New Britain herald., 1915-04-16

 BY "GRAVY."
JIM JEFFRIES, FORTY TO-DAY, IS QUALIFIED FOR PRESIDENCY.

Congratulations are due today to that distinguished, if somewhat ex- tinguished, American, James J. Jeff fries. The great man of Los Angeles, will be forty years old today. AL though 1t may never have occurred to Jeff, he has the makings of first rate presidential timber. In launching his candidacy for the exalted Job which will be decided at the polls by the sovereign voters of the United States next year Jeff might announce him. self as possessed of the following qualifications:
 He is a male.
 2-He is white.
 3-He is of legal age.
 4-He is native-bor citizen of the United States.
 5-He was born in Ohio, where most presidents come from.
 6-He is a clergyman's son.
 He was born in a log cabin
 That last is the clincher which makes Jeff loom up as a real presi- dantial possibility. Practically all men are males, majority are white,
 
 quirement of thirty-five, vast numbers have been born in the United States and no small proportion of them in Ohio, clergymen are notoriously ad- dicted to large families, but mighty few men of today can boast of having been born in a log cabin. And, for 8 man who wants to be chief execu- tive of the U. $. A., that sort of a house is the very best of all to be born in.
 It was a crude and tiny edifice of logs, on a farm mostly timber, in the rube-arbs of Carroll, O., where Jeff first saw the light o'day on April 15, 1875. Alexis c. Jefferies, the great mans papa, was a sturdy son of the soil descended from race of orawny, daring pioneers. Farmer Alexis was proficient with the plough and the hoe and the axe, but at about the time of Jeff's birth he laid these aside and went out to preach the gospel to the Ohio heather. Jeff's father didn't believe in houses of worship, and did his preaching in the open air.
 Jeff was about six years old when the Rev. Alexis found the Ohio neighborhood becoming too civilized and we'll settled to suit him, and gathering his family together, he set out for the wild, free, woody west. They didn't travel in Pullmans, but eventually they reached their goal, which was the Arroyo -Seco Canon, near Los. Angeles. Jeff occasionally sat in at school, but he was. educated principally at home, and when he had grown into strapping lad he got job in Los Angeles factory as an ironworker. There he scrapped with the other hands and gradually at tained a local reputation. It was a long time, however, before Jeff could be convinced that he had the makings of (. professional fighter. His ring career is usually given as beginning with his San Francisco battle with Dan Long of Denver in 1896. Nearly three years before that however, Jeff, then eighteen, fought the famous negro, Hank Griffin, and Jeffries knocked out the clever veteran in the fourteenth round. Hank had pub lic1y expressed the opinion, before a crowd of sports in a Los Angeles saloon, that he could lick any hombre in the town, and Jeff was picked as the proper person to reduce Griffin's bump of self-esteem. And Jeff did! still Jeff didn't have any Idea of be- coming a professional fighter until he met Dan Long. He put tic Denverite to sleep in the second round and the purse of thousand bones looked so good to the young giant, who had then just attained his majority, that he de- c1ded to buy stack of chips in @ game which held out such golden re- wards, far beyond that to be achieved as a boilermaker,