The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-01-29

but he doesn't get hold OF any great
amount of it, although the salaries paid are in a
general way more than fairly comfortable.
Robert Wicklife Woolley is one of the latest
of Americas well-known newspaper men to be
appointed to a position in the treasury depart
ment. AS someone else has put it, Woolley makes
more money than any other man in the United
States, but the personal difficulty is thai he is
not allowed to keep the proceeds of his manu-
facture. He is the director of the mint, and every
body knows that the province of the mint is-to
turn out money for the multitudinous uses of the
people of these United States.
There are not many newspaper men in the
country who are better known than this present
official of Uncle Sans government. Woolley
looks about thirty years old, but he can add quite
a number of years on to that and CIV no lie to
the date of his birth. He has been a reporter, a
sporting editor, a managing editor, an editor, and
a writer of magazine articles, and today he can
pick up any one of his old jobs and do it justice,
and if the whirligig of politics in time shall thrust
him forth from the portals of the treasury de.
partment, he probably and very naturally will
turn to tread in the old accustomed ways.
The writer of this has known Woolley for a
good many years, and worked with him side by
side for a considerable length of time on a great
Chicago daily. Woolley was then a sporting edi-
tor, He is an outdoor man, who loves the things
which all full-blooded Americans love, and, more
over, he knows how to write about them, whether
it be as a close finish on a Kentucky track or a
IA innings 80 far 0 to 0 at the National league
grounds in New York city. Woolley loves sport
for sports sake, but it must not be supposed for
a minute that sport ever occupied the major part
of his time.
From boyhood until this day the present direc-
tor of the mint has been a student of sociological
conditions, of economics and of the ways and
means of legislation to get for the people what
seems to the progressive-minded the things which
they ought to have. Convictions that certain
lines of procedure were the right ones to follow,
- - 90 liz f1A haun Oiunn
Robert w. Woolley many strenuous and exciting
hours during his long newspaper career.
1t is not necessary to explain to the people of
the United States what a political ring is, nor is
it necessary to explain what an invisible govern
ment is. Certain brave spirits in newspaperdom
have been fighting rings and invisible government
for years, and it has made no difference to the
courageous ones whether the ring was composed
of men of their own party, or whether the in.
visible government likewise was tinged with a
partisan color of a hue ordinarily deemed 'ad-
mirable by the crusaders. The director of the
mint is a Democrat, but he has fought Democrats
when they were trying to exploit the people for
selfish ends.
Not long after he entered newspaper work the
director of the mint had a time of it," which
tested his courage and the sincerity of his convic-
tons. l am not going to mention the name of
the place where a certain thing happened, but
unquestionably the scene of it will be recognized
by many and the details will be remembered by
men who have not yet arrived on the borders of
middle age.
Down in the South, and not very far in the
South, either. Robert w. Woolley was once
managing editor OF a newspaper of prominence
in a city of considerable size. The chief editor
of his paper and the mayor of the town were
engaged in a row., for the mayor, 1t was believed.
was connected with a municipal political combi-
nation which, as the editor viewed it, was far
from being an institution intended to benefit the
people of the community. Finally the lie was
passed, and the lie is, or was, anyway. a sure
fighting word in certain communities.
One morning Mr.. Woolley went down to the
newspaper office and found the mayor of the town
and his SOC. each with a gun in hand, holding the