The Evansville daily journal., 1856-12-17

SPEAKER BANkS.-feW men nave run
more diversified career than Mr.. Speaker
Banks. Last month he was forty years old.
He has been a factory boy, carpenter, a ma
chnist, dancing master, an actor, editor,
a lawyer, a national Democrat, coalitionist,
an ardent lover of the Irish champion of re-
ligious liberty, Know Nothing, and is now
Frees0ier. This is chequered life.
The above from an exchange is a caricature
Of the eminent man. He has never been a
dancing master--a mountebank. nor apolitical
weathercock. lie has been an earnest, labo-
rious man; one who felt strongly what was
within him, and early perceived he had a des-
tiny, and he has followed it without any mis-
giyngs of the end. He was poor boy who
learnt his trade in a machine shop, and labor
ed for many years after his majority, and after
his marriage, in the factories at Waltham and
Lowell He is entirely self educated, and all
his leisure hours in his apprenticeship and
manhood have been most asSidously devoted
to study. He evinced a taste for defamation
when a boy, and organized debating societies
when an apprentice at Waltham, and he al
ways maintained connection with them, till
he gained a higher and wider sphere for his
powers; they were the schools in which he
perfected his oratory. A fellow laborer with
him at Lo we'll has told us, that he often knew
him to leave his bench at the ringing Of the
evening bell for the cessation Of labor, and
walk to Waltham, u or Is miles distant and
there take part in debate before his fayorte
IL e. L.
at the ringing Of the morning bell.
This task was often performed, and shows
how deeply the mind and heart was in the
work of selfculture. The first to notice his
remarkable mental powers, was the eminent
Robt. Rantoul, once United States District At
torney Of Mass; for short time Senator from
that State, and the protector and achiever of
the Great Illinois Central Railroad enterprise.
By his advice and assistance he studied law,
and was associated for some time, before his
death, with that eminent Democrat, in his pro-
fessional business. From that Democratic
fountain We presume he derived his free soil
sentiments which seem to have been the ruling
convictions of his life; for these he abandoned
his Americanism; and for these too he gave
up his Democracy, and the brilliant hopes the
party once presented to him.
We have had no sympathy with Mr.
Banks political course, but we have always
felt an admiration for the genius and in
dustry that has raised the smutty black
smith boy from the coal black shop to the
Speakers chair in the United States House of
Representatives; and we love to hold up the
example to all working men; to the smutty
and sweaty apprentices in every workshop
to teach them that there is no dishonor in
their condition. and that there are no barriers
between them and the highest positions ofI
honor in the country, that study, genius, and
a courageous, determined heart cannot sur
mount. Such an example is worth all the
preaching in the world to excite youth to a
noble struggle and brilliant victory over
fortune and the circumstances of BIRTH
And Mr.. Banks is not the only one who has,
within a few years, risen from the machine
shop, and been prominent in the councils of
the country. James F. Simmons, whom Mr..
Clay said was unsurpassed in intellectual
power in the Senate; Mr.. James, the present
Ssnator from Rhode Island, who has reared
more noble monuments to his fame in splen-
did and successful cotton factories than any
other man now living, both graduated at 21
years of age from machine shop, and while
developing their iron muscles at the anvil,
formed sturdy brain by hard thinking and
ponderous blows of logic in these shop Con-
crosses. which are assembled in those days of
enqr:sv and discussion in every large factory.