On January 3, 1906, Dr. Senn married Margery L. Lynch, who was born in Chicago. They are the parents of twin daughters, Barbara and Dorothy.
ALBERT J. EARLING. Constructive enterprise in America has had its most notable triumphs in railroad building. In that field American ingenuity, indomitable energy, and resourcefulness, has been displayed at their best. The history of railway building on this continent lias many splendid chapters, but for speed in construction and practical solution of some of the most formidable engineering difficulties all records were broken when the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railway, the Pacific Coast extension of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, was built from Mobridge, South Dakota, to Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. It is an additional distinction to the citizen- ship of Wisconsin that the president and the moving spirit in the undertaking was a man born in Wisconsin soon after it became a state, who went into the railway service of the Milwaukee System when a boy, and has during forty-seven years of service risen from one grade to another until he is now president of the great corpora- tion.
Mr. Earling's home is in Chicago, where he is one of the loyal members of the Wisconsin Society of Chicago. On December 18, 1905, Burton Hanson, general counsel for the Milwaukee road, secured the charter in the state of Montana for the Pacific Coast extension. The first ground was broken for the enterprise in the same year, on the east bank of the Missouri River at Mobridge in South Dakota. Within twenty-seven months the road was completed from that point to Butte, Montana, and the first passenger train was run into Butte, over a distance of seven hundred and eighteen miles from Mobridge. In the early part of 1910 the road was opened from Mobridge to Seat-
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tle and Tacoma, a total distance of 1395 miles, both for freight and local passenger business. Then on May 29, 1911, two of the finest pas- senger trains in the world were put into service from Seattle and Tacoma to Chicago, for first class passenger business. These trains have become known to all the traveling public as the Olympian and the Columbian.
The total cost of construction of the Pacific Coast extension was about two hundred million dollars. While probably its primary pur- pose was to secure a great trunk line from the northwest coast to con- nect with the net work of the older Milwaukee System, most enduring results, and those which will eventually contribute most to the pros- perity and welfare of the country, consisted in the opening up of a vast stretch of land across the northwest which had hitherto been practically undeveloped. Since the building of the Puget Sound Line hundreds of prosperous cities and villages have sprung up along the route, and transportation has accomplished its familiar miracles in the promotion of industry and commerce. Besides the many towns which denote a development of agriculture, there are several mineral regions, whose resources have been made profitable through this road. Roundup, Montana, a mining town of about fifteen hundred popula- tion is one of the notable examples of this development.
A long technical description would be necessary to indicate the remarkable difficulties encountered and overcome in the construction of this railroad, and only a brief reference can be made to them in this sketch. At Mobridge, South Dakota, the road crossed the Mis- souri River, on its new steel bridge the heaviest and largest ever thrown across that stream. It consists of three immense spans, each four hundred and twenty-five feet in length, and the superstructure rising sixty-five feet above the rails, is imposed upon four massive piers, lifting the bridge proper fifty-five feet above the surface of the river. The Puget Sound extension crosses four mountain ranges. The Big Belts, the Rockies, the Bitter Root, the Cascades. A tunnel one thousand feet below the summit of the Bitter Roots is about two miles in length, while the entire construction in that range entailed some of the heaviest work and most intricate engineering ever employed in railway building. At the entrance on the east side of this tunnel the trains are in Montana and they immerge at the west end in the state of Idaho: At Beverly, near the mouth of Crab Creek, the railway crosses the Columbia River, on a magnificent steel bridge, nearly a mile in length, and lifted above the water to permit of the passage of boats without employing drawbridge or life span.
Albert J. Earling who since September, 1899, has been president of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company, and under whose presidency the Puget Sound Extension was begun and com- pleted, was born at Richfield, Wisconsin, January 19, 1849. He had
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a common school education, and at the age of seventeen, entered the service of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, having been connected with that road ever since 1866. He started as a teleg- rapher, and was promoted to train despatcher, continuing in that department of the service for nine years. He was assistant super- intendent four years, and for two years was division superintendent. He then became assistant general superintendent, and was appointed general superintendent of the Milwaukee lines, in 1888. In 1890, Mr. Earling was made general manager, and held that office five years, when he was elected to the office of second vice-president and to the office of chief executive place in the system in September, 1899.
HON. JEROME I. CASE. By the death in 1891 of Jerome I. Case, passed a life which should be an inspiration to the living. Active in politics, his political influence was always for high ideals and progres- sive polities. A man of great wealth, and a creator of a great industrial enterprise, his life emphasized the truth that enterprise and wealth are not inconsistent with the highest standards of character and conduct. He was a manager of men, an executive in affairs, a wielder of great financial and industrial resources. He built, and what he built still stands, a permanent factor in the industrialism of his home city of Ra- cine.
