The Washington herald., 1913-10-12
SECRETARY McADOO TELLS OF INTERESTING
PERIODS IN VARIED AND EVENTFUL CAREER
Read Law While Employed Clerk Of the Court in Chatta-
nOOga-Early Days in New York, Following Panic
of 1893, Were Dark Ones
By JAMES b. MORROW.

was in the habit of observing to hi
family. should be capable of plainly ex
pressing their opinions, standing on thei
feet or sitting down, and of coherentl
describing sequential events.
Man thinks, he said. Otherwise mai
would be no better than beast or a bird
Writing was always necessary, he knew
hut open speech and not silence wa
golden sometimes.
Holding such views of the utteret
word. he required his son and namesak
10 visit his law office once a week for 1
lesson in defamation. Also for hint
pertaining to the rough and tumble o
everyday debate.
So, at the age of twenty-nine, William
Gibbs McAdoo. thus trained and having
besides, eight years seasoning at th'
har. arrived in New York. He coulC
state a case convinCingly, even magnet
ically, looking a man or a multitude
straight in the face without bashfulnesS
or uncertainty. But he was no rhet
orician by the common Interpretation oi
that term.
Quite as important, he had wonderful
eyes-gray eyes verging on Holland blue
moody, honest, smiling, and serious eyes
all at once. No revealing picture of the
man who dug the first tunnel under the
Hudson River would omit his eyes. Nor
his nose, which is acquiline, sensitive,
commanding and refined.
Then, as at present, notwithstanding
the settling influences of battles and
years, William Gibbs McAdoo was six
feet and two inches tall and weighed
about 156 pOunds-a greyhound Of a man,
with a long and graceful stride. Now
at fifty he mounts the back stairs Of the
Treasury three steps at a time.
Neither humbleness nor boast is in his
statement when he says that he was
poor at the opening OF his life in New
York. Matters had gone amiss with him
in the South. a street railroad, which
he improved had failed. II had been
looking toward the North" he told me,
for long time. A larger stage for
lawyers and business men, 1 felt, wait
cd there"
No Thought of Tunnels Then.
\ wife and three children accompanied
him. As he crossed the Hudson on a
ferry. William G. McAdoo would not
have believed the day was coming when
he should ride under it through a tunnel
OF his own. The potentialities of a
stranger carrying a carpet-bag and an
umbrella happily are not visible in Wall
Street or known to himself.
The tunnel and those other tunnels
which were built afterward have long
since grown to be an old and daring
the man who caused them to be carried
through mud and blasted through rock,
contrary to much disbelief that the work
ever could be done, is almost unknown.
He has talked in the past, but not about
himself
1t is twenty-one years since this long
legged, slim bodied, imaginative and
boldly adventurous Southerner walked
up the hill from the river bank and was
lost TO view in the onrushing Broadway
throng. The railroad and tunnel COM
pany which he organized is bonded for
81 OOO.OOO He meant at first to spend
Sl,O0OUOO and build two miles of track.
Instead he built nine times that length.
ON March last he became Secretary
of the Treasury.
How can his power Ge explained? His
eyes, his nose. and his skill at state
ment have been mentioned. Then, too,
ne is an apostle and a poet. His is the
vision which sees castles in the heavens,
and his is the genius which turns the
castles into bricks, cut stone. and NOR
tar. His dreams were inherited from
his father; his genius for actualizing the !
dreams from his mother.
Judge McAdoo, his son told me, had !
little aptitude toward money. He wrote |
verses and a book on geology, and |
studied botany and astronomy. He |
took me into the woods and fields when |
I was a boy" the Secretary said, "and |
taught me the names of stars, forest
trees, and wild flowers"
At the outbreak OF the Mexican war
he recruited a company-squirrel hunt
ers for most participated down the Ten
nessee, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers in
barges to New Orleans, going thence to
Vera Cruz and fighting in all the battles
from the seacoast and over the noun
tains to Mexico City. He was six feet
and four inches in stature.
Uses No Liquor or Tobacco.
Up to his death, which occurred only
4 few years since, he never had tooth
1rawn or doctored. Like him physically.
McAdoo did not begin to use
spectacles at his desk until a short while
20. His teeth are as solid as were
Inc teeth OF his father. He does not
smoke. II am not a teetotailer," he said.
but 1 have no liking for liquor and
therefore, do not drink it."
Though he will be fifty years old on
he last day of this month. his hair, part
d on the side and brushed fat against
lis head, is as black as it ever was.
.ately. he has taken up tennis with DR..
ITayson, the Presidents physician, but
or years ne had no regular bodily eXer
Use. 81 have lived on the energy" lie
'emarked, which 1 stored up IN my
.outh while chopping wood, husking corn,
nd picking cotton
After the Federals marched into Ten |
lessee TO fight at Fort Donelson, Island |
80. 10, Shiloh, Chickamauga, and other
Iaces. the McAdoos retreated toward |
Georgia. Judge McAdoo, because of in
uries received in the Mexican war, was I
xem.1 L from military duty, but he took l
art in many of the battles in Georgia J
gainst Gen. Sherman. Mrs. McAdoo had d
cen a Floyd and owned a rice planta- q
ion. {
John Floyd, her father, came from a Il
olonial ship-building family. He was a c
rigadier general in the war with the h
reek Indians. As major general. he c
the defenses at Savannah l
uring the war of 1872 with Great Britain. t
ecretary McAdoo has several letters IL
'hich were written to John Floyd by his l.
-iend, Andrew Jackson: also letter Z
rom James Monroe then Secretary of s
Var in President Madison'S Cabinet, say
lg that peace had been negotiated be-
xeen the United States and England and
rdering that the news be communicated a
} the British officers.
In her flight to her plantation near the u
eacoast, Mrs. McAdoo found refuge at o
farmhouse just outside of Mariette, Ga. Il
here, on October 81, 1868, William Gibbs b
IcAdoo was born. Three weeks later, j
[rs. McAdoo went to Milledgevile, where "
le family remained for thirteen years. d.
Very Hard Times I'm Georgia. :,
The rico tioy, n,