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Youth--Education--Characteristics

Politics--Newspaper Work--New York--Buying into Tacoma News --Marriage--Sale of Newspaper

LETTERS: To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore

Law--Drafting New City Charter--Elected as City and County Attorney-- Gubernatorial Campaign--Mayoralty Campaign--Earthquake --Appointment as Interstate Commerce Commissioner

LETTERS: To P. T. Spurgeon To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To Lyman Naugle To John H. Wigmore To John H. Wigmore To William R. Wheeler To Orva G. Williams To the Iroquois Club, Los Angeles, California To Isadore B. Dockweiler To Edward B. Whitney To Hon. Theodore Roosevelt To Benjamin Ide Wheeler To William E. Smythe To John H. Wigmore To Benjamin Ide Wheeler To William R. Wheeler To John H. Wigmore To William R. Wheeler

Increased Powers of Interstate Commerce Commission--Harriman Inquiry--Railroad Regulation--Letters to Roosevelt

LETTERS: To Edward F. Adams To Benjamin Ide Wheeler To Elihu Root To E. B. Beard To George W. Lane To Charles K. McClatchy To Lawrence F. Abbott To John H. Wigmore To Mrs. Franklin K. Lane To Theodore Roosevelt To John H. Wigmore To William R. Wheeler To Lawrence F. Abbott To Charles K. McClatchy To Charles K. McClatchy To John Crawford Burns To Theodore Roosevelt To Samuel G. Blythe To Sidney E. Mezes To John H. Wigmore To George W. Lane To Carl Snyder From Oliver Wendell Holmes To Oliver Wendell Holmes To John H. Wigmore To Daniel Willard To John McNaught

Politics--Democratic Convention--Nomination of Wilson --Report on Express Case--Democratic Victory--Problems for New Administration --On Cabinet Appointments

LETTERS: To Albert Shaw To Curt G. Pfeiffer To George W. Lane To Oscar S. Straus To Benjamin Ide Wheeler, To George W. Lane. To John H. Wigmore. To Timothy Spellacy. To Adolph C. Miller. To William F. McComba, To Hugo K. Asher. To Francis G. Newlands. To Woodrow Wilson. To William J. Bryan. To James D. Phelan. To Herbert Harley. To Charles K. McClatchy. To Ernest S. Simpson. To Fairfax Harrison. To James P. Brown. To Adolph C. Miller. To Edward M. House. To Benjamin Ide Wheeler. To Sidney E. Mezes. To John H. Wigmore. To John H. Wigmore. To Joseph N. Teal. To Edward M. House. To Mitchell Innes.

Appointment as Secretary of the Interior--Reorganization of the Department--Home Club--Bills on Public Lands

LETTERS:

To John H. Wigmore. To Walter H. Page. To Edwin A. Alderman. To Theodore Roosevelt. To Lawrence F. Abbott. To William M. Bole. To Fairfax Harrison. To Frank Reese. To Mark Sullivan. To Edward M. House. To James H. Barry. To Edward F. Adams. To Hon. Woodrow Wilson, To Benjamin Ide Wheeler. To Albert Shaw. To Charles K. Field. To Frederic J. Lane. To Edward E. Leake. To William R. Wheeler. To--. To his Brother on his Birthday. To Cordenio Severance. To Hon. Woodrow Wilson. To Theodore Roosevelt. To Hon. Woodrow Wilson. To Lawrence F. Abbott.

Endorsement of Hoover--German Audacity--LL.D. from Alma Mater --England's Sea Policy--Christmas letters

LETTERS: To William J. Bryan. To John Crawford Burns. To Alexander Vogelsang. To John H. Wigmore. To John Crawford Burns. To Edward J. Wheeler. To John Crawford Burns. To William P. Lawlor. To William G. McAdoo. To John Crawford Burns. To E. W. Scripps. To George W. Wickersham. To Frederic J. Lane. To John Crawford Burns. To Eugene A. Avery. To John F. Davis. To Dick Mead. To John Crawford Burns. To Sidney E. Mezes. To Cordenio Severance. To Frederick Dixon. To Robert H. Patchin. To Francis R. Wall. To John H. Wigmore. To Mrs. Adolph C. Miller. To Mrs. Magnus Andersen. To Mrs. Adolph C. Miller.

