The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-12-23
OSCAR STRAUS, DISTINGUISHED DIPLOMAT,
 62 YEARS OLD TO-DAY

CongrattuEatory messages from many lands and from people of widely diff ferent religious and political views will be showered upon Oscar solomon Straus today on the occasion of hds .sixty-second birthday. Recently de feated for Governor of New York State on the Progressive ticket, MT Stnaus yet boiled tremendous vote in New York cty, and tens of thou sands who dislixed his political affil- iations gave him their ballots because they liked and admired the man. MT Straus was notably exempt from the the abuse and s1ander that Is GUS tomarily heaped upon a candidate for office. and even his b1tterest % Pons1eaI SIea-l York City newspapers that were bit terest in denouncing Col. Roosevelt said scarce a word against the dis tinguished Jew who headed the Bull Moose State ticket.
 Oscar Straus Is the youngest of the three famous brothers who came to America with their parents from Rhenish Bavaria in 1854. Isidor Straus the eldest perished with his devoted wife who refused to desert him, when the Titanic went down last AprilS Ma made millions from his department store interests in New York and Brooklyn, and has spent vast sums In aIleviating the miseries of the poor. His most noteworthy philanthropy was the establishment of a. system of sta- tions for the free distribution of ster-
 
 New York health department show has saved thousands of infant lives.
 Oscar Solomon Straus, was lad of four when his parents. Lazarus and Sara Straus, left their Bavarian home for America and settled at Talbot ton, Ga His youth was that of the hood planted and reaped, attended school and played. A Jew, Lazarus Straus was scholarly, learned and to1- erant and his youngest son was sent +o Ra Sunday school learn his A. B. C's. Straus pere was pro hcient in the Hebrew language, and the itinerant preachers of all denomt- nations often went to him with knotty texts and to discuss Biblical history.
 Lazarus Straus was all but finan- cially ruined by the war, and in 1863 bus, Ga He remained there two years, paying all his debts, and with the scant sum remaining went to New York. With his two elder sons he started the pottery and glassware bus mess of L. Straus & Sons, while Os- car attended Columbia College. He wrote-and sold a number of verses to magazines. He was employed for time a reporter on the Sun, and afterward studied law under Theodore w Dwight and Charles O'Connor. For a number of years he practiced law, and then entered the importing buSi- ness of his brothers.
 It was twenty-five years ago that Oscar Straus began his diplomatic ca reer as envoy extra ordinary and min ister plenipotentiary to Turkey He continued in that post for two years, and returned to Constantinople in the same capacity in 1898. Ten years ago he was appointed a member of The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitra- ton. In 1906 ne entered the cabinet of President Roosevelt as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and in 1909 he was for a third time made the Am erican ambassador to Turkey
 MT. Straus is the author of several be mentioned "The Development of Religious Liberty in the United States" "The Origin of Republican Form of Government in the United States and Our Diplomacy with Ref erence to Our Foreign Service.''