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'^ tO'TV Uiry-Z^yrx^ 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 UPON 
 
 The Life and Services of 
 
 Samuel Whitaker 
 
 Pennypacker 
 
 Governor of Pennsylvania 
 
 President of the Historical Society 
 
 of Pennsylvania 
 
 By HAMPTON L. CARSON 
 
 Delivered in the Hall of the Historical Society 
 January 8th, 1917 
 
I 
 
 
AN ADDRESS 
 
 UPON 
 
 The Life and Services of 
 
 Samuel Whitaker 
 
 Pennypacker 
 
 Governor of Pennsylvania 
 
 President of the Historical Society 
 
 of Pennsylvania 
 
 ^ 
 
 V 
 
 By HAMPTON L. CARSON 
 
 Delivered in the Hall of the Historical Society 
 January 8th, 1917 
 

 

 >v. 
 
 ORDER OF TREATMENT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ancestry 2 
 
 Personal Characteristics 4 
 
 Parentage 5 
 
 Schooling 6 
 
 Military Service 8 
 
 Law Studies 9 
 
 Historical Studies 10 
 
 In Politics 12 
 
 Law Practice 14 
 
 Law Eeporter 15 
 
 Judicial Career 16 
 
 Nomination as Governor 24 
 
 As Governor 26 
 
 His Programme 28 
 
 Legislative Vices 30 
 
 Vetoes 31 
 
 Eeapportionment 33 
 
 Ballot Reform 34 
 
 Eminent Domain 36 
 
 State Constabulary 39 
 
 Conservation 40 
 
 Historic Shrines 41 
 
 University of Pennsylvania 42 
 
 State Enterprise 43 
 
 Summary of Results 44 
 
 Administrative Work 46 
 
 Humor 47 
 
 Charters 40 
 
 Pardons 51 
 
 Judges 51 
 
 In Camp 53 
 
 Governor's Duties 54 
 
 Simplicity of Life 55 
 
 Avoidance of Strike by Proclamation 56 
 
 Quayism 58 
 
 Refusal of Supreme Court Justiceship 62 
 
 The Press Libel Law 65 
 
 The Ripper Bills "9 
 
 The Capitol Case 85 
 
 Public Service Commission 90 
 
 As a Collector 91 
 
 Services to the Historical Society 91 
 
 As a Pennsylvanian 94 
 
 iii 
 
The Life and Services 
 
 OF 
 
 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker 
 
 Fellow Members of The Historical Society of Penn- 
 sylvania; Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 This meeting is held to commemorate the life and 
 services of one who loved to enter these halls, and who 
 will enter them no more. His active membership began 
 in March, 1872. In 1876 he became a Comicillor, in 1885 
 a Vice President, and in 1900 he became President, and 
 was re-elected for sixteen successive years, holding the 
 office at the time of his death — September 2nd, 1916. 
 He was also one of the Trustees of the Gilpin Library, 
 the Dreer Manuscripts Trust, the Publication Fund and 
 the Building Fund. In all these positions he served us 
 without stint of strength or lapse of interest. The im- 
 portance, the variety and laboriousness of the duties 
 circumscribed by this circle of offices can be best appre- 
 ciated hj his colleagues, who bear cheerful testimony to 
 his fidelity, his zeal and his effectiveness. It is no exag- 
 geration to say that the promotion of the purposes of 
 this great Institution formed a serious part of his labors 
 in life, nor is it too much to say that during his admin- 
 
 1 
 
2 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 istration his spirit controlled and animated our delib- 
 erations. A meeting from which he was absent was 
 like an engine under half steam ; a meeting at which he 
 was present moved under full pressure. The bow of 
 Ulysses now stands against the wall unstrung, and 
 none there be in all Ithaca who can bend it. 
 Ancestry. jjjg character, while in the main simple in its out- 
 
 lines, was in many respects complex and difficult of 
 analysis, but the key to it lies in a careful study of his 
 ancestry. James Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam 
 hammer, in his Autobiography, wrote these words : 
 ''Our history begins long before we are born. We 
 represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our 
 ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of an- 
 cestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially 
 in the more civilized races. At all events we cannot 
 help having a due regard for our forefathers. Our 
 curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect 
 influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthu- 
 siasm, or as some might say, a harmless vanity to take 
 pride in the honor of their name. The gifts of nature, 
 however, are more valuable than those of fortune, and 
 no line of ancestry, however honorable, can absolve us 
 from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, 
 and from the practice of the virtues of self control and 
 self help." These striking and helpful words are ap- 
 plicable to Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. Those who 
 have been baffled in their efforts to understand him. 
 those who were puzzled by seemingly contradictory 
 traits, those who regarded his public career as a par- 
 adox, must seek an explanation in the diverse elements 
 of his descent, which like streams of distant origin took 
 tinctures and tastes from the soils through which they 
 flowed. Dutch, Norman-French, Anglo-Saxon and 
 Welsh blood commingled in his veins. Dierck, the first 
 Count of Holland in the ninth century, whose son mar- 
 ried Hildegarde, the daughter of Louis of France, and 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 3 
 
 Philippa, the granddaughter of Charles of Valois, who 
 married Edward III of England in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, are to be found in the first line of descent. There 
 also were Joan of Beaufort, Elizabeth Stradling, Bar- 
 bara Aubrey and Elizabeth Bevan, all of Welsh descent. 
 In the second line, which sprang from John of Gaunt 
 — ''time honored Lancaster" — were Eleanor Somerset 
 and Watkin Vaughan of England and of Wales. Some 
 of these men had built churches, founded colleges or 
 been pilgrims to the Holy Land ; some had been sailors 
 and been rescued from pirates ; some had been men of 
 restless ambition, or jolly dogs rejoicing in good liv- 
 ing; some of these women had languished in lonely 
 towers, ransomed prisoners, or stitched upon tapes- 
 tries. As this blood filtered through dukes and earls 
 to counts and knights and esquires, it finally became 
 blended with that of the common people. The earliest 
 of the Pannebakers, or, in Dutch, Pannebakkers, 
 were tile makers in Holland, and disciples of Menno 
 Simon, the founder of the sect now known as Men- 
 nonites. Children of persecution and often burned as 
 heretics at the stake, their descendants welcomed the 
 approaches of the early Quaker preachers offering 
 them inducements to seek refuge in the land of Penn. 
 Hendrick Pannebaker, a member of the Dutch Re- 
 formed Church, the founder of the American family, 
 left his home in Crefelt, a city on the Rhine, near the 
 borders of Holland, and became one of the earliest set- 
 tlers in Germantown, and a friend of Francis Daniel 
 Pastorius. His grandson, Matthias, the great-grand- 
 father of the subject of this address, became a Bishop 
 in the Mennonite Church. Since then the family has 
 become widely scattered, extending from Canada to 
 Mexico and California, and all through the eastern and 
 middle counties of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Vir- 
 ginia. The men have been lawyers, judges, physicians, 
 farmers, soldiers, authors, publishers and preachers. 
 
4 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 and the women members of Quaker meeting, or the 
 Church, and gentle mothers of modest citizens. 
 
 At the Pennypacker Reunion, held October 4th, 1877, 
 our late President in describing a member of the family 
 who had become a Senator of the United States, said : 
 ''Reverdy Johnson wrote to me of Isaac S., of Virginia, 
 that possessing 'sterling integrity he had the confi- 
 dence of every man in the Senate.' Thaddeus Stevens 
 complained of Elijah F. that he was 'too damned 
 honest, ' and this trait, which seems to crop out even in 
 our politicians, I think we may claim as a family char- 
 acteristic." He also said: ''Physically we are gener- 
 ally large, with dark hair and eyes, and if we could get 
 our neighbors to repeat to us the comments they some- 
 times make in our absence, we would probably learn 
 that we wear full sized stockings and are not handsome. ' ' 
 ' ' This pedigree, ' ' as Governor Pennypacker once wrote, 
 "is not without a certain philosophical value," and he 
 tersely declared: "Man is a result as well as a cause." 
 Personal Here thcu you have the key to his character. He had 
 
 tics. unusual pride of ancestry combined with extreme dem- 
 
 ocratic simplicity; he had an imposing carriage of the 
 head and a rustic slouch of the body ; he had a peculiar 
 twang of utterance, but his speech was accurate and 
 polished. While he never forgot his patrician blood he 
 never consciously reminded one of it. On State occa- 
 sions he bore himself with lofty dignity; on informal 
 occasions with unconventional affability. I have seen 
 him receive the President of the United States and 
 Governors of other States, surrounded by glittering 
 staffs, with exact but not overstrained formality, and I 
 have seen him, even while standing in front of the Gov- 
 ernor 's chair, which was to him an emblem of authority 
 and influence, talk easily with faiTuers, mine laborers 
 and timid school teachers, in a way which disarmed 
 embarrassment without inviting familiarity. He com- 
 bined breadth of view and liberality of sentiment with 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 5 
 
 marked racial bias, his Dutch strain predominating and 
 inspiring some of his most eloquent utterances ; while 
 singularly tolerant of other men's views he was ag- 
 gressively insistent upon his own; kindly and even 
 gentle at heart he was inflexible in the performance of 
 duty however distasteful ; a man of definite egotism, he 
 displayed the most unselfish modesty; with an entire 
 absence of guile and the ingenuousness of a child, he 
 knew mankind's badness and hated evil: loyal to his 
 friends, he refused to listen to the tale-bearer; it was 
 not that he closed his eyes to their imperfections, but 
 that he was sympathetically astigmatic ; hospitable by 
 nature he preferred men of Pennsylvania birth or an- 
 cestry to those coming from other States however re- 
 nowned they became: he placed Rittenhouse above 
 Franklin, and Matthew Stanley Quay above Thaddeus 
 Stevens and Stephen Gallatin; endowed with the fac- 
 ulty of clearly expressing his thoughts he delighted in 
 mystery of suggestion; serious and at times grave to 
 sadness he rioted in humor and sparkled with wit; of 
 the most recondite learning, he could talk with detailed 
 knowledge of the most ordinary affairs; reluctant to 
 provoke encounters he could and did bear himself with 
 the most heroic and splendid courage. ''He was a 
 man; take him for all in all, I ne'er shall look upon his 
 like again." 
 
 He was born in Phcenixville, Pa., on the 9th of April, Parentage. 
 1843. His father, Isaac Anderson Pennypacker, was a 
 graduate in medicine of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania in 1835, and Professor of Theory and Practice in 
 the Philadelphia College of Medicine, which was later 
 merged in Jefferson Medical College. His mother was 
 Anna M. Whitaker, a daughter of Joseph Whitaker, a 
 wealthy ironmaster. His grandfather was Matthias 
 Pennypacker of Pickering, Chester County, Pa., who 
 was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 
 1837 ; a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and a 
 
6 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 corporator of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad 
 Company. His grandmother was Sarah Anderson, 
 daughter of Isaac Anderson, who had been a lieutenant 
 in the Revolution, and a member of Congress from 1803 
 to 1807, in the days of Jefferson, and later a Presi- 
 dential Elector. 
 Schooling. His carlicst teachers were his parents. His mother 
 
 taught him to read before he was four years old, and 
 his father, who was skilled in observing a child's pro- 
 cesses of thought, was his daily instructor in conduct. 
 While still very young he attended a school in the 
 neighborhood, kept by a Mrs. Heilig, and he well re- 
 membered the stool and the paper cap intended for 
 'Hhe fool." Before he was eight years old he had de- 
 voured Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress for the story, and 
 knew ^sop's fables by heart. Later he delighted in 
 tales of adventure, particularly those concerning Her- 
 nando Cortez, Henry Hudson, Captain John Smith, and 
 the American patriots, Putnam, Marion and Sergeant 
 Champ. Then he read "Nick of the Woods," and to 
 the end of his life he thought it the best tale of Indian 
 warfare. At eleven he became interested in natural 
 history, elementary astronomy and even dipped into 
 Whitaker on Arianism. Guizot's Washington gave 
 him an early bent toward American history, which 
 became a passion. As a lad, he attended a public 
 school on "Tunnel Hill," now a part of Phoenixville, 
 and had as schoolfellows the children of the Irish 
 workers in the iron mills and several Indian boys and 
 girls of a Canadian tribe encamped on the Pickering 
 creek. He was an apt pupil, and led in grammar, geog- 
 raphy and arithmetic. He also used his fists upon one 
 John Bradley, to whom j^ears later, when a judge, he 
 granted a license to sell liquor in Philadelphia. At his 
 father's house he frequently saw the famous traveler, 
 Bayard Taj^lor, and listened with boyish rapture to 
 tales of adventure in foreign lands. He also saw 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 7 
 
 Daniel Webster, William H. Seward, Neal Dow of 
 Maine, and younger men who in time became distin- 
 guished, among them Wayne MacVeagh. In the fall 
 of 1854, Dr. Pennypacker removed from Phoenixville 
 to Philadelphia, living on Chestnut Street west of 18th 
 Street, becoming one of the founders of The Philadel- 
 phia City Institute, and of the Howard Hospital. The 
 boy was then sent to the Northeast Grammar School 
 under the presidency of Aaron B. Ivins, a noted 
 teacher with a genius for mathematics. His progress 
 was rapid, for in nine months he had passed from the 
 Fifth form to the First. He then entered the West 
 Philadelphia Institute, established by Professor Eph- 
 raim D. Saunders, who insisted, with the aid of a 
 native of France, upon the exclusive use of the French 
 language in all of the school exercises and even upon 
 the playground. In this way the future Governor ac- 
 quired a ready use of French which he never lost. His 
 schoolmate Gregory B. Keen writes of these days : "He 
 had come fresh from the N. E. Grammar School full 
 of notions as to the importance of English grammar, 
 which he ventilated freely to us youngsters who knew 
 nothing about it, in competition with our equally strong 
 opinions as to the value of Latin grammar, which we 
 were all studying, and which he knew nothing about. 
 .... His favorite game at school was 'shinny.' " In 
 1856 he had the misfortune to lose his father, who died 
 at the early age of 44, and the family returned to 
 Phoenixville. Already it had been planned that the 
 boy should go to college and study law, and his prepar- 
 atory studies were superintended at the Grovemont 
 Seminary by the Rev. Joel E. Bradley, who had trans- 
 lated the Bible from tJie Hebrew and Greek. He be- 
 came proficient in French, Latin and Greek, reading 
 four books of the ^neid, the Georgics, Sallust, Horace 
 and Livy; and the Anabasis, the New Testament, Her- 
 odotus and four books of Homer. The Latin he never 
 
8 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 forgot, and preferred Virgil to Homer. In mathemat- 
 ics he mastered algebra and geometry and studied 
 the elements of philosophy, chemistry and history. 
 His school days ended in 1859. In preparing for the 
 Sophomore class in Yale, he read far beyond the col- 
 lege requirements, but owing partly to lack of means 
 and partly to the outbreak of the Civil War he had to 
 abandon all thought of a college education. Various 
 efforts were made to secure clerical positions, all of 
 which happily failed. While acting as President of the 
 Young Men's Literary Union, he took part in debates 
 and public entertainments, followed by a pedestrian 
 trip across Eastern Pennsylvania and into Maryland. 
 He also spent a summer in the drug store of a cousin 
 in Kensington, and in a short time sold drugs and put 
 up prescriptions. In the winter of 1861-62 he helped 
 to keep the books of the firm of Whitaker & Condon 
 which sold in Philadelphia the product of his grand- 
 father's iron furnaces. The following winter he taught 
 a public school, consisting of about sixty pupils, on a 
 hill near his birthplace, and it is said that never was 
 there in that locality a better teacher, and never were 
 pupils better prepared. 
 Military In his twentieth year he enlisted as a private in the 
 
 26th Emergency Regiment of Pennsylvania Volun- 
 teers. This was not militia service as the hasty might 
 infer. I have been informed by the best authority that 
 it was a service which tested patriotism, because the 
 enlistment being for an emergency, its possible duration 
 was indefinite, and in this respect the volunteer yielded 
 more to the Government than the nine or twelve months 
 men. The regiment saw service in the Gettysburg 
 campaign, under the command of Colonel Jennings, 
 and was in contact with White's Confederate Cavalry 
 of Early's command at such a time and at such a place 
 as to determine in part the scene of the great battle. 
 It lost about 170 men who were captured by the enemy, 
 
 Service. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 9 
 
 and, although consisting of raw recruits, acted with 
 such firmness as to be mentioned in the dispatches of 
 General Early. Private Pennyi^acker shortly after- 
 ward wrote a sprightly and interesting account of his 
 experiences under the title of ' ' Six Weeks in Uniform. ' ' 
 
 After he was mustered out of service he entered as ^^^ studies. 
 a student the law offices of the accomplished Peter 
 McCall, Esq., then occupying the chair of Pleading and 
 Practice in the Law Department of the University of 
 Pennsylvania. A gentleman, who entered the same 
 office shortly after Pennypacker had left it, writes me : 
 "There was a sort of tradition among the students 
 that he had been recognized as one of the ablest, if not 
 the ablest of his period, and also (I think) that he had 
 held on to his rather rugged manner and strong Re- 
 publican views, untempered by the influence of 
 Mr. McCall himself, who, as you know, was intensely 
 Anti-Republican and whose personality did impress all 
 of us to an extraordinary degree. Nobody could be in 
 daily contact with him without wanting to be like him, 
 and I rather think that Pennypacker had to make an 
 effort not to yield a little in regard to views which I 
 suppose I ought to label as 'reactionary' in the par- 
 lance of the present day." 
 
 After a novitiate of three years, during which he at- 
 tended the lectures at the Law School delivered by 
 George Sharswood, Peter McCall and the late P. Pem- 
 berton Morris, he was admitted to the Philadelphia 
 Bar May 19th, 1866, and graduated from the Law De- 
 partment in July of the same year. Among his fellow 
 classmates were Chief Justice Fell, the late Judge Wilt- 
 bank, the late Judge McCarthy, and Samuel S. Hol- 
 lingsworth, Silas W. Pettit, Rufus E. Shapley, George 
 W. Biddle, Jr., B. Franklin Fisher, J. Granville Leach 
 and the singular but picturesque Damon Y. Kilgore. 
 His early practice was slender, and he amused himself 
 by writing a Charade on the word Dramatic, and by 
 
10 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 diligent attendance upon ''the early meetings of the 
 Penn Club, which were really distinctive and brought 
 together men not affectedly Bohemian but indulging in 
 the spirit of freedom in thought and speech and the 
 flavor of simplicity which just suited his nature." 
 Here he became intimate with the contributors to the 
 Penn Monthly under the editorship of Wharton 
 Barker, with Dr. Eobert Ellis Thompson, and the late 
 Judge Henry Reed, and notably with the rarely gifted 
 Henry Armitt Brown, whom he guided over the hills of 
 Valley Forge when preparing his wonderful oration, 
 and to whose memorj^ a few weeks later he paid a touch- 
 ing tribute. 
 Eietorkai j^ jgjO he became President of the Law Academy, 
 
 Avhich had been founded under the aus]3ices of Peter S. 
 Duponceau. About the same time he devoted himself 
 to historical studies, particularly those relating to 
 Pennsylvania ; his first efforts, as he himself has de- 
 scribed them, dating from 1873 when he formed the 
 design of writing the history of the Mennonites, a 
 people whom he regarded as the most interesting who 
 had come to America. The task was one of extreme 
 difliculty, requiring a preliminary knowledge of the 
 German and Dutch languages. No collection of their 
 books had ever been made in this country, and nothing 
 of value had been published except some papers in 
 Pennsylvania Dutch, which were descriptive rather 
 than historical, so that the structure had to be erected 
 from its foundation. At the end of ten years Mr. 
 Pennypacker had mastered the languages just named, 
 had collected books and manuscripts, pored over jour- 
 nals, diaries, letter-books, old deeds, wills, court rec- 
 ords, bibles, hymn-books, the imprints of the Ephrata 
 press, and the publications of Christopher Saur, all of 
 which he read with ease in the original, no matter how 
 time-stained, or, if in manuscript, no matter how 
 crabbed the handwriting; saturating himself at the 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 11 
 
 same time with local traditions and tramping all over 
 Montgomery, Chester and Lancaster counties upon 
 visits to aged citizens, exploring garrets and old farm 
 houses, and conferring with Professor Oswald Seiden- 
 sticker, Julius F. Sachse, A. H. Cassel of Harleysville, 
 who were toilers in similar fields, and particularly with 
 Kobert Ellis Thompson, who had written an article on 
 '^The German Mystics as American Colonists." The 
 results were stated in seven papers entitled ' ' The Set- 
 tlement of Germantown, and the Causes which led to 
 It"; ''David Rittenhouse, the American Astronomer"; 
 "Christopher Dock, the Pious Schoolmaster on the 
 Skippack and his Works"; "Der Blutige Schau-Platz 
 oder Martyrer Spiegel"; "Mennonite Emigration to 
 Pennsylvania " ; " Abraham and Dirck OP Den Graeff ' ' ; 
 "Zionitsher Weyrauchs Hiigel oder Myrrhen Berg." 
 These were collected into a volume of "Historical and 
 Biographical Sketches," published in 1883, modestly 
 called "a torso," although, with confidence in the ex- 
 tent of his researches, he declared: "I believe the work 
 so far as it has gone to be thorough, and if it should not 
 progress to the end, I shall at least have the satisfaction 
 of having contributed something to the history of a 
 people who are in every way worthy of the most careful 
 study, and who will sooner or later attract wide atten- 
 tion." In 1899, in a separate volume, entitled "The 
 Settlement of Germantown, ' ' which is the ripest of his 
 historical works, and in the papers entitled "German 
 Immigration"; "The Dutch Patroons of Pennsyl- 
 vania"; "The Pennsylvania Dutchman and Wherein 
 He has Excelled"; "Johann Gottfried Seelig," and 
 "Sower and Beissel," constituting important parts of 
 his "Pennsylvania in American History," published 
 in 1910, he confirmed and extended the outcome of his 
 special studies based on original sources of infonna- 
 tion to be found in the vast collections of this Society. 
 It was this special line of work which gave him his 
 
12 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 reputation as the expert in Pennsylvania Dutch his- 
 tory, but those who rashly fancied that he had neg- 
 lected other phases of our Pennsylvania growth did 
 not know him. He was thoroughly well informed of 
 all that had been done by English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch- 
 Irish, Swedish and Huguenot settlers, and on occasions 
 would pour out a raking fire of facts which over- 
 whelmed his opponents. As he had made the field of 
 Pennsylvania Dutch history his own, and had been the 
 first to make it prominent, his reputation as a specialist 
 overshadowed his other labors. 
 In Politics. In 1880 he became interested in the Anti-Third Term 
 
 campaign waged against the candidacy of General 
 Grant, and became an active member of the Anti-Third 
 Term League of Philadelphia of which the eminent 
 scholar, historian and publicist, Henry Charles Lea, the 
 future Attorney General of the United States, Wayne 
 MacVeagh, the energetic and ever active banker-cit- 
 izen, Wharton Barker, the refined and intellectual 
 Henry Eeed, later a judge of Court of Common Pleas 
 No. 3 of Philadelphia County, the zealous maltster T. 
 Morris Perot, and spirited merchant John McLaughlin 
 were leading spirits. They all went to Chicago in July, 
 and met on the train the celebrated Colonel Robert G. 
 Ingersoll, Green B. Eaum of Indiana and Stewart L. 
 Woodford, Lt.-Governor of New York, later our Min- 
 ister to Spain at the outbreak of the Spanish- American 
 War. Rarely, if ever, did I listen to as brilliant and 
 eloquent discussions as took place by the hour in the 
 smoking car in which Ingersoll, MacVeagh, and Wood- 
 ford were the most animated participants, spurred on 
 by questions and criticisms from Barker and Penny- 
 packer. The Philadelphians all slept, or rather tried 
 in vain to sleep, in the same room in the Palmer House, 
 the cots being arranged in rows like those of a hospital 
 ward, the men on the ends next to the door insisting 
 that the windows be kept open, the men nearest to the 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 13 
 
 windows insisting on closing them because of a sharp 
 breeze from the Lake, and the men in the middle argu- 
 ing first with one faction and then with the other as 
 successive experiments were made. In the morning 
 we attended the Convention as spectators from the gal- 
 lery; saw Don Cameron hand the gavel to Senator 
 Geo. F. Hoar, heard Conkling's masterpiece in placing 
 in nomination the man ''from Appomattox and its 
 famous apple-tree," and Garfield's speech nominating 
 John Sherman, which attracted all eyes to him as a 
 possible dark horse, which he subsequently proved to 
 be. The balloting was tedious and Mr. Pennypacker 
 and myself withdrew and returned home before the ad- 
 journment, followed by the news of the nomination of 
 Garfield and the rout of that stalwart band of 306 who 
 never wavered in their support of Grant. On that re- 
 turn journey I first became acquainted with the depth 
 and variety of the stores of knowledge possessed by 
 Pennypacker. He poured forth an inexhaustible stream 
 of information on Constitutional law, history, philos- 
 ophy and literature to which I listened completely over- 
 whelmed. But the incident which impressed me most, 
 and which I recall as though it were of yesterday, was 
 that one afternoon a woman who occupied the opposite 
 section from ours with a boy of about four or five years 
 of age became train-sick and suffered from headache, 
 and the future Governor of Pennsylvania, after binding 
 her head with a handkerchief steeped in iced water, 
 drew the boy to the opposite end of the car and kept 
 him amused for more than an hour with stories of birds 
 and animals and Indians, thus giving the mother a 
 chance to sleep. 
 
 In 1882, Mr. Pennypacker was active in the Inde- 
 pendent Movement, which nominated John Stewart, at 
 present an Associate Justice of our Supreme Court, for 
 Governor, ran for the Legislature on an independent 
 ticket in his legislative district and was defeated, but 
 
Law Practice. 
 
 14 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 at a public meeting reading his famous open letter to 
 Governor Hoyt, which led the latter to proclaim him- 
 self as in favor of the movement, causing one of the 
 greatest political uproars of the time. 
 
 At the Bar for many years Mr. Pennypacker 's prac- 
 tice was small and rather slow in development. But in 
 time his industry, learning and sound judgment 
 brought to him important clients. In 1884, in the lead- 
 ing case of Commonwealth ex rel. Sellers vs. The 
 Phoenix Iron Company, reported on appeal in 105 Pa. 
 State, 111, he established, after some years of discus- 
 sion, the principle that a minority stockholder in a pri- 
 vate corporation, who was denied access to corporate 
 records and information as to corporate affairs, might 
 have a mandamus to compel the production of such 
 books and papers as were essential to him for an ac- 
 curate ascertainment of his rights as a stockholder, a 
 victory which was confirmed in a second phase of the 
 same litigation in 113 Pa. State, 563. These cases were 
 the forerunners of that long line of authorities which 
 have been relied upon by counsel in conducting investi- 
 gations of the affairs of the huge trade combinations 
 which in recent years have become known as Trusts. 
 A year or two later he was retained as private counsel 
 by an eminent banking house in a matter which at- 
 tracted the attention of English solicitors, who were 
 much impressed by the clearness and cogency of Mr. 
 Pennypacker 's views as expressed in a written opinion, 
 and still later he prepared a most elaborate, original 
 and satisfactory trust agreement for the guidance and 
 control of trustees charged with the management of 
 most important concessions from the Government of 
 China touching the establishment of a Chinese Amer- 
 ican Bank, — a paper which, being one of the earliest, if 
 not the earliest, of its kind, attracted the attention of 
 Mr. Evarts, Mr. Olney and Mr. Cushing, then in the 
 heyday of their fame as active practitioners, and which 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 15 
 
 has served as a basic model for subsequent business 
 enterprises on similar lines. 
 
