LOVED BY HIS EMPLOYEES.
He loved to tell how, returning from a trip to Europe, the warmest welcome (and that which shows the popularity of the man) was that given by a crowd of his employees gathered at the Toledo depot to greet him as the train rolled in.
The election of Mr. Jones to the mayoralty of Toledo is an interesting story. He was the candidate nominated in the spring of 1897 to bridge the chasm between the two opposing factions in the Republican party. The saloons, corporations and rings of the city were marshaled against him, but his stout supporters, the wage-earners and the law-abiding people, carried the day after a lively campaign.
The frankness and plainness of Mr. Jones pleased the people as well as his eight-hour day and his ideas of social equality. His messages as mayor to the common council of Toledo were models of businesslike integrity and acumen, showing a vital interest in the welfare of the city, and the value of having a practical and upright business man at the head of civic affairs. Among measures pertinent and practical for the city’s self-government advocated by the mayor were a single-chambered board, city bids, the wage system, a municipal lighting plant, the abolishment of the contract system, the establishing of a purchasing agency to stop the waste of department buying, park and street improvements, etc.
His address before the annual convention of the League of American Municipalities, at Detroit, on “Municipal Ownership” was characterized as the best of the convention, and attracted wide attention. It was repeated at Chicago by request.
Mayor Jones was accorded a warm reception in Boston. He addressed the Twentieth Century Club at a dinner; he was banqueted by the Mayors’ Organization of Massachusetts; he dined with Mayor Quincy, who is something of a reformer himself; and he gave utterance to his views at a public mass-meeting of Boston’s best people. But with characteristic modesty, he looked upon such invitations merely as new opportunities to spread the new gospel, and not in any sense as the means of bringing fame or glory to himself.
The story of Mr. Jones’s successful career carries with it encouragement and example for the young man who starts in life with no capital but manliness, courage, persistency, and a willingness to work.
BORN IN A HUMBLE HOME.
Mr. Jones was born in 1846, in Wales. Of his humble home he says: “It could scarcely be dignified by the name of cottage, for, as I saw it a few years ago, it seemed a little barren hut, though still occupied.” It was in memory of this modest birthplace over the sea, which is known as Tan y Craig (under the rock), that Mr. Jones named his handsome Toledo mansion Tan y Oderwen (under the oak).
Perhaps the following autobiographical statement will serve better than anything I could write to present his life story: