The Washington herald., 1914-03-23
Statesmen, Real and Near.
BY FRED c. KELLY.

| BY FIXED u hELL1.
Representative John Jacob Rogers, OF
Lowell, Massachusetts, is thrice eligible
to be a charter member Of the Harvard
Association OF Youngest Members OF
Congress
A great many of our Youngest Mem
bers Of Congress were turned out Of Har-
ward six or seven years ago. The asso-
ciation includes Rogers and Billy Murray,
both OF Massachusetts. and Lathrop
Brown, of New York. none Of whom had
accumulated much more than the thirty
years necessary for membership in Con-
gress at the time of his election. Lathrop
Brown even now is barely thirty-one.
and he is not only the youngest member
OF the present Congress, but has the
ldsintiest cutest little mustache in the
entire House. Just a year or two ahead
OF these young chaps at Harvard was
Franklin Roosevelt, youngest person ever
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His
uncle Theodore, who is one of the great
est as well as one of the best-known liv-
ing ex-Presidents of the United states,
was also a Harvard man. Many more
cases could be cited.
All this teaches us, or ought to. that
being sent to Harvard cannot keep man
down IL he has the stun in him. People
who go about cracking crude jokes at the
expense Of Harvard University and
twittlng those who have attended that
school, might perhaps employ their time
more profitabIy in other lines. A young
man Of the right sort can go to Harvard
and get just as good an education as he
could at any institution in the country.
But this little piece started out to be
about Representative John Jacob Rogers,
and not a learned dissertation on higher
education.
.?? -? ??? ??? :?
Yes. why. indeed. is Rogers three times
eligible to be a member of the Harvard
Association OF Youngest Members of
Congress?
, l. simply because he has been gradu-
ated from that place three times as often
as any Of the other Youngest Members
He has three degrees from there, whereas
none of the other members boasts-if he
does boast about it-of more than one.
a. B.. a. NJ. LII. B.-those are his de-
grees. II took him seven years TO get
them, but at the end OF that time he
was a regular schOlar-though still hu-
man being. He is probably the most
scholarly man OF his years in Congress.
His disposition is to go clear down deep
handful of gravel of the bottom.
From early bOyhood Rogers has had
desire to see and TO know. When he was
nine years of age il occurred to Rogers
that he would like to know more about
the properties OF sulphur matches His
parents seemed to have certain inforna-
tIon about matches that they were trying
to keep from him, and the mystery Of it
preyed on his mind. One afternoon
when his parents were away, Rogers got
a box of the forbidden matches and went
I'D into the hayIoft of the family barn
where he could be alone and experiment.
dis plan was to strike the matches one
at a time and make careful observation
Of what happened.
When Rogers father returned and
found only ashes where his barn had
been before. he said things that discour-
aged the boy from studying things in the
concrete From that time OH he has had
a tendency to stick to the abstract Up
to the time he came to Washington Rog-
ers probably could not have named on
hand a dozen members of Congress. Yet
he knew a great many things about
American Constitutional history. and had
spent considerable time abroad studying
VG.Ous forms OF government from the
point of view OF the scholar. His favor
lite method of ascertsining how to pro-
coed with a given proposition is to read
two or three dozen large books on the
subject Let us suppose, for example.
that Rogers was interested in a bill to
regulate hack stands n the District of
Columbia. His first move would be to
da l over TO the Congressional Library
and find out what the Medes and Per-
slams did in regard to hack stands.
Gradually he would trace the thing down
to modern times.
However. coaXing facts out of books Is
not the only way Rogers has of learning
about the world in which he lives. He
may look at things from the scholarly
angle. but he always looks. For instance.
since he has been in Congress he has
never failed to walk when tourneying be-
tween his home and the Capitol and has
never made the trip twice over the same
route. In that way he has covered prac-
ticaIly every little cross street in that
part OF Washington. Then. with those
and other streets fresh in his mind, a
map of the city before him. he sits down
and reads histories of the National Cap
ital.
Rogers has today a burning ambition.
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