The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1896-10-09


Under tie caption of "a Self-Made
Man in High Place." the st. Paul
Globe of May -, 1895, paid high
and unusual tribute to a man who has
been elected to a position which he
held at the time the article was pub
lished, in spite of the most stringent
opposition of the paper publishing the
article 1t was the occasion of the
new management of the paper assum-
Eng control, and in that issue it was at
tempted to show, as much as possible
within the compass of one issue of the
Daper. the character of the state, her
resources and her government, and
much that would be of interest to the
people outside of the state. The arti-
Gle devoted to Gov. Clough took up
more than a page of the paper, and
the following is extracted from what
the Globe said at that time, when
there was no campaign on, and when
it, as a Democratic paper, felt called
upon to pay a deserved tribute to the
highest citizen of the state and one
who, as it stated. had won his way up
the rounds of prosperity by his own
personal eXertions. The cuts here
used, with more than dozen others,
were also used by the Globe on the oc-
,casion referred to:
The ambitious school boy or the as
piring farmer. lad who feels within
him the promptingS of superior ma
rture and repeats, after the immortal
Raleigh, "Fain would 1 climb, yet fear
Ito fall" need only to look at the life
record of the present governor of
Minnesota, and he will need no guard
60, Inth 70 yNrni 70
fiutterins, ambition, or cheer him to
deeds of greater daring with the his
torc injunction: eff thy heart fail
thee, climb not at ALL
American history fairly bristles with
records that start in the furrow. at
the bench, on the tow-path or behind
the counter, and end on the bench, at
the bar, or high in the scale of social,
political and commercial life.
Though but boy when he left his
native State of New Hampshire, he
seems to have inherited many of those
characteristics peculiar to the canny
dOWn-EaSter, and yet possessed of q
warm heart and genial disposition.
he offered a ready soil for the plant
ing of the germs from which grow the
true Westerner.
1t was in 1855 that Elbridge Elihu
Clough, father of the present govern
or, migrated from the rocky hills of
New Hampshire and settled upon the
hOspitable soil Of Waup;ca, Wis. Two
years later, when David was ten years
of age, the elder ClouSh moved to
Spencer Brook, Isl nti county, this
state, and there began the work of
opening up a farm. II is was in July,
1857, before Minnesota had been adj
United into the union of states, and
the principal business of that locality
was that of numbering.
The Wayside Arcadia.
The Spencer Brook farm was at that
time a convenient halfway stopping
place between the primitive logging
camps on upper Rum river and it's
tributaries, the West branch, Brad
bury brook and Mile Laos lake and
the down-river supply points. Being
thus associated so intimately with the
lumber business as boy, it was nat
ural that young Clough should adopt
it as his business when he came to
the point Of choosing an aVOcatiOn. III
his younger days IL d up to the age of
twenty, he worked during the sum-
mer months on his fathers farm, and
when the first SnOWf1akeS fiecked the
AaystackS and the meadows he, in COM
mon with all the other young men of
the neighborhood, shOuldered his "tus-
sick and hied him to the camp of the
folly, but handwriting, lumbermen,
there to spend six months in the hard
est kind of physical toll that is known
an the realm Of manual labor.
No man knows what actual hard
labor is until he has worked in lum-
ber camp, and the hardest part of it
na1.t lat
10 have voluntarily chosen as his as
aignment. To bend ones back under
q peavey" and lift every pound that
the tense muscles will bear is strain
upon the physical constitution that
none but a robust frame could endure,
and to say that man who works on
q landing or skidway of logs does this
q thousand times day is to give some
slight idea of the character of the work.
Then, for thirty or forty days in the
spring of the year, comes a still Sc
verer test Of physical strength and en-.
durance, still greater draught on the
physical resources Of the working lum-
herman. This Is when the annual
Stdrive' occurs
The drive is to the lumberman what
the roundup" is to the ranchman.
The uninitiated imagine that when the
hogs are Ouce Ill the rlVer duu tue wa
ter begins to run all the lumberman has
to do is to sit still and wait for his
crop to float down to the mill. Moth
ang could be farther from the fact.
Even with the improved facilities, the
great dams and reservoirs and the new
machinery and appliances of the pres
ent time, the drive is the worst part of
the logging season, but in the days
when Dave Clough was one Of the
''shantee boys it was far worse. In
the first place, the logs are piled up
In huge pyramids in and along the
bank Of the river, and the work Of
s'breaking the rollways' is both labori-
Gus and dangerous, and none but man
quick of eye, foot and wits has any
business on Il rOllway."
breaking ROlIway"
Imagine a great mass of logs piled
In the middle Of a stream. impeding
the progress of a great bulk Of water
above, the logs frozen together or piled