The Washington herald., 1913-09-07
Newman Is Self-Made Man
WAS OFFICE BOY IN RAILROAD STATION
Drove Wagon for Paperhanger
Secretary Bryan Tells Story
Illustrating the Attitude Of
the Commissioner Toward
Those Who Seek His Re-
moyaI from Board. B

In the exact center OF a whirlwind Of
conflicting protests against his appoint
ment to the position of president of the
Board of District Commissioners, oliver
P. Newman sits each day At his desk at
the Municipal Building and watches
calmly the associations which are raising
the wind-and in raising the wind raise
also the composite equivalent OF what
those of us will be VINO prefer the
macadamized and oiled rather than the
dusty and rocky road of life.
Mr. Newman is a young newspaper
man with q wide and eminently success
full career: his eyes are blue, clear, and
direct as a boys, while his bearing has
the erect distinction of a soldier, and
when he talks he speaks with a certain
conviction that leaves no doubt as TO his
sincerity.
1T was just after my appointment"
he said, land before I had been con-
firmed. that went over to the State De-
partment on some newspaper business.
so you're the fellow that's kicked up all
that fuss the Secretary of State
laughed. when l went into his office. 'Cn,
no. said !. I'm not fussing at all-its
the other fellow"
Bryan Tells Story.
And then Secretary Bryan told me the
story Of Johnny and the cat, which ex-
plains the situation. There was the new
ing and the crying OF the cat from around
the corner of the house.
Johnny" called his mother oh,
Johnny, are you pulling that poor cats
tail?'
No, mother protested Johnny. and
Yet the cat shrieked, and hissed, and
mewed. and meoued.
Johnny" his mother called agar,
rara'f
you pulling the poor things tail?
90 Why, no. mother; I'm not pulling the
cats tail, I'm just holding the cats tail
the cats doing the pulling,
1t was a story on life at West Point
that opened the door of the newspaper
cffCe to Oliver +. Newman when he was
twenty-oue years old. He could write.
and he knew all about West Point, be
cause he had won an appointment TO the
academy in a competitive examination,
and was there for more thAn a year
v hen he tlunked in math. To be sure,
he drLued volunteer regiment in Al
bany in the spring and summer of 1898
Tor the Spanish American war, but the
regiment was never called out of Albany,
and young Newman's ambition to be a
soldier could not be realized.
But his story on West Point, which
appeared in one of the prominent maga-
zines, was his passport 10 a reportership
yn the Des MOi1es Leader, where he was
associated with Samuel Strauss, after
wards associate publisher of the New
York Times: Allen Dawson. who became
editor of the New York Globe; Judson c.
WelIVer now political editor of the
Munsey publications; John Snure, who is
the political editor of the Washington
Times: Henry r. Jones. news editor of
the Washington Post, and Robert Patch
il, the Washington correspondent of the
New York Herald
Native OF Nebraska.
1t is not strange that in such an at
musphere Mr. Newman made the news
PAPER his profession. and that. along
with his Confreres, he succeeded, al
though when a small boy in Des Mones
he had the choice Of many careers. He
vas born in Lincoln. Nebr., in 1871, and
came with his parents, Mr. and Mrs.
George c. Newman. to Des Moines in
1854, where during his vacation times hs
did everything that all other boys do to
make money
He was a great success driving a
paperhanger's wagon, but when he could
be an Office boy in a railroad Office, and
keep tab on the trains, he handed in his
resignation to the paperhanger and sign
ed with the railroad Office Then the
next year he found more money in the
Clerkship in a drug store. Later domi-
mated by the spirit of progress, young