Scotland's Mark on America by George Fraser Black
page 55 of 243 (22%)
page 55 of 243 (22%)
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century.
STATE. James Gillespie Blaine (1830-93), Secretary (1881, 1889-92) and unsuccessful candidate for President in 1884. John Hay (1838-1905), one of the ablest Secretaries of State (1898-1905) this country ever had, was also of Scottish descent. He also held several diplomatic posts in Europe (1865-70), culminating in Ambassador to Great Britain (1897-98). AGRICULTURE. James Wilson (1835-1920), Secretary (1897-1913) under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was Regent of Iowa State University, and in 1891 was elected to the chair of Practical Agriculture in the College of Agriculture and Director of the State Experiment Stations. He was wonderfully successful in the expansion and administration of the "most useful public department in the world." LABOR. William Bauchop Wilson, born in Blantyre, near Glasgow, Scotland, in 1862, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America (1900-09); Member of Congress (1907-13), and Chairman of the Committee on Labor in the sixty-second Congress, Secretary of Labor (1913). POSTMASTER-GENERAL. The first postal service in the Colonies was organized by Andrew Hamilton, a native of Edinburgh, who obtained a patent for a postal scheme from the British Crown in 1694. A memorial stone on the southwest corner of the New York Post Office at Thirty-third Street commemorates the fact. John Maclean (1785-1861), Postmaster-General from 1823 to 1829, was later Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court of Ohio, and unsuccessful candidate |
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