High Adventure

There are people who ignorantly suppose that the Senate is composed of sedentary gasbags who would prove to be lame ducks in other spheres of rough and tumble. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of Senators are temperamentally adventurers, knights-errant, more combatively courageous than fluent. It is quite typical that Raymond T. Baker, having exhausted most forms of excitement, announced last week his candidacy as U. S. Senator from Nevada.

This Baker is not to be confused with Ray Stannard Baker, doctrinaire commentator, historian and propagandist of Woodrow Wilson. Nor is he like Newton D. He would never have had the patience--even granting the mental ability--to acquire Newton D.'s learning, trained wit. Nor could he, like Newton D., have spent nearly all his life in one state. Raymond T. Baker is one who craves excitement glorified by achievement.

He was born in Eureka, Nev., son of George Washington Baker, leading counsel of the Southern Pacific Railroad in days when emiment railroad lawyers were advised to carry guns. The baby University of Nevada and the slightly more sophisticated Leland Stanford University gave him his education. Then he went into the hills of his home to dig opulence. With flowing red tie and cartoon-hat, he was as good a miner as the rest--"the most fearless man who ever entered Funeral Range which guards Death Valley." is the title he acquired. He was one of the first into the Rawhide gold boom. He located "Windy Point," "Dead Mule." He went back east, sold his claims, became a man with a fabulous bankroll. So to Europe. There he met Elinor Glyn.* She was enchanted by "Young Hercules." But nothing came of it and later he took to wife the widow of a Vanderbilt--Mrs. Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt, whose husband had gone down with the Lusitania.

Before his marriage had come the curious episode of his supervision of the Nevada State's Prison, full of the toughest men that lived. He talked to them of ideals. They mocked. He abolished the lockstep. They did not object. He made the prison clean ("It doesn't cost the state anything to be clean," said he). The rough men smiled. He put them out on the honor system to work on the roads for pay. One convict ran away. The convicts cheered, for their chance had come. They asked for parole to chase the offender. Raymond T. Granted it and they caught the runaway. Raymond T. became idolized.

Other forms of excitement came later. He traveled to the ends of the earth. He elected his brother District Attorney. He went to Russia as confidential secretary to the U. S. Ambassador, and ran away from the Embassy to watch the Russians fight the Germans. But excitement, for him, had to be balanced by achievement. So he accepted from President Wilson the job of Director of the Mint, and served into the Harding Administration.

During the last week, Mr. Baker has been in the East. Soon he will head for Nevada, to open his campaign to wrest the Senate seat from Republican Senator Oddie, whose term is expiring.

*Mrs. Clayton Glyn, widow; author of Three Weeks, His Hour, The Reason Why, Three Things, Man and Maid, The Great Moment, etc., etc.