The late Mr. Case was without doubt the most remarkable of many strong characters who came to Racine county during the pioneer period Though he became one of the most successful manufacturers, not only in Wisconsin, but with rank among the leaders anywhere in the world, his life and chief interest were always devoted to the state and vicinity in which his early career had begun. It was in his section of Wisconsin that he first introduced his improved machinery, and as this state was the first to get the benefit of the products of his genius, so it has, for now more than half a century, continually benefited from the great enterprise which he built up. It was part of his character to do the work that lay nearest to him with the facilities available, and it was for this reason that he gradually acquired so vast an interest in the industralism of this state, and conferred so lasting a benefit upon the prosperity of its citizens. Though a man of exceedingly modest spirit, he had the ambition and industry, which together worked for inevitable high success. The industry which will always be most closely associated with his name was of course the great J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, but his interest and efforts also extended into many other fields, and while his great industrial plant conferred great wealth and material prosperity on the people of this state, he was also a constant factor in promoting civic benefits. His executive ability enabled him to take an active part in many affairs, outside of his own immediate busi- ness. The advancement of his home city, of Racine, was always due to
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his help, and he conferred both his own endeavors and liberally of his own means to promote that end. Every other good cause found in him a willing helper, and he acquired a position of no small prominence in civil and political affairs of Wisconsin.
The late Jerome I. Case was of New England stock and of English descent, his first American ancestors having been four brothers who located on the shores of New England during the Colonial period. Jerome I. Case was born at Williamstown, Oswego county, New York, December 11th, 1818. His parents, Caleb and Deborah (Jackson) Case, had moved from Rensselaer county to Oswego county as pioneers of the latter, and had cleared a home from the midst of the woods in that part of the state. This arduous work of pioneering was a task in which the sons also shared, and it was in the environment of the frontier, with its dangers and difficulties and simplicities of existence that Jerome I. Case was reared to manhood. Though the youngest son whose early life was spent at a time when both the east and west were laboriously emerging from the primitive conditions of the early last century, schools had hardly yet been established on a basis anything like the modern free schools, and there as a youth he had opportunities to attend only a few weeks each year, the instruction itself being of the most elementary character. When he was about sixteen years old, his school days came to an end, but about that time occurred the circumstance which directed him into his permanent career of usefulness. His father had secured the right to sell and use a one-horse tread-power threshing machine. This was a wonderful thing for the time, and its management was turned over to the son Jerome, who, never receiving an early training in mechan- ics, yet manifested a native ability in that direction. From that time until he became of age, young Mr. Case gave his services, as was the custom of those days, to his father, and was chiefly employed in operat- ing the old-fashioned thresher, which has been mentioned. On attaining his majority, he started the operation of a threshing machine on his own account, but this was only preliminary to his ambition for securing a more liberal education, and one that would fit him for the higher respon- sibilities of life. His first savings were therefore devoted to this end. In January, 1841, he entered the Academy at Mexicoville, New York, where he took such studies as he thought would be more practical for his future purposes. He never denied the knowledge and resources of books, but at the same time his most useful education and training was acquired through his contact with men.
It is a feature of special interest, in connection with the great Case industry, that it was founded in Wisconsin during the territorial period of the state, and is one of the few great enterprises which saw their inception so far back in history. In the spring of 1842 when twen- ty-three years of age, Mr. Case bought six threshing machines on credit, these machines being of the crude design then in use, and brought these
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to Racine. Five of the machines he sold, and with the sixth he went about the country doing the threshing for the farmers of this vicinity. His machine saw hard service, and at the end of the second season re- quired rebuilding, a task to which Mr. Case had applied himself with a great deal of interest, and though, as mentioned, he had had no technical equipment in mechanics, he possessed a great deal of natural ability along that line, and with such tools as he could find, and without very definite ideas of what he wished to accomplish, he set to work, not only to rebuild, but if possible to improve his old machine. Grain separating machinery up to that time had advanced little beyond the old days of the flail and winnowing floor. There was no machine capable of threshing and separ- ating the grain from the chaff in one operation, and it was to remedy this vital defect that Mr. Case applied his experience and ingenuity to the perfection of his first machine. What was known as the open or "ground hog" threshers were still quite generally in use. These only beat out the grain, throwing out all chaff and grain together, after which it was necessary to separate. During the winter of 1843-1844, in the kitchen of a farm house at Rochester, in Racine county, Mr. Case made a model which illustrated his ideas in a practical form, and which afforded a great deal of gratification to the ambitious young inventor. Crude and imperfect though it was, his machine could not be equalled by the best product of the east. During the following summer, he demonstrated the practical qualities of the machine, and further improved it, and then in the fall of 1844 started a small shop in Racine, and planned to construct one or more machines during the succeeding winter.
Though he recognized that his invention was one to fill a long felt want, the modesty which was inherent in Mr. Case's character, pre- vented him from realizing the importance of his great invention, and what was destined to be its remarkable popularity. Even the advisors who encouraged him in the progress, believed that half a dozen machines, if successful, would be sufficient to meet all the demands in this state, and to extend the sale beyond the limits of the state had not yet become a part of the contemplations or prospects of those interested in the man- ufacture. Thus the men behind the manufacture at the beginning, were never eager to force the sale, and it accordingly increased on a natural basis, and in strict keeping with the demands. Mr. Case turned out a product which the people wanted, he managed his own affairs well, did right by his associates and patrons, and the success of the enterprise took care of itself.