 At the same time he was carrying on special work Law Reporter, 
 on the literature of the law, acting as reporter-in-chief 
 for Court of Common Pleas No. 3 of Philadelphia 
 County, his labors in this field being reported in Vol. 2 
 (1876) to Vol. 23 (1888) inclusive of the Weekly Notes 
 of Cases. In 1879 he published his Supplementary 
 Index to the Common Law Reports arranged under 
 titles, a work of laborious industry, which unquestion- 
 ably laid a broad foundation for the legal knowledge 
 which he subsequently displayed as a judge in admin- 
 istering common law principles. This was followed in 
 1881-84 by the publication of four volumes of an aver- 
 age of 580 pages each, of decisions of the Supreme 
 Court of Pennsylvania, containing cases not to be 
 found in the official State Reports because excluded 
 under the act of June 12th, 1878, and known to the pro- 
 fession as Pennypacker 's Reports. He once told me, 
 with a twinkle in his eye, that he was often amused 
 while on the bench by the efforts of counsel to cite cases 
 from his own volumes, as if they had a higher authority 
 than those officially reported. Later, he made a most 
 important contribution to our judicial history by ex- 
 tracting from our Colonial Records and Colonial Ar- 
 chives 76 cases, coming before the judges between the 
 years 1683 and 1713, and published in 1892 in a sep- 
 arate volume entitled Colonial Cases; a task of per- 
 tinacious digging through masses of other matter, 
 much of it most wearisome, contained in 26 volumes, 
 imperfectly indexed, and which he therefore had to ex- 
 amine page by page. He also delivered an Historical 
 Address upon Congress Hall and its Associations, at 
 the last session of the Court of Common Pleas No. 2 
 in that venerated building, September 16th, 1895, which 
 takes its place with Mr. Justice Mitchell's address upon 
 the passing of the old District Court as a classic con- 
 tribution to the historv of our old learal shrines. 
 
16 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 Judicial In January, 1889, he was appointed by Governor 
 
 Beaver to the vacancy in Court of Common Pleas No. 2 
 of Philadelphia County occasioned by the election of 
 James T. Mitchell to the Supreme Court, an appoint- 
 ment made by a Governor who in 1882 had been de- 
 feated for that office in part by the exertions of the 
 sturdy appointee, who was selected in obedience to the 
 spirit of harmony and reconciliation which had re- 
 united the wings of the Eepublican Party in Pennsyl- 
 vania, as well as in recognition of his abilities and at- 
 tainments. The appointment was followed by a pop- 
 ular election for the term of ten years, and again in 
 1899 by a re-election to a second term. In the year 
 1897 he became President Judge of his Court, through 
 the retirement of the venerable jurist J. I. Clark Hare. 
 His colleagues during his thirteen years of judicial ser- 
 vice were Judges Hare, Fell, subsequently Chief Jus- 
 tice, Jenkins, Mayer Sulzberger who like Erskine 
 surrendered a splendid career at the bar to wear a 
 judicial robe, and the late Judge Wiltbank, a master 
 of equity jurisprudence. If the action and reaction of 
 intellect upon intellect in close associations can pro- 
 duce, as they must, the most agreeable as well as last- 
 ing results, then truly no years of the late Governor's 
 entire career were more fruitful, for never in the judi- 
 cial history of Philadelphia County was there at any 
 one time in any one court a more remarkable combina- 
 tion and display of purely intellectual i30wer than in 
 the concentrated rays of minds so variously and so 
 richly equipped. The Court was like that of the King's 
 Bench when Mansfield, Buller, Yates and Ashhurst sat 
 side by side. 
 
 The duties of the judges in a court of original juris- 
 diction, or what may be called a court of first instance, 
 differ from those of judges in an Appellate or Supreme 
 Court in this : the judges of the appellate court deal with 
 facts established by the verdict of a jury or found by 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 17 
 
 an equity judge in the court below, and apply the fixed 
 principles of law to these facts, correcting whatever 
 errors in law may have been committed by the judges 
 below. The judges in the lower courts, however, are 
 charged with the difficult, delicate and onerous duties 
 of ascertaining what the facts are in each contested 
 litigation in order to prepare the way for a proper 
 discharge of duty by the appellate judges. They come 
 in contact with active life and with all the contentions, 
 prejudices, passions and weaknesses incident to human 
 nature in waging battles in the court room, which are 
 a civilized substitute for the old savagery which settled 
 disputes by force and not by law. Hence a nisi prius 
 judge, as he is called, should have a knowledge of 
 human nature, a sensitive appreciation of the merits of 
 the controversy, infinite patience, the faculty of close 
 attention to the evidence, and self-repression so as to 
 guard against a too hasty determination of the matters 
 in dispute. He must have complete knowledge of prac- 
 tice, of the rules of evidence, and common sense in 
 their application, and he must be ready and dexterous 
 in his expediting of the public business. He must be a 
 master, moreover, of the machinery of legal business 
 known as ' ' Motions and Eules, ' ' and as well posted in 
 equity proceedings as in those at common law. In 
 these respects the demands upon the knowledge and 
 sufficiency of a Pennsylvania judge are far more con- 
 stant and exacting than those prevailing in England 
 where the business is highly specialized. 
 
 Judge Pennypacker met these requirements to the 
 satisfaction of the profession and of the public. His 
 manner at nisi prius was admirable. He rarely inter- 
 rupted counsel unless they strayed beyond the limits 
 of the case; he ruled points of evidence promptly and 
 firmly; his charges to juries were clear and precise. 
 He avoided extraneous discussions of the law and mys- 
 tifying qualifications of principles. In disposing of 
 
18 Samuel Whitaker Pemiypacher. 
 
 motions and rules he was prompt and decisive. He 
 worked in perfect harmony with his colleagues, and 
 the result was a businesslike administration. Although 
 thousands of cases came before him, he wrote but few 
 opinions comparatively. A few instances will suffice to 
 show his judicial manner. 
 
 The case of People's Passenger Railway Co. vs. 
 Marshall St. Railway Co. (20 Phila., 203, A. D. 1890) 
 involved the right to lay tracks upon certain streets. 
 The opinion is characteristic of his method, but it is 
 especially interesting as containing the germ of a 
 thought expressed thirteen years later in his Inaugural 
 Address and in two of the most celebrated of his veto 
 messages as Governor. He said: ''Individual prop- 
 erty may be taken by the State by the right of eminent 
 domain, but this power can only be exercised when it 
 appears that the property so taken is in some way 
 necessary for the maintenance of the general welfare. 
 It would seem, therefore, that the citizen ought at least 
 to have the judgment of his representatives in the Leg- 
 islature, or of some one representing the Common- 
 wealth which exercises the right, that the property so 
 taken from him is needed for a public purpose. This 
 Act authorizes 'any number of persons not less than 
 five,' without regard to their responsibility, to say 
 when a highway of the city may be entered upon and 
 occupied by a railway. It is quite clear from obsei^a- 
 tion of the ways of men and ordinary human experi- 
 ence that the action of these 'any number of persons 
 not less than five' will be determined, not by a careful 
 consideration of whether the public welfare demands 
 it, but by the prospect of profit and advantage to be 
 secured by themselves. If the duty of judging in so 
 important a matter may in this way be delegated by 
 the Legislature, and the number of railroad, railway, 
 telephone, telegraph companies and other similar cor- 
 porations, requiring the exercise of the right of emi- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 19 
 
 nent domain, continues to increase, it can be readily 
 seen that in the near future the control of his property 
 by the citizen will be very much limited." 
 
 In Shepp vs. Jones, 3 Dist. Kep., 539 (1894), a dis- 
 puted trade mark case, he concisely said: "No man 
 has a right to sell his goods as those of a rival by means 
 liable to impose on purchasers, and may be restrained 
 by injunction, if he does so. The rule is based on 
 honesty, and ought to be upheld." 
 
 In Comm. ex rel. vs. Gratz, et al., 5 Dist. Rep., 341 
 (1896), he refused to mandamus the Board of Educa- 
 tion in the selection of a teacher, because the duty of 
 choice lay with the Board and involved such discretion 
 that a court could not interfere. 
 
 In Carroll vs. the City of Philadelphia, et al., and 
 The Penn Asphalt Paving Co., 6 Dist. Rep., 397 (1897), 
 he courageously upheld, against a combination of con- 
 tractors, freedom of competitive bidding. The case 
 was one of street paving, involving the use of asphalt. 
 The specifications called for "sheet lake asphalt," and 
 it was held that the advertisement for bids could not, 
 by setting up "a standard with a double head," limit 
 the standard to two grades known as Bermudez and 
 Trinidad, and thus exclude competitive bidding by 
 owners of other grades. To do so would be to limit 
 the bidding to those who controlled the two classes. 
 Aside from this unshackled determination the opinion 
 is interesting as displaying his peculiar learning. In 
 giving a history of asphalt he invoked an authority 
 unknown to counsel, the Dutch author Joannes de Laet, 
 whose work on Trinidad had been published in Leyden 
 in 1630. 
 
 In refusing the application for a Charter by The 
 First Church of Christ Scientist, 6 Dist. Rep., 745 
 (1897), he declared that where the jmrpose of a cor- 
 poration is only to inculcate a creed or to promulgate 
 a form of worship, no question can arise as to the 
 
20 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 propriety of such purpose, because under the Constitu- 
 tion of Pennsylvania private belief is beyond public 
 control, and there can be no interference with the rights 
 of conscience, but where the purpose of a proposed 
 corporation, as set forth in the application, necessarily 
 imports a system for the treatment of diseases to be 
 carried into effect by persons trained for the purpose, 
 who may receive compensation for their services, and 
 where the knowledge and training of such healers do 
 not conform to the tests required by law, the courts 
 will refuse to confirm such charter under the guise of a 
 charter for a church or religious body. 
 
 After quoting the provisions of the Act of March 24, 
 1877, P. L. 42, which established a policy which the 
 courts must be careful not to thwart, he said: ''To 
 grant this charter would be to sanction a system of 
 dealing with disease totally at variance with any con- 
 templated by the Act of 1877 and different from any 
 taught in 'a chartered medical school.' It is pos- 
 sible," he gravely added, ''that the method proposed 
 is correct, but the most important of truths which run 
 counter to long established and popular currents of 
 thought must ever pass through a period of test and 
 trial before they are accepted. Reforms are proverbi- 
 ally slow." Then he adds, with a touch of character- 
 istic humor, "It may be, as we are told in Science and 
 Health, that to look a tiger in the eye with faith is to 
 send him frightened into the jungle; but men, as they 
 are at present informed, are more apt to rely, however 
 
 mistakenly, upon rifles Should they in the lapse 
 
 of time become convinced by the teachings of Science 
 and Health that their course is erroneous, no doubt a 
 future legislature will repeal the Act of 1877, but for 
 the present its policy must be enforced." 
 
 In Madden vs. Electric Light Co., 7 Dist. Pa., 364 
 (1898), he held that where a majority of "the stock- 
 holders of a corporation chose to make an improvident 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 21 
 
 contract, a minority interest had no redress unless the 
 act of the majority was not in good faith. Moreover, 
 the internal management of a foreign corporation 
 operating under a license in Pennsylvania was exclu- 
 sively under the jurisdiction of the foreign court, and 
 could not be inquired into in Pennsylvania. The same 
 result was reached in Hartley vs. Welsh, 8 Dist. E., 
 546 (1899). 
 
 In refusing a new trial in Feingold vs. Traction Co., 
 7 Dist. 445 (1898), he said that the true rule touching 
 the degree of care demanded from railway officials to- 
 ward infant trespassers is that force cannot be used 
 to the injury of child trespassers, but that responsibil- 
 ity for care over them rested with their parents or 
 guardians. Cars are not for the beneiSt of trespassers. 
 To require the stopping of a car in order to put off 
 intruders might be, upon certain occasions, a great em- 
 barrassment to both the company and the passengers. 
 *'A school of trespassing children could lawfully stop 
 the running of a railroad." 
 
 In Granger vs. Pigot, 10 Dist. R. 327 (1901), he en- 
 forced the equitable principle that a trustee cannot be 
 permitted to buy the trust property at his own sale, or 
 secure to himself any individual benefit from such pur- 
 chase. ''Officers ought to be protected from the 
 temptation to exercise their control over the acts of the 
 corporation in such a way as to benefit themselves as 
 individuals, at the expense of the estates for which the 
 corporation may be trustee. We hold, therefore, 
 that it is contrary to public policy, and against good 
 morals, to permit the secretary of a financial corpora- 
 tion to buy, for his own benefit, stock held by the cor- 
 poration in a trust capacity. ' ' 
 
 In Connor vs. Sterling, 10 Dist., 437 (1901), he dealt 
 with evidence in a murder case. He ruled that a photo- 
 graph, proved to have been taken from life and to re- 
 semble the person intended, might be used in evidence 
 
22 Samuel Wkitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 for the purpose of identification; but where its offer 
 might affect so serious a question as one of life or 
 death, the offer ought to be accompanied with proof of 
 the circumstances under which the photograph was 
 taken, and of its subsequent custody and history ; nor 
 should extraneous matter be written upon its back, 
 containing unproved statements likely to create in the 
 minds of the jury impressions unfavorable to the de- 
 fendant. 
 
 It must not be concluded by laymen from the fore- 
 going examples of his judicial work that Judge Penny- 
 packer discovered any new legal principles or invented 
 anything in the realm of law. He was too good a judge 
 to do that. It is not the function of a judge to legislate. 
 His province is to declare and not to make the law. No 
 better description of what a judge should be was ever 
 given than by Alexander Simpson, Jr., in the following 
 words : 
 
 "An ideal court, it has been said, is one in which 
 justice is judicially administered. Necessarily, there- 
 fore, an ideal judge is one who judicially admin- 
 isters justice. But what a wide vista that opens ! May 
 I delay you a moment to briefly point out what it does 
 mean as applied to a Common Pleas Judge in this State ? 
 It means not only that the judge must be honest, in- 
 dustrious, learned and sober, but that he must have 
 patience to hear all that is to be said, keeping his mind 
 receptive until the last word is spoken in argument, 
 though his own rulings are being criticised, at the same 
 time by appropriate inquiry bringing out all that is 
 valuable in the argument, and yet must have a keen 
 legal sense enabling him to understand, and often on 
 the spur of the moment to apply to the particular case 
 under consideration the foundation principles ab- 
 stracted from the arguments and authorities presented. 
 It means that he must be in touch alike with the indi- 
 vidual citizen and the community as a man, solicitous 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 23 
 
 to preserve individual rights and yet equally solicitous 
 to conserve the general public good ; anxious that mat- 
 ters of discretion may be as few as possible, yet doubly 
 anxious because of increased responsibility when they 
 do arise; with abundant friendships, yet blind to the 
 counsel and suitors before him, and to everything, 
 whether of poverty, wealth, influence, friendship or 
 otherwise, possessed by them, save, and save only, the 
 facts and the law applicable to the particular case. He 
 must have a broad and philosophical mind in a sound 
 and healthy body; must be able to see not merely the 
 rights and justice of the particular case, with a keen 
 desire to decide it in that way, but to see also the effects 
 its decision will have upon the body of the law; must 
 be able to avoid posing for or being influenced by pres- 
 ent public applause, and yet constantly recognizing 
 that the greatest good to the greatest number, within 
 the limitations necessary to protect the minority, is the 
 end and aim of all republican government. He must 
 steadily bear in mind the fact that the judiciary is n(Jt 
 the law-maldng body in the community, and yet recog- 
 nize that under the common law his decisions, on the 
 novel questions constantly arising, may establish rules 
 of action with the same effect as legislation. He must 
 have the horse-sense to know that men in other walks 
 of life than his own are actuated by motives that influ- 
 ence him but little ; that, therefore, juries drawn from 
 all classes of the community are better able than he is 
 to judge of those motives, and yet be willing to take his 
 just share of responsibility for every verdict rendered 
 before him, and to set aside or modify it when justice 
 so demands. It means that he must profoundly love 
 the institutions of his country ; must have a genius for 
 and love of the law he administers ; must have a proper 
 respect for the place that he occupies, and yet be ap- 
 proachable ; must be modest and civil, yet dignified and 
 firm in his demeanor; must be prompt, clear and con- 
 
24 Samuel WMtaker Pennypacker, 
 
 sistent in his rulings, and plain, direct and concise in 
 his charges, and yet must recognize that he is but 
 human, and, therefore, the other lawyers who practice 
 before him may be right and he be wrong; must loyally 
 follow the decisions of the appellate courts, whether or 
 not appealing to his legal sense, to the end that the law 
 may not be looked upon as uncertain, nor made the 
 subject of reproach; and more than all these, with an 
 abiding sense of responsibility to his conscience and 
 his God, he must so act as to avoid the least appearance 
 of evil, that every one, including the unsuccessful 
 suitors before him, will at once recognize that he does 
 in fact possess all these qualities. He who enters a 
 court presided over by such a judge as I have described 
 knows at once that he has entered a place instinct with 
 justice; though blind as the Goddess herself, he sees 
 and feels that there justice is judicially administered." 
 The words just quoted are taken from Mr. Simpson's 
 speech in placing Judge Pennypacker in nomination 
 for a second term, and their value as a portraiture of 
 the man is fixed by the circumstance that Mr. Simpson 
 is well known as the most candid and outspoken critic 
 of the judges that the Bar has seen during the past 
 fifty years. 
 Nomination Wc are uow to vicw Judgc Penuypackcr in a totally 
 different role. In June, 1902, he was nominated by the 
 Republican Party for the office of Governor, after a 
 spirited contest in the Convention with the late Mr. 
 Justice John P. Elkin of the Supreme Court. The 
 younger men of the party led by Elkin, who then held 
 the office of Attorney General under Governor Stone, 
 favored Elkin, the older men, led by Senator Quay, fa- 
 vored Pennypacker. A sharp encounter occurred be- 
 tween the leaders, in which the latter won. I recall as 
 one of the pleasantries of the occasion that Frank B. 
 McClain, then a member of the House from Lancaster 
 County, and now Lt.-Governor of the State, a man of 
 
 as Governor. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 25 
 
 the most engaging presence and captivating powers of 
 oratory, in seconding Mr. Elkin's nomination plucked 
 an American Beauty rose from Ms button-hole and 
 holding it above his head, exclaimed: "The red rose 
 of Lancaster blooms for the plowboy from Indiana 
 County. ' ' In nominating Pennypacker I countered by 
 describing the raw recruit in blue who on the night of 
 July 1st, 1863, had slept on the steps of the Capitol he 
 had volunteered to defend against the invading hordes 
 of Lee, and snatched a white rose from a bowl which 
 stood on the table of the presiding officer. It was the 
 white rose that won, although the victor had in his veins 
 the blood of "time honored Lancaster." 
 
 The campaign was a warm one. Both Judge Penny- 
 packer and his opponent, the Hon. Robert E. Pattison, 
 who had twice been Governor, appeared upon the 
 stump, the latter a veteran campaigner, the former 
 without much previous experience. A writer in the Yale 
 Review referring to Pennypacker has remarked: "His 
 lot as a candidate was not a particularly happy one be- 
 cause he had had no experience as a campaigner. He 
 had been accustomed to speaking his mind freely and 
 directly without equivocation, subterfuge, or indirec- 
 tion. The voters of the State were not prepared for 
 such frank declarations, but they could not escape the 
 conviction that he was an entirely honest man, and 
 moreover, a courageous one, even though they did not 
 approve his backers." The writer's impressions 
 correspond with my own, but he either failed to notice, 
 or else omitted to express, that as the campaign went 
 on the speaking improved and the candidacy became 
 stronger until toward the close the result was clearly 
 in sight. At a meeting in Chester during the last week. 
 Democratic hopes having sunk perceptibly. Candidate 
 Pennypacker provoked shouts of laughter by compar- 
 ing the Democratic party to a turtle which had been 
 run over in the village street, and a crowd having gath- 
 
26 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 ered, an Irishman, who observed a slight wiggling of 
 the tail, exclaimed : ' ^ The baste is dead but is not yet 
 sinsible of it." 
 
 Judge Pennypaeker was elected by a plurality of 
 more than 150,000 votes. 
 As GoverDor. rpj^g jj^au who had been elected Governor of Pennsyl- 
 vania was thus described by the gifted journalist, James 
 Creelman, who personally traveled from New York to 
 Harrisburg for the express purpose of seeing with his 
 own eyes the most talked about Governor in all the 
 States, and this too when he had been but three months 
 in office: *'A stalwart burly man .... of impressive 
 physique, wide-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed 
 — such a husky frame of bone and brawn as the Boers 
 have. He is Dutch on his father's side: otherwise he 
 is English, German and Welsh — all stubborn bloods. 
 His immense head, high cheek bones and narrow, pen- 
 dulous gray beard suggest at once the Mandarin of 
 Northern China. The dark eyes, the high forehead, 
 wide at the base and narrow at the top ; the dark skin, 
 heavy jaws and short nose heighten the impression of 
 Mongol Magisterialism. It is easy to find such a 
 powerful, bony, almost savagely impassive counte- 
 nance in the Yamens of Manchuria. The very look is 
 Mandarin-like. The Governor was dressed in sober 
 gray, and where stockings usually show themselves, 
 the legs of old fashioned top boots worn in warm 
 weather revealed the staid unfrivolous Pennsylvanian. 
 The white refined hands alone gave a hint of the scholar 
 and naturalist. All else was half farmer, half man- 
 darin The Governor's family history reaches 
 
 back through two hundred years of Pennsylvania his- 
 tory. One of his ancestors was employed by William 
 Penn. He was born sixty years ago and received an 
 academic education, after which he Avas a school 
 teacher. When the Civil War broke out he volun- 
 teered as a soldier. He served in the regiment which 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 27 
 
 first engaged the Confederate Army in the battle of 
 Gettysburg. After the war he was graduated from the 
 law school of the University of Pennsylvania and was 
 admitted to the bar. In 1866 he was elected President 
 of the Bancroft Literary Union and President of the 
 Law Academy. In 1889 he was appointed Judge of the 
 Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia by Governor 
 Beaver. In the same year he was elected to the same 
 position for a term of ten years. At the time of his 
 nomination for Governor by the Republicans he was a 
 President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of 
 Philadelphia. He is President of the Historical So- 
 ciety of Pennsylvania and of the Philobiblon Club, Vice- 
 President of the Sons of the Revolution and of the 
 Colonial Society, Past Commander of the Frederick 
 Taylor Post No. 19, Grand Army of the Republic, 
 member of the Society of Colonial "Wars, and member 
 of the Society of the War of 1812. He is also a Trustee 
 of the University of Pennsylvania, and a member of 
 the Valley Forge Commission. He is the author of 
 more than fifty books and papers. His library of early 
 Pennsylvania publications contains over eight thou- 
 sand books and manuscripts. ... So that it will be 
 seen that this strong-limbed cool Governor who has put 
 his name and seal upon a law intended to intimidate 
 the press of Pennsylvania, this lawy^er who reminded 
 his people that the Philadelphia cartoonist who cari- 
 catured his person would, a hundred years ago, have 
 been drawn and quartered and had his head stuck on a 
 pole, is not a political lout, not an ignorant iniffian, but 
 a man of learning, of refined tastes, of quiet personal 
 courage, of stainless official record on the bench and 
 wide experience of the dignities and amenities of life. ' ' 
 Such was the impression made in a single interview 
 upon a visitor coming from another State, and who 
 regarded the Governor's relations to the press-libel 
 law with a hostile eye. From the sketch which I have 
 
28 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 given of his career, and from the graphic strokes of the 
 pen portraiture I have just exliibited it is impossible 
 to extract any elements which could be fashioned into 
 a tool of unprincipled politicians, or into a fool in the 
 conduct of the public business. And yet such was the 
 effort of his critics to make him appear, when they 
 disliked his conclusions. A review of his official acts, 
 now that time has cooled the blood and purified the 
 vision, will be his all-sufficient vindication. When 
 waves beat high and boil furiously it is evident that 
 they encounter strong resistance, and when the storm 
 subsides the solid rock appears against which they had 
 dashed themselves in vain. 
 
 The Inaugural Address, delivered January 20th, 
 1903, was a State paper of unusual merit. Apart from 
 its literary excellence, which was to be expected from 
 the pen of so accomplished a writer, it stated a definite 
 policy, which was rigorously adhered to. The Gov- 
 ernor had a statesmanlike view of the objects to be 
 aimed at, and a determined purpose to reach them, 
 however difficult the task. Much of the resistance that 
 he encountered and much of the criticism and abuse 
 that were poured upon him was due to the persistent 
 courage with which he pursued his plans. A less clear- 
 sighted man would have become bewildered, a less 
 brave man would have been intimidated. He fought 
 corporate interests, personal prejudices, entrenched 
 customs, popular fallacies, combinations of politicians, 
 protests of well meaning but misinformed citizens, and 
 the concentrated fire of a hostile press without fear 
 and without flinching. Now that ten years have passed 
 since the close of four years of strenuous conflict it is 
 possible to review the field with calmness and estimate 
 the value of the victories that he won. 
 Hig I cannot do better in indicating to you how carefully 
 
 Programme. \^q jj^d thought out his programme in advance, and how 
 far he succeeded in carrying it into effect, than by ana- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 29 
 
 lyzing his Inaugural Address, and, after stating sep- 
 arately each proposition, describing what he did or 
 attempted to do, and what he finally accomplished. 
 The Inaugural is the key to his Gubernatorial career. 
 
 He opened with a characteristic tribute to the great- 
 ness of Pennsylvania, a State with a population greater 
 than that of England in the time of Elizabeth, twice 
 that of Holland when the leading maritime power of 
 the world, and twice that of the United States when 
 Washington became President; a State of boundless re- 
 sources, with princely annual revenues, and substan- 
 tially out of debt ; a State which paid each year for the 
 maintenance of public schools and charities more than 
 any other American Commonwealth, accomplishing 
 these results without a State tax upon land or houses, 
 and with a tax rate in her large cities less than in any 
 other of the leading municipalities of the country. The 
 Governorship of such a State was, therefore, an office 
 which was one of the great executive places of the 
 earth. No man, whatever his capacity, or what the 
 manner in which he had been called, might approach it 
 save with humble steps, and with a grave sense of its 
 importance and responsibilities, and he pledged him- 
 self to see to it, so far as he might be able, that under 
 the Constitution the laws were faithfully administered. 
 
 With judicial circumspection, a trait that was born 
 in him and cultivated by long practice, he expressed a 
 wish ''always within reasonable limits to confer with 
 all persons who may have facts to impart or conclu- 
 sions to present," and he declared it to be his ''purpose 
 to consult especially with those who in common par- 
 lance are called politicians." He declared that "there 
 is no more dangerous public vice than the prevalent 
 affectation of disrespect for those who are engaged in 
 the performance of the work of the cities, the Common- 
 wealth and the Nation, because it is in effect an attack 
 on popular government, and its tendency is to under- 
 
30 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 mine our institutions." I once heard President Mc- 
 Kinley avow similar sentiments. This was not a sur- 
 render to evil influences ; it was a wise and philosophic 
 opening of the mind to sources of knowledge which an 
 autocratic, self-sufficient and impracticable egotist 
 would have rejected. As a matter of fact the Governor 
 fought and overcame politicians quite as frequently as 
 he agreed with them when his judgment convinced him 
 that their plans were proper. 
 Le^LatatiTO He iusistcd that ''there is too much legislation," 
 
 ^^'^' that it was "far better to leave the law alone unless the 
 
 necessity for change was plain." In this he agreed 
 with Blackstone, Sharswood, and the best informed of 
 our experienced publicists. As a result of the firm 
 hand that he imposed on legislative action, both by ad- 
 vice and the exercise of the veto power, he cut the bulk 
 of our legislation to half of what it had been before him, 
 and what it became after him. The soundness of his 
 position has been amply sustained by our recent experi- 
 ences in struggling with a perfect mania for legislation. 
 A statute is the panacea of the legislative quack. To en- 
 able you to appreciate this let me tell you that within the 
 past five years the State legislatures and Congress have 
 passed more than sixty thousand laws. He declared that 
 "the modern tendency to invent neiv crimes ought to he 
 curbed." To confuse the distinction between mere 
 breaches of contract and crimes was to bring the law 
 itself into disrepute. Without reverting to historical 
 illustrations he clearly had in mind the intolerable con- 
 dition once existing in England when more than three 
 hundred offences were punishable by death. He was 
 opposed to the reckless disposition to impose imprison- 
 ment upon acts "which were never known to be of- 
 fenses until they became statutory." To those of you 
 who are not familiar with the extent of this vice let 
 me say that within the past ten years more than one 
 thousand laws have been passed in tlie aggregate in 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 31 
 
 the States and by Congress to legislate men into 
 jail. 
 
