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Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him by Joseph P. Tumulty
page 9 of 590 (01%)
My dear father, Philip Tumulty, a wounded soldier of the Civil War, after
serving an apprenticeship as an iron moulder under a delightful, whole-
souled Englishman, opened a little grocery store on Wayne Street, Jersey
City, where were laid the foundation stones of his modest fortune and
where, by his fine common sense, poise, and judgment, he soon established
himself as the leader of a Democratic faction in that neighbourhood. This
modest little place soon became a political laboratory for me. In the
evening, around the plain, old-fashioned counters, seated upon barrels and
boxes, the interesting characters of the neighbourhood gathered,
representing as they did the leading active political forces in that
quaint cosmopolitan community.

No matter how far back my memory turns, I cannot recall when I did not
hear politics discussed--not ward politics only, but frequently the
politics of the nation and the world. In that grocery store, from the lips
of the plainest folk who came there, were carried on serious discussions
of the tariff, the money question, our foreign relations, and all phases
of the then famous Venezuelan question, which in those days threatened to
set two continents on fire.

The make-up of the little "cabinet" or group which surrounded my father
was most interesting. There was Mr. Alexander Hamill, the father of
Congressman Hamill of Jersey City, a student of Queen's College in Ireland
and who afterward taught in the National Schools of Ireland, a well-read,
highly cultured, broad-minded man of affairs; and dear Uncle Jimmie
Kelter, almost a centenarian, whose fine old gray hair gave him the
appearance of a patriarch. Uncle Jimmie nightly revelled in the recital to
those who were present as ready listeners, his experience when he was
present at a session of the House of Parliament in London and heard the
famous Irish statesman, Daniel O'Connell, denounce England's attitude of
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