Gage

A onetime Democrat, he became Secretary of the Treasury in a Republican administration. As such, he financed the first war which the U. S. fought against a civilized country other than Great Britain.* He was official head of Chicago's World's Fair. He was long President of Chicago's First National Bank-"its brains and body" forgotten La Salle Streeters called him. He married a Minnesota woman, a Colorado woman, a California woman. He "discovered" Frank A. Vanderlip. At 80, a soft veil of hair covered his head; with spreading beard and whiskers, he looked more of a statesman than Charles Evans Hughes. He lived to be 90. Not one gumchewer could have told another his name. It was Lyman Judson Gage.

Lyman Gage died at Point Loma, high, green promontory near San Diego, Calif. Theosophists nave their homes there. "I am not a theosophist," said Lyman Gage two decades ago. "I claim the privilege of withdrawal from the struggles of business life. Point Loma climate is most agreeable . . . here one can lead the simple life."/= There he, 73, married Frances Ada Ballou, 36, who was with him, 17 years later, at the end.

Historians will not vex themselves with the details of his life. It is recorded that he was born and had some schooling in upstate New York. The Oneida Central Bank employed him at $100 a year. As clerk in a lumber yard in Chicago, they made him load and unload wagons and dropped him when bad times came. He got into a bank and after 42 years quit Chicago, its leading banker.

In 1892 President Grover Cleveland (Gold Democrat) offered him the treasury seat. Mr. Gage refused. In 1896, he and other Gold Democrats helped Mark A. Hanna defeat William Jennings Bryan (Silver-tongued Silver Democrat) and, to be polite to the Gold Democrats who voted for his candidate, Mark Hanna gave Mr. Gage the Treasury post in William McKinley's Cabinet. Theodore Roosevelt irked Mr. Gage, and he left the Cabinet as soon after Mr. McKinley's death as it was proper to do so. He had done his work well. Mr. Gage had but two honorary degrees-one from Beloit, one from New York University. He disliked public office and detested politics. He liked business, and, after that, the twilight. He dignified both.

*The Spanish-American War, which was also the first war by which the U. S. acquired noncontiguous territory.

/=The Simple Life, famed book by Charles Wagner, was, in the current catchpenny philosophy, the complement of Theodore Roosevelt's doctrine of "the strenuous life."