 Here are some samples of the laws that he vetoed, vetoes 
 An Act was passed making it a misdemeanor to adver- 
 tise by any written notices offering legal services in a 
 divorce case. The Governor met it by saying: "It is 
 true that to advertise publicly is unprofessional and 
 not to be conmiended, but it is not essentially a crime 
 and not such an offense against morals and propriety 
 as to render the offender subject to imprisonment. 
 . . . . If our morals are to be improved in this re- 
 spect by legislation, it must be by making more strin- 
 gent the laws allowing divorces and not by the effort 
 to make criminal that which is only incidental to the 
 system. ' ' An Act made it the duty of every justice of 
 the peace within one week after he had rendered judg- 
 ment to file a transcript of the proceeding with the 
 prothonotary of the county court, under pain of fine 
 and imprisonment. The Governor disposed of it by 
 saying : ' ' There may be many reasons why a transcript 
 could not be filed within a week. The serious illness of 
 a justice, the destruction by fire of his docket, and many 
 other unforeseen occurrences might prevent it, but ob- 
 jection is put upon the broader ground that the failure 
 to perform such a ministerial duty is not in itself es- 
 sentially a crime and ought not to be so treated." An 
 Act prescribed imprisonment for not less than ten days 
 or more than ninety days for practicing the occupation 
 of barber without having obtained a certificate of regis- 
 tration. The Governor declared that compliance with 
 the Act could properly be compelled by the imposition 
 of penalties, but a failure to comply ought not to be 
 treated as a crime. An Act was aimed at the importa- 
 tion and sale of carcasses of lambs or sheep with the 
 hoofs on. The Governor tersely remarked that, *'if a 
 farmer chose to buy a slaughtered lamb from his 
 neighbor to take to market, and the hoofs were left 
 
32 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 on, the seller becomes a criminal The bill 
 
 is not approved." An Act made it unlawful for gyp- 
 sies to encamp without written permission of the owner 
 of the land, and punished the offence by fine and im- 
 prisonment. The Governor disposed of the matter by- 
 saying : ''Under our law the owner of lands may make 
 a lease for three years by parole (word of mouth). A 
 lease at will or a mere license is a less estate than a 
 lease of three years, and there seems to be no reason 
 why the owner could not give permission by word of 
 mouth." A bill prohibited liquor dealers under pain of 
 imprisonment from giving away eatables in the form 
 of meals or lunch, except crackers, cheese and pretzels. 
 The Governor declared: ''There seems to be no reason 
 why it should be an offense for a man who is making 
 a sale to give something in addition if he chooses to do 
 it. If it is wrong to make a gift, why should there be 
 an exception in favor of the pretzels and cheese? A 
 roll or a piece of bread would appear to be as innocent 
 as cheese. It is not wise to enact legislation which is 
 so easily evaded. There would be no difficulty in sell- 
 ing the crackers, cheese and pretzels, and giving away 
 the liquor, or in selling all for the price of the liquor." 
 Another bill imposed imprisonment in the county jail 
 for five days for spitting in public places. The Gov- 
 ernor said : ' ' The purpose of the bill appears to be an 
 effort to make people nice and cleanly in their habits 
 by legislation. Among the thousands of people who go 
 to a circus, one or more may have a cold: catarrh or 
 sudden contact between the teeth and tongue may cause 
 a flow of saliva. Imprisonment seems to be severe 
 punishment for yielding to what cannot always be pre- 
 vented. If spittoons were provided, there would be 
 stronger reason for such legislation. It would be bet- 
 ter to have a well digested health regulation." An Act 
 authorized sheriff's to acquire and maintain two blood- 
 hounds for tracking criminals. The Governor de- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 33 
 
 clared: ''It is far better that a person charged with 
 crime should escape than that the means provided for 
 in this act should be used for his capture." Another 
 Act related to the use of bottles and jars in the de- 
 livery of milk and cream. The Governor described the 
 bill as ''an example of that inconsiderate spirit which 
 would visit with fine and imprisonment an act to which 
 no criminality can properly attach. Articles used in 
 trade ought not to be protected by imprisoning the 
 people who use them, nor should the fact of their crim- 
 inality depend upon a notice given by an interested 
 owner, complaining of a misuse of the article hired." 
 
 I might give you many other illustrations, but these 
 will suffice. The general principle underlying the Gov- 
 ernor's vetoes was that the indiscriminate use of im- 
 prisonment took from the ]3rison much of its eifect as 
 a restraint upon those who did evil. Juries would re- 
 fuse to convict where they believed the charge ought 
 not to be sustained, even though the facts came within 
 the terms of a statute, and thus men would be daily 
 taught to disregard the law. 
 
 The next subject dwelt upon in the Inaugural was Reapportion- 
 the Constitutional direction that at the completion of 
 each United States census there should be a Senatorial 
 and Representative reapportionment of the State. 
 This was a matter of vital consequence as going to the 
 root of representative government, and avoiding the 
 evils of "rotten boroughs." It was also a matter of 
 much difficulty, and the task had been vainly attempted 
 by Governor Pattison. Such was the uproar and op- 
 position that attended his efforts that successive Gov- 
 ernors had evaded the task, which became all the more 
 difficult with the lapse of time. Such were the inequal- 
 ities and injustices existing that Governor Penny- 
 packer resolved upon correction. It was a long fight 
 and a hard fight. Practical politicians, election officers, 
 men who declared that their constituencies would be 
 
34 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 destroyed, or party majorities disturbed if not endan- 
 gered, were all in league to obstruct him. He was even 
 told that it was mathematically impossible. At two 
 regular sessions of the Legislature no one would under- 
 take the preparation of a bill, though many were the 
 conferences between the Governor and the leaders. 
 The end of his term was approaching, and he saw this 
 great Constitutional mandate deliberately disobeyed. 
 Finally he undertook the task himself, mapped out a 
 bill, submitted it to criticism, to discussion, to argu- 
 ment, to modification, and with a mastery of figures 
 little suspected in political calculations and a deter- 
 mined purpose to do his duty which confounded the 
 foes of change, he at last brought all opposition to an 
 end, called a special session of the Legislature to con- 
 sider nine important and pressing subjects, of which 
 this was one, and had the satisfaction of seeing written 
 upon the statute book a just and rational rearrange- 
 ment of the political geography of the State. I recall 
 most vividly the scenes of those three years and a half 
 of battle, the maps that were made, the maps that were 
 unmade, the reams of paper containing election re- 
 turns, estimates of disaster, predictions of party defeat 
 in this district or in that, the unseating of this man, and 
 the seating of that, the groans of the dethroned, the 
 moans of the wounded, and the final triumph of the 
 clear-headed determined occupant of the Governor's 
 chair, sustained as he was by the loyal support of a few 
 who though often denounced as political leaders proved 
 themselves to be true servants of the people. The 
 newspapers made little of it comparatively, and the 
 people stood in silent indifference to what had been 
 done, but nevertheless they owe their present basis of 
 representation to the inflexible resolution of Samuel W. 
 Pennypacker. 
 Ballot The next cardinal purpose of the Governor was the 
 
 simplification of the ballot. The then existing ballot 
 
 Reform. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 35 
 
 law, suggested by well meaning but overzealous re- 
 formers, had proved in practice to be both cumbersome 
 and inefficient. It needed either careful amendment or 
 reconstruction. The Governor emphatically declared 
 that ''our system of government depended primarily 
 upon the right of every elector to vote according to his 
 judgment and preference, without interference by or 
 obstruction from any other person or influence, and to 
 have all the votes accurately counted." He pointed 
 out that in providing the necessary means it ought to 
 be remembered that the more simple they are and the 
 less complicated the device the more likely are they to 
 be effective. He urged that the plan to be adopted 
 ought to be one easy for the voters to understand. He 
 denounced as "mere vicious theorizing the thought 
 that something ought to be done by means of the law 
 to encourage any particular form of voting, making it 
 easy for one or difficult for another, ' ' and stood for the 
 equal rights of Independents, Prohibitionists, So- 
 cialists, Democrats or Republicans to vote their full 
 party tickets if they so willed. 
 
 Serious attention was given to these recommenda- 
 tions, and various efforts were made to simplify pro- 
 cedure, notably by the Act of 29th April, 1903, amend- 
 ing the existing election laws by regulating the methods 
 of nomination, the arrangement of groups of party 
 candidates, and by direction as to how ballots should 
 be printed ' ' so as to give each voter a clear opportunity 
 to designate bis choice of candidates," accompanied by 
 printed instructions for the guidance of the unwary or 
 uninitiated citizen. The purity and freedom from in- 
 terference of elections were guarded by provisions con- 
 trolling the police force and the actions of election 
 officers. This good work was followed up at the special 
 session called in January, 1906, by several Acts provid- 
 ing for the personal registration of electors in cities of 
 the first, second and third classes, as a condition of 
 
Domain. 
 
 36 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 their right to vote; by the establishment of uniform 
 primaries, by prohibitions of corrupt practices, and by 
 the restriction of the political activities of municipal 
 officers, clerks and employees. In the study and prep- 
 aration of this series of statutes, which constitute an 
 important and valuable part of our' election code, the 
 Governor was anxious to secure the best and most just 
 results, and was ever alert to guard against the mis- 
 chiefs of impracticable reforming enthusiasms on the 
 one hand, and subtle practical artifices on the other. 
 The difficulty of maintaining a steady balance between 
 these equally dangerous extremes can only be appre- 
 ciated by one who has had the opportunity of actual 
 observation. 
 Eminent A fifth topic, cmphasizcd in the Inaugural, was that 
 
 of eminent domain, which involved the power of the 
 State to take private property for public use upon com- 
 pensation to the property owner. Wliile explaining 
 that the Constitutions of both the United States and 
 the State protected the citizen in his individual right 
 of property, he admitted the qualification that where 
 there was public need, for the good of the community, 
 the State might intervene, and upon compensation, 
 compel him to surrender his individual right for the 
 general welfare. ''The danger as well as the vice of 
 the situation lies in the unrestrained power of a 
 few individuals, bound together under the mys- 
 terious potencies of corporations, to seize upon private 
 property upon a mere declaration of their covetous- 
 ness, and foul streams, cut through forests, and destroy 
 homesteads." In the Governor's view, before any 
 franchise was granted, either by special or general 
 law, involving a disturbance of the individual nght of 
 property, and before any exercise of the enormous 
 power of eminent domain by a private or public cor- 
 poration, there ought to be express assent by the State 
 itself, based upon an ascertainment of the public need. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 37 
 
 In this he announced the wholesome principle that, 
 "while the test was public necessity to which a citizen 
 must yield, the determination of the existence of such 
 a necessity should not be left to the ex parte choice of 
 a corporation interested in the acquisition, but should 
 be lodged in an independent and impartial officer or 
 official body to pass on the question in advance of con- 
 demnation.'' I call your attention to this as one of the 
 best illustrations of the Governor's fairmindedness 
 and perfect poise. Wliat he said seems to have been 
 regarded as a challenge, for very shortly two bills 
 reached him, both of which he vetoed. One of them 
 conferred upon cities the right of eminent domain to 
 remove dams, booms and other obstructions from 
 streams flowing near cities. ''This bill," said he, "if 
 it became a law, would grant to the cities a most dan- 
 gerous power. The power is given to remove not an 
 obstruction within the limits of the municipality, but 
 an obstruction upon any stream of water which flows 
 near the corporate limits. With the city authorities 
 rests the power to determine whether the obstruction 
 impedes the natural flow of the stream. The founda- 
 tions of a bridge may be an obstruction and a dam 
 certainly would constitute an obstruction. Under this 
 bill, therefore, since the Delaware river flows near the 
 City of Philadelphia, that city would be permitted to 
 remove any dams which may exist upon the river. The 
 Susquehanna river flows near the City of Harrisburg. 
 Under this bill that city would be permitted to remove 
 all railroad bridges which cross the river." The other 
 bill gave to railroads the power to condemn dwelling 
 houses "for yards and shops," or for "any other 
 proper corporate purpose," whenever "in the judg- 
 ment of the directors" it was necessary to construct, 
 straighten, widen or improve the railroad. The Gov- 
 ernor said: "When the land of a citizen is taken by a 
 railroad, it is taken by the Commonwealth, because the 
 
38 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 public necessities require the sacrifice. Is it then more 
 to the interest of the Commonwealth that there should 
 be an absolutely straight line between New York or 
 Chicago, because that is the logical end toward which 
 one alternative takes us, or is it more to the interest 
 of the Commonwealth that the citizen should be per- 
 mitted to rear his family at his own fireside undis- 
 turbed, with all that this means for the iDreservation 
 of the race and its virtues? It seems to me that it is 
 possible to take a middle course to avoid both Scylla 
 and Charybdis and to this extent at least to put the 
 exercise of the right of eminent domain where in prin- 
 ciple it belongs. There may be a house about which 
 there can be no sentiment and little value owned by a 
 man without family, which he proposes to sell at an 
 enoi*mous price because it stands in the line of a great 
 public improvement. There may be a home typical of 
 all that there is good in American life, around which 
 cluster the associations of centuries and which ought to 
 be preserved regardless of trade. There may be a 
 railroad organized at a venture without public need, 
 destined to end in failure after the destruction of much 
 which is more useful than itself. Is it wise to leave 
 the determination of what ought to be saved and what 
 may be destroyed to a board of interested directors? 
 Is it wise to have judgment rendered by one of the 
 parties? The bill ought to have provided for a tri- 
 bunal representing the State which could decide upon 
 the necessity and, while being just to the railroads, 
 could protect the citizen. If we are to go further with 
 the grants of the right to take private property, and 
 any one who has kept pace with recently projected leg- 
 islation can see whither we are else drifting, some such 
 plan ought to be adopted. ' ' 
 
 The same view is expressed in his veto of a bill re- 
 lating to cemeteries. He declared: ''It has become a 
 frequent device, when one man wants to get possession 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 39 
 
 of the property which belongs to another, to organize a 
 corporation, and persuade the Commonwealth to sur- 
 render to this corporation a power which ought never to 
 be exercised except for the purposes of the Common- 
 wealth itself, looking to the good of the people. This 
 bill proposes to give to another class of corporations 
 the right of eminent domain If incorpor- 
 ated cemetery associations should desire to extend 
 their lands, there seems to be no good reason why they 
 should not buy them and pay for them, as all individ- 
 uals conducting business interests are compelled to 
 do." 
 
 The next subject discussed in the Inaugural con- ^^^*^® , , 
 
 " " ^ Constaliulary. 
 
 cerned the conflicts behveen concentrated capital and 
 organized labor, which had been of frequent occurrence 
 in Pennsylvania, resulting in cessation of production, 
 loss of profits and of wages, violations of law and dis- 
 turbance of large communities. The Governor with his 
 usual impartiality stated both sides of the controversy: 
 — that *'it was to the good of the State to encourage 
 production under proper safeguards against violence 
 and terror, for nothing but harm could result from un- 
 used resources in the hands of either individuals or 
 corporations. On the other hand, the State was inter- 
 ested in bringing about conditions in which in the dis- 
 tribution of rewards from business ventures capital 
 should have less of profit and labor more of compensa- 
 tion. But no capitalist should be strong enough, and 
 no laborer should be insignificant enough to escape 
 obedience to the law. No employer and no laborer 
 should be encouraged to violate his contract, and above 
 all no man should be permitted to interfere upon any 
 pretence whatever with another who might choose to 
 sell his labor, and violence, from whatever source aris- 
 ing, should be promptly and rigidly suppressed, using 
 whatever force might be necessary for the purpose." 
 The results of these just reflections were embodied in 
 
40 Samuel Whitaker PennypacJcer. 
 
 the Act of 2nd of May, 1905, which established the now 
 celebrated and much admired State constabulary. I 
 shall never forget the morning when the Deputy Sec- 
 retary of the Commonwealth laid upon the Governor's 
 table an armful of commissions and asked for his sig- 
 nature. ''What are these, sir?" "Commissions." 
 "Commissions for what?" "For Coal and Iron 
 police." "Pray what are they?" "Special officers to 
 • maintain law and order about the properties of coal 
 and iron mines and other industrial establishments." 
 ' ' Are the names filled in ? " " Yes, Governor. " " Who 
 suggested the names ? " " The companies themselves. ' ' 
 ' * Take them away ! I will never put the police powers 
 of the State in the hands of the nominees of one of the 
 parties to a controversy. We must have an independent 
 constabulary." No finer example of practical wisdom 
 in the maintenance of law and order, without taking 
 sides in a controversy, can be found in any State, and 
 the results as attested by eleven years of experience 
 have justified the Governor's sagacity. 
 Conservation. Thcu camo the important matter of the Conservation 
 of Natural Resources, suggested and enforced years 
 before it had attracted the attention of Congress or of 
 other States, or had aroused the sleeping faculties of 
 the Nation. "The commercial idea put briefly and in 
 gross," said the Governor, "is that forests, coal, oil 
 and iron are to be sent into the market as soon and as 
 rapidly as possible, in order that they may be con- 
 verted into money and the man of the day may live in 
 luxury and enjoyment. The duty of the statesman is 
 to look beyond the indulgence of the time, to regard 
 these resources as gifts of Providence, to be husbanded 
 with care and used as need requires rather than wasted 
 or poured upon glutted markets, with a sense that when 
 once exhausted they can never be restored." The 
 Governor's suggestion that a slight tax should be im- 
 posed upon some of our productions, the proceeds to 
 
Samuel WhitaJcer Penny packer. 41 
 
 be applied to the betterment of our roads, which he 
 argued would not be a serious burden, but would result 
 in securing for our own peof)le a proportion of the 
 benefit of the natural deposits, was not acted on, but 
 the establishment of good roads was embodied in the 
 Good Roads bill of 15th of April, 1903, and the creation 
 of the State Highway Department. The acquisition 
 of large bodies of lands to be reforested, — a policy 
 which had been inaugurated by Governor Stone, — was 
 promoted by the Act of 13th May, 1903, which directed 
 the Commissioner of Forestry to establish a school at 
 the Mont Alto Reservation for practical instruction in 
 forestry and to prepare forest wardens for the proper 
 care of the State lands. 
 
 The next topic dwelt upon in the Inaugural lay very Historic 
 close to the Governor's heart and his illustrations dis- 
 played his characteristic touches as a historian. ''No 
 people," he said, "are ever really great who are neg- 
 lectful of their shrines and have no pride in their 
 achievements. The history of the world shows that a 
 correct sentiment is a more lasting and potent force 
 than either accumulated money or concentrated author- 
 ity. The theses which Luther nailed to the church door 
 at Wittenberg still sway the minds of men and the 
 Fuggers disappeared when they died. AVhat would 
 have been the influence of Greece without the memories 
 of Marathon, or of England without those of Runny- 
 mede? Around Fort Duquesne, in Western Pennsyl- 
 vania, at one head of the great river of the world was 
 to a large extent detennined in the French and Indian 
 War the question whether the American continent 
 should be dominated by Latin or Teuton, involving the 
 destinies of the human race, and around Philadelphia, 
 in Eastern Pennsylvania, the real struggle of the Revo- 
 lutionary War occurred. The good example set by 
 Philadelphia in its care of Independence Hall and Con- 
 gress Hall should be followed by the State. The fields 
 
42 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 of Fort Necessity, where Washington first became 
 known ; of Bushy Run, where Bouquet won his impor- 
 tant victory, and the camp ground of Valley Forge 
 should be tenderly cared for and preserved." He had 
 the satisfaction of seeing the Valley Forge Commission 
 well established and generously supported. Later he 
 successfully headed off a movement in Congress to take 
 the control away from Pennsylvania and lodge it in a 
 National Commission. He did so in a characteristic 
 letter to Senator Penrose, which proved effective: 
 ''Our State Commission has secured the lines there 
 (Valley Forge), has laid out avenues and is doing its 
 work well. We want to do everything we can to help 
 them and to prevent the interference which comes from 
 persons outside the State and certain well-meaning but 
 ill-advised women within it. Pennsylvania is rich 
 enough and capable enough to take care of Independ- 
 ence Hall, Valley Forge, and her battlefields, and make 
 them tell their lesson to the nation. After she had 
 expended large sums of money in marking and erecting 
 monuments at Gettysburg, it was transferred to the 
 United States Government and the result was that 
 after Grover Cleveland had been elected President the 
 bronze New York monument was put in the cemetery 
 in the very center of the field, which was in every as- 
 pect of it a Pennsylvania battle. I do not propose, if I 
 can help it, to have this course repeated as to Valley 
 Forge, and should the matter come up in Congress, I 
 rely upon you to help me. Should a bill be presented, 
 you can probably kill it easily by having added to it 
 that the Government also take Bunker Hill from Mas- 
 sachusetts and Ston}' Point from New York." 
 University of The luaugural next dealt with the unique relation 
 occupied by the University of Pennsylvania to the 
 State. As early as April 1891, the Governor, in an 
 elaborate article contributed to the Penxsylvania Mag- 
 azine OF History axd Biography, had examined in 
 
 Permsylvanla. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 43 
 
 detail and traced with care the history of the Univer- 
 sity in its relation to the State, emphasizing the stat- 
 utory obligations created by the Legislature in obedi- 
 ence to the mandate of the Constitution of 1776 that 
 * ' all useful learning shall be duly encouraged and pro- 
 moted in one or more universities." He had followed 
 this in 1899 by a minute and convincing presentation of 
 facts to a special committee of the Trustees to inquire 
 into the origin of the University of Pennsylvania in 
 support of a demonstrable origin in the charitable 
 school established in 1740, subsequently expanded into 
 an academy, a college, a university, without losing its 
 original feature as a part of the general scheme. With 
 this matter in view, he declared : "It shall be my effort 
 to restore the relation of patronage and control, the 
 outgrowth of colonial conditions and made a constitu- 
 tional requirement, and to regain and retain for the 
 State the credit of this early and unprecedented recog- 
 nition of the cause of learning." In pursuance of this 
 purpose he not only attended frequently the meetings 
 of the Trustees, but revived the old custom of having 
 the Board meet once a year in the State Capitol, when 
 he presided ex officio. 
 
 The next topic dwelt upon in the Inaugural, the 
 statutory regulation of the public press, I shall re- 
 serve for special consideration. 
 
 He then dwelt upon the importance of a real State state 
 pride ; the elimination of separate interests of city and 
 countiy; the need of Pittsburgh to aid Philadelphia 
 in finding an outlet to the sea, and of Philadelphia to 
 aid Pittsburgh in her effort to unite the vast popula- 
 tion of the head waters of the Ohio, and entreated both 
 to act not for themselves alone, but for the good of the 
 State and its people. He had the satisfaction of seeing 
 both of these purposes generously nurtured by liberal 
 legislative appropriations for the enlargement and im- 
 provement of the navigation of the Delaware and 
 Allegheny rivers. 
 
44 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 Summary of From the foregoiiig review of the Governor's elab- 
 orate and well-considered programme you will perceive 
 that he succeeded in all his aims, save the one that I 
 have reserved, and even as to this he achieved a partial 
 but lasting success. He had reduced the bulk of legis- 
 lation ; he had curbed the invention of new crimes ; he 
 had reapportioned the State ; he had reformed the bal- 
 lot laws ; he had safeguarded the purity of elections ; he 
 had restricted the power of eminent domain; he had 
 established an impartial police force; he had conserved 
 the natural resources of the State; he had improved 
 her public roads ; he had honored her historic shrines ; 
 he had reconsecrated her greatest educational institu- 
 tion; he had awakened State pride and State coopera- 
 tion by fostering commerce upon the greatest of our 
 natural highways. Add to these the achievements of 
 the special session of 1906 — the honor of which belongs 
 to him alone — the creation of a Greater Pittsburgh ; the 
 protection of the State funds deposited in banks and 
 trust companies; the personal registration of voters; 
 the Act against corrupt practices at elections; the 
 prohibition of officers, clerks, and employees of cities of 
 the first class from taking an active part in political 
 movements and elections; the control of State appro- 
 priations for the erection of County bridges ; the aboli- 
 tion of fees in the offices of the Secretary of the Com- 
 monwealth and the Insurance Commission; the im- 
 provement of primary election laws; the establishment 
 of a civil service system; the regulation of nomina- 
 tion and election expenses, and requiring that full ac- 
 counts to be publicly filed. Here you have a body of 
 constructive legislation of lasting value unparalleled 
 by any corresponding period of four 3^ears since the 
 days of Franklin. I challenge controversy on this 
 point. President Roosevelt declared, in speaking of the 
 results of the special session only, that no such com- 
 plete results of reformatory and progressive legisla- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 45 
 
 tion in so short a period of time had been attained in 
 any other State of the Union. Had he known of what 
 else had been done he could scarcely have been more 
 emphatic. The Yale Revietv devoted a whole article 
 to the record of the special session, and declared that 
 through the Governor's vigorous action '4n a single 
 month there had been placed on the statute books of 
 Pennsylvania a most remarkable set of laws." Even 
 the great daily journals, which had been the most exact- 
 ing, the most persistent and relentless of his critics, 
 were emphatic in his praise. 
 
 But besides these achievements of the highest order, 
 there is a second class to which I must call your atten- 
 tion. He established the following Departments : Pub- 
 lic Printing and Binding ; State Highways ; State Fish- 
 eries; Factory Inspection; the State Police. He 
 established also the Bureau of Mines; of Vital Statis- 
 tics; of Economic Zoology; and a State Museum of 
 objects illustrating the fauna and flora of the State, and 
 its mineralogy, geology, archeology, arts and history, 
 the latter securing for the first time an orderly arrange- 
 ment of the records of the State. He regulated the 
 hours of labor and the employment of minors in the in- 
 dustries and manufactories of the State. He provided 
 for the erection of a State Hospital for the treatment 
 and care of the criminal insane, which has became one 
 of the model institutions of the country. He provided 
 a system of humane education in our public schools, 
 forbidding experiments in such schools upon any liv- 
 ing creature. He authorized and appointed a Com- 
 mission to codify the laws of divorce and to co-operate 
 with the other States in securing uniformity of divorce 
 legislation in the United States. By increasing the 
 salaries of the judges he gave them an adequate income 
 so essential to good judicial work. He signed a well 
 drawn and practicable Pure Food Act and avoided the 
 mischief of baking-powder bills. He revised the tax- 
 
tlve Work. 
 