In 1847 Mr. Case erected a three story brick building thirty by ninety feet in dimensions, located near the site of the present factories in Racine. The plant as best constructed was larger than the business then required, but it was Mr. Case's publie spirit that caused him to erect a structure which would reflect credit upon his home town. About this period the farming communities of the west became very prosperous,
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and as the merits of the J. I. Case threshers and horse power machines became more widely known, the demand increased so that it was always ahead of the supply. This sketch will not permit a detailed account of the growth of this remarkable industry, but it is sufficient to say that from the small shop of 1844 there has been developed by the successive additions and improvements, the increasing of equipment and addition of continually larger business, there has been produced what is now the largest industry of the kind in the world. Even though the most enthus- iastie dreams of the founder could not have foreseen the results of this later development. He was not a man to have visions far beyond the limits of logical possibilities, and it was not consistent with the judg- ment of people of that time to estimate or foresee anything like the remarkable growth and extent of our modern industrialism. Racine itself was then a small town, and it would have been unreasonable to suppose that a joint industry surpassing in wealth and the number of employes the entire population and resources of the town at that time, could have grown up about this center. However, from that time to this the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Plant has been one of the greatest in Racine, and in later years fully one-sixth of the total population of this city comprise the employes and the families connected with this great industry. Another important benefit derived from this factory is its influence in attracting other business concerns of more or less mag- nitude to Racine, so that the Case enterprise might be properly consid- ered to have been the nucleus of the modern industrial city. The build- ings of the great plant cover some thirty acres of land on the banks of Root river, just inside the lake harbor, so that it has docks for loading and unloading vessels, and plenty of terminal railroad facilities.
The success of this great enterprise has been due first of all to Mr. Case, but in a hardly less degree to his excellent judgment in selecting men who could execute and extend his own powers, and assist him in carrying out the enterprise in its highest form. Thus there are several other names which deserve credit in any account of the J. I. Case Thresh- ing Machine Company. In 1863, Mr. Case admitted to partnership, three men who were then in his employ. These were Stephen Bull, the only one still living at this time, and the late M. B. Erskine, and the late Robert H. Baker. After the admission of these younger partners, the business was conducted under the firm name of J. I. Case & Company. In 1880 the business was reorganized as the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company, with a paid up capital of $1,000,000. From that date Mr. Case was president of the company until the time of his death. One of the most important improvements in the development of threshing machines was the introduction of a portable steam engine, and subse- quently of the traction steam engine. The J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company have almost from the first manufactured these engines as an essential part of threshing equipment.
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In 1876 was organized at Racine, the firm of Case, Whitney & Com- pany, with a capital stock of $120,000, which was subsequently increased to $150,000, the purpose of this enterprise being to manufacture plows. Mr. Case was the company's first president, and continued in that office for two years, at which time the business was incorporated as the J. I. Case Plow Company. He remained at the head of the affairs of this company until his death. It would be impossible to enumerate all of the other enterprises in the field of business with which Mr. Case's name was associated at various times. In 1871 he was one of the incorporators of the Manufacturers National Bank in Racine, an institution which has enjoyed a splendid record of prosperity, and is recognized as one of the strongest banks in the state. He was president of this bank from the time of its organization until the time of his death. Also in 1871 he had assisted in the organization of the First National Bank at Burlington, Wisconsin, and was president of this institution. Other banking houses which he assisted in establishing were those at Monrovia, California. at Fargo, North Dakota, and at Crookston, Minnesota.
The part which Mr. Case played in making Racine a great manu- facturing city and improving all its business conditions did not pass without proper appreciation from his fellow citizens. He was a man of great public spirit, and always willing to do his share of public work, and at the same time his fellow citizens were eager, to honor him with the highest public offices in their state. In 1856 he was elected mayor of Racine, and the following year declined renomination, which had been offered him. Then in 1858 he was induced to accept the nomination and was elected over Hon. John M. Cary. He also was elected to the State Senate, a body which he served efficiently for two years. The first pres- idential vote cast by Mr. Case was for William Henry Harrison, and he was active in his affiliation and support of the old Whig party up to the time of its dissolution and the organization of the Republican party in 1856, at which time he became one of the first in Wisconsin to adhere to these new principles and ever afterward vigorously supported its plat- form and candidates up to the time of his death. Mr. Case was an ardent Union man, and during the Civil war was unfailing in his liberality, as to money and efforts to uphold the cause of freedom and the union of the states. At the breaking out of the war, when Colonel William Utley proposed to raise a regiment, Mr. Case offered the sum of one thousand dollars to the first company that would enlist in that regiment.
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