Arizona republican., 1908-05-10

i VIII say the same thing in different
 words and they will follow it with an i account of the governors life. They
 will tell how. when his drunken father 1 abandoned his mother. the lad quit school and started to work to help support her They will tell how he worked in a country store for $1O a l week and later in a drug store and in 1 a railroad contractors office, and how how he kept on educating himself by reading at night so that he would not
 lose the advantages of higher school | ing
 John A. Johnson was born in St. | Peter, Minn.. in 1861. while the civil | War was raging. His father and
 mother were poor immigrants from | Sweden who had come to this country eight years before. John's boyhood
 was unhappy. His father was a ne'er- do-well who brought Restitution to the family and when only twelve years old 1 the boy left school to help support his mother. A few years later he be-
 came her entire support. as we'll as | providing for brother and sister. When he was selected as editor of
 the St. Peter Herald by it's owners he set to work unhesitatingly. although he knew no more about editorial work
 than he did about prehistoric archae- | lodgy. His friends lent him the Ihon- ey to buy a half interest in the paper.
 He tackled the job and mastered it. When he was elected state senator
 he did the same thing. and he re- peated the action when he took his place in the state house at St. Paul as
 the chief of the state Those who know him best have never seen him hesitate over an act. Always he has seemed to know. instinctively. the right thing to do without puzzling over the problem.
 Gov. Johnson'S first nomination to office came in 1894 when he was
 thirty three years old and had just
 welded Miss Fillmore NJ Preston. He was then the leading democratic edi-
 tS in the state. From being a power in the newspaper world to being a power in politics was a natural step
 and one that for Johnson. with his energy and capacity for public ser vice. was inevitable. The Democrats nominated him for the state senate.
 but although he made hard fight he
 was not able to overcome the Repub- lican majority Norninated again in
 1898. however. he was successful and
 in that and the following session of
 the legislature he made a record for
 integrity and ability that gave him the leadership of his party in the success
 ful fight for an increased gross earn ings tax on the Minnesota railways.
 The story 0f his sensational cam paign for governor in 1904 is well known. Nominated in the year of the Roosevelt land slide, he campafgned
 on state issues from one end of the state to another. and when the votes
 were counted in November it was found that he had been elected by the safe margin of 5000, although Roose- welt swept the state with d plurality of 161. GOO.
 So John Johnson packed his grip. said goodbye to St Peter and the Herald force. told Henry to look after the job work. and went to St. Paul. and there he stsvedl Johnson grew on Minnesota. The more the people knew of him the better they liked him. He didn't do anything specta- cular. He just sat at his desk in the big satehouse and attended to the peo- ple's business as if the state was a private corporation of which he was the head-and the public liked the in noVation and the results he got for them They liked it so much that in 1906 they decided to keep him right there by given him plurality of I2.0O0 over Cole. his republican oppo- nent The victory was absolutely personal indorsement for the balance of the Republican ticket was elected by handsome Dluralities
 Quietly but effectively Governor Johnson got out after the big law breakers with correspondingly big stick
 During the four years he has been acting as governor of Minnesota the assessed valuation of the United States Steel corporation has been raised from $32, 100000 to sI9O. .0OO. GOO and the steel corporation. in lieu of q luther increase of taxation. is building a $20.000.000 steel plant in Duluth. Railway rates have been reduced from ten to thirty per cent. Min nesOta has secured the two cent rail- way passenger rate. Largely upon his initiative the system of taxation was reformed; laws were enacted provid- ing for the equitable taxation of sleep car companies; a modern law of mort gage taxation was passed Recipro- cal demurrage laws were adopted. while orders of the railroad and ware house commission were made immedi- ately effective.
 A free state employment bureau in the interests of labor~was created and has been conducted with most satis- factory results. An immense system for the drainage of swamp lands was inaugurated. A law was passed pro- viding for municipal ownership of public utilities. Governor Johnson out witted the tWine trust by appealing to the legislature for authority to sell the product bf the state twine plant outside as well as within the state. At his suggestion railway passes were abolished in Minnesota while his part in insurance reform was so signi- ficant that President Roosevelt public ly recognized him as the leader in the national campaign for the reformation Of insurance methods
 All these things have endeared the man to Minnesota. St. Peter folks ad- mire him just because he is "John"- because they know him so thoroughly. They know that he is mt a ,,oIit;oa1