His wife did all her own housework, and as he was State’s Attorney for the district until 1868, and earned about fifteen hundred dollars a year, they considered themselves prosperous. From 1868 to 1872 he built up a private practise, and that paid him better. Besides, the short-sighted brother had gone into banking, had taken Joseph’s money for investment, and succeeded mightily.
In 1872 “Old Joe” Gillespie pushed Cannon forward for the Congressional nomination, and Cannon not only won it, but was elected after a brisk campaign. He has been in Congress, with the exception of one term, ever since then.
Altogether, Mr. Cannon has served thirty-two years, and, according to his own statement, it has cost him three hundred thousand dollars to live during that time. The government has paid him one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The rest came out of his private income. Nearly twenty years of the time has been spent as a member of the Committee on Appropriations. When the expenditures steadily increased Cannon was taxed with extravagance.
“You think,” he said in reply, “that because I am chairman of the Committee on Appropriations that it is my duty to make appropriations. I tell you it is rather my duty to prevent them being made.”
During the period of his service Congress has spent nearly twelve billion dollars. Since he has been Speaker it has spent nearly two billion dollars, and he has fought down expenses constantly. It is a staggering total, but the country that demanded such expenditures has reached a wealth never attained by another nation, and the leading men who ran the government and made the appropriations have been of giant size. Cannon stands among the foremost.
Speaker Cannon is a poor man, as far as personal wealth is concerned, and yet he is as happy as when he built the little four-room cottage for his wife and with her began the upward fight that has landed him in a supreme position in the national government.
A DEVELOPER OF CITIES.
Canadian Boundary Line Fails to Bisect the Sphere of Usefulness of a Massachusetts Man.
Henry M. Whitney has crowded three or four great business careers into his life, and each of them has resulted in good to the community in which he operated. His father, General James S. Whitney, was fairly prosperous, though there were then no capitalists and no rich men, as rich men are reckoned to-day, in Conway, Massachusetts, where he lived.
Henry M. Whitney was born in Conway in 1839. He studied in the public schools and at Williston Seminary until he was sixteen years old; then he went to work in the Conway Savings Bank. When his father became collector of the port of Boston, he went with him as a clerk, and later, when the father entered the employ of the Metropolitan Steamship Company, the son again went with him, still as a clerk.