 46 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 ing systems of the counties of less than one million 
 inhabitants, and by the creation of the Water Supply 
 Commission he rescued the streams and springs of the 
 State from speculative or monopolistic appropriation. 
 It would be easy to multiply illustrations of his 
 statesmanship, breadth of view, rational progressive- 
 ness, care of the public health and morals, conserva- 
 tion of natural resources, of his pride in the State's 
 history, and his eagerness to promote her welfare, but 
 these must sujBfice as illustrations of his acts as a con- 
 stituent part of the legislature, through his power to 
 approve or veto bills. It is now in order to consider 
 him as an administrator. 
 Administra- Jn this rcspcct he was altogether admirable. But 
 little is known by the public of the exacting duties im- 
 posed upon the Governor, and it will not be out of place 
 to describe some of their features which will stand as 
 a fair sample of his entire term, as he was expected to 
 reside at the Capital, and devote himself continuously 
 to the routine duties of the office. The Legislature met 
 but once in two years, remained in session from the 
 second week in January until the middle of May, and 
 devoted on an average but four days a week to its 
 labors, assembling on Monday evenings and adjourn- 
 ing on Thursday afternoons, so as to allow the non- 
 resident members to attend to their private business at 
 week ends. As against an eight months' legislative 
 service, the Governor, who even in the summer months 
 enjoyed but slight relaxation, toiled more than five times 
 as long. While the Legislature was in session his offi- 
 cial routine was much interrupted by the calls of 
 Senators and Representatives to discuss pending bills 
 whose name was legion, and by the visits of strangers 
 attracted by a meeting of the Legislature, and partic- 
 ularly by swarms of citizens from all parts of the 
 State interested in educational and charitable appro- 
 priations for universities, colleges, schools, hospitals 
 
Samuel Whitaher Pennypacker. 47 
 
 and asylums, and markedly suspicious of everybody's 
 avarice except their own. They were followed by flights 
 of office seekers and their backers, looking for judge- 
 ships, clerkships, prison appointments, justiceships 
 of the peace because of vacancies, membership on 
 State boards or commissions, or requesting letters of 
 reconmiendation to coi^oration officers, based on some 
 slight campaign acquaintance with the Governor or 
 from having served as a juror in his court, or from 
 having known him when a schoolboy. The Governor, 
 however busy, having been elected by the people was 
 "a public servant," and had, therefore, to postpone the 
 reading of his mail, which was choked with similar re- 
 quests, and reserve for a quieter hour the consideration 
 of approval or veto of the bills, which were being 
 weekly certified to his table by the presiding officer of 
 the Senate and the Speaker of the House as having 
 been passed by both those bodies. When the Legisla- 
 ture adjourned, for thirty days thereafter the strain 
 was still greater, for it was found that in the closing 
 days five hundred bills or more had been hurriedly 
 passed, and that the Governor must examine all these 
 within the time limit lest they become laws, and further 
 that the appropriations exceeded the revenues by mil- 
 lions of dollars, thus imposing on the Executive the 
 odious and unjust task of paring them down, or of 
 vetoing them outright, provoking very often a howl of 
 rage. ' ' If he had only let our bill go through, ' ' shrieked 
 citizen A., who was deaf to similar shouts from the 
 majority of the alphabet. 
 
 Hard though the task was, he accomplished it. Being Hu^or. 
 in the best of health and spirits, punctual, attentive, 
 diligent and capable, accustomed to hard work, and 
 ready with his tongue and pen, he disposed of duties 
 that were new to him with noticeable ease. At times 
 his humor, at times his philosophy aided him. A bill 
 had been passed prohibiting the killing of bears, ex- 
 
48 Samuel Whitalcer Pennypacher. 
 
 cept in the montli of November, and with any other 
 weapon than a gun. The original form in which he 
 dictated his veto message was as follows: ''I would 
 gladly sign a bill properly drawn for the protection of 
 this interesting animal, but unfortunately this Act 
 compels a judge to send a man to jail who kills a bear 
 in any other month of the year than November, and 
 with any other weapon than a gun. Suppose a man 
 with an axe in his hand, and chopping wood in the 
 month of July, is attacked by a bear with cubs, the 
 bear won't wait till November, and won't let him go 
 get a gun. ' ' I begged him to allow it to remain in that 
 form, but he thought it too crude for a veto message, 
 and whipped it into the shape in which it finally ap- 
 peared. The humor is still there but the point is 
 blunted. A railroad bill authorized one railroad com- 
 pany to purchase a part or parts of another railroad 
 company's property. He said : ' ' I do not know what is 
 meant by 'a part or parts.' There was once a man who 
 was cut into pieces. One piece consisted of a fragment 
 of his finger nail, the other piece of the remainder of 
 his body." Of his philosophy I will give but two illus- 
 trations. A State officer had refused to perform a min- 
 isterial duty under a mandatory statute. The duty was 
 so plain that I prepared to apply for a mandamus. 
 Before doing so, I had a talk with the Governor, and 
 after reading the statute declared: ''I do not see why 
 he cannot see his duty, the law is specific." Looking 
 out of the window the Governor asked: ''Carson, can 
 you see those hills on the other side of the Susque- 
 hanna?" ''Certainly," I replied, "but what has that 
 to do with the case?' "You can see them, you say? 
 I slept on those hills three nights before the battle of 
 Gettysburg." He then gave me a graphic account of 
 the experiences of his regiment. I was interested in 
 the narrative, but after it was over, said : ' ' That is very 
 diverting, but what has it got to do with the case?" 
 
Samuel Whitaker Fennypacher. 49 
 
 His answer was: '^You say that you can see those 
 hills. Your eyesight is perfect, but suppose I asked 
 the same question of Mr. D.?" (naming a spectacled 
 clerk in the office). "His answer would be 'No, Gov- 
 ernor, I cannot see the hills. ' I would not be disturbed, 
 because the poor fellow is near-sighted." And then 
 bursting into laughter, he said: ''Your man is intel- 
 lectually near-sighted ; pity him, but mandamus him." 
 
 On another occasion, after three hours of continuous 
 labor in silence, the Governor dropped his pen and 
 asked me if I knew who Cornelius Plockhoy was. For- 
 tunately I had read The Settlement of Germantown 
 and replied in the affirmative. He then discoursed on 
 Plockhoy 's socialistic views, and at the end of ten min- 
 utes resumed his interrupted work with the remark: 
 "I do not smoke tobacco, but I do enjoy a little intel- 
 lectual smoke." 
 
 A striking example of the Governor's care in the charters, 
 transaction of the public business was presented by 
 his practice of personally scrutinizing all applications 
 for charters for business corporations. On the second 
 day of his term, obsendng that the form of charter in 
 use gave no information as to the capital subscribed, 
 or the names of the stockholders, he called for the orig- 
 inal papers on file in the office of the Secretary of the 
 Commonwealth. His quick eye soon discovered several 
 instances where the authorized capital was but $1000. 
 He instantly suspended action, and refused in writing 
 to approve the charter of the Donora Light, Heat and 
 Power Co., using that as a test case, stating: "It is 
 manifest that the cash which has been paid into the 
 treasury and the whole amount of the capital stock, if 
 all of it had been j)aid, would be entirely inadequate for 
 the purposes of the corporation. A charter ought not 
 to be granted where it is manifest that the corporation 
 would not be able to perform its functions." (27 
 Penna. County Court Reports, 463.) Alarm spread 
 
50 Samuel Whitaker PennypacTcer. 
 
 from tlie Secretary's office to all parts of the State. 
 The Governor's refusal, it was declared, would destroy 
 the business of the Commonwealth, curtail the rev- 
 enues, and drive all applicants into other States, New 
 Jersey and Delaware in particular, and breed a plague 
 of foreign corporations seeking to do business in Penn- 
 sylvania. Protests from corporation lawyers, eminent 
 in the profession, flowed in daily. A day was set for 
 solemn argument upon an application for a rehearing. 
 The leaders of the bar in Dauphin County, sustained by 
 colleagues from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton, 
 Reading and Lancaster, appeared in opposition and a 
 discussion, as in a court room, followed, lasting for 
 nearly three hours. In less than a week, the Governor 
 handed down a carefully written opinion (12 Pa. Dist. 
 Rep., p. 115). He explained that, unless the practice 
 were changed, ''any three irresponsible persons may se- 
 cure the grant of most important privileges without the 
 necessity of advancing money to assure the carrying out 
 of the purpose of the corporation," and the charter if 
 granted would constitute a contract, the obligation of 
 which the State could not impair. Men of straw could 
 easily be used for the purpose. "Traffic in charters 
 would be thus encouraged." "Approval" by the Gov- 
 ernor meant something more than a mere clerical func- 
 tion. It meant that he must be satisfied that a substan- 
 tial capital had been subscribed by responsible per- 
 sons to insure good faith. With the possible conse- 
 quences of his refusal to accept a nominal sum he had 
 nothing to do. It was his duty to see that the charter 
 was based on actual value. He reaffinned his previous 
 ruling and established the position that at least five 
 times the amount previously required would be exacted 
 in the future. In less than a year he had quintupled 
 the revenues of the State from this single source, and 
 instead of driving charters elsewhere there was an 
 enormous increase in the number of applications, be- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 51 
 
 cause it was recognized that a Pennsylvania charter 
 was not to be bought for a song, or made the cover for 
 speculative schemes. 
 
 In the matter of pardons he exercised the same cir- Pardons. 
 cumspection. Although, under the law, he could not 
 extend executive clemency except upon a favorable rec- 
 ommendation of the Board of Pardons, he sometimes 
 refused to concur in their action. Notably, in the 
 famous Cutaire case, which presented the dramatic 
 features of that of Eugene Aram — the discovery of 
 human bones sixteen years after the mysterious disap- 
 pearance of a living person — he wrote an opinion re- 
 fusing to liberate the prisoner whose death sentence 
 had been commuted years before to life imprison- 
 ment: and in the Kate Edwards case, which had been 
 heard three times by the Board of Pardons, and which 
 led to an Act of Assembly at the instance of Chief Jus- 
 tice Mitchell, he witliheld the death warrant, because 
 he declared he could not hang a woman years after her 
 male confederate had been acquitted, the evidence 
 showing that either both were guilty or both were in- 
 nocent. In this connection, it may be said that although 
 the Governor was personally strongly opposed to cap- 
 ital punishment, he never hesitated to sign death war- 
 rants when required by law. It cost him, however, 
 much mental anguish, which was noticeable for hours. 
 
 In the same cautious way he handled all requisitions Judges. 
 for the extradition of criminals, in doubtful cases send- 
 ing the papers to the Attorney-General. 
 
 In the selection of judges for vacancies to be filled 
 by Gubernatorial appointment he deliberated long. 
 Admonished of the danger of haste, through the de- 
 clination of the appointee, the selection of George 
 Tucker Bispham, before actual tender of the place, 
 having obtained publicity through an accident, he pon- 
 dered even when a particular appointment was stren- 
 uously pressed. I recall that a certain eminent lawyer 
 
52 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 was unanimously supported by the citizens and in- 
 terests of his county in the upper part of the State. 
 The unanimity of the support made the Governor cau- 
 tious, and he made some independent inquiries of his 
 own. He learned that the candidate was interested 
 financially and officially in all the public utilities of his 
 neighborhood. ''How can I appoint him?" he asked; 
 ''he would be disqualified to sit as a judge in perhaps 
 the most important litigation of his county." He se- 
 lected another man of merit, and three weeks later it 
 was bruited about that the local bank, the electric 
 light company and the trolley company had all failed 
 and carried down in the crash the very man who had 
 been so persistently urged. 
 
 In the Yale Revieiv of August, 1907, Mr. Clinton 
 Rogers Woodruff, an accomplished student of State af- 
 fairs, wrote: "Governor Pennypacker himself set the 
 example of careful, conscientious, faithful discharge of 
 the executive duties of his office. He was at his desk 
 in the executive building every morning at 9 o'clock 
 on practically every working day of the year. He re- 
 mained throughout the day, accessible to all who had 
 business to transact with him, and carefully considered 
 every subject presented to him. As an illustration of 
 how he conducted the executive work, I may cite an 
 instance which I personally obser\^ed. I was in his 
 office on one occasion by appointment. The Auditor- 
 General preceded me by a few minutes, his business 
 relating to the execution of a contract. The Governor 
 asked in the first place for the Act of Assembly author- 
 izing the work covered by the contract. He examined 
 that carefully to make sure that he had the authority 
 to execute the contract. Then he examined the contract 
 itself to see whether it was in conformity with the law 
 and adequately protected the interests of the State. 
 Then he asked for a certificate from the State Treas- 
 urer to make sure that the money involved was in the 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 53 
 
 Treasury and available. After he had satisfied himself 
 on all these points and that the contract was in legal 
 form, he attached his signature. He took nothing for 
 granted and acted only after he was fully informed as 
 to the circumstances." 
 
 As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of in camp, 
 the State he was an annual visitor to the camps of the 
 National Guard, and became deeply interested in the 
 inspection of arms, uniforms and equipment. I am in- 
 debted to Adjutant-General Stewart for the following 
 anecdotes. At his first camp the Governor inquired 
 with some anxiety as to whether it was usual to review 
 the troops on horseback, and on being told that it was, 
 after a few minutes of hesitation, said; ''General 
 Stewart, as I have been so long unaccustomed to the 
 saddle, and have many responsibilities upon me I shall 
 not mount. It is too great a risk." The reply was, 
 *'Then the staff must dismount." "Be it so," said the 
 Governor, "if I can walk, they can do so also." The 
 inspection then proceeded, the Governor following 
 closely with his eyes the examination of arms and 
 accoutrements as conducted by Inspector-General 
 Sweeney, who, in passing rapidly down the lines, halted 
 in front of a private and called his attention to the fact 
 that his bayonet was not properly adjusted, but was 
 turned the wrong way. The Governor after watching 
 the method of correction took the weapon into his own 
 hands and adjusted it to the musket several times and 
 passed on. The next year a General of the Regular 
 Army of the United States conducted the inspection, 
 and overlooked a misplaced bayonet. The Governor 
 waited until the line had been passed and then said, 
 "General, I think that you have passed a man with a 
 misplaced bayonet. " " Impossible, ' ' was the reply ; " a 
 bayonet cannot be misplaced." The Governor smiled, 
 and returning to the man took his weapon from him 
 and brought it to the General, and made a demonstra- 
 
54 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 tioD. A hearty laugh followed at the expense of the 
 regular army officer, who said: ''Well, I am a grad- 
 uate of West Point, and I never knew before that a 
 bayonet could get out of its proper groove." 
 
 At the inauguration of President Roosevelt a por- 
 tion of the National Guard of Pennsylvania attended 
 under the command of Governor Pennypacker, who 
 asked General Stewart to provide him with a horse. 
 In view of his previous unwillingness to mount, the 
 General expressed surprise and intimated that it was 
 probably more dangerous to ride a strange horse 
 through crowded streets with excited citizens waving 
 flags and hats than on a decorously conducted parade 
 ground. The Governor's reply was characteristic: 
 ' ' General Stewart, in Pennsylvania I was Commander- 
 in-Chief and could do as I pleased ; here in Washington 
 on an occasion like this I am under orders as a Divi- 
 sion Commander. I have looked at the orders and they 
 require that all officers shall be mounted. I shall not 
 set an example of disobedience, and I shall not with- 
 draw from my command. See that I have a horse." 
 "\ATiile riding down Pennsylvania Avenue, an old man 
 on the sidewalk exclaimed: ''Here comes the Governor 
 of Pennsylvania, I wonder if he has his ancestral 
 boots!" "There they are," said the Governor, thrust- 
 ing out his foot and drawing up his trouser leg, and 
 laughing heartily. 
 GoTcrEor's To givc you corrcct information as to the multiplic- 
 
 ity of duties exacted of Governor Pennypacker let me 
 say that in addition to those which I have described, 
 which may be called his major duties, he was also 
 President of the State Board of Agriculture, a Trustee 
 of the State Library, a Commissioner of Public 
 Grounds and Buildings, the President of the Commis- 
 sion of Soldiers' Orphan Schools, of the College and 
 University Council, of the State Live Stock Sanitary 
 Board, of the Board to Pass upon the Necessity for 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 55 
 
 the Construction of Elevated and Underground Pas- 
 senger Railways; of the Louisiana Purchase Exposi- 
 tion Commission; of the Commission for the Erection 
 of a Statue of Governor Curtin at Belief onte; of the 
 Commission for the erection of a Soldiers' Monument 
 at Middle Spring; of the Commission to purchase a 
 silver service for the Battleship Pennsylvania, and a 
 Trustee of Allegheny College and of the Soldiers ' and 
 Sailors ' Home at Erie. He was also ex officio a visitor 
 to the Philadelphia City and County prisons, of the 
 penitentiaries of the State, and of the several lunatic 
 hospitals, and the soldiers' orphan schools. He signed 
 all patents for lands issued in the name and by the 
 authority of the State. He had power to remit fines 
 and forfeitures, to grant reprieves and commutations 
 of sentence. He demanded fugitives from justice from 
 the Executive of any other State or territory, and is- 
 sued warrants for the arrest of persons resident in 
 this State upon the requisition of the Governor of any 
 other State or territory. He authenticated under the 
 seal of the State records and instruments of writing 
 intended for use in other States or territories. These 
 constituted his minor duties, but occupied much of his 
 time and attention, as none of them, not even excepting 
 his visitorial rights over public institutions, were ever 
 neglected. 
 
 In his mode of life at Harrisburg the Governor was simplicity 
 simple and unaffected. His public receptions, while 
 hospitable, were modest and inexpensive. There was 
 an entire absence of display. His annual dinners to 
 the members of the State judiciary resembled the cor- 
 dial gatherings of friends for talk and reasonable re- 
 laxation rather than formal affairs. His biennial 
 receptions of the Senators and members of the House 
 were popularly attended by tradesmen and farmers 
 and modest citizens of the neighborhood, as well as by 
 Statesmen, Congressmen, and local magnates. He 
 
 if Life. 
 
56 Samuel Whitaker Pemiypacher. 
 
 drove no carriages at State expense as he and Ms 
 family preferred to go about on foot. If he was in 
 haste to catch a train he used a depot hack. He paid 
 his own railway fares and never accepted a pass, at a 
 time when passes were common. He maintained no 
 press staff, and though friendly with reporters, with 
 whom he was personally popular, he never entertained 
 them until the last fortnight of his administration. He 
 never directly or indirectly sought to curiy favor or 
 moderate criticism. He took pleasure in feeding the 
 squirrels on the Capitol grounds, and always had his 
 pockets filled with nuts for their use. He superin- 
 tended the pruning of the trees and shrubs on the Cap- 
 itol Hill and delighted in long tramps up the banks of 
 the Susquehanna, or in excursions to Wetzell's swamp 
 in search of flowers and insects, or to the river islands 
 to pick up Indian arrow heads or stone implements. 
 He liked to talk to fishennen in shad season and en- 
 joyed simple suppers at road-side inns. The loungers 
 about the doorways never knew to whom they were 
 listening, unless some one recognized him and called 
 him ''Governor." He was in high spirit when visit- 
 ing the forestry reservations or the fish hatcheries, 
 and told ghost stories in the moonlight to the wonder- 
 ing foresters. He publicly thanked by letter the news- 
 paper which had aided him by a useful suggestion and 
 never was heard to utter an opprobrious epithet even 
 when sorely tried. He was considerate and kindly to 
 the clerks and messengers in all the Departments, and 
 won their hearts by his simplicity and manliness. 
 Avoidance of In the Spring of 1906 the clouds of an impending strike 
 prociam^ation. gathered in the anthracite region, threatening a repeti- 
 tion of the devastation, loss and gloom so frequently 
 resulting from violence and rioting. Without waiting 
 for armies of strikers to march out of the mines, and 
 gather as pickets to intimidate others in the neigh- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 57 
 
 borhood of the breakers, and without waiting for the 
 ripening of the crisis requiring the presence of the State 
 Constabulary or the calling out of the National Guard, 
 the Governor by a bold and resolute stroke, which was 
 entirely original, maintained unbroken peace and good 
 order. He issued the following proclamation on 
 May 2d, 1906: "Whereas, industrial disturbances 
 have recently arisen in various parts of the Common- 
 wealth accompanied by manifestations of violence and 
 disorder; Now therefore I, Samuel Whitaker Penny- 
 packer Governor of Pennsylvania do issue this my proc- 
 lamation and call upon all citizens by their conduct, 
 example and utterances, whether printed or verbal, to 
 assist in the maintenance of the law. Times of commo- 
 tion furnish the test of the capacity of the people for 
 self government. Every man is entitled to labor and 
 get for his labor the highest compensation he can law- 
 fully secure. There is no law to compel him to labor 
 unless he so chooses and he may cease to labor when- 
 ever he considers it to be to his interest so to cease. 
 The laboring man out of whose efforts wealth arises 
 has the sympathy of all disinterested people in his law- 
 ful struggles to secure a larger proportion of the profit 
 which results from his labor. What he earns belongs 
 to iiim and if he invests his earnings the law protects 
 his property, just as the rights of property of all men 
 must be protected. He has no right to interfere with 
 another man who may want to labor. Violence has no 
 place among us and will not be tolerated. Let all men 
 in quietness and soberness keep the peace and attend 
 to their affairs, with the knowledge that it is the pur- 
 pose of the Commonwealth to see that the principles 
 herein outlined are enforced." 
 
 No higher encomium could be pronounced upon the 
 result accomplished by this quiet but determined atti- 
 tude than that contained in the following letter : 
 
58 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 ''Reading Terminal. 
 Philadelphia, Penna. 
 May 10th, 1906. 
 My dear Governor Pennypacker: 
 
 ^Vhen I was pressed by the New York interests to 
 urge the Governor of Pennsylvania to take a decided 
 stand for law and order I told them that I knew the 
 Governor of Pennsylvania; that he would perform his 
 duty without suggestions from any one ; that no person 
 in the Commonwealth better understood what was his 
 duty; and that he had the character and the courage to 
 perform it. I have received a number of telegrams 
 congratulating the Commonwealth on the stand taken 
 by you; and I only want to say to you now that 
 your action was a most potential factor in bringing 
 about a solution of the problem. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Geo. F. Baer." 
 
 With this solid background of character and achieve- 
 ment before us we can view in proper perspective the 
 stormy features of his career. His critics and oppo- 
 nents were of two classes, those who misjudged him, 
 and those who fought him from ''policy." I seriously 
 doubt whether he had any real enemies, certainly no 
 personally malignant foes. His friends who under- 
 stood him were staunch and loyal, and were bound to 
 him by "hooks of steel." 
 Quayism. The first murmurs of discontent came from those who 
 
 disliked his admiration of Senator Quay. They asserted 
 that Quayism had spoiled him. There were some 
 people to whom the mere mention of Quay's name 
 caused a spasm affecting the vision, just as the shadow 
 of King Richard in the bush caused the horse of the 
 Saracen to shy. They never were able to discriminate 
 between personal opinions and official acts. It is true 
 that Mr. Pennypacker personally liked Senator Quay, 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pemiypacker. 59 
 
 and that he sincerely admired his political leadership 
 and its results. But this is a totally different thing 
 from approval of Quay's system or an adoption of his 
 methods, both of which were absolutely foreign to his 
 nature, and wholly unknown to him in practice. His 
 wrath had been greatly stirred by an anonymous attack 
 on Pennsylvania in the Atlantic Monthly of October, 
 1901, as it was evident from the time of its appearance, 
 being coincident with an approaching election, and 
 from its use of local incidents that it was a covert 
 political document intended for use in Pennsylvania by 
 an unknown Pennsylvanian who attempted to belittle 
 the really great features in Pennsylvania history. 
 Judge Pennypacker 's reply was crushing and convinc- 
 ing, and would have stirred every heart, if he had not 
 added a eulogy of Mr. Quay. He did not use the expres- 
 sion that ''Quay was greater than Webster." That 
 was a phrase devised by a critic, and its brevity and 
 point gave it a meretricious circulation. What he did 
 was to draw a parallel between Webster's surrender to 
 the Slave power, evoking the designation of "Ichabod" 
 given him by Whittier, and Quay's success in electing 
 Harrison as President, the defeat of the Force bill, and 
 the success of the McKinley Tariff bill. If any one 
 will read the address upon Mr. Quay delivered by the 
 Governor on the occasion of the memorial services, 
 March 22d, 1905, and read it wittingly, he will find 
 that the marrow of the eulogy is expressed in this sen- 
 tence: "In the capacity for the building up and the 
 maintenance of political forces and for their applica- 
 tion to the accomplishment of public ends, it may well 
 be doubted whether the country ever before produced 
 the equal of Mr. Quay." And the candid reader will 
 find toward the close of the eulogy this sentence also: 
 "He was not without faults. If his conduct sometimes 
 fell below the highest ethical standards, where is the 
 man who can honestly scan his own life and throw a 
 
60 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 stone? Though he cared nothing for the mere accu- 
 mulation of money, and was little 'afflicted with the 
 mania for owning things,' he exulted in the exercise 
 of power and like the war horse in Job smelled 'the 
 battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the 
 shouting.' He regarded men and their aims too much 
 as mere counters to be used for his purpose. He cared 
 too little for their comments." Here then is the dis- 
 tinction. While ho admired and greatly admired the 
 man as a statesman and what he had done for Penn- 
 sylvania and the Nation at large, he did not deny, while 
 he sought to soften, his weaknesses. But we are con- 
 sidering not Mr. Pennypacker 's personal views but his 
 acts and conduct as Governor, and it is only because 
 his critics failed to notice the distinction that I am at 
 the pains to state it. The Governor's methods and the 
 Governor's acts were not those of "Quayism." He 
 never bullied men; he never applied the screws of 
 power, he never manipulated caucuses or conventions, 
 he never maneuvered for position, he never schemed, he 
 never coerced a legislature; he never trafficked in 
 places; he never tempted men; he never bought them. 
 He simply did not know what such things were. He 
 never surrendered his judgment to Mr. Quay : he never 
 acted under his dictation. He selected his cabinet largely 
 on purely personal grounds. The Attorney General, the 
 Deputy Attorney General, the State Librarian, the 
 Commander of the State Constabulary, the head of the 
 Health Department, and the Private Secretary were 
 not Quay men, in fact several had been actively anti- 
 Quay. The Superintendent of Public Education was a 
 lifelong Democrat; the first appointment to the Su- 
 preme Court was of a lifelong Democrat; the second 
 appointment to the Supreme Court was of the man who 
 had led the Independent revolt in 1882. The first judi- 
 cial appointment to a lower court was also of an Inde- 
 pendent. The Secretary of the Commonwealth, who 
 
Samuel Wliitaker Pennypacher. 61 
 
 died in office, the Banking Conmiissioner, the Secretary 
 of Agriculture, and the Dairy and Food Commissioner, 
 coming from other parts of the State where the Gov- 
 ernor had no acquaintances politically, were, it is true, 
 agreeable to Mr. Quay, but they all made admirable 
 State officers, and proved to be zealous and efficient. In 
 the choice of great State officers, the Auditor General, 
 the State Treasurer and the Secretary of Internal Af- 
 fairs, the Governor had no part, as they held constitu- 
 tional offices, and were elected by the people. On fair 
 analysis, it is clear that so far as administrative selec- 
 tions were concerned the Governor was remarkably 
 free from Mr. Quay's influence. 
 
 As to the Insurance Commissionership, which was 
 filled by Mr. Israel W. Durham, a Quay lieutenant, the 
 Governor did not hesitate to call Mr. Durham's atten- 
 tion to his frequent absences from tlie office, which sub- 
 sequently proved to be due to an incurable disease, and 
 he directed a court contest, which was conducted by the 
 Attorney General in person, over the fees of the office, 
 which had become inordinately large, and after a judi- 
 cial decision that under the statute the fees belonged 
 to the Commissioner, the Governor put his heel upon 
 the whole matter by making the abolition of the fees 
 in this Department a subject matter of the amended 
 call of the Special Session of the Legislature in 1906, 
 and the evil was stamped out forever. 
 
 In Legislative matters it was equally clear from the 
 first three months of the Governor's term, when he 
 freely exercised the veto power, that he was a persistent 
 foe to jobs. The only visit that Senator Quay ever 
 made to Harrisburg during Governor Pennypacker's 
 administration was in April, 1903, and he did so on 
 the Governor's invitation. Five bills had passed the 
 House, one to make it easy to consolidate water, gas 
 and electric companies, another to license race-track 
 gambling, another to repeal potential grants in the 
 
62 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 Susquehanna Canal, the Kingston dam, and a filtration 
 bill, all of which were favorites with the politicians. 
 The Senator was plainly told that if the bills passed the 
 Senate they would be vetoed. They were all killed in 
 the Senate. A leading newspaper declared: "These 
 five sensational reversals of schemes to which the Gang 
 was committed followed directly upon a visit to Harris- 
 burg by Senator Quay. He conferred with Governor 
 Pennypacker for the greater part of the day, and de- 
 parted with an abstracted air upon him, declaring in 
 positive terms that he was not interested in any pend- 
 ing legislation save the libel bill. It may be that he 
 was not. It may be that he made a special plea with 
 the Governor to veto the grab bills when they reached 
 him. Those who are sufficiently imaginative to accept 
 these pleasant fancies may do so." A zealous and ob- 
 servant friend of the Governor, in calling his attention 
 to this utterance, wrote: ''I enclose you an editorial, 
 which I consider the highest compliment I have ever 
 seen paid to man. It is so evidently wrested, by the 
 mere force of virtue, from an unwilling critic, that it 
 speaks volumes." The next year there was no session 
 of the Legislature, and during that year Mr. Quay died. 
 Refusal of The ncxt storm that assailed him was stirred up 
 
 Court primarily by the conflicting ambitions of others, and 
 
 Justiceship, sccoudarily by those who misjudged him and who ought 
 to have known him better. Through the death of Chief 
 Justice McCollum and the consequent promotion of Mr. 
 Justice Mitchell a vacancy occurred in the Supreme 
 Court, which was filled by the appointment by Gov- 
 ernor Pennypacker of Samuel Gustine Thompson on 
 November 25th, 1903. Mr. Thompson was a Democrat, 
 but was considered best qualified to sit because of his 
 having been previously a member of the Supreme 
 Court under an appointment by Governor Pattison to 
 fill a vacancy in an unexpired term. As the vacancy had 
 to be permanently filled at the general election to take 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 63 
 
 place in November, 1904, the great parties began to con- 
 sider candidates. Some of the Republican leaders who 
 had suffered under the use of the veto axe and the sena- 
 torial defeat of their favorite measures, as just ex- 
 plained, conceived the idea of getting rid of the Gov- 
 ernor by putting him into the Supreme Court, and with- 
 out his knowledge or consent tentatively suggested his 
 name for the place. A newspaper discussion followed, 
 and opposition developed on the ground that the public 
 service could not afford to lose him as Governor. It was 
 the highest kind of a tribute to his value as Governor, 
 particularly as it occurred after the tremendous uproar 
 in the press occasioned by the libel bill, and I have 
 taken it up out of the order of date solely because of 
 its minor importance. All discussion proceeded with- 
 out a word from the Governor until the argument took 
 the turn of a denial of right on the part of the Gov- 
 ernor to surrender his place for a seat in the highest 
 tribunal in the State. As he considered this an inva- 
 sion of his personal and official right to determine his 
 own actions he asserted his right in a public letter 
 which was widely printed in the press, explaining 
 that John Jay had resigned the Chief Justiceship of 
 the United States to become Governor of New York, 
 and other Governors had been chosen during their terms 
 of office as such to United States Senatorships, or had 
 accepted foreign missions and all without a denial of 
 their right to do so, without stating what he would do 
 if the nomination were tendered him. In private he re- 
 iterated these views, and denied the right to force his 
 hand, for he felt the delicacy of declining a nomination 
 which had not yet been offered. Instantly it was as- 
 sumed that he intended to accept, and those who ought 
 to have known and trusted him became his critics. Lead- 
 ing members of his own bar, strange to say, addressed 
 him in protest and urged him to make known his deter- 
 mination. This gave him much pain, but he preserved a 
 
64 Samuel Wliitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 dig-nified silence in public, and only in private letters re- 
 asserted Ills rights without divulging what he would do. 
 Finally in April, 1904, he was called upon by a Com- 
 mittee, consisting of the Hon. David H. Lane, Senator 
 Sheppard, Senator John M. Scott and Hon. Henry F. 
 "Walton, then Speaker of the House, appointed to notify 
 him that the Pliiladelphia delegation had unanimously 
 endorsed him for the nomination for Supreme Court 
 Justice. He quietly drew from the drawer of his desk 
 a paper which he read in the following terms : "In view 
 of the possibility of some such action as you have taken 
 I have given careful consideration to the subject in a 
 conscientious effort to reach a correct conclusion. I 
 have examined the matter in all of its relations so far 
 as I have been able to understand them, and I have con- 
 cluded not to be a candidate and not to permit my name 
 to be presented to the Convention. In so doing I want 
 further to say to you that this expression of unstinted 
 confidence coming from the people of the City which you 
 represent and wherein my judicial work was done will 
 ever be one of the grateful memories of my life. ' ' The 
 paper was signed "Sam'l W. Pennypacker," and was 
 handed on request to Speaker Walton, who has pre- 
 served it. It was printed throughout the State, and in 
 less than four days letters poured in, two of them, I am 
 happy to say, from gentlemen who had distrusted him. 
 One read as follows : "My dear sir: If you meant, from 
 the outset, to decline this nomination, I offer my sin- 
 cere apolog}" for ever having doubted you. But if you 
 have yielded your own judgment and have made the 
 splendid personal sacrifice of giving up for the sake of 
 a professional ideal, an office to which you believe your- 
 self fully entitled, there is no measure to the honor and 
 gratitude which are due you." Another read: "I 
 never lost faith even when those who wished you would 
 accept the nomination, and those who wished you would 
 not, alike concluded that you would. Personally, I 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 65 
 
 could not see how you could go wrong in such a mat- 
 ter." A third read: "I desire to present to you an 
 expression of my extreme gratification and approval 
 of your course in declining the nomination of the 
 Supreme Judgeship ; as far as I am able to discover in 
 my daily intercourse, my opinions on this matter are 
 shared by all intelligent non-partisan men of both 
 parties. To my knowledge your presence and influence 
 last session put a complete stopper on the corruption 
 which has become such an unfortunate and prominent 
 feature of our legislative sessions in later years ; it was 
 the presence of a thoroughly honest and capable man 
 'on the Hill' that brought these desirable results, and 
 we cannot afford to lose such a man, even to get a good 
 judge." A fourth read: "Permit me, without any 
 intention of fulsomeness, to thank you, in the name of 
 the common mass of unknown voters and citizens to 
 which I belong, for the magnificent rejection of place 
 and power, made by you yesterday." And a fifth 
 read: *'It would be difficult to express fully my es- 
 timate of the character of your act in refusing the nom- 
 ination to the Supreme Court. In quality it is the same 
 as that of Washington in resigning his Commission. 
 I can recall no other instances of such complete and 
 faithful devotion to a high sense of public duty in which 
 self interest bore no part. This act alone will make 
 your name illustrious in our annals. The people have 
 never had and never will have a truer representative ; 
 calumny, detraction and abuse have had their day ; and 
 from this day forth the people will know you as you 
 are, a man with the simple straightforward traits of 
 Lincoln, with equal courage and endurance, and a fear- 
 less faith." 
 
 We now enter the real storm belt. The first, the The Press 
 most violent and the most prolonged of the veritable 
 tempests to which the Governor was exposed grew out 
 of his approval of the Act of 12th May, 1903, popularly 
 
66 Samuel Whitaker Penny paclcer. 
 
 known as "The Press Muzzier." In my analysis of 
 the Programme mapped out by the Inaugural Address 
 I reserved this subject for special consideration, and it 
 is now in order to consider it. The Inaugural contains 
 these words : ''The doctrine of the liberty of the press, 
 conceived at a time when it was necessary to disclose 
 the movements of arbitrary power, has become in 
 recent days too often a cover for base and ignoble pur- 
 poses, and, like the sanctuaries of old, a place of re- 
 treat where any wrongdoer may secure immunity from 
 punishment. Sensational journals have arisen all over 
 the land, the owners in concealment and the writers 
 and purveyors undesignated, and they have thriven by 
 propagating crime and disseminating falsehood and 
 scandal, by promulgating dissension and anarchy, by 
 attacks upon individuals and by assaults upon govern- 
 ment and the agencies of the people." He declared 
 that ''they are a terror to the household, a detriment 
 to the public service and an impediment to the courts of 
 justice. It would be helpful and profitable to reputable 
 journalism if they could be suppressed. ' ' He predicted 
 that ' ' the time is now at hand, and may have already 
 come, when society will find means to prevent this de- 
 velopment of vicious life, which constitutes the most 
 conspicuous instance of existing ills." He declared; 
 "I know of no reason why Pennsylvania, which has 
 been foremost in so many directions in the past, should 
 not take the lead in a needed effort to improve manners 
 and morals by such a reform." He declared that 
 "Our Constitution imposes responsibility for the abuse 
 of the liberty of the press," and he made two sugges- 
 tions for the consideration of the Legislature; first, 
 "whether or not it would be well to extend to such cases 
 the law of negligence as developed by the decisions of 
 our courts, so that there should be liability in damages 
 for the physical and mental suffering caused by pub- 
 lication made 'without reasonable care';" second, "an 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 67 
 
 inquiry as to the propriety of requiring the names and 
 residences of the owners of newspapers to be published 
 with each issue;" and added, ''It may be that on con- 
 sideration the Legislature in its wisdom will be able to 
 devise other means which, while protecting journals of 
 good repute, will tend to eliminate the unworthy." 
 
 These passages introduce us to the casus belli. Let 
 me at the outset correct three widely prevalent but 
 mistaken notions: first, that the Governor's attitude 
 toward the press was inspired by personal sensitive- 
 ness over the use of cartoons ; second, that the bill was 
 in its most stringent features the work of his hands; 
 third, that the bill contained provisions destructive of 
 the liberty of the press. As to the first: The Gov- 
 ernor was not a man of small and mean resentments, 
 and would never have regarded a personal grievance as 
 a basis for State-wide legislation, but, apart from this, 
 it is sufficient to state that it was after and not be- 
 fore the approval of the bill that the malice, venom 
 and ferocity of the cartoonists were set loose. Prior 
 to that time the cartoons had been good-natured pieces 
 of humor, such as those relating to the Governor's 
 paternal boots, or the way in which he wore his 
 beard, or, at the worst, his friendly relations to 
 Senator Quay. In proof of this, all that need be done 
 is to look at the newspapers of the campaign period 
 preceding his election, and compare them with the ter- 
 rific exaggeration of the art of the cartoonist and the 
 satirist after the bill had been approved. As to the 
 second, the Governor's draft of a bill contained only 
 provisions for compensatory damages resulting from 
 negligent publications, and the publication of the 
 names of the owners and managing editors of the 
 papers. It contained no reference to punitive damages 
 resulting from the use of "pictures, cartoons, head- 
 lines, displayed type, or any other matter calculated to 
 specially attract attention." Those features and the 
 
68 Samuel WJiitaker Pennypaclcer. 
 
 punitive damage clause were injected by amendment, 
 without consultation with the Governor, by counsel for 
 men who had smarted under the lash. As to the third, 
 a simple analysis of the bill, section by section, will 
 suffice. 
 
 The Governor's main thoughts were contained in the 
 two specific suggestions he had made as quoted above 
 from the Inaugural Address. I recall distinctly a con- 
 versation I had with him in June, 1902, more than four 
 months before his election, when strolling about his 
 farm on the banks of the Perkiomen. He was speaking 
 of his experiences as a judge. ''I have tried many 
 cases, perhaps a thousand, of injuries to citizens result- 
 ing from the negligence of others ; of men and women 
 hurt upon railroads, or knocked down in the street by 
 careless drivers of vehicles, or from people throwing 
 things from windows, and I have had to consider 
 whether a little care could have prevented injury ; and 
 I have often thought as I have read of injuries to 
 reputation or to business caused by some careless news- 
 paper publication whether the law of negligence rather 
 than of malice ought not to apply." He mentioned 
 three kinds of cases which had impressed him, where 
 a charge had been made and published of official dis- 
 honesty against the treasurer of a trust company, 
 which proving false was promptly retracted; where a 
 charge had been made against a worthy citizen of hav- 
 ing committed a drunken assault in a public place on a 
 well-known man, the citizen being at the time abroad; 
 and a charge of infidelity against a married man, whose 
 complete innocence was established by an alibi. ''Now 
 why," he asked, "is not this negligence? It is not 
 malice, the editor had no malice against people he did 
 not personally know and who were all in private life. 
 The slightest inquiry before, instead of after, the pub- 
 lication would have revealed the truth, and might have 
 prevented the shame, the disgrace and the suffering 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 69 
 
 so needlessly caused, and also the libel suits which 
 followed." He then dwelt upon the unfairness to the 
 injured party through lack of knowledge of the name 
 of the author of the libel, and mentioned a fact which 
 I did not know — that England had required by Act of 
 Parliament the publication on the editorial page of the 
 names of the owners and managing editors of all news- 
 papers. He also mentioned a case of a mistrial in our 
 United States District Court occasioned by a news- 
 paper publication, which caused the judge to set a 
 verdict aside. As I listened to the reading of the In- 
 augural I recalled these circumstances and they threw 
 light upon his motives, although his thought as ex- 
 pressed went beyond them. 
 
 The Bill, amended as has been stated without his 
 interposition, reached the Governor duly certified by 
 the presiding officers and clerks of both the Senate and 
 the House. As the opposition of the press was strong, 
 a public hearing of all parties interested was fixed for 
 April 21st, 1903, in the Hall of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. It was a most impressive gathering — three 
 hundred editors, the representatives of more than 
 twelve hundred newspapers, dailies, semi-weeklies, bi- 
 weeklies and monthlies, were present in protest — and 
 the large room was crowded to its utmost capacity 
 with members of the Legislature and interested citizens 
 as sjDCctators. The Governor presided, and, alive to 
 the psychology of such an unusual occasion, was heard 
 to remark : ' ' This meeting is morally most significant. 
 The press is asking to be heard before a decision ig 
 reached. Perhaps it may occur to some of these 
 worthy gentlemen that that is just what private citizens 
 would claim as their right before being stricken down 
 in reputation and business." The case was argued, in 
 support of the bill, by Richard C. Dale and Alexander 
 Simpson, Jr., both at the height of their eminence at 
 the bar, and in opposition by the Hon. Charles Emory 
 
70 Samuel WhitaJcer Pennypacker. 
 
 Smith, editor of the Philadelphia Press, Hon. Thomas 
 V. Cooper, a member of the House, but appearing as 
 the editor of the Delaware County American, and by 
 Cyrus G. Derr, Esq., a leader of the Eeading bar and 
 the present president of the Pennsylvania State Bar 
 Association. In a discussion between these accom- 
 plished disputants, lasting nearly four hours, every 
 phase of the question was presented. The public, how- 
 ever, was not so well informed. The text of the bill 
 was never printed in the newspapers, so that there was 
 never an opportunity given to citizens to judge for 
 themselves of the character of the proposed legisla- 
 tion. The arguments against the bill were printed in 
 full ; the arguments in its favor were stated in a form 
 so abridged as to give little idea of their pertinency, 
 particularly as the text of what was being discussed 
 was suppressed. The bill itself was denounced editori- 
 ally and a campaign worked up against it, in which 
 some incautious and emotional members of the rev- 
 erend clergy participated without ever ha\^ng read 
 a line of the measure. Thus was it made easy — 
 whether intentionally or not matters little — for the 
 public to misjudge the character of the law, and fur- 
 ther, for the public to misjudge the Governor in ap- 
 proving it. In his carefully considered approval the 
 Governor writes: ''Few persons have read or have 
 had the opportunity of reading the provisions of this 
 bill. In order that the opportunity may be given, I 
 quote the language in full as follows. ' ' The exact text 
 was then stated as a part of the message of approval. 
 Instead of printing tliis as a part of the document, 
 every newspaper omitted the words of the bill, and 
 opened their concentrated assaults by stating, "The 
 Governor, after quoting the text of the bill, said," &c., 
 &c. There was no way in which the citizen of that day 
 could accurately inform himself as to the controversy, 
 unless he happened to find legislative copies scattered 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 71 
 
 over the desks of members, a chance not within the 
 reach of one man in every hundred thousand, and the 
 only way in which the citizen of to-day can inform 
 himself is to take up the Pamphlet Laws of the session 
 of 1903, and turn to pp. 349-359, and as this State docu- 
 ment is practically unknown to nine men out of ten, 
 the knowledge essential to a fair judgment does not 
 exist within easy popular reach. Hence an analysis of 
 the bill is plainly in order. Stripped of statutory ver- 
 biage, the first section provided that civil actions 
 might be brought against the proprietor, owner, pub- 
 lisher or editor of any newspaper of the State 'Ho re- 
 cover damages resulting from negligence," on the part 
 of such persons, ''in the ascertainment of facts and in 
 making publications affecting the character, reputation 
 or business of citizens." 
 
 There is nothing in this section which prohibited pub- 
 lication, any more than the liability to suit against a 
 railroad for negligence in carrying a passenger would 
 forbid the running of the railroad. 
 
 The second section provided that in such actions, "if 
 it shall be shown that the publication complained of 
 resulted from negligence on the part of such owner, 
 proprietor, manager or editor, in the ascertainment of 
 the fact or in the publication thereof, compensatory 
 damages may be recovered for injuries to business and 
 reputation resulting from such publication, as well as 
 damages for the physical and mental suffering endured 
 by the injured party or parties." 
 
 This too contained no prohibition of publication, but 
 legally put upon the plaintiff the burden of proving neg- 
 ligence on the part of the editor, who was left at entire 
 liberty to show that he had made inquiry or that the cir- 
 cumstances were such as to preclude inquiry; in short, 
 to show as a defence that he had not been negligent. 
 
 The section then continued: "and whenever in any 
 such action it shall be shown that the matter com- 
 
72 Samuel WhitaJcer Penny packer. 
 
 plained of is libelous, and that such libelous matter has 
 been given special prominence by use of pictures, car- 
 toons, headlines, displayed type, or any other matter 
 calculated to specially attract attention, the jury shall 
 have the right to award punitive damages against the 
 defendant or defendants." These are the words added 
 to the Governor's draft, and for which he was not re- 
 sponsible. The split infinitive would alone acquit him, 
 but the fact is as stated. This was the usual feature of 
 the law of negligence, that where it was so gross as to 
 be matter of aggravation, or where the injury was ac- 
 companied by circumstances of brutality, the jury 
 might add punishment to compensation. 
 
 The third section provided for the publication on the 
 editorial page of the names of the owner or editor of 
 the paper, and provision was made for ownership by 
 corporations or partnerships, a feature borrowed from 
 English law, where it had been approved by experience. 
 
 The fourth section provided for notice of changes in 
 ownership of the papers, so as to enforce the preceding 
 section. 
 
 The fifth section declared it to be a misdemeanor, 
 punishable by a fine of not less than five hundred dol- 
 lars nor more than one thousand dollars, for a neglect 
 to carry out the provisions of sections three and four. 
 This was the usual sanctioning feature of a law. 
 
 These three last sections have become a permanent 
 part of the law of the State, acquiesced in by the entire 
 press, and stand to the credit of the Governor in fur- 
 nishing protection to the citizen against anonymous or 
 irresponsible libellers. 
 
 The sixth section repealed all acts or parts of acts 
 inconsistent with the foregoing provisions. 
 
 There the statute ended.* It will be seen that the 
 
 * In order that the reader may judge for himself of the statute in its 
 entirety, and of the reasons of the Governor in approval, I print the full 
 text of the law and of the Governor's message of approval in Appen- 
 dix A. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 73 
 
 fiercest of the fighting was directed against sections 
 one and two. The Governor in approving the bill 
 declared: ''There is nothing in the terms of the bill 
 which prevents any newspaper from making such com- 
 ments upon legislative measures or upon the official 
 acts of the State, Municipal, County or public officers 
 as are proper for the information of the public or are 
 in the line of legitimate publication." That is a fair 
 comment, and the closest scrutiny of the bill will fail to 
 discover any muzzling of the press in dealing with 
 public servants. The Governor continued: "There are 
 no inhibitions in the bill. It subjects all preliminary in- 
 quiries as to facts and their subsequent publication to 
 the test of care. The doctrines of the law of negligence 
 are well known and apparently easy of application. 
 Haste and recklessness in the ascertainment of facts 
 prior to publication, or in the manner of publication, 
 amounting in the judgment of a Court to negligence or 
 the want of that degree of care which a man of ordinary 
 prudence would exercise under the circumstances, will, 
 if proved, give a ground of action for such damages as 
 result from injuries to business and reputation. There 
 is no interference with jDrivileged communications."* 
 Let me digress a moment as to what was meant by the 
 Governor in referring to ''haste and recklessness in the 
 
 * That the reader may understand what is meant by this, I subjoin 
 a definition from a well-known legal authority, Odgers on Slander and 
 Libel, page 184. "'Privileged communications' are of two kinds: (1) 
 Absolutely privileged, which are restricted to cases in which it is so 
 much to the public interest that the defendant should speak out his 
 mind fully and freely that all actions in respect to the words used are 
 absolutely forbidden, even though it be alleged that they M^ere used 
 falsely, knowingly, and with express malice. This complete immunity 
 obtains only where the public service or the due administration of 
 justice requires it. . . . (2) Qualified privilege. In less important 
 matters, where the public interest does not require such absolute im- 
 munity, the plaintiS" will recover in spite of the privilege, if he can 
 prove that the words were not used bona fde, but that the defendant 
 used the privileged occasion artfully and knowingly to defame the 
 plaintiff." 
 
74 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 ascertainment of facts prior to publication, or in the 
 manner of puhlication." The following anecdote will 
 convey very clearly the spirit and motive of the Gov- 
 ernor's approval of the Act: 
 
 It was told to me by one of our most useful and 
 accomplished public men whose early training as a 
 newspaper man had made him an expert in the art of 
 drafting headlines which constitute so large a part of 
 reportorial skill. ''There was a fishing party," said 
 he, ''of which I was one at Harvey Cedars, and the 
 luck being against us and the weather warm we re- 
 turned unexpectedly early to the piazza of the little inn 
 where we were to dine. There were five of us, one the 
 president of a bank, another the vice-president of a 
 trust company, a third the superintendent of a school, 
 the fourth the head of a manufacturing establishment, 
 and myself. We called for refreshments, which were 
 served on the piazza — a lemonade, a ginger ale and 
 some whiskies and soda. The conversation turned on 
 various matters and finally the superintendent said : ' I 
 wonder why Governor Pennypacker signed that press- 
 muzzling bill.' 'Yes,' exclaimed the president: 'so do 
 I. It seems such a foolish thing for a sensible man to 
 do.' 'I will tell you,' I replied. 'Suppose tomorrow 
 morning there appears on the front page of one of our 
 great dailies the pictures of all of us somewhat dis- 
 torted, but plainly recognizable, with our names 
 tagged to our clothing, with the headlines in large let- 
 ters: 'Strange Doings at Harvey Cedars — A Fishing 
 Party becomes a Drinking Bout — Mr. A., Mr. B., Mr. 
 C, Mr. D. and Mr. E., Seen Drinking in the Open Air — 
 Mysterious Females Hovering About.' 'My Heavens, 
 what a lie!' said the manufacturer. 'Is itf I asked. 
 'Didn't we come down here to fish? Aren't we drink- 
 ing in the open air? Didn't you see the cook and the 
 waitress moving about to get us our dinner?' 'Yes, 
 but it is all innocent, and the way you put it, the public 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 75 
 
 would think we were all carousing in a wrong place.' 
 *Yes,' I said, 'it is the way it is put, and it is just that 
 against which the Governor's bill is meant to protect 
 you.' It was an eye-opener for them," said my infor- 
 mant, and he laughingly added, "Do you know that I 
 had great trouble in quieting the superintendent, who 
 feared that I might have been overheard by some re- 
 porter, and that he would get into trouble with his 
 scholars and his wife about the 'Mysterious Fe- 
 males.' " ^ 
 
 To resume our examination of the message of ap- 
 proval. The Governor continued : ' ' The bill in its ap- 
 plication is not confined to officials, but affects as well 
 the citizen or business man, whose conduct constitutes 
 no part of the right of the public to information. The 
 corporation officer who has been falsely charged with 
 crime ; the manufacturer who has been falsely accused 
 of being a drunken brawler ; the woman whose domestic 
 griefs have been imfeelingly paraded, or whose chasity 
 is improperly suspected; the student who has been 
 falsely accused of murder ; the clergyman who has been 
 cruelly maligned ; the quiet citizen whose peace of mind 
 has been destroyed by the publication of evil gossip; 
 the merchant whose credit has been affected by ground- 
 less rumors ; the suif erers from reckless but not neces- 
 sarily malicious publications are given the right, not to 
 prohibit publication, but to recover the damages which 
 they have sustained, provided they prove negligence or 
 lack of care on the part of the publishing newspaper. 
 All of these are instances of what has in fact recently 
 occurred." 
 
 The foregoing extracts explaining that there was no 
 immunity extended to public servants from legitmate 
 criticism of their acts, and lifting the curtain upon pri- 
 vate scenes of writhing victims of the cruelty of negli- 
 gence, were dropped out of sight, and attention was 
 concentrated upon a single sentence, in which the Gov- 
 
76 Samuel Whitaher Pennypacker. 
 
 ernor, after describing a cartoon as ''asserting to the 
 world that the press is above the law and greater in 
 strength than the Government, ' ' had written, ' ' In Eng- 
 land a century ago the offender would have been drawn 
 and quartered and his head stuck upon a pole without 
 the gates. ' ' It was made to appear as if the Governor 
 favored this form for present day punislmient of those 
 who cartooned him. The reference to bygone times 
 was purely historical, and might have been omitted 
 IP^ith advantage, as open to such misconstruction, but 
 the warlike critics of the Governor failed to notice a 
 more aggravated instance of a misleading appeal to 
 history on their own part when Nelan represented the 
 Governor as chuckling over these words: " 'I thank 
 God there are no free schools nor printing in Virginia, 
 and I hope we shall not have them these one hundred 
 years ; for learning has brought heresy and disobedi- 
 ence and sects into the world, and printing hath di- 
 vulged them, and libels against the best Government.' 
 — Governor Berkeley of Virginia to King Charles II of 
 England in 1665." This cartoon was accompanied by 
 the headlines : ' ' Two Governors with a single Thought. 
 Pennypacker sees as did Sir William Berkeley the 
 Evils of Printing. ' God keep us from it, ' so wrote an 
 old Colonial tyrant, troubled by disrespect of author- 
 ity." Another cartoon represented the Governor in a 
 proudly boastful attitude at the base of a pedestal upon 
 which a bust appeared, on the side of which were in- 
 scribed the words : " ' I will punish this insolent printer 
 who dares to criticize a Governor.' — Gov. Cosby of 
 New York who prosecuted John Zenger, 1735." 
 
 No one will find in the bill, nor in the character and 
 career of Governor Pennypacker, any justification for 
 such misrepresentation of his sentiments or his acts. 
 The conscientious student of the period will not fail to 
 }:>onder the closing words of the Governor's approval. 
 "Since the laws of God and nature are immutable and 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 77 
 
 inexorable, unless some means are found to uproot 
 some of the tendencies of modern journalism confidence 
 already badly shaken will be utterly lost, and the influ- 
 ence of the press, which has been so potent an agent in 
 the development of civilization and in securing civil 
 liberty, will be gone forever. With a serious sense 
 that the event is of more than ordinary moment, with 
 full knowledge of the importance of the press and of 
 its value to mankind through all past struggles, and 
 with the hope that the greater care and larger measure 
 of responsibility brought about by this law, tending to 
 elevate the meritorious and repress the unworthy, will 
 promote its reform while benefiting the community, I 
 approve the bill." All these words were omitted from 
 the public prints, and the last four words quoted with- 
 out their splendid and elevated setting. 
 
 It is no wonder that the people failed to understand 
 the bill, and failed to understand the Governor. The 
 whole Commonwealth became involved. More than 
 twelve hundred newspapers of all kinds opened their 
 artillery fire, and the cannonading spread until all the 
 big guns of the Nation were in action. The cartoonists 
 of the Baltimore Herald, of the Washington Post, of 
 the Washington Star, of the Atlanta Constitution, of 
 the Denver Post, of the Omaha Herald, of the St. Louis 
 Post Despatch, of the St. Louis Republic, to name but 
 a few of the many, depicted the Governor as muzzling 
 a bull dog, as crunched by a tiger, as impaling an edi- 
 tor, as Mrs. Partington, as Don Quixote, or as wor- 
 shiping a strange god called Spleen, and a political 
 tough was seen reading a poster which read: '^ Penn- 
 sylvania new Libel Law Stops Free Utterance, Gags 
 a Free Press, Stops Criticism, Throttles Justice, Sup- 
 presses Exposure of Corruption." 
 
 The future student, far removed from the passions 
 and prejudices of that day, when he reads with calm- 
 ness the text of the so-called press-muzzier, and the 
 
78 Samuel Whitaker Pemiypacker. 
 
 Governor's message of approval, will marvel that there 
 should have been such an uproar based on such a pal- 
 pable misapprehension, and he will not fail to admire 
 the quiet personal and moral courage of the man who 
 faced the fire of so gigantic an engine as the press of 
 America without flinching and without loss of char- 
 acter. Had the Governor been a politician, he would 
 doubtless have retired in safety at the first mutterings 
 of the storm; or had he been less seriously convinced of 
 the necessity for some additional statutory regulation 
 of the press, he would have been content to rely, as 
 some of his legal friends advised, upon the law of libel 
 as resting on the principles of the common law expan- 
 sively expounded as they had been by a century or two 
 of great judges. But the Governor was not a politician, 
 and he had his own views and stood by them without 
 quaking. No one can say that they were peculiar to him- 
 self. Many other men of widely different tempera- 
 ments have had them. Andrew D. White, one of the 
 most accomplished of our scholars and diplomatists, 
 has lamented in his autobiography the recklessness of 
 the American press in dealing with the characters of 
 our public men; Theodore Eoosevelt, who cannot be 
 taunted with being a tool of tyranny or a foe to free- 
 dom, has declared that newspapers ''habitually and 
 continually, and as a matter of business, practice every 
 form of mendacity known to man, from the suppression 
 of the truth and the suggestion of the false to the lie 
 direct." John A. Sleicher, editor of Leslie's Weekly, 
 pleads for ' ' a daily newspaper that shall print less and 
 better news; that shall exercise such censorship over 
 its columns that no one's character shall be assailed, no 
 institution's standing be discredited, no vested right be 
 jeopardized, and no man or woman's motives impugned 
 until the editor has justified his statements." Presi- 
 dent Hadley urges ''that the newspaper reader must 
 get into the habit of seeing whether the statements of 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 79 
 
 fact in the paper are sui3ported by evidence or not." 
 And James Edward Rogers in his book upon ''The 
 American Press," just issued from the University of 
 Chicago Press, states: "The conclusion to which my 
 own study of the subject has led me is that the nature 
 of the American press is essentially sensational and 
 commercial with only a secondary place given to the 
 cultural aspects of human thought, and that as a result 
 its influence on the morals of the community tends in 
 the direction of stimulating love of sensation and in- 
 terest in purely material things." 
 
 There is no danger that Governor Pennypacker will 
 be classed by posterity with Governor Berkeley or Gov- 
 ernor Cosby, but he will be regarded as a propugnator 
 for the purification and uplifting of the press. 
 
 The next storm that burst was local in its extent, but The Ripper 
 while it lasted it raged with violence. It grew out of 
 the passage of four bills amending the Act of 1st of 
 June, 1885, providing for the better government of 
 cities of the first class, commonly known to Philadel- 
 phians as the Bullitt Bill. In the opposition press they 
 were designated as "Ripper Bills." The name had an 
 odious sound and an odious meaning, and the epithet 
 was calculated to mislead. In truth, as approved by 
 the Governor, they were not ripper bills at all. They 
 ripped no one out of office, and they were not to go 
 into effect until after the existing terms of the public 
 officers to be affected had expired, in fact not until 
 after the Governor himself was out of office. Their 
 history was as follows: During Mayor Weaver's term, 
 in the midst of the hottest kind of a conflict between 
 the Mayor and Councils, he removed the Directors of 
 Public Works and of Public Safety and appointed men 
 of his own choice against the interests and views of the 
 local party leaders. The municipal disturbance took 
 place over the lease of the Gas Works to the United 
 Gas Improvement Company. In the regular session of 
 
80 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 the Legislature of 1905 four bills were introduced pro- 
 viding for the election by Councils of the Directors of 
 Public Works, Public Safety, of Supplies, and of Public 
 Health and Charities, and looking to their immediate 
 effect. There was a strong effort made by politicians 
 of all degrees to induce the Governor to sign them in 
 this shape. It signally failed, as he was opposed to the 
 last named feature. They were then amended so as 
 not to become operative until April 1907. The Gov- 
 ernor approved two of the bills and vetoed two. His 
 critics charged that he acted inconsiderately, that he 
 acted unwisely and inconsistently, and that he surren- 
 dered to political influences. These charges have no 
 real basis. As to the first: Instead of acting incon- 
 siderately he acted with deliberation. He received a 
 representative delegation of protesting citizens, whose 
 distinguished counsel was not only heard in argument 
 but who filed a printed brief which was attentively read 
 and considered. He received and heard also a counter 
 delegation of citizens headed by another lawyer who, 
 though a rough diamond, was an able and respected 
 constitutional student. He wrote letters to trust- 
 worthy friends whose opinions were requested, and re- 
 ceived replies by no means unanimous. He discussed 
 the matter with men of the type of Senator Knox as 
 to the various forms of municipal government best 
 suited to varying conditions in the State. He thought- 
 fully pondered the decision of the Supreme Court in 
 Commonwealth vs. Moir, 199 Pa. 534 (1901), which was 
 marked by the ablest constitutional opinion ever writ- 
 ten by Chief Justice Mitchell, and by the most powerful 
 dissent of Mr. Justice Dean, so that both sides of the 
 question were fully presented. So much for the charge 
 of lack of consideration. As to the second charge that 
 he acted unwisely — in the judgment of his critics — and 
 that he acted inconsistently. He was firmly convinced 
 — and under the law as expounded from the days of 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 81 
 
 Chief Justice Black, and George Sharswood to those of 
 Mitchell there can be no doubt of the soundness of his 
 A'iews — that a municipal government was not an inde- 
 pendent sovereignty but a mere legislative agency, en- 
 tirely within the power of the Legislature to create, 
 abolish or amend. Next, he was convinced that under 
 the Bullitt bill the Mayor had too much power, an 
 opinion, by the way, now entertained by many of those 
 who once thought otherwise, and who are now agitating 
 for a change in the Bullitt bill. Next, he was convinced 
 that a change was desirable, and lastly that a consider- 
 able body of citizens, many of them of distinction and 
 the highest respectability, desired a change. The per- 
 sonnel of the debaters did not enter into it. Had * ' the 
 people," whatever that vague and shifting term may 
 mean, exchanged sides with the politicians, his views 
 would have remained the same. As to inconsistency, it 
 has been said that it would have been better to have 
 vetoed all the bills, as the result of the election of 1907 
 showed that the people did not want their charter 
 touched. This is hindsight, a common form of 
 wisdom. His conclusion was to submit the question in 
 some shape to the people for self determination, and 
 although the form of the bills made this somewhat 
 awkward, by approving two bills and vetoing two, he 
 created a referendum in accordance with the much dis- 
 cussed theory of the day. In this way he straddled, as 
 some harshly said. In tmtli, he defined the issue so far 
 as practicable. He gave the politicians far less than 
 what they wanted, and he gave the people more than 
 half of what they wanted. He displeased both sides. 
 I do not say that it was Solomon's judgment, but it 
 was much like Solomon's act, who by threatening to 
 kill the child elicited the true mother's cry. He actu- 
 ally elicited the sentiments of the community. As 
 philosophic Wordsworth has said. 
 
82 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 "He is oft the wisest man 
 Who seems not wise at all." 
 
 Lastly, it was said that, in approving two of the bills, 
 he surrendered to political influences. This charge is 
 equally without foundation. By insisting that all the 
 bills should have a prospective and not an immediate 
 effect he cut out the ripper features from all of them. 
 The two bills that he vetoed were those in which the 
 politicians had the most vital interest. Had you heard, 
 as I did, the explosions of wrath from the men who 
 wanted a clean sweep, you would be chary of charging 
 a political surrender. "But why not veto all the 
 bills?" some persistent critic cries. The answer has 
 been given in part, but there is a larger view to be con- 
 sidered. At the time of the discussion, it was by no 
 means clear what the public wanted. There were too 
 many voices, strident all of them and clashing in their 
 clang. The politicians were not all on the one side and 
 "the people" all on the other. The politicians' view 
 was supported by many eminent and respectable cit- 
 izens. Earnest remonstrants, however sincere, are too 
 apt to overlook the representative features of our gov- 
 ernment. Behind the politicians stood the legally 
 chosen representatives of the people, their constitution- 
 ally authorized agents, to express their views on sub- 
 jects of government, their duly accredited attorneys in 
 fact. To deny this is to impeach representative gov- 
 ernment. Until our system is changed government is 
 not to be conducted b}^ masses of men on one side, or by 
 respectable minorities on the other. No Governor is at 
 liberty to disregard the most characteristic and valu- 
 able feature of our system. If he were to ignore legis- 
 lative acts on matters entirely within the powers of 
 that body, it would lead to an administrative dead-lock, 
 or else to a purely arbitrary personal autocracy. It 
 is easy for those without actual practical experience in 
 the administration of affairs, and who hug favorite 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 83 
 
 theories, to say that a governor ought to do this, or that 
 he ought not to do that, but they would do well to remem- 
 ber the words of Sir Thomas More in his Utopia, that 
 ''there is never a time when critics are lacking ready 
 to teach Hannibal the art of war." The man who 
 really understands the difficulties of the task will re- 
 frain from shouting at the man at the wheel when 
 plowing through heavy counter seas, or to change 
 the simile, even the strongest of men when caught in 
 the midst of swaying crowds, rushing from opposite 
 corners, must himself choose his direction, and is not 
 aided materially by advice from a citizen looking out 
 of the top story window. 
 
 We are now prepared to understand the Governor's 
 thoughtfully expressed reasons for his action.* He be- 
 gan by comparing a real ' ' ripper" bill with those before 
 him. He explained that the Act of March 7th, 1901, which 
 applied to Pittsburgh and was not passed during his 
 term, ''abolished the office of mayor, and provided a 
 chief executive to be called the city recorder, and to be 
 temporarily appointed by the Governor. It removed 
 from office the mayor who had been elected by the peo- 
 ple. It provided for a concentration of authority in the 
 hands of the city recorder, who was given the power 
 to appoint the heads of five of the principal depart- 
 ments, as well as members of the sinking fund commis- 
 sion. This act became known even in the decisions of 
 the Courts as 'a ripper.' When the constitutionality 
 of the act was assailed, the Supreme Court decided that 
 the power of the Legislature was unquestionable, and 
 its exercise depended upon legislative discretion." 
 Having thus given the basis for a comparison, he con- 
 tinued: "The present bills raise no constitutional 
 query and they are in every respect the exact antithesis 
 of this Act. They are so drawn as not to take effect 
 until the first Monday of April, 1907, and, therefore, do 
 
 * For the full text see Appendix B. 
 
84 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 not affect any present incumbents. They remove no 
 official from office. They interfere with no one elected 
 by the people. Instead of concentrating power, their 
 effect would be to disseminate it." He then discussed 
 the various forms of government and gave interesting 
 historical examples of the evil of permitting too great 
 a concentration of power in one individual. He traced 
 the drifts of opinion, and stated that while in the 
 National Government the tendency was toward a con- 
 centration of power, the current was running the other 
 way in the States. Then coming to municipal affairs, 
 he said: "The most thoughtful observers and those 
 most familiar with the practical difficulties of the sub- 
 ject would probably concede that it would be better for 
 the administration of public affairs in Philadelphia if 
 the power, which is given by existing laws to the Mayor, 
 could be, in certain directions, at least lessened." His 
 views thus stated are in entire accordance with the 
 freshest expressions of opinion, particularly those ap- 
 pearing recently over the signature of "Penn," whose 
 sane, sound and always well-balanced views conunand 
 the highest respect. After dwelling on several per- 
 suasive confirmations of this thought, and having de- 
 clared that they indicated dissatisfaction with existing 
 conditions, he then proceeded to answer those who 
 urged him to reverse the determination of the Senate 
 and House, in which all the members of both bodies 
 from Philadelphia had participated, and with admi- 
 rable self-restraint declared: *'We must not lose sight 
 of the principle that the Governor's veto was expected 
 only to extend to those measures which might not re- 
 ceive a two-thirds vote of the Senate and House." 
 This, under the circumstances of the bills having 
 reached his table after the close of the session, gave to 
 the Governor an absolute power of veto which was 
 never intended. "For me to exercise this power arbi- 
 trarily with respect to the question raised by these 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 85 
 
 bills, would be to assume an unusual and illogical posi- 
 tion For the change of the method of gov- 
 ernment in this municipality much more than two- 
 thirds of each House have voted. If the absolute con- 
 trol of affairs in Philadelphia by an individual were to 
 be preserved, over the almost unanimous vote of the 
 Assembly and of the representatives of Philadelphia 
 to the contrary, by the autocratic exercise of the inci- 
 dental power of the Governor, it might well be a cause 
 both for uneasiness and complaint." Having reached 
 a decision as to the main line of thought, he stated this 
 qualification, that as sudden changes and radical 
 changes were always accompanied with disadvantages, 
 and while the power of the Mayor might be wisely 
 lessened, it would also be wise not to take it away alto- 
 gether. The way in which the bills had come to him 
 made it difficult to discriminate exactly in the applica- 
 tion of this cautionary view, but the conclusion reached 
 was the most practicable. * ' Should further changes in 
 the method of appointing directors prove by experience 
 to be necessary and advantageous, they can be made at 
 some future session." 
 
 It is submitted that the future students of our affairs 
 will find as little to condemn in the Governor's disposi- 
 tion of the matters just reviewed as in the libel bill. 
 Certainly no one will impugn his motives. 
 
 The next storm that broke differed in its character Tuecapitoi 
 and in its direction from those which have been de- ^*^' 
 scribed. In the controversies which raged over the 
 libel bill and the ripper bills the attacks were concen- 
 trated upon the Governor himself; in the Capitol 
 scandal the attacks were made upon the Auditor Gen- 
 eral and a former State Treasurer, who were charged 
 with having- conspired with the Superintendent of 
 Public Grounds and Buildings, the architect and the con- 
 tractor to defraud the State. No one ever whispered 
 or ever intimated that the Governor was a party to the 
 
86 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 fraud. It was known of all men that such a thing was 
 an impossibility. Joel Hawes, an American writer of 
 the early part of the last century, in one of his "Lec- 
 tures to Young Men," forcibly said: ''A good char- 
 acter is in all cases the fruit of personal exertion. It 
 is not inherited from parents ; it is not created by ex- 
 ternal advantages; it is no necessary appendage of 
 birth, wealth or talents or station; but it is the result 
 of one's own endeavors — the fruit and reward of good 
 principles manifested in a course of virtuous and honor- 
 able action. " It was Governor Pennypacker's character 
 which made him armor-proof against suspicion and 
 calumny. The worst that was said was that his vig- 
 ilance was relaxed and that he had been stupidly blind. 
 It is proper to examine these criticisms. Both of them 
 are inconsiderate. No one has ever charged that the 
 Governor did something which he ought not to have 
 done, hence the criticisms are negative rather than 
 positive. They do not inform us of what, in the judg- 
 ment of the critics, the Governor might have done, nor 
 do they tell us what the critics themselves would have 
 done had they been in his place, nor do they even in- 
 timate what it was that the Governor did not see. They 
 simply assume that there was something which he 
 ought to have seen and could have seen had he been 
 vigilant. Before there can be sanity of criticism there 
 must be sanity of statement based on knowledge. Let 
 there be no confusion of thought in the matter. The 
 Governor was not the Auditor General, he was not the 
 State Treasurer, he was not the Superintendent of 
 Public Grounds and Buildings, he was not the con- 
 tractor, he was not the architect. He was charged with 
 none of their duties and possessed none of their 
 powers. He was one of three members of the Board of 
 Public Grounds and Buildings, and in passing the bills 
 for the furnishing and equipment of the Capitol, he 
 relied, and had a right to rely, on the vigilance and 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 87 
 
 honesty of his subordinates. For every dollar of ex- 
 penditure, he had furnished to him with the bills the 
 oath of the contractor, then a business man of unim- 
 peached reputation, to their accuracy; the certificates 
 of the architect, also under oath, to the fact that they 
 were correct and in accordance with the contract; the 
 certificates of the Superintendent of Public Grounds 
 and Buildings that the goods had been delivered and 
 were in possession of the State, and all were accom- 
 panied by the joinder of the Auditor General and State 
 Treasurer in what were technically called 'treasury 
 settlements," and it was not until he had all of these 
 papers involving the separate official action of four 
 State officers that he approved the bills. He could not 
 have found the cunningly concealed overcharges, be- 
 cause they were buried in a mass of thousands of items 
 contained in the Quantities Book in the office of the 
 Auditor General, which had been prepared and kept by 
 that officer for his own guidance. It required the ser- 
 vices of the New York Audit Company at a later day 
 to ferret these items out and it involved nine months 
 of time, so craftily had the contractor supplied goods 
 under one schedule, which should have been supplied 
 under another. Had the Governor put aside all his 
 other duties and turned himself into an expert book- 
 keeper he could not have found the juggled items, even 
 had he suspected them, because their detection as to 
 overcharges depended upon tracing way-bills, pack- 
 ages, and the identification of articles by both measure- 
 ment and scales. But at the time of approval of the 
 bills there was no ground for suspicion; no one had 
 made a charge, no one had sounded a note of warning, 
 and none of the disappointed bidders, nor any of the 
 citizens who were subsequently called to testify upon 
 the trial, after the din had been kept up for nearly a 
 year, were on hand with evidence. The real point is 
 that the Governor was not required to look; it was 
 
88 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 no more a part of his official duty to turn up such 
 items than it would be the duty of the president of 
 a trust company to examine each week the ledger 
 accounts of his depositors to see whether they were 
 properly credited or had overdrawn their accounts, 
 or whether a clerk had made false entries to cover 
 his embezzlements; or of the president of the Penn- 
 sylvania Railroad Company to spend his time in 
 the auditing department, or in the supply depart- 
 ment, or in looking after switch tenders or the men in 
 the signal towers; or of the president of a steamship 
 company to inspect the boilers and engines of an ocean 
 liner so as to secure the safety of the passengers ; or of 
 a general in command of a million or two of men to 
 discover shortages in food or munition supplies. In 
 our complicated modern life men in the highest posi- 
 tions are obliged to rely on their subordinates, and on 
 the good faith and honesty of their colaborers. It is 
 out of reason as well as outside the bounds of prac- 
 tical administration to do otherwise. Omnia prcesum- 
 nntur esse rite acta is a maxim based upon the broadest 
 experience. In a great Commonwealth, where the Gov- 
 ernor was loaded down with multifarious and exacting 
 duties, some of which I have described, there is no room 
 for any just or candid man to assert that he ought to 
 have seen that which was concealed from notice, or to 
 suspect that which was not suspected, or to smell rotten- 
 ness which was so deeply buried as to be deodorized 
 until exhumed by professional spades. He was not 
 employed as a detective, he was elected to be Governor. 
 When the charge was made in the midst of a political 
 campaign, and but three months before the expiration 
 of the Governor's term, that there had been crookedness 
 in the Capitol accounts, he met it with promptitude and 
 directness. He instantly called in the Auditor General, 
 prepared and published a statement showing every cent 
 which had been expended either by the Commissioners 
 of Public Grounds and Buildings or by the Capitol 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 89 
 
 Commission in each and every way in connection with 
 the building and equipment of the Capitol. This put 
 the people in possession of the actual figures of ex- 
 penditure. At the same time the Attorney Greneral 
 conducted an investigation to enable him to ascertain 
 whether there was ground for instituting either crim- 
 inal or civil proceedings against the contractors, the 
 architect and the State officers. All of the papers on 
 file were examined, a laborious and voluminous task, 
 and all were found to be regular on their face. No 
 facts, no testimony, no evidence which would be com- 
 petent in a court of law were produced by the man who 
 had made the charge. It was clear that deep probing 
 would be necessary, and exhaustive and searching in- 
 terrogatories were addressed to every one who had had 
 the slightest connection with the contracts, and their 
 written answers were obtained. Before the work could 
 be completed the official terms of both the Governor 
 and the Attorney General expired. A report was filed 
 and printed covering three hundred and seventy pages 
 of what had been done up to that time, dealing with 
 ' ' the evidence thus far submitted — and speaking of that 
 only," a limitation which was persistently ignored by 
 the public press, which failed to notice that the report 
 was necessarily limited to the early stages of the in- 
 quiry and was not intended to be final and complete. 
 After insisting on ''the need for a very searching 
 examination, ' ' and calling attention to the necessity of 
 establishing fraud by the testimony of competent ''ex- 
 perts in the line of the work criticised, ' ' the suggestion 
 was made that "the contracts and the vouchers should 
 be placed in the hands of an audit company, or experts 
 well known," a suggestion which was acted on by the 
 employment of the New York Audit Company, and the 
 subsequent proceedings were based upon the very lines 
 of inquiry instituted by the Governor and the Attorney 
 General. No future study of the matter can be com- 
 plete without careful examination of this preliminary 
 
90 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 work. The spirit of the Governor shines forth electri- 
 cally in his exclamation on the witness stand before 
 the legislative investigating committee : ''If we did not 
 get good work, we were all deceived, and if the State 
 has been defrauded it is an especially wicked thing. It 
 would be, in my judgment, not only a fraud but a 
 species of treason." 
 
 I have examined at length all the grounds of actual 
 criticism of a great and good man. I state it deliber- 
 ately and without qualification, there is nothing which 
 furnishes a pretext for a charge of maladministration 
 or of negligent administration. There never was a 
 more painstaking or conscientious public servant than 
 Samuel W. Pennypacker. He devoted his whole time 
 and his full strength to the performance of his duties. 
 He cherished no ambitions to be served by intrigue, he 
 laid no traps, he planned no schemes, he stirred no 
 factional quarrels, he meditated no vengeance. I do 
 not claim for him infallibility of judgment. No one can 
 claim that in this world of uncertain factors. I do not 
 claim that his estimates of men were unerring, for he 
 was too tender-hearted and unsuspicious to detect evil 
 readily. I do not claim for him that uncanny distrust 
 which avoids the snares which the unscrupulous spread, 
 but which would convert a generous mind into an 
 odious skeptic of the good in human nature, but I can 
 and do claim that in conscientiousness he was unsur- 
 passed. '*A still and quiet conscience is a peace above 
 all earthly dignities," or, as Old South puts it, in one 
 of his sermons, ''A palsy may as well shake an oak, or 
 a fever dry up a fountain, as either of them shake, dry 
 up, or impair the strength of conscience. For it lies 
 within; it centers in the heart; it grows into the very 
 substance of the soul, so that it accompanies a man to 
 his grave; he never outlives it, because he cannot out- 
 live himself. ' ' 
 Public During the term of Governor Tener a Public Service 
 
 Commission. Commissiou was established under the Act of 26th of 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 91 
 
 July, 1913 (P. L. 1374), consisting of seven members 
 charged with the supervision, investigation and regula- 
 tion of all railroads, canals, street railways, stage lines, 
 express companies, baggage transfer companies, pipe 
 lines, ferry companies, common carriers, Pullman car 
 companies, tunnel companies, turnpikes, bridges, 
 wharves, grain elevators, telegraph, telephone, gas, 
 electric, water, heat, and refrigerating companies, and 
 like public service companies within the State. The 
 ample and elaborate powers given constituted the most 
 extraordinary grant of power to a quasi judicial body 
 that had ever been attempted in the history of the 
 State, and called for men of the highest capacity and 
 varied experience. Ex-Governor Pennypacker was one 
 of those selected, became the president of the Commis- 
 sion and was in active service until within two months 
 of his death. He died with his armor on. 
 
 I cannot dwell upon Mr. Pennypacker 's tastes, ac- Asa 
 complishments and achievements as a book collector ^*'"®<=*o'^- 
 and a bibliophile without repeating what I have already 
 said about them in an address recently delivered before 
 The Philobiblon Club. It is sufficient to say that in 
 these respects he was unique, and had he done nothing 
 else he would be remembered by scholars as a remark- 
 able man. 
 
 I now turn to his services to this Society. The three services to 
 administrations preceding that of Governor Penny- ^ciSy.*°^^^*^ 
 packer were notable for the large accessions of early 
 Pennsylvania imprints, principally from the presses of 
 William Bradford and his descendants, Eeynier Jan- 
 sen, Benjamin Franklin and his successors, Robert 
 Bell, the Dunlaps, Joseph Cruikshank, Christopher 
 Saur and his descendants, the Ephrata Community and 
 Henry Miller; for the increase in membership on the 
 removal of the Society to the ^ ' Picture House, ' ' on the 
 Spruce Street front of the grounds of the Pennsylvania 
 Hospital, and the purchase of the Patterson mansion. 
 
 Governor Pennypacker 's administration of sixteen 
 
92 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 years marks an epoch in the history of the Society. 
 It should not be forgotten that we owe very largely 
 to him the present enlarged building, through the 
 assistance of State appropriations. He was dis- 
 tinctively qualified to fill the office of president by 
 his experience as a vice-president and councillor, 
 and the sympathetic interest he took in the objects of 
 its organization ; his profound and intelligent knowledge 
 of the history of the Commonwealth, and the pride 
 which he took in its elucidation, as shown by his 
 numerous addresses and writings. Even during his 
 absence of four years at Harrisburg, as Governor of 
 the Commonwealth, his interest in its prosperity was 
 never abated ; he attended meetings of the Society and 
 Council, and conferred with the Librarian on purchases 
 of rare Americana and other matters pertaining to the 
 Library. It was during this absence that the sale of the 
 valuable collection of Americana of Bishop Hurst took 
 place in New York. At his conference with the Libra- 
 rian in the executive office, as both turned over the 
 pages of their catalogues, his opinions were tersely 
 expressed: "I would buy that," or '* try to secure this 
 work," and fortunately for the Society, many valuable 
 additions were secured for its collections, one in par- 
 ticular being the personal Day Book of President 
 Washington, kept during his occupancy of the Morris 
 mansion on Market Street, the "White House" of the 
 then Capital of the Nation. The additions to the collec- 
 tion of rare Americana were in nowise abated, but the 
 increase in the Manuscript Division became unprece- 
 dentedly large and valuable. 
 
 It may be stated that the accession of books to the 
 Library number 24,340 bound volumes. Letter-books 
 351, and Manuscripts, 166,134 ; among the latter, Penn 
 and Penn-Physick, including miniatures of Admiral 
 Penn and wife, with letters to the Founder; William 
 Penn's Journals when in Ireland and Holland, and cor- 
 respondence; there are also collections under the fol- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 93 
 
 lowing names : Isaac Norris ; James Logan ; Pastorius ; 
 Franklin ; Hamilton ; Rawle ; Wharton ; Shippen-Burd ; 
 Washington; Wayne (Orderly Books, one of the 14th 
 British Foot, captured at Stony Point, and papers re- 
 lating to the Western Expedition) ; Cadwalader ; 
 Robert Morris ; John Nixon ; John Dickinson ; Clymer ; 
 Reed-Forde; Gratz; Chaloner-White ; Cox-Parrish; 
 MTiarton; Humphreys; Proud; John F. Watson; Ser- 
 geant; Hollingsworth-Morris ; Governor George Wolf; 
 Carpenter; Ashhurst; Hooper; Mendenhall; Jay 
 Cooke; Alexander H. Stephens; and United States 
 Bank and Northampton and Chester County docu- 
 ments. 
 
 The accessions to the Gilpin Library were 222 vol- 
 umes of rare Americana; 28 Letter-books; 117 Manu- 
 scripts; 7 bound volumes of correspondence of Ben- 
 jamin West and original drawings; Holmes' Map of 
 Pennsylvania, 1681, as it came from the press, and 
 General Duportail's original plan of the encampment 
 at Valley Forge. 
 
 It may be stated here that there are 3877 bound vol- 
 umes of manuscripts now on the shelves of the Manu- 
 script Division, and material awaiting repair and bind- 
 ing sufficient to add 3000 volumes. 
 
 Governor Pennypacker 's historical writings are 
 models of careful research and devoted study; they 
 have the power to hold the interest of the general 
 reader and his admirable accuracy satisfies the exigen- 
 cies of the student. He had an unrivaled acquaintance 
 with all that had been published and an astounding 
 amount of new and valuable unpublished information 
 on the history of the Commonwealth. His translations 
 are uniformly well performed, and the spirit of the 
 original always faithfully preserved in its English 
 translation. Referring to two of his recent works he 
 wrote: ''The entire edition of my 'Pennsylvania in 
 American History' was sold within two weeks, and 
 copies are now being bought at $10.00 each;" and that 
 
94 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 'Pennsylvania the Keystone' has already gone through 
 four editions, covering 12,000 copies." 
 AsaPenn- Finally, he is to be considered as a Pennsylvanian. 
 
 sylvanlan. . . , .^r i • 
 
 A Chinese philosopher once wrote: ''He who sincerely 
 loves his country leaves the fragrance of a good name 
 to a hundred centuries." His State pride and his 
 State patriotism were abnormal, I had almost said 
 colossal. It did not spring from the sickly and bitter 
 root of provincialism. It was not nourished by pre- 
 judice, nor did it thrive upon detraction or jealousy of 
 the other parts of the country. It sprang from knowl- 
 edge, from insight into the diviner meanings of those 
 mysterious decrees of Providence which mixed in our 
 latitude the martyred blood wrung from the suffering 
 brows of Holland, Sweden, England, Scotland, Ireland. 
 Wales, Grermany, Switzerland and France, to be dis- 
 tilled by the fierce fires of revolution into the most 
 precious elixir of the ages. 
 
 Consider, Pennsylvanians, of what a State ye are the 
 citizens ; a State which in its origin was the sanctuary 
 to which the i^ersecuted of all creeds and races fled for 
 safety; a State inspired by Mercy, Justice, Truth and 
 Peace; upon whose soil were fought those battles in 
 colonial, revolutionary and fratricidal days, which de- 
 termined the course of critical events; and in whose 
 holiest shrine were composed and adopted those docu- 
 ments which chart the channels of national power; a 
 State from whose veins of wealth and from whose roar- 
 ing looms the labor of the world is quickened ; a State 
 of struggle and achievement ; and of the most generous 
 humanities in the service of mankind; a State whose 
 history ought to stir the hearts, uplift the pride, and 
 command the love of all her loyal sons and daughters. 
 
 It was this State which your late President knew and 
 thoroughly understood; whose reputation he was ever 
 ready to defend against disloyalty or ignorance, and 
 whose interests he faithfully served until the shaft of 
 the insatiate archer struck him down. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennppacker. 95 
 
 Appendix A. 
 
 PampJilet Laws of Pa. 
 
 1903-p. 349. ■ No- 265 
 
 '*AN ACT 
 
 "To authorize civil actions for the recovery of 
 damages arising from newspaper publications negli- 
 gently made; defining the character of such damages; 
 and requiring every newspaper published in this Com- 
 monwealth to print, in a conspicuous place in each 
 issue, the names of the owners, proprietors or pub- 
 lishers, and the managing editors of the same; and 
 making a violation of this act a misdemeanor, and fix- 
 ing a penalty therefor. 
 
 ''Section 1. Be it enacted &c., That from and after 
 the passage of this act, civil actions may be brought 
 against the proprietor, owner, publisher, or managing 
 editor of any newspaper published in this Common- 
 wealth, whether the same be published monthly, bi- 
 weekly, semi-weekly or daily, to recover damages 
 resulting from negligence on the part of such owner, 
 proprietor or managing editor in the ascertainment of 
 facts and in making publications affecting the char- 
 acter, reputation or business of citizens, 
 
 "Section 2. In all civil actions which may be here- 
 after brought against the proprietor, owner, publisher 
 or managing editor of any newspaper published in this 
 Commonwealth, whether the same be published 
 monthly, bi-weekly, semi-weekly or daily, and whether 
 such owner be an individual, partnership, limited part- 
 nership, joint-stock company, or corporation, if it shall 
 be shown that the publication complained of resulted 
 from negligence on the part of such owner, proprietor, 
 manager or editor, in the ascertainment of the facts or 
 in the publication thereof, compensatory damages may 
 be recovered for injuries to business and reputation 
 
96 8amuel WUitaker Penny packer. 
 
 resulting from such publication, as well as damages 
 for the physical and mental suffering endured by the 
 injured party or parties; and whenever in any such 
 action it shall be shown that the matter complained of 
 is libelous, and that such libelous matter has been given 
 special prominence by the use of pictures, cartoons, 
 headlines, displayed type, or any other matter calcu- 
 lated to specially attract attention, the jury shall have 
 the right to award punitive damages against the de- 
 fendant or defendants. 
 
 '^Section 3. That from and after the passage of this 
 act, each and every newspaper published in this Com- 
 monwealth, whether the same be published monthly, bi- 
 weekly, semi- weekly or daily shall publish in every copy 
 of every issue, on the editorial page, in a conspicuous 
 position, at the top of reading matter, the name of the 
 owner, owners, proprietor or proprietors of such news- 
 papers, together with the name of the managing editor 
 thereof; and if said newspaper or newspapers shall be 
 owned or published by a corporation, then the name of 
 the corporation shall be published, together with the 
 names of the president, secretary, treasurer, and 
 managing editor thereof; and if the said newspaper 
 or newspapers shall be owned or published by a part- 
 nership or partnership limited, then the names of the 
 partners, or officers and managers, of said partnership 
 or partnership limited, shall be published in like man- 
 ner. 
 
 ' * Section 4. In the event of any change being made 
 in the proprietor, owner, publisher or managing editor 
 of any newspaper, or in the office of president, secre- 
 tary or treasurer of any corporation owning and pub- 
 lishing said newspaper, or any change in the name of 
 the co-partners, the said change or changes shall be 
 duly set forth in the next edition, or issue, of said news- 
 paper, following said change or changes. 
 
 "Section 5. Any person, firm, limited partnership 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 97 
 
 or corporation, publishing a newspaper in Pennsyl- 
 vania, which omits, fails or neglects to carry out the 
 provisions of sections three and four of this act, and 
 make the publication required by the preceding sec- 
 tions, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor ; and upon con- 
 viction thereof shall be fined not less than five hundred 
 dollars, nor more than one thousand dollars. 
 
 '^ Section 6. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent 
 herewith be and the same are hereby repealed. 
 
 '^^pproved— The 12th day of May, A. D. 1903." 
 
 The Goveenor's Message of Approval. 
 
 • ' The questions raised by the Senate Bill No. 690 are 
 of very grave importance. They affect large business 
 interests, the freedom of speech and the press, the right 
 of the citizen to be informed concerning current affairs 
 and the conduct of government, as well as his right to 
 protect his reputation and home from the injuries that 
 result from careless or negligent, as well as malicious 
 false report. They are of importance for the further 
 reason that, whichever way decided, the fact that they 
 are raised indicates a widespread dissatisfaction with 
 existing conditions, and their correct decision is likely 
 to have an effect within and without the Common- 
 wealth. They are deserving, therefore, of the most 
 careful consideration, and the conclusion, unaffected 
 by any personal feeling and unswayed by any fear of 
 personal consequences, ought to be reached upon the 
 plane of what will be for the good of the people. 
 
 Few persons have read or have had the opportunity 
 of reading tlie provisions of this bill. In order that 
 the oi^portunity may be given, I quote the language in 
 full as follows : 
 
 ''That from and after the passage of this act, civil 
 actions may be brought against the proprietor, owner, 
 publisher or managing editor of any newspaper pub- 
 
98 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 lished in this Commonwealtli, whether the same be 
 published monthly, bi-weekly, semi-weekly, or daily, to 
 recover damages resulting from negligence on the part 
 of such owner, proprietor or managing editor in the 
 ascertainment of facts and in making publications af- 
 fecting the character, reputation or business of citizens. 
 
 "Section 2. In all civil actions which may be here- 
 after brought against the proprietor, owner, publisher 
 or managing editor of any newspaper published in this 
 Commonwealth, whether the same be published 
 monthly, bi-weekly, semi-weekly or daily, and whether 
 such owner be an individual, partnership, limited part- 
 nership, joint stock company or corporation, if it shall 
 be shown that the publication complained of resulted 
 from negligence on the part of such owner, proprietor, 
 manager or editor, in the ascertainment of the facts or 
 in the publication thereof, compensatory damages may 
 be recovered for injuries to business and reputation 
 resulting from such publication, as well as damages for 
 the physical and mental suffering endured by the in- 
 jured party or parties; and whenever in any such 
 action it shall be shown that the matter complained of 
 is libelous, and that such libelous matter has been given 
 special prominence by the use of pictures, cartoons, 
 headlines, displayed type, or any other matter cal- 
 culated to specially attract attention, the jury shall 
 have the right to award punitive damages against the 
 defendant or defendants. 
 
 ' ' Section 3. That from and after the passage of this 
 act each and every newspaper published in this Com- 
 monwealth, whether the same be published monthly, bi- 
 weekly, semi-weekly or daily, shall publish in every 
 copy of every issue, on the editorial page, in a con- 
 spicuous position at the top of reading matter, the name 
 of the owner, owners, proprietor or proprietors of such 
 newspapers, together with the name of the managing 
 editor thereof; and if said newspaper or newspapers 
 shall be owned or published by a corporation, then the 
 name of the corporation shall be published, together 
 with the names of the president, secretary, treasurer 
 and managing editor thereof; and if the said news- 
 paper or newspapers shall be owned or published by a 
 partnership or partnership limited, then the names of 
 the partners, or officers and managers, of said partner- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 99 
 
 ship or partnership limited, shall be published in like 
 manner. 
 
 ' ' Section 4. In the event of any change being made 
 in the proprietor, owner, publisher or managing editor 
 of any newspaper, or in the office of president, secre- 
 tary or treasurer of any corporation owning and pub- 
 lishing said newspaper, or any change in the name of 
 the co-partners, the said change or changes shall be 
 duly set forth in the next edition, or issue, of said news- 
 paper following said change or changes. 
 
 *' Section 5. Any person, firm, limited partnership 
 or corporation, publishing a newspaper in Pennsyl- 
 vania, which omits, fails or neglects to carry out the 
 provisions of sections three and four of this act, and 
 make the publication required by the preceding sec- 
 tions, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon con- 
 viction thereof shall be fined not less than five hundred 
 dollars nor more than one thousand dollars. 
 
 ''Section 6. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent 
 herewith be and the same are hereby repealed. ' * 
 
 There is nothing in the terms of the bill which pre- 
 vents any newspaper from making such comments upon 
 legislative measures or upon the official acts of State, 
 municipal, county or public officers as are proper for 
 the information of the public or are in the line of legit- 
 imate public discussion. There are no inhibitions in 
 the bill. It subjects all preliminary inquiries as to facts 
 and their subsequent publication to the test of care. The 
 doctrines of the law of negligence are well known and 
 apparently easy of application. Haste and reckless- 
 ness in the ascertainment of facts prior to publication, 
 or in the manner of publication, amounting in the 
 judgment of a court to negligence or the want of that 
 degree of care which a man of ordinary prudence would 
 exercise under the circumstances, will, if proved, give 
 a ground of action for such damages as result from 
 injuries to business and reputation. There is no inter- 
 ference with "privileged communications." 
 
 The bill in its application is not confined to officials, 
 but affects as well the citizen or business man, whose 
 
100 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 conduct constitutes no part of the right of the public 
 to information. The corporation officer who has been 
 falsely charged with crime; the manufacturer who has 
 been falsely accused of being a drunken brawler; the 
 woman whose domestic griefs have been unfeelingly 
 paraded, or whose chastity is improperly suspected; the 
 student who has been falsely accused of murder; the 
 clergyman who has been cruelly maligned; the quiet 
 citizen whose peace of mind has been destroyed by the 
 publication of evil gossip; the merchant whose credit 
 has been affected by groundless rumors; the sufferers 
 from reckless but not necessarily malicious publi- 
 cations, are given the right, not to prohibit publication, 
 but to recover the damages which they have sustained, 
 provided they prove negligence or lack of care on the 
 part of the publishing newspaper. All of these are in- 
 stances of what has in fact recently occurred. 
 
 Within a few days, in a leading article on the first 
 page of a daily journal, under large headlines, upon a 
 iTimor of unknown source as to the name of a suggested 
 appointee to the position of Prothonotary of the 
 Supreme Court, when no appointment had been made 
 and no utterance, official or otherwise, had emanated 
 from any member of that court, that high tribunal was 
 subjected to a covert assault under the words '^ Machine 
 After Control of the Supreme Court. ' ' 
 
 A mayor of our chief city has been called a traitor, 
 a senator of the United States has been denounced as 
 a yokel with sodden brain, and within the last quarter 
 of a century, two Presidents of the United States have 
 been murdered, and in each instance the cause was 
 easily traceable to inflammatory and careless newspaper 
 utterance. A cartoon in a daily journal of May 2d 
 defines the question with entire precision. An ugly 
 little dwarf, representing the Governor of the Common- 
 wealth, stands on a crude stool. The stool is subordi- 
 nate to and placed alongside of a huge printing press 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 101 
 
 with wheels as large as those of an ox-team, and all 
 are so arranged as to give the idea that when the press 
 starts the stool and its occupant will be thrown to the 
 ground. Put into words, the cartoon asserts to the 
 world that the press is above the law and greater in 
 strength than the government. No self-respecting peo- 
 ple will permit such an attitude to be long maintained. 
 In England a century ago the offender would have been 
 drawn and quartered and his head stuck upon a pole 
 without the gates. In America to-day this is the kind 
 of arrogance which ' ' goeth before a fall. ' ' 
 
 If such abuse of the privileges allowed to the press 
 is to go unpunished, if such tales are permitted to be 
 poured into the ears of men, and to be profitable, it is 
 idle to contend that reputable newspapers can maintain 
 their purity. Evil communications corrupt good man- 
 ners. One rotten apple will ere long spoil all in the 
 barrel. The flaring headlines, the meretricious art, the 
 sensational devices and the disregard of truth, in time 
 will creep over them all. Men are affected by prox- 
 imity and professional sympathy. Wlien recently a 
 verdict of $25,000 was rendered against a journal for 
 libel, this entirely proper item of news only reached the 
 public by the methods of a hundred years ago. It was 
 unpublished, and each man whispered the fact to his 
 neighbor. It is equally idle to contend that untrue 
 statements and vicious assaults produce no effect and 
 that the upright are unharmed. A whole generation of 
 young men are being trained to a familiarity with crime 
 and to disrespect for government. Even the Legis- 
 lature recently, by an act which passed both Houses, 
 held the threat of imprisonment over justices of the 
 peace for what would have been at most only a neglect 
 of duty. Bishops, too, hurry into print without investi- 
 gation, and with only such information as comes from 
 muddy sources, to express their disregard for those 
 whom the people have entrusted with authority. Both 
 
102 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 incidents indicate a tone which is already too prevalent 
 and is being steadily cultivated to the public detriment. 
 Were a stranger from Mars by some accident to read 
 our daily press, he would conclude that the world is 
 inhabited by criminals and governed by scoundrels. It is 
 sad to reflect that some historian of five hundred years 
 hence, misled by what he reads, will probably study 
 the statesman whom we know to be able and strong, 
 generous and kindly, keeping his promises and paying 
 his debts, and depict him with the features of an owl 
 and the propensities of a Nero or Caligula. The motive 
 which leads to the degradation of the press is very plain 
 and by no means unusual. It is the same motive which 
 causes men to put deleterious chemicals into food, weak 
 iron into the boilers of engines, and wood into the flues 
 of houses, — the desire to produce cheaply in order that 
 there may be a profitable sale. There is no animosity 
 toward the poor creature who may take copperas into 
 his stomach or scandal into his mind, but the willing- 
 ness to do injury for a reward needs the supervision 
 and restraint of the law in eax?h instance alike. Where 
 the conscience of the individual is too hardened to pre- 
 vent him from going astray, where trade associations 
 have become a bond of sympathy rather than a curb for 
 wrong conduct, and injuries are inflicted upon others, 
 then the law ought to lay its heavy hand upon those 
 who offend, whether they be weak or whether they be 
 strong. It is not the individual attacked who is alone 
 concerned. The Commonwealth is interested that those 
 who render her service should be treated with deference 
 and respect, so that when they go forth in the perform- 
 ance of her functions those to whom they are sent may 
 feel that they are vested with authority. Let there be 
 no mistake about it. In the long run, society always 
 finds a way to protect itself. For continual, persistent 
 public violation of the law, the publication so offending 
 may be abated by the courts as a public nuisance. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 103 
 
 When, during the war of the Rebellion, a New York 
 journal forged a proclamation with the name of the 
 President attached to it, to the great injury of the 
 nation then in the midst of a struggle for life, Mr. Lin- 
 coln promptly suppressed the publication. The liberty 
 of the press to scatter injurious falsehood no more 
 bound him than the withes bound Samson. He estab- 
 lished a precedent which no doubt will be followed in 
 the future should a like occasion demand it. The exist- 
 ence and growth of the evil is recognized by all ob- 
 sei*ving men, has been pointed out in repeated warnings 
 by the Supreme Court, and was frankly acknowledged 
 by the representatives of the press at the hearing upon 
 the present bill. I listened in vain to hear any remedy 
 they might be able to suggest. Many years' experi- 
 ence on the Bench has led me to the conclusion that 
 crimes are widely propagated not by the malice but by 
 the recklessness of the press, and that in certain classes 
 of cases, among them murder, the accused were at times 
 convicted or acquitted before they reached the court 
 room. But for the unfortunate decision that the Legis- 
 lature could limit the courts in imposing punishment 
 for contempt to acts occurring within the court room, 
 as though violation of an order had some relation to 
 doors and windows, the courts could have prevented 
 this interference with the performance of their func- 
 tions and this aggression upon personal liberty. Such 
 a condition of things is much to be deplored and it 
 ought to be prevented if possible. The bill offers as a 
 remedy for these ills, or some of them, the application 
 of the principles of the law of negligence to the publi- 
 cation of newspapers. All that this means is that they 
 shall exercise ''reasonable care" in the ascertainment 
 of facts and the announcement of comment which may 
 injuriously affect the reputation or business of other 
 people. It is a law of almost universal application in 
 the affairs of men. When we walk the streets or drive 
 
104 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 a horse, or light a fire or make a shoe or build a house, 
 we must take care that we do not cause harm to others. 
 It applies to the gatherer of garbage. Why should it 
 not apply to the gatherer of news? It applies to the 
 lawyer, the doctor and the dentist, in the exercise of his 
 profession. Whj should it not apply to the editor? It 
 is impossible to give any logical reason which will bear 
 examination why they should be exempt. The damages 
 provided for by the bill follow the ordinary rule of 
 damages for want of reasonable care. When a man is 
 bitten by a dog or gored by a bull, or cut or burned, or 
 overturned or is run over by a hand cart or street car, 
 through negligence, he may recover compensation for 
 physical and mental suifering. This measure of 
 damage is peculiarly applicable and in fact essential 
 in the cases of injuries intended to be guarded against 
 by the bill. When a woman is falsely called a strumpet, 
 it does not break her arm or rob her of her wardrobe. 
 It hurts her feelings, and if she cannot get compen- 
 sation for her mental suffering she can get nothing. 
 If malicious untruth is emphasized by picture and head- 
 line, punitive damages are awarded. Is there any good 
 reason to the contrary? If a man gouges out the eyes 
 or rubs pepper into the wounds of his adversary, or 
 cuts the tongue out of his neighbor's horse, the damages 
 are always left to the discretion of a jury. 
 
 An upright and worthy gentleman, trained to the law, 
 who has worn a sword in the service of his country, 
 and who bears a name honored in Pennsylvania for 
 more than two hundred years because of its connection 
 with an impressive and heroic event, is sent by the 
 people to the Legislature, and in the performance of 
 his duty and upon the responsibility of his oath intro- 
 duces a proper bill which is not agreeable to the press. 
 It is not shown that the bill would be harmful or unwise. 
 The policy is not confronted with argument pointing 
 out its error or weakness. But some outcast is hired 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 105 
 
 to pervert his name from Pusey into "pussy" and to 
 draw contorted cats which are scattered broadcast over 
 the land in the hope that the vile and vulgar will snicker 
 at his wife and children when they pass. Could the 
 most just and kindly of judges, could any friend of the 
 press meaning to be fair, say that should he bring suit 
 against the newspapers which committed this outrage 
 and indecency he ought not to be permitted to recover 
 what a jury shall regard as compensation! 
 
 The bill provides, under penalty, that the names of 
 the owner, proprietor, publisher and managing editor 
 shall be printed with each issue. The purpose of the 
 provision is that it may be known who is responsible 
 for the publication. Every business man prints upon 
 his bills and letterheads and puts in front of his store, 
 his name. Every doctor and every lawyer puts his 
 name on his office door. The law provides that a record 
 shall be made, open to the public, of those who compose 
 partnerships and limited partnerships. And yet every 
 day pages of material are printed purporting to be a 
 record of current affairs of the world, and claiming the 
 right to sit in supervision upon the courtesies of the 
 parlor and the doings of public officials, and no one 
 knows what their origin, whence they come, who is he 
 who writes them or who is responsible for them. If the 
 vendor of a horse were to insist upon wearing a mask 
 so as to escape identification, who would buy of him? 
 The Veiled Prophet, though preaching about piety and 
 virtue, was so veiled because both hideous in appear- 
 ance and libertine in conduct. No harm and much good 
 may come from requiring such publicity. These are all 
 of the provisions of the bill, and no one of them would 
 seem to be uncalled for, unjust or unduly harsh. 
 
 Since the Constitution of this State, in its declaration 
 concerning liberty of the press, directs that there shall 
 be responsibility "for the abuse of that liberty," and 
 since the test is that publications shall not be "mali- 
 
106 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 ciously or negligently made, ' ' it would appear to be in 
 entire accord with that instrument that newspapers 
 should be held accountable in damages for negligence. 
 Some technical objections are made to the bill. It is 
 urged that since weekly newspapers are nowhere men- 
 tioned, it offends against that provision of the Consti- 
 tution which prevents special legislation. A careful 
 examination shows that the enacting clauses are in gen- 
 eral words, ''each and every newspaper" and ''any 
 newspaper, ' ' and that the enumeration of the different 
 kinds of newspapers is mere description and unes- 
 sential. The omission of the word "weekly" was un- 
 wise but in no sense fatal. If hereafter a news- 
 paper should be issued every other day or twice a 
 day, and thus not be included in the descriptive words 
 used, it would, as well as the journals published weekly, 
 be covered by the general enacting words, and be sub- 
 ject to the provisions of the bill. All of the provisions 
 relate to one general subject and appear to be suffi- 
 ciently described in the title. It is further urged that 
 the bill ought not to become a law because not read 
 upon three several days in the House of Eepresenta- 
 tives before its final passage. If it was not so read, 
 then undoubtedly there was a failure upon the part of 
 the House to perform its duty. Whenever, however, 
 the bill is signed by the President of the Senate and 
 the Speaker of the House, it is an official certificate that 
 it has been passed in accordance with the constitutional 
 requirements and the rules governing the action of 
 those bodies. But little thought is needed to see that 
 the Governor has no responsibility for, and can exer- 
 cise no supervision over, the manner of the delibera- 
 tions of the Legislature. He has no part or parcel in 
 them, he has no place on the floor, and save by report 
 and unofficially has no knowledge of what occurs there, 
 except as they give it to him. The two houses consti- 
 tute a separate branch of the government, and were he 
 to interfere it would be an encroachment and lead to 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 107 
 
 untold commotions. He can no more dispute their cer- 
 tifications than could they inquire into his motives for 
 signing a bill or withholding his approval. If they 
 should assert that it was properly passed and he should 
 assert to the contrary, who is to decide the disputed 
 question of fact, he who oflficially knows nothing about 
 it, or they who are given the power? If it is proper 
 legislation in correct form, how could he justify himself 
 in disapproving it on the ground that the motives were 
 impure or the manner of passing it informal? In the 
 case of Kilgore vs. Magee, 85 Penna. 412, where it was 
 alleged that the bill had not been read three times, the 
 Supreme Court said that the duty of seeing that this 
 mandate was observed was solely that of the members, 
 and further : ' ' In regard to the passage of the law and 
 the alleged disregard of the forms of legislation re- 
 quired by the Constitution, we think the subject is not 
 within the pale of judicial inquiry." This furnishes a 
 safe rule to follow. The purpose of the reading upon 
 three different days is not to allow time for those inter- 
 ested to impress their views upon the legislators, but 
 to insure that the legislators have the opportunity for 
 hearing and voting advisedly. In the present case 
 there was more than the usual opportunity given for 
 preliminary discussion by the people. Some such legis- 
 lation was recommended in the Inaugural address. A 
 bill concerning cartoons was introduced early in the 
 session and widely published. This bill was read three 
 times in the Senate and once in the House. A similar 
 bill had been read twice in the House when the present 
 bill was substituted, so that if the allegation of irreg- 
 ularity be correct, at least we can be assured that the 
 action taken was preceded by numerous forewarnings. 
 The proposed legislation has been regarded by a 
 large proportion of the reputable press with great mis- 
 givings. It is natural that this should be the case. The 
 future is ever uncertain, and the easy way to avoid the 
 dangers ahead is to stand still. This is nevertheless 
 
108 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 not a wise course. The boy conscious of many lapses, 
 who is invited by a stern father into a private room, 
 enters with a vague dread, and yet the purpose may 
 only be to arrange for the coming holidays. When the 
 gardener comes with his hoe into the garden which has 
 been left to run wild, it is safe to say that it is the mul- 
 lein and not the pea which is likely to suffer. 
 
 This bill may not be the best possible legislation, but 
 the purpose is commendable, and should experience 
 show it to be defective, something better may be de- 
 vised. It ought to be cordially and cheerfully accepted 
 by the reputable press, for they have a special interest 
 in its becoming a law. Where the tares occupy the 
 ground, the wheat perishes. It threatens them with no 
 danger. Seeking to utter the truth and not the false- 
 hood, what have they to fear? Into our courts where 
 learned judges administer the law with fidelity and 
 juries are drawn from the masses of the people well 
 fitted to determine who is the wrongdoer, they are not 
 likely to be suiomoned, or if summoned they may go 
 with entire safety. This much is certain. Since the 
 laws of God and nature are immutable and inexorable, 
 unless means are found to uproot some of the ten- 
 dencies of modern journalism confidence already badly 
 shaken will be utterly lost, and the influence of the 
 press, which has been so potent an agent in the develop- 
 ment of civilization and in securing civil liberty, will 
 be gone forever. 
 
 With a serious sense that the event is of more than 
 ordinary moment, with full knowledge of the impor- 
 tance of the press, and of its value to mankind through 
 all past struggles, and with the hope and belief that the 
 greater care and larger measure of responsibility 
 brought about by this law, tending to elevate the mer- 
 itorious and repress the unworthy, will promote its 
 welfare while benefiting the community, I approve the 
 
 bill. 
 
 Saml. W. Pennypacker. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, 109 
 
 Appendix B 
 
 Pamphlet Laws of Pa. | 
 
 1905— p. 390. J " 
 
 ''an act 
 
 "To amend an act, entitled 'An act to provide for the 
 better government of cities of the first class in this 
 Commonwealth,' approved the first day of June, Anno 
 Domini one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five, by 
 amending section one of article three of said act, by 
 vesting in the Director of the Department of Public 
 Safety certain powers, therein given to the Mayor ; and 
 amending section one of article twelve of said act by 
 providing for the election of the Director of the Depart- 
 ment of Public Safety and the Director of the Depart- 
 ment of Public Works by the members of the select and 
 common councils of cities of the first class, and pro\ad- 
 ing for their removal. 
 
 "Section 1. Be it enacted, &c., That so much of sec- 
 tion one, article three of the act, entitled 'An act to 
 provide for the better government of cities of the first 
 class in this Commonwealth,' approved the first day 
 of June, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and 
 eighty-five, which reads as follows: 
 
 "Section 1. No policeman or fireman shall be dis- 
 missed without his written consent, except by the de- 
 cision of a court either of trial or of inquiry duly de- 
 terminated and certified in writing to the mayor, which 
 court shall be composed of persons belonging to the 
 police or fire force equal or superior in official position 
 therein to the accused. Such decision shall only be de- 
 termined by trial of charges with plain specifications 
 made by, or lodged with, the Director of the department 
 of public safety, of which trial the accused shall have 
 due notice, and at which he shall have the right to be 
 present in person. The persons composing such court 
 shall be appointed and sworn by the director of the 
 
110 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacl^er. 
 
 department of public safety to perfonn tlieir duties 
 impartially and without fear or favor, and the person 
 of highest rank in such court shall have the same 
 authority to issue and enforce process to secure the 
 attendance of witnesses, and to administer oaths to 
 witnesses, as is possessed by any justice of the peace 
 in this Commonwealth,' shall be amended to read as 
 follows : 
 
 ''Section 1. No policeman or fireman shall be dis- 
 missed without his written consent, except by the deci- 
 sion of a court either of trial or of inquiry, of which 
 decision notice shall he given, in writing, to the Di- 
 rector of the Department of Public Safety, which court 
 shall be composed of persons belonging to the police or 
 fire force equal or superior in official position therein 
 to the accused. Such decision shall only be determined 
 by trial of charges, with plain specifications made by, 
 or lodged with, the Director of the Department of Pub- 
 lic Safety, of which trial the accused shall have due 
 notice, and at which he shall have the right to be pres- 
 ent in person. The persons composing such court shall 
 be appointed and sworn by the Director of the Depart- 
 ment of Public Safety to perform their duties impar- 
 tially and without fear or favor, and the person of 
 highest rank in such court shall have the same authority 
 to issue and enforce process to secure the attendance 
 of witnesses, and to administer oaths to witnesses, as 
 is possessed by any justice of the peace in this Com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 ''Section 2. That so much of section one, article 
 three of said act, which reads as follows : 
 
 'Section 1. The finding of the court of trial or in- 
 quiry, as aforesaid, shall be of no effect until approved 
 by the Mayor," shall be amended to read as follows: 
 
 "Section 1. The finding of the court of trial or in- 
 quiry, as aforesaid, shall be of no effect until approved 
 by the Director of the Department of Public Safety. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. Ill 
 
 ''Section" 3. That so much of section one, article 
 twelve of said act, which reads as follows: 
 
 'Section 1. The mayor shall nominate and, hy and 
 tvith the advice and consent of the select council, ap- 
 point the following officers, who shall hold office during 
 the term for which the appointing Mayor was elected, 
 and until their successors shall be respectively ap- 
 pointed and qualified: 
 
 I. The Director of the Department of Public Safety. 
 
 II. The Director of the Department of Public 
 Works, shall be amended to read as follows : 
 
 "Section 1. The Director of the Department of Pub- 
 lic Safety and the Director of the Department of Public 
 Works shall be elected by a vote of a majority of all 
 the members of select and common councils of said 
 cities, in joint session, for a term of three years, and 
 until their successors shall be respectively elected and 
 qualified, and shall be subject to removal by a vote of 
 a majority of all the members of the select and common 
 councils in said cities, in joint session. 
 
 "Section 4. This act shall not take effect until the 
 first Monday of April, Anno Domini one thousand nine 
 hundred and seven. 
 
 All acts or parts of acts inconsistent herewith are 
 hereby repealed. 
 
 Approved— The 5th day of May, A. D. 1905. 
 
 Saml. W. Pennypacker. 
 
 The Governor's Message of Approval and Disapproval. 
 
 "I file herewith, in the ofiice of the Secretary of the 
 Commonwealth, with my objections. Senate bill No, 
 479, entitled, 'An act to amend section five of an act,' 
 entitled "A supplement to an act, entitled 'An act to 
 provide for the better government of cities of the first 
 class in this Commonwealth, amending articles two, 
 three, ten and twelve, and providing for a Department 
 
112 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 of Public Health and Charities, in lieu of the Depart- 
 ment of Charities and Correction,' approved the eighth 
 day of April, Anno Domini one thousand nine hundred 
 and three, so as to provide for the election of the Di- 
 rector of the Department of Public Health and Char- 
 ities by the members of the select and common councils 
 of said cities and providing for his removal." 
 
 Senate bills Nos. 441, 479 and 480, all relating to the 
 government of cities of the first class, may well be con- 
 sidered together. We are told in Genesis that when 
 Jacob wanted to deceive his father into conferring 
 upon him the blessing which was intended for Esau, he 
 covered his hands and his neck with goatskin. It gen- 
 erally happens in all serious inquiries that it is neces- 
 sary to look beneath the mere surface indications if we 
 are earnestly desirous to reach a correct conclusion. 
 The act of March the 7th, 1901, *'for the government of 
 cities of the second class," in effect annulled the pre- 
 vious charters of those municipalities. It abolished the 
 office of mayor, and provided a chief executive to be 
 called the city recorder, and to be temporarily ap- 
 pointed by the Governor. It removed from office the 
 mayor who had been elected by the people. It pro- 
 vided for a concentration of authority in the hands of 
 the city recorder, who was given the power to appoint 
 the heads of five of the principal departments, as well 
 as the members of the sinking fund commission. This 
 act became known even in the decisions of the courts 
 as a "ripper." When the constitutionality of the act 
 was assailed, the Supreme Court decided that the power 
 of the Legislature was unquestionable, and its exercise 
 depended upon legislative discretion. The present bills 
 raise no constitutional query and they are in every re- 
 spect the exact antitheses of this act. They are so 
 drawn as not to take effect until the first Monday of 
 April, 1907, and, therefore, do not affect any present 
 incumbents. Thov remove no official from office. They 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 113 
 
 interfere with no one elected by the people. Instead of 
 concentrating power, their effect would be to dissem- 
 inate it. They provide that certain heads of depart- 
 ments, instead of being appointed by the mayor under 
 existing laws, shall be elected by the members of coun- 
 cils, and in this way give the people much greater con- 
 trol over these heads of departments. The mayor is 
 now elected for a term of four years, and during this 
 period is beyond the reach of the people, except through 
 the process of impeachment. The members of councils 
 are in large part elected each year, and at the end of 
 two years all of the members of common council, and 
 at the end of three years all of the members of select 
 council, may be changed. The provision that the bills 
 shall not go into effect until the first Monday of April, 
 1907, is in the nature of a referendum, for the reason 
 that, if these bills should not be approved by the people, 
 disapproval can be expressed in the election of mem- 
 bers of the Senate and House, who will have ample 
 time before the date named to have the acts repealed. 
 The principles they invoke are much larger and broader 
 than the affairs of any municipality, and the contest 
 that has resulted is the manifestation of a straggle 
 which has been waged throughout the existence of all 
 governments, past and present, and is not yet deter- 
 mined. Whether it is more conducive to the welfare 
 of human society, and to the development of good gov- 
 ernment and its proper administration, to have power 
 concentrated in an individual, and responsibility fixed, 
 or to have it vested in representatives of the people, 
 whose tenure depends upon their carrying out the pop- 
 ular will, is still an open question. The history of most 
 nations, states and municipalities, shows that there has 
 been a continual shifting from one system to the other, 
 as the evils which have resulted from each by long con- 
 tinuance have impressed themselves upon the people. 
 Whether Charlemagne, building up an empire which 
 
114 Samuel Whitaker Penni/packer. 
 
 meant the rehabilitation of Europe, or Abraham Lin- 
 coln, representing a government of the people and by 
 the people, was the more beneficent in his work, may- 
 be open to discussion. Whether Nero, setting fire to 
 Rome for the amusement of an emperor, or Robes- 
 pierre, cutting off the heads of his enemies in the name 
 of the populace, was the more harmful, is equally un- 
 certain. In France, the efforts of the Bourbons to con- 
 centrate power was followed by the Revolution, and 
 that again by the empire of Napoleon. In England, the 
 arbitrary exercise of authority by the Stuarts was fol- 
 lowed by the establishment of the Commonwealth under 
 Cromwell, and thereupon succeeded the restoration and 
 the limited monarchy of 1688. So far as we can gather 
 light from the experience of the past, the concentration 
 of power seems to be the more dangerous. There have 
 been few instances of such dissemination of power as 
 to lead to anarchy, and these, like the revolt of the 
 Anabaptists of Munster, and the French Revolution, 
 have been of brief duration, but instances in which all 
 authority has been grasped by individuals to the public 
 disadvantage have been very numerous. Pope sought 
 a solution of the problem by writing: 
 
 "For forms of government let fools contest. 
 That which is best administered is best." 
 
 In this country the opposite currents of thought have 
 been in existence, and have alternated in control ever 
 since the adoption of our national constitution. The 
 efforts of Washington, Hamilton and Adams to con- 
 centrate executive authority led, in a few years, to the 
 overthrow and destruction of the Federalist party. 
 The Democrats and Jefferson, advocating the other 
 view, then came into power and for fifty years, in the 
 main, had control of the government. For the last 
 forty years the drift has been in the opposite direction; 
 but who can say that we have reached a final solution 
 of the problem? At the present time the tendency in 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pomy packer. 115 
 
 the national government is toward a concentration of 
 power, and in the different state governments the cur- 
 rent is running in the direction of entrusting executive 
 authority to the representatives of the people. The 
 most thoughtful observers and those most familiar with 
 the practical difficulties of the subject would probably 
 concede that it would be better for the administration 
 of public affairs in Philadelphia if the power, which is 
 given by existing laws to the mayor, could be, in certain 
 directions at least, lessened. He has, in effect, absolute 
 control over the contracts for all the public work, over 
 an army of police and attendants, and over all the 
 affairs of the municipality. He, in substance, has the 
 appointment of officials, of greater or lesser impor- 
 tance, estimated to be in number from seven thousand 
 to twelve thousand. If this great authority could be 
 exercised intelligently, and only as a trust for the good 
 of the people, it would undoubtedly be the best system 
 of government ; but if, unfortunately, it should fall into 
 corrupt or even incapable hands it would prove to be 
 the very worst. One of the most important principles 
 of all good government is the proper maintenance of 
 the distinction between legislative and executive func- 
 tions, and one of the gravest dangers to be feared is 
 the absorption through encroachment of the functions 
 of one department by the other. Such encroachment 
 may come from the executive as well as from the legis- 
 lative branch of government. The authority of the 
 mayor can be exercised in such a way as not only to be 
 felt in the legislation of councils, but to dominate them. 
 The seat of the councilman, which he holds for a very 
 brief period, is dependent upon the good will of the 
 mayor, and he can hardly be expected to resist the 
 influence when called upon to legislate. The power of 
 the mayor, should he fail to exercise conscientious self- 
 restraint, may be used also in politics. In this aspect 
 of the matter, the bills are of importance to the whole 
 
116 Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 
 
 Commonwealth, for the reason that Philadelphia, with 
 its large delegation in the legislature and in political 
 conventions, has a great influence in determining ques- 
 tions which affect the State. Since the passage of the 
 Bullitt Bill, one mayor of Philadelphia sought to be- 
 come the President of the United States. Another was 
 selected for the special purpose of overthrowing the 
 then existing political control of the Commonwealth, 
 and the eif ort very nearly succeeded. Such conditions 
 and such possibilities certainly give rise to proper ap- 
 prehension. While there is great difference of view 
 as to the propriety of the proposed legislation, undoubt- 
 edly many of those most capable of judging correctly 
 are of the opinion that the present sj^stem has not 
 proved to be, upon the whole, advantageous to the 
 municipality. The most influential political leader in 
 Philadelphia is of the opinion that it has proven to 
 be harmful. Since he has had long experience, and the 
 opportunity for close observation, his conclusions are, 
 at least, entitled to careful consideration. Many of the 
 most competent lawyers are in accord with this view. 
 It has been announced far and wide over the land, and 
 is believed by many good people, that, under the suc- 
 ceeding mayors, contracts for public work have been 
 awarded to corrupt favorites, that the police have been 
 in league with the keepers of dives and bawdy-houses, 
 and that these improper relations have been supported 
 by those in authority. However much we may disbe- 
 lieve these charges, and however much we may dep- 
 recate their inconsiderate publication, they neverthe- 
 less indicate a dissatisfaction, upon the part of those 
 who make them, with existing conditions. Upon this 
 important subject, upon which men may well differ in 
 their conclusions, the Governor is urged to reverse the 
 determination of the Senate and House, in which all 
 of the representatives of Philadelphia, in both Senate 
 and House, participated. The Constitution gives the 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 117 
 
 Governor a power of veto, but it was never intended to 
 be an absolute veto. If he disapproves of a measure 
 it may nevertheless become a law by a vote of two- 
 thirds of the members of both Senate and House. It 
 is true that after adjournment of the Assembly he may 
 disapprove of the bills which then remain, but this pro- 
 vision was intended only to prevent the manifest in- 
 convenience of inaction. It was supposed by those 
 who drafted the Constitution that bills would be con- 
 sidered by the Assembly during its session, that few 
 would be left at its close, and for them it would be 
 necessary to make provision. The effect of leaving the 
 mass of legislation until the closing days of the session 
 gives to the Governor an absolute power of negation 
 which was never intended, and, incidentally, it may 
 be said that at some time great harm will result to the 
 Commonwealth because of this practice. We must not, 
 however, lose sight of the principle that the Governor's 
 veto was expected only to extend to those measures 
 which might not receive a two-thirds vote of the Senate 
 and House. For him to exercise his power arbitrarily 
 with respect to the question raised by these bills, would 
 be indeed to assume an unusual and illogical position. 
 This question is not one of ordinary legislation, but it 
 goes to the very foundations of government, involving 
 all the interests, not only of this municipality, but the 
 principles which affect all civilizations. For the change 
 of the method of government in this municipality much 
 more than two-thirds of each House have voted. If the 
 absolute control of affairs in Philadelphia by an in- 
 dividual were to be preserved, over the almost unan- 
 imous vote of the Assembly and of the representatives 
 of Philadelphia to the contrary, by the autocratic exer- 
 cise of the incidental power of the Governor, it might 
 well be a cause both for uneasiness and for complaint. 
 
 Having now reached a decision as to the line of 
 thought which ought to determine the action of the 
 
118 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 Governor upon the main question, this qualification yet 
 remains to be made. Whatever system of government 
 may be the better, it is certainly true that a radical and 
 sudden change from one plan to another is always ac- 
 companied with disturbances and disadvantages. In 
 my view it would be wiser to lessen the power of the 
 mayor. It would be wiser not to take it away. There 
 is a certain propriety in having the Director of Public 
 Works, who has charge of the contracts for which coun- 
 cils make the appropriations, subject to the control of 
 councils. There is also a certain propriety in having 
 the Director of Safety, who has charge of the police and 
 the maintenance of the peace, appointed by the mayor, 
 who is responsible for good order. Had there been 
 four separate bills, one for each department, this 
 thought could have been enforced, but in the shape they 
 have come to me it is impossible to secure such a result. 
 Nevertheless a modification of the proposed plan it is 
 possible to make, by approving the bill which changes 
 the method of selecting the Directors of the Depart- 
 ments of Public Works and Public Safety, and dis- 
 approving the two bills which change the method of 
 selecting the Directors of the Departments of Supplies 
 and of Public Health and Charities. The maintenance 
 of a proper conservatism in the conduct of important 
 affairs is a different proposition from an interference 
 with the determination of a fundamental principle of 
 government by the Legislature. Should further 
 changes in the method of appointing directors prove by 
 experience to be necessary or advantageous, they can 
 be made at some future session. 
 
 For these reasons I approve Senate bill No. 441, and 
 disapprove of Senate bills Nos. 479 and 480, the 5th day 
 of May, A. D. 1905." 
 
 Saml. W. Pennypacker. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Penny packer. 119 
 
 Appendix c 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL W. PENNYPACKER 
 
 Annals of Phoenixville and Its Vicinity. 8vo, pp. 295, 
 
 1872. 
 Eittenhouse's Orrery. Lossing's American Historical 
 
 Record, 1873. 
 A Councillor, Judge and Legislator of the Olden Time. 
 
 Lippincott's Magazine, April 1874. 
 Charlestown Township. Potter's American Monthly, 
 
 January 1875. 
 Abraham and Dirck op den Graeff. Penn Monthly, 
 
 Sept. 1875. 
 Captain Joseph Richardson. Penn Monthly, Feb. 1876. 
 The Pennypacker Reunion. 8vo, pp. 51, 1877. 
 Colonel Samuel John Atlee. Pennsylvania Magazine, 
 
 1878. 
 Mennonite Emigration to Pennsylvania. Pennsyl- 
 vania Magazine, 1878. 
 A General Index to the English Common Law Reports. 
 
 Supplement. 8vo, pp. 485. Philadelphia, 1879. 
 The Settlement of Germantown and the Causes "Which 
 
 Led to It. Pennsylvania Magazine, 1880. 
 James Abram Garfield. 8vo, pp. 8, 1881. 
 A Noteworthy Book. Pennsylvania Magazine, 1881. 
 Zionitischer Weyrauch's Hiigel oder Myrrhen Berg. 
 
 Bulletin of Library Company of Philadelphia, 1882. 
 David Rittenhouse. Harper's Monthly, May 1882. 
 Recueil de diverses Pieces Concernant la Pennsylvania. 
 
 Pennsylvania Magazine, 1882. 
 Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of 
 
 Pennsylvania. 4 vols., 8vo. Philadelphia, 1882-1885. 
 Historical and Biographical Sketches. 8 vo, pp. 416. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1883. 
 
120 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 
 
 An Address at the Bicentennial Celebration of the 
 Settlement of Germantown, Pa., and the Beginning 
 of German Emigration to America. 8vo, pp. 12. 
 Philadelphia, October 6, 1883. Translated into Ger- 
 man and into Dutch by Dr. Scheffer of Amsterdam. 
 
 An Open Letter from Samuel W. Pennypacker to 
 George William Curtis. 8vo, pp. 8. Philadelpliia, 
 1884. 
 
 Address : ' ' The State of Pennsylvania, Where the Con- 
 stitution was Framed," in the Proceedings at a 
 Dinner given by the Citizens of Philadelphia to the 
 Hon. John A. Kasson, October 13, 1877. 8vo. Phila- 
 delphia, 1887. 
 
 Breakfast to the Justices of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States in the American Academy of Music, 
 September 15, 1887, by the Bar of Philadelphia. 8vo, 
 pp. 61. Philadelphia, 1888. 
 
 Banquet given by the Learned Societies of Philadelphia 
 at the American Academy of Music, September 17, 
 1887, Closing the Ceremonies in Commemoration of 
 the Framing and Signing of the Constitution of the 
 United States. 8vo, pp. 86. Philadelphia, 1888. 
 
 The Quarrel between Christopher Sower, the German- 
 town Printer, and Conrad Beissel, Founder and 
 Vorsteher of the Cloister at Ephrata. 8vo, pp. 21. 
 Philadelphia, 1888. 
 
 A Political Fable. 8vo, pp. 7. Philadelphia, 1890. 
 
 Brief, in re Eight of the Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania 
 Emergency Eegiment to a Monument at Gettysburg. 
 (Board of Commissioners of Gettysburg Monu- 
 ments.) 8vo, pp. 9. Philadelphia, 1890. 
 
 The University of Pennsylvania in Its Relations to the 
 State of Pennsylvania. 8vo, pp. 15. Philadelphia, 
 1891. 
 
 The First Mayor of Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Mag- 
 azine, XV, 344, 345, 1891. 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 121 
 
 The Early Literature of the Pennsylvania Germans. 
 Proceedings of the Pennsylvania German Society. 
 Vol. II, 1892. 
 
 The Keystone and Plymouth Rock : An Address at the 
 dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, 
 December 22, 1891. 8vo, pp. 10. Philadelphia, 1892. 
 
 Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania Emergency Infantry: An 
 Address at the Dedication, September 1, 1892, of the 
 Monument to Commemorate the Services of the Regi- 
 ment on the Battlefield of Gettysburg. 8vo, pp. 26. 
 Philadelphia, 1892. 
 
 Pennsylvania Colonial Cases: The Administration of 
 Law in Pennsylvania prior to A. D. 1700, as shown 
 in the Cases Decided and in the Court of Proceedings. 
 8vo, pp. 185. Philadelphia, 1892. 
 
 The Pennypacker Pedigree. Philadelphia. (Fifty 
 copies privately printed.) 
 
 The Weekly Notes of Cases. 45 vols., 1875-1894. (Re- 
 porter for C. P. Nos. 2 and 3.) 
 
 Hendrick Pannebecker, Surveyor of Lands for the 
 Penns, 1674-1754, of Flombom, Germantown, and 
 Skippack. 8vo, pp. 164. Philadelphia, 1894. 
 
 Congi-ess Hall : An Address at the Last Session of the 
 Court of Conmion Pleas, No. 2, in Congress Hall, 
 Philadelphia, September 16, 1895. 8vo, pp. 34. 
 Philadelphia, 1895. 
 
 Joseph Rusling A\^itaker, 1824-1895, and His Progen- 
 itors. A Memorial. 8vo, pp. 32-42. Philadelphia, 
 1896. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Dutchman in Philadelphia. 8vo, pp. 
 13. Philadelphia, 1897. 
 
 Pennsylvania and Its University. A Letter to Charles 
 C. Harrison. 8vo, pp. 11. Philadelphia, 1897. 
 
 Pennsylvania and Its University. 8vo, pp. 11. Phila- 
 delphia, 1897. 
 
 Address on Memorial Day, May 30, 1898, before 
 Colonel Frederick Taylor Post, No. 19, G.A.R. 8vo, 
 pp 18. Philadelphia, 1898. 
 
122 Samuel Whitaher Pennypacker. 
 
 Valley Forge: An Address before the Pennsylvania 
 Society of Sons of the Revolution, June 18, 1898. 
 8vo, pp. 9. Philadelphia, 1898. 
 
 The Descent of Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, late 
 President of the Netherlands Society of Philadelphia, 
 Pa., from the Ancient Counts of Holland, with the 
 Authorities in Proof. 8vo, pp. 25. Philadelphia, 
 1899. 
 
 The Settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the 
 Beginning of German Emigration to North America. 
 8vo, pp. 310. Philadelphia, 1899. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Dutchman and Wherein he has Ex- 
 celled. 8vo, pp. 6. Philadelphia, 1899. 
 
 The Origin of the University of Pennsylvania in 1740. 
 8vo, pp. 23. Philadelphia, 1899. 
 
 Address of the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
 Pennypacker 's Mills, Pa,, June 17, 1899. 8vo. pp. 8. 
 
 The South African War in Nuce. 8vo, pp. 6. Phila- 
 delphia, 1900. 
 
 Netherlands Society of Philadelphia Annual Banquets, 
 1892-1901. Addresses each year. 8vo. 
 
 Reports of Cases in the Philadelphia License Court of 
 1901. In Curiam Currente Calamo Scribentur. 8vo, 
 pp. 30. Philadelphia, 1901. 
 
 Johann Gottfried Seelig and the Hymn Book of the 
 Hermits of the Wissahickon. 8vo, pp. 7. Philadel- 
 phia, 1901. 
 
 Speeches of the Hon. Matthew Stanley Quay. 8vo, pp. 
 200. Philadelphia, 1901. 
 
 Three Letters upon the War in South Africa. 1 — Its 
 Cowardice. 2 — Its Brutality. 3 — Its Futility. 
 Printed in newspapers over the world and translated 
 into the languages of the Continent. 
 
 Valley Forge Orderly Book of General Weedon. 8vo, 
 pp. 323. New York, 1902. 
 
 Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. A Historical Par- 
 allel. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1902. (Several editions.) 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 123 
 
 Pennypacker's Mills in Story and Song. (Typed.) 
 Folio, pp. 205. Philadelphia, 1902. 
 
 The Capture of Stony Point : Oration at the Dedication 
 of the New York State Park, July 16, 1902. 8vo, pp. 
 10. Philadelphia, 1902. 
 
 Inaugural Address. 8vo, pp. 8. Harrisburg, Pa. 1903. 
 
 Laws Passed at the Session of 1903. 8vo, pp. 661. 
 Harrisburg, Pa., 1903. 
 
 Vetoes. 8vo, pp. 162. Harrisburg, Pa., 1903. 
 
 The Freedom of the Press: Governor Samuel W. 
 Pennypacker's Message Approving the Bill in Ee- 
 straint of its Liberty, and Charles Emory Smith's 
 Editorial in Protest. 8vo, pp. 28-1. Philadelphia, 
 1903. 
 
 George Washington in Pennsylvania. 8vo, pp. 16. 
 Harrisburg, Pa., 1904. 
 
 Address at Gettysburg upon the Introduction of Presi- 
 dent Eoosevelt. 8vo, pp. 6. Harrisburg, 1904. 
 
 Address upon Pennsylvania Day, August 30, 1904, at 
 the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 8vo, pp. 14. 
 Harrisburg, 1904. 
 
 In re Application of William J. Byers for commutation 
 of the sentence of death. 8vo