A Full Career

Pernicious anemia laid its pale fingers upon the body of General Isaac R. Sherwood. For three months he struggled with it, as it sucked the life blood from his frame. Toward the end he became unconscious. And last week he died.

Thus a career as remarkable as that of any man who has ever served in Congress, a career covering 90 years, two months and two days, eventful from its inception to its end. The mere recital of its milestones is epic:

Born in Stanford, N.Y., in 1835, the son of a veteran of the War of 1812, he was educated .at the Hudson River Institute, Claverack, N. Y., at Antioch College (of which Horace Mann was then President) , at Ohio Law College.

At 22, while still studying law, he bought the Williams County Gazette. He was admitted to the bar; he married; he was elected Probate Judge of Williams County, Ohio. A few months later, still in his mid-twenties, he resigned his judgeship and enlisted as a private in the 14th Ohio Infantry. He fought in 43 battles, was under fire 123 days, was six times cited for gallantry in action and was promoted step by step to the rank of Brigadier General.

Before he was 30, he had left the Army, and the war was over. He edited a Toledo newspaper for a year, and was editorial writer on a Cleveland paper for two years. He then served two terms as Secretary of State of Ohio, and in 1872 at 37 he was elected to Congress, served one term but was denied reelection. Until this time he had been a Republican, but he turned Democrat.

He bought and edited the Toledo Journal for nine years. He was probate Judge of Lucas County for six years. He edited the Canton News-Democrat for ten years.

In 1906, at 71, he was again elected to Congress, as a Democrat from Toledo. For 14 years continuously he sat in the House of Representatives. But in the Harding landslide of 1920 he was defeated. In 1921 at the ripe age of 86 he left the halls of Congress. But he was not done. Eighteen months later, campaigning with pristine vigor of mind, he won his way back, reelected. He sat for two years more, and a year ago decided that he had had enough. Last February he made his farewell address to the House.

He denounced the Anti-Saloon League and the Volstead Act. At the age of twelve he had signed a pledge never to vote for a law permitting the sale of intoxicating beverages, but the methods of the Anti-Saloon League, he said, are unChristian, "vindictive, vengeful and mercenary," and "by its drastic methods of trying to enforce the Volstead law it has hatched the biggest crop of law-breakers ever inflicted upon a community."

On March 4 he retired. Last week he died.