Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1901 — Johnson Is a Paradox. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Johnson Is a Paradox.

Tom L. Johnson, who has been elected mayor of Cleveland upon a democratic ticket, one of the main planks of which is the upholding of the 3-cent car fare proposition, is one of the strange anomalies of the country, and withal a man who has many friends because of his intense earnestness in any work which he undertakes. To understand something of the paradoxical nature of the new mayor of Cleveland it is necessary to compare the following facta: Agnanufacturer of the most highly protected steel rail, he is a free

trader of the most pronounced kind; a trolley king who has driven out competition in the cities where he has large traction interests, he is at the same time the fiercest foe to monopolies and monopolists in the country; a very large owner of real estate, he is the leader of the disciples of Henry George and has given largely of his wealth to the furtherance of the cause of the single tax movement; a gold standard man, he was one of Bryan’s most enthusiastic supporters. That he left the traction world of Cleveland some time ago is but a mere incident in his desire to represent the city as its mayor. He is quite capable of supporting a plank in a platform which he would oppose from a business point of view, not from insincerity, but rather from an earnest theoretical idea of what is to be desired in a utopian world, and also a practical

knowledge of what is necessary to business in a world which is not utopian. His properties, which are represented as nearing $10,000,000, have been obtained entirely by his relentless energy and foresight of fields available for labor. He started in life without a high school education and traveled rapidly through the various stages of newsboy, clerk, worker at a furnace mouth and bookkeeper in a railroad office. He soon saw the advantage of the street railway interests from a money-making point of view, and, as he married a wealthy woman early in life, he obtained a small beginning in Indianapolis, from which time he has worked onward to his present proniinent position.

TOM L. JOHNSON.