N the opening hours of the present year there came to Albany two Republican leaders, Herbert Parsons, President of the New York County Committee, and Timothy L. Woodruff, chairman of the State Committee. The former had recently forced a reluctant State convention to nominate the newly elected Governor; the latter represented the official head of the organization, which had elected its nominee. They came to ask the appointment to a semi-judicial position of a Brooklyn district leader; they came in the customary fashion to offer the regulation endorsement.

"But the man is a district leader," objected the new Governor. Such was the spirit in which Charles Evans Hughes began his administration.

Nor is this incident so slight as it. might seem. To Parsons and Woodruff this objection smacked of revolution. It was, moreover, an epitome of much that followed. For a generation the public life of New York has been dominated by a single tradition. In fair weather this tradition was denominated "responsible party government; in less happy days it had come to be designated as "boss rule." But underlying all titles was the fundamental idea of a partisan organization; of party principle enforced by the application of patronage. When Governor Hughes thus rejected the test of party interest and proposed that of public efficiency, he levelled his first and most startling blow at a venerable tradition.

It was precisely because Governor Hughes has continued to attack tradition that one of the most acute observers of public life in the State and nation supplied the following answer to the riddle the career and success of Governor Hughes has set for politician and citizen alike. He said:

We have been living in an era of Cavalier heroes-Roosevelt, Jerome and their kind have reproduced something of the spirit and the personal charm of the Prince Ruperts of other days. Governor Hughes, on the contrary represents the twentiethcentury Roundhead.

Without pursuing this characterization too far, there is yet a sound basis of fact underlying it. It is not merely that the earlier years of the present Governor were spent in a Baptist parsonage under influences suggestive of Puritan rigidity. It is not alone that the counsel to the Armstrong Committee was the organizer and first teacher of the famous Rockefeller Bible class. Nor is it entirely comprehended in the singular austerity and uncompromising literalness with which the chief executive has applied the common law and the Ten Commandments to the financial and political world. It is rather that, in addition to these circumstances, the whole public life and service of the man Hughes have been destructive of a tradition and a system, and in his great fight he has displayed something of the stiff-necked and iconoclastic spirit of the Roundhead.

The student of the life of Governor Hughes will find a surprising continuity of spirit running through the

whole story. In the earliest childhood he will find a dominant note of work; in the years of early manhood he will find this same tireless and relentless spirit displayed, culminating in that great insurance investigation, where it first found real public recognition.

Should he care to pursue the subject farther, he will find it still exemplified in the Executive. Chamber, where the lights burn nightly until after midnight. Yet, always, back of the work will be descried the fundamental conviction that the task represented a mission, quite as much as it contributed to a

career.

"I believe you have a call from God to enter the profession of the law," was the advice given the youth. Hughes, at the close of his college life, by one of his devout professors, and this message reveals alike the incentive and the spirit of his professional life.

Governor Hughes was born in Glens Falls forty-five years ago. His father, a native of Wales, was a Baptist clergyman; his mother had been a school teacher. The first significant anecdote of the boy Hughes is told of the period when he was less than five years old. He had begun to go to school, and after two or three days of attendance went to his father's study and laid on the desk a paper on which he had written, "Charles E. Hughes, his plan of study."

"Papa, I don't like it at school," said the boy, "teacher goes over and over the same thing and I get nervous. I could do better at home."

The puzzled father looked at the paper and found the boy had drawn up a plan of study and recitation at home. He accepted the plan and for several years the young student followed his own schedule.

A few years later the young Hughes entered the public schools of New York City, and was duly graduated from Public School Number 35, delivering the salutatory of his class. During these earlier years his reading was confined exclusively to works of science, and it was not until he en

tered college that he began his reading of fiction-even then it was in a systematic fashion. At thirteen the boy was ready for college and his father took him to Hamilton, but the faculty thought him too young and turned him away. The boy waited. a year, but it was a year of work, not rest, and the following year he entered Hamilton as a sophomore.

"The faculty still thought him too young," Dr. Hughes once said, "but I told them I thought I knew the power of the boy for endurance better than they." A year later the boy quitted Hamilton for Brown. He had found the work there "too easy." Although he entered Brown in the middle of the course, he was graduated with honors, holding third place in his class and winning various prizes. From Brown Mr. Hughes went to Delhi, in Delaware County, where he taught in the local academy during the morning and read law afternoons and evenings. During the last campaign Governor Hughes spoke in Delhi and there he met one of his old pupils.

"We used to study algebra together, did n't we?" inquired the candidate, by way of introducing the old acquaintance to a group of reporters, who stood by.

"Wa-al, ya-as,' was the deliberate answer, "and after six weeks I guess you knew all about it." From Delhi Hughes went to the Columbia Law School, winning new honors here and becoming an instructor. During one vacation, at this time, Mr. Hughes studied shorthand, to save time in making notes of lectures; such was the spirit of his academic work. From Columbia Mr. Hughes went to private practice of the law, and subsequently, because of bad health, went to the Cornell Law School as a professor.

"The pleasantest days of my life. were spent here, far above Cayuga's waters," he told an audience at Ithaca during the last campaign, and he has admitted that he quitted this congenial work with extreme reluctance. Something of the academic spirit, moreover, has clung to the

man ever since. After several years at Ithaca he returned to New York and the practice of the law. Here the first period of his life ends.

"Life is only work-and then more work-and then more work," he once said, and in a measure this epitomizes these earlier years.