On Writing English--Visit to Monticello--Citizenship for Indians--On Religion--American-Mexican Joint Commission

Cabinet Meetings--National Council of Defense--Bernstorff--War--Plan for Railroad Consolidation--U-Boat Sinkings Revealed--Alaska

Notes on Cabinet Meetings--School Gardens--A Democracy Lacks Foresight--Use of National Resources--Washington in War-time--The Sacrifice of War--Farms for Soldiers

LETTERS: To Franklin K. Lane, Jr. To George W. Lane. To Albert Shaw. To Walter H. Page. To John Lyon. To Frank Lyon. To Miss Genevieve King. To John McNaught. To Hon. Woodrow Wilson. To Allan Pollok. To E. S. Pillsbury. To William Marion Reedy. Notes on Cabinet Meetings. To Daniel Willard. To James H. Hawley. To Samuel G. Blythe. To George W. Lane. To Edgar C. Bradley.

After-war Problems--Roosevelt Memorials--Americanization--Religion --Responsibility of Press--Resignation

Suggestions to Democratic Nominee for President--On Election of Senators--Lost Leaders--Lincoln's Eyes--William James's Letters

LETTERS: To Mrs. Ralph Ellis.

Need for Democratic Program--Religious Faith--Men who have Influenced Thought--A Sounder Industrial Life --A Super-University for Ideas --"I Accept"--Fragment

FRANKLIN K. LANE

FRANKLIN K. LANE With his younger brothers, George and Frederic.

FRANKLIN K. LANE At eighteen.

FRANKLIN K. LANE As City and County Attorney.

FRANKLIN K. LANE, MRS. LANE, MRS. MILLER, AND ADOLPH C. MILLER

FRANKLIN K. LANE WITH Ethan Allen, Superintendent of Rainier National Park, Washington

FRANKLIN K. LANE AND George B. Dorr In Lafayette National Park, Mount Desert Island, Maine.

FRANKLIN K. LANE IN 1917 Taken in Lafayette National Park.

"LANE PEAK," Tatoosh Range, Rainier National Park

DATES

FAMILY NAMES

Franklin K. Lane was the eldest of four children. Father: Christopher S. Lane. Mother: Caroline Burns. Brothers: George W. Lane. Frederic J. Lane. Sister: Maude . He was married to Anne Wintermute, and had two children: Franklin K. Lane, Jr. . Nancy Lane .

THE LETTERS OF FRANKLIN K. LANE

INTRODUCTION

Youth--Education--Characteristics

Although Franklin Knight Lane was only fifty-seven years old when he died, May 18, 1921, he had outlived, by many years, the men and women who had most influenced the shaping of his early life. Of his mother he wrote, in trying to comfort a friend, "The mystery and the ordering of this world grows altogether inexplicable. ... It requires far more religion or philosophy than I have, to say a real word that might console one who has lost those who are dear to him. Ten years ago my mother died, and I have never been reconciled to her loss." Again he wrote of her, to his sister, when their brother Frederic--the joyous, outdoor comrade of his youth--was in his last illness, "Dear Fritz, dear, dear boy, how I wish I could be there with him, though I could do no good. ... Each night I pray for him, and I am so much of a Catholic, that I pray to the only Saint I know, or ever knew, and ask her to help. If she lives, her mind can reach the minds of the doctors. ... I don't need her to intercede with God, but I would like her to intercede with men. Why, Oh! why, do we not know whether she is or not? Then all the Universe would be explained to me."

From those who knew him best from childhood, no word of him is left, and none from the two men whose strength and ideality colored his morning at the University of California--Dr. George H. Howison, the "darling Howison" of the William James' Letters, and Dr. Joseph H. Le Conte, the wise and gentle geologist. "Names that were Sierras along my skyline," Lane said of such men. To Dr. Howison he wrote in 1913, when entering President Wilson's Cabinet, "No letter that I have ever received has given me more real pleasure than yours, and no man has been more of an inspiration than you."

The sealing of almost every source of intimate knowledge of the boy, who was a mature man at twenty-two, has left the record of the early period curiously scant. Fortunately, there are in his letters and speeches some casual allusions to his childhood and youth, and a few facts and anecdotes of the period from members of his family, from school, college, and early newspaper associates. In 1888, the story begins to gather form and coherence, for at that date we have the first of his own letters that have been preserved, written to his lifelong friend, John H. Wigmore. With many breaks, especially in the early chapters, the sequence of events, and his moods toward them, pour from him with increasing fullness and spontaneity, until the day before he died.

