"This Davis"

Reporters and cameramen made a precipitant descent upon No. 6 E. 68th St., Manhattan--the home of Frank L. Polk. There a Mr. Davis was spending the day. There he heard he was the Democratic nominee for President.

He soon found out what it meant to be a candidate. First, the deluge of the press. Then the deluge of supporters--the delegate from Porto Rico who had voted for Davis 33 times in San Francisco, and 103 times in Manhattan, etc. Soon the magnates of the party descended --Josephus Daniels, Pat Harrison, Governor Ritchie. Then the telegrams--from A. Mitchell Palmer, from 'Senator McKellar, from General Bliss, from Mr. Associate Justice Butler, etc., etc.

Two of the telegrams are worth reproduction. One from a man incomparable among his kind, who was born a wit, made a politician, and elected a Vice President:

IF GOOD WISHES HELP, YOU HAVE MINE.

THOMAS R. MARSHALL.

The other was from a woman, from whom such words were significant:

HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU AND THE PARTY. I FEEL THAT IN YOUR HANDS THE THINGS THAT MR. WILSON FOUGHT FOR WILL HAVE A WORTHY CHAMPION. CONGRATULATIONS TO MRS. DAVIS. MRS. WOORDROW WILSON. Who is this Davis whom good wishes may or may not help, whom the widow picks to champion the things her husband fought for? Who is he? He is not one of the several Congressmen by that name, nor one of the several college Presidents, nor one of the several noted doctors including famed ophthalmologists, obstetricians, gynecologists, pathologists, nor one of the well-known clergymen; nor is he General, Admiral, Judge, scientist, editor, theologian, curator, author. He is one of several lawyers and diplomats. He is, in fact, the John William who was born in Clarksburg, W. Va., on April 13, 1873. That makes him 51 years old and just about eight months younger than Calvin Coolidge. It is generally reported that as a child he was precocious. As the campaign goes on, the accounts of this precocity will be amplified. At any rate he was graduated from Washington and Lee University at the age of 19. Three years later he took his LL.B. at the same place. From 1915 on, he annexed a whole string of LL.D.' here, in England, in Scotland.

John William was now a lawyer. First he practiced with his father, J. J. Davis, who had been a member of Congress. Then he returned to Washington and Lee as an instructor and later went back to his father's office. Then he served a term in the State Assembly. His father advised him not to go there a second time; so he stuck to the law until 1910.

In that year, John William attended the State Convention. It was decided to nominate him for Congress. John William agreed to accept, provided only that his father, then retired from the political arena, would not object. A telegram was dispatched to the elder Davis. Two telegrams came in reply. Both telegrams advised and admonished John William not to take the nomination. Both were pocketed by a wily politician, one Ignatius Brennan. John William was nominated by acclamation and accepted. Some time later he received his father's messages.

The indirect result was that, a few months later, John William went to Washington as Representative. There he showed he was a lawyer of ability by partaking in the indictment of a Federal Judge. As a member of the Judiciary Committee he attracted attention, as well as by his speeches in Congress against the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. He remained in the House until August, 1913, when President Wilson took him out to be Solicitor General.

It was in that post that his reputation began to grow. He conducted a great number of important cases for the Government before the Supreme Court. The terseness of his eloquence, the cogency of his argument made him talked about.

In 1918 Woodrow Wilson sent John William Davis to Berne, to negotiate with the Germans on the treatment and exchange of prisoners. Shortly afterwards Walter Mines Page died. Woodrow Wilson selected John William to succeed to the Embassy of the Court of St. James's.

In the new post, John William showed a different side of himself. The lawyer turned diplomat. He was a great success, admired and respected in Britain, pleasing to the State Department at home.

When he left England in 1921, Mr. Davis took up the law once more. He entered the Manhattan law firm which is now Stetson, Jennings, Russell and Davis. By that there hangs a tale. This firm acts as counselor to J. P. Morgan & Co. On this keynote do the anti-Davisites of the present Presidential campaign sing their chorus of "Wall Street and Big Business." Early in the campaign one of his supporters wrote to Mr. Davis suggesting that he drop his corporation connections for political reasons. Mr. Davis replied:

"If I were in the market for the goods you offer I would not complain of the character of this consignment, although I notice that you do not guarantee delivery. The price you put on them, however ... is entirely too high. You offer me a chance to be the Democratic nominee for the Presidency, which carries with it, in this year of grace, more than a fair prospect of becoming President of the United States. In exchange, I am to abandon forthwith and immediately a law practice which is both pleasant and, within modest bounds, profitable, to throw over honorable clients who offer me honest employment, and to desert a group of professional colleagues who are able, upright, and loyal.

"At no time have I confined my services to a single client, and in consequence I have been called upon to serve a great many different kinds of men&#!51;some of them good, some of them indifferently good, and others over whose character we will drop the veil of charity. Indeed, some of my clients, thanks perhaps to their failure to secure a better lawyer, have become the involuntary guests for fixed terms of the Nation and the State.

"Since the law, however, is a profession and not a trade, I conceive it to be the duty of the lawyer, just as it is the duty of the priest or the surgeon, to serve those who call upon him, unless, indeed, there is some insuperable obstacle in the way.

"No one in all this list of clients has ever controlled, or fancied that he could control, my personal or my political conscience. I am vain enough to imagine that no one ever will.

"The only limitation upon a right-thinking lawyer's independence is in the duty which he owes to his clients, once selected, to serve them without the slightest thought of the effect such a service may have upon his personal popularity or political fortunes. Any lawyer who surrenders this independence or shades this duty by trimming his professional counsel to fit the gusts of popular opinion, in my judgment, not only dishonors himself but disparages and degrades the great profession to which he should be proud to belong.

"What is life worth, after all, if one has no philosophy of his own to live by? If one surrenders this to win an office, what will he live by after the office is won? Tell me that!"

This statement was probably one of the chief contributions to Mr. Davis' nomination. It secured an immense amount of favorable comment.

But what of the "Big Business !" jeer, the cry of "Reactionary!"? How does Mr. Davis' record stand?

He belongs to a firm of corporation lawyers. Grover Cleveland belonged to the same firm at the time of his election in 1892.

Although his clients have been J. P. Morgan & Co., the New York Telephone Co., the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, the U. S. Rubber Co., the Associated Press,* other clients have been "Mother" Jones and Eugene V. Debs, the National Window Glass Workers' Union, the Irish Free State. As a member of the Judiciary Committee of the House in the 62nd Congress, he sponsored the 'Clayton Act which declared that labor unions could not be prosecuted under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. As Solicitor General he upheld the Adamson Eight-Hour Law for railroad employes and prosecuted several anti-trust cases.

Mr. Davis has been married twice. His first wife died little more than a year after their marriage in 1899. His second marriage took place in 1912. He has one daughter, Julia, by his first wife. She recently was married to one William McMillan Adams.

*The only time at which President Coolidge and Mr. Davis met was last April, when the President addressed the Convention of the Associated Press. Mr. Davis was introduced as "one who may be your political rival in the Fall." Mr. Coolidge bowed.