Up to the time he became counsel to the Stevens Gas Commission Governor Hughes had never had any intimate acquaintance with political life. Although a stanch Republican, it had been his boast that he had never intentionally voted a a machine-made ticket; politically, he was, then, an independent. The question as to who "discovered Hughes" is still unsettled. Yet it is an odd coincidence that Henry W. Taft,-brother of the Secretary of War, a rival for presidential honors not impossibly,by his recommendation of the lawyer Hughes for counsel to the Stevens Committee, has first claim to this honor. Hughes had opposed Taft in an important litigation growing out of the beet sugar industry, and had somewhat unfortunately impressed his opponent with his power to grasp the technical and chemical phases of the question, phases which decided the case. It is a matter of record, moreover, that Hughes several times declined the offer, and ultimately accepted it only after he had been convinced that it would be unlimited by political considerations. When the State Senate, under the leadership of McCarren, defeated Hughes's 80-cent-gas bill, Mr. Hughes had his first practical experience with public life and the Senate "Old Guard."

Recalled from Europe a few months later to undertake the far greater insurance investigation, Mr. Hughes asked and received from the legislative committee, on the first day, a bunch of blank subpoenas; henceforth the witnesses were of his own choosing. The marvellous story of that investigation needs no repetition. When it was finished the secrets of a generation of political history were public property. Odell,

Depew, Platt and a score of other politicians had gone down in the wreck and a financial dynasty had been overthrown. It is no exaggeration to say that contemporary State politics date from this investigation. It was during the course of this investigation that Odell offered Mr. Hughes the Republican nomination for mayor of New York. The motive of the offer was not misunderstood, and, with his work to complete, Mr. Hughes declined to be turned aside by any political honors. Having completed that work and written the monumental report of the committee, Mr. Hughes prepared to go back to a law practice certain to be immensely remunerative. Here, one may say, ended the second period in his career.

It soon became apparent, however, that the Armstrong Committee's investigation had wrought a political revolution. The alliance between the corporation and the politician, often suspected in the past, had at last been proven. As a result a tremendous public wrath was stirred against those political leaders, under whose domination the situation had developed.

Public indignation amounted almost to hysteria and was obviously crystallizing against the Republican party and about Hearst. To escape the consequences of its dereliction, the Republican party unwillingly and under duress nominated the man who had evoked the storm. The campaign that followed was unique in the history of New York State. The unsought nomination. Governor Hughes accepted, but he rejected the party which gave it. He declined to defend the party record; he refused to accept responsibility for the past; he gave his personal pledge to submit the State departments, long under suspicion, to a new Armstrong investigation. It was a peculiar fact that his campaign utterances were legal rather than popular in form. Despite all urging he refused to “insurrect the public mind."

"There has been too much loose talk, already," talk, already," was his stern re

joinder, when urged to "warm up." He put it more humorously another time, when confronted with the duty of kissing babies

"No, I will not make any appeal to the passions of the populace," was his droll refusal.

"If I am elected governor," became the invariable preface to his personal campaign addresses. But he went up and down the State as no candidate in a generation has done. Night and day he travelled and spoke. Experienced newspaper men grew weary under the terrific strain, but not the candidate; his voice might fail, but never his energy.

"Whatever the result, I want to know that the fight has been fought for all it was worth," was his explanation for his toil.

The importance of this campaign to the future of the Governor must not be overlooked. He had sounded the depths of political corruption in his investigations. Here he sounded. the depths of popular resentment and indignation. In his victory and the defeat of his party Mr. Hughes grasped the salient fact that he had received a personal commission from the voters of the State to "clean house." Thus, it was but natural that his first act as Governor should be to break with tradition, as has been indicated. His second break was no less significant. Under Hill, Black and Odell the government of the State had become centred in the "back room," the inner private office in the Executive Chamber. Here corporation lawyers had bought legislation from party leaders in return for campaign contributions. Here

had centred much that the Armstrong Committee had revealed. Governor Hughes removed the centre of gravity of the state administration out into the "big room." Henceforth politicians and citizens, on an equal footing and in plain sight, waited their turn to talk with the Governor, and the "side door" was permanently closed.

Hardly had he taken office when the Governor was forced to name a

Superintendent of Public Works. The position was the most important within his gift. It comprehended the expenditure of $101,000,000 for the new Erie Canal. Governor Hughes selected Ex-Senator Stevens, who had conducted the gas investigation. Stevens was a millionaire, who had owned street railroads and banks and was used to dealing with big things. Of his fitness there could be no question. His record in the State Senate had been clean and honorable. But he had been retired to private life, because of a factional fight with the Wadsworths, the Republican overlords of western New York.

"We are against him and we are the regular organization," protested the Wadsworths.

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Of a piece with all the rest was Governor Hughes's first message to the Legislature. All over the State there was cry against public service. corporations. In New York City transit conditions had become intolerable. Yet the State maintained a Railroad Commission and paid five. politicians $8,000 apiece annually to regulate" these corporations. An ex-chairman of the Republican State Committee and the most powerful single county leader in the State were among its members. It was the fortified centre of political patronage and to the public it stood for the alliance of the politician and the corporation against them. In his first message Governor Hughes recommended its abolition, together with that of various kindred commissions. When this recommendation was made, politicians turned pale at a step so revolutionary. In its place, the Governor recommended two real public service commissions.