We know Mr. Whitlock by his literary work. He has been a newspaper man for years, and has published three successful novels—“The Thirteenth District,” a novel of politics; “Her Infinite Variety,” and “The Happy Average,” the last said to be autobiographical. He is also a lawyer and is a close student of current affairs. He is an idealist who believes in the present fulfillment of his dreams, and believes that all the problems of life, whether social or political, depend for their solution on the intelligence of the individual. To him the people are the foundation of public power and public officials but their hired servants. He maintains that the people can and should conduct their own government without the aid of political machines, and that representative government is possible in the present day. His only message to the people is that the power is theirs and that they should never allow any man or set of men to take it away from them. He makes no promises, simply pledging himself to represent the whole people.
There is one thing of which Mr. Whitlock allows himself to be proud. It is the Juvenile Court Bill, of Ohio, which he drew and was greatly instrumental in having passed by the legislature. It provides for a separate court for the hearing of children under sixteen, and it is Mr. Whitlock’s earnest hope that a state “junior republic” may be the final outcome of the work.
Dr. W. M. L. Coplin is another Southerner who has attained distinction in the city of Brotherly Love. He was born in Bridgeport, West Virginia, in 1864. He was educated at Lindsay Military Academy, Fairmont State Normal School, Mt. Union College, and later at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, from which institution he graduated in 1886. After practicing his profession for nine years, he accepted the position of Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology in the Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained one year. He then returned to Philadelphia to assume the duties of a similar chair in the Jefferson Medical College and to become Director of the Laboratories of the Jefferson Medical College Hospital, positions which he still occupies. He has held professorships in three medical colleges and a number of national, state and municipal positions. For the last ten years he has devoted his entire time to teaching and departmental organization, in which he has shown peculiarly successful capabilities.
Dr. Coplin is an ardent research worker, and has conducted numerous investigations along scientific lines; his experiments have rendered the medical world invaluable aid in solving some of its most difficult problems. He is a voluminous writer on subjects connected with Pathology, Bacteriology and Sanitation, and is widely known by his contributions to magazines. The fourth edition of his Manual of Pathology has just been issued, and the Manual of Practical Hygiene is in process of revision.
DR. W. M. L. COPLIN
In November, 1905, the mayor of Philadelphia bestowed upon Dr. Coplin the highest honors which his adopted city could tender a physician—the appointment of Director of the Department of Public Health and Charities, a position for which he is peculiarly fitted, on account of his rare administrative qualifications.
Probably the most uplifting tendency of the times is that looking towards the nationalization of instruction in the universities of the chief countries of the world, shown by the Rhodes scholarships at Oxford; the Roosevelt Chair of American Institutions at the University of Berlin, endowed by an American banker; Mr. Stillman’s million-dollar gift to the Beaux Arts in Paris and the American Academy of Art at Rome; the Hyde foundation for Harvard professors at the Sorbonne; the Baron de Coubertin’s prizes at Princeton, Leland Stanford and Tulane Universities; the Duc de Loubat’s foundation for the study of American Antiquities at the National College of France; and the opening, in the University of Paris, of a department for the study of the History and Outlines of American Law.