All the later record exists in his letters, most of them written almost as unconsciously as the heart sends blood to the remotest members of the body; and they come back, now, in slow diastole, bearing within themselves evidence of the hour and day and place of their inception; letters written with the stub of a pencil on copy-paper, at some sleepless dawn; or, long ago, in the wide- spaced type of a primitive traveling typewriter, and dated, perhaps, on the Western desert, while he was on his way to secure water for thirsty settlers; or dashed off in the glowing moment just after a Cabinet meeting, with the heat of the discussion still in his veins; others on the paper of the Department of the Interior, with the symbol of the buffalo--chosen by him--richly embossed in white on the corner, and other letters, soiled and worn from being long carried in the pocket and often re-read, by the brave old reformer who had hailed Lane when he first entered the lists. This is the part of the record that cannot be transcribed.

Franklin Knight Lane was born on July 15, 1864, on his father's farm near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, the eldest of four children, all born within a few years. The low, white farmhouse that is his birthplace still stands pleasantly surrounded by tall trees, and at one side a huge, thirty-foot hedge of hawthorn blooms each spring. His father, Christopher S. Lane, was at the time of his son's birth a preacher. Later, when his voice was affected by recurrent bronchitis, he became a dentist. Lane speaks of him several times in his letters as a Presbyterian, and alludes to the strict orthodoxy of his father's faith, especially in regard to an active and personal devil.

In 1917, when in the Cabinet, during President Wilson's second term of office, Lane wrote to his brother, "To-night we give a dinner to the Canadians, Sir George Foster, the acting Premier, and Sir Joseph Polk, the Under-Secretary of External Affairs, who, by the way, was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and says that he heard our father preach."

But it was from his mother, whose maiden name was Caroline Burns, and who was of direct Scotch ancestry, that Franklin Lane drew most of his physical and many of his mental traits. From her he derived the firmly-modeled structure of his face; the watchful Scotch eyes; a fine white skin, that weathered to an even brown, later in life; remarkably sound teeth, large and regular, giving firm support to the round contour of the face; and the fresh line of his lips, that was a marked family trait. A description of him, when he was candidate for Governor of California, at thirty-eight, was written by Grant Wallace. Cleared of some of the hot sweetness of a campaign rhapsody it reads:--

"Picture a man a little above the average height ... with the deep chest and deep voice that always go with the born leader of men; the bigness and strength of the hands ... the clear eye and broad, firm, and expressive mouth, and the massive head that suggests irresistibly a combination of Napoleon and Ingersoll."

These two resemblances, to Napoleon and to Robert Ingersoll, were frequently rediscovered by others, in later years.

The description concludes by saying, "That Lane is a man of earnestness and vigorous action is shown in ... every movement. You sit down to chat with him in his office. As he grows interested in the subject, he kicks his chair back, thrusts his hands way to the elbows in his trouser pockets and strides up and down the room. With deepening interest he speaks more rapidly and forcibly, and charges back and forth across the carpet with the heavy tread of a grenadier." As an older man this impetuosity was somewhat modified. What an early interviewer called his "frank man-to-manness" became a manner of grave and cordial concentration. With the warm, full grasp of his hand in greeting, he gave his complete attention to the man before him. That, and his rich, strong laugh of pleasure, and the varied play of his moods of earnestness, gayety, and challenge, are what men remember best.

In 1871, the mother, father, and four children, after visiting two brothers of Mrs. Lane's on the way, finally reached the town of Napa, California.

"They came," says an old schoolmate of Napa days, "bringing with them enough of the appearance and mannerisms of their former environment to make us youngsters 'sit up and take notice,' for the children were dressed in kilts, topped by handsome black velvet and silk plaid caps. However, these costumes were soon discarded, for at school the children found themselves the center of both good--and bad-natured gibes, until they were glad to dress as was the custom here." The "Lane boys," he says, were then put into knee-trousers, "and Franklin, who was large for his age and quite stout, looked already too old for this style," and so continued to be annoyed by the children, until he put a forcible end to it. "He 'licked' one of the ringleaders," says the chronicler, and won to peace. "As we grew to know Franklin ... his right to act became accepted ... . There was always something about his personality which made one feel his importance."

The little California community was impressed by the close intimacy of the home-life of the Canadian family--closer than was usual in hurriedly settled Western towns. The father found time to take all three boys on daily walks. Another companion remembers seeing them starting off together for a day's hunting and fishing. But it was the mother, who read aloud to them and told them stories and exacted quick obedience from them, who was the real power in the house. There were regular family prayers, and family singing of hymns and songs.

This last custom survived among the brothers and sister through all the years. Even after all had families of their own, and many cares, some chance reunion, or a little family dinner would, at parting, quicken memory and, with hats and coats already on, perhaps, in readiness to separate to their homes, they would stand together and shout, in unison, some song of the hour or some of their old Scotch melodies with that pleasant harmony of voices of one timbre, heard only in family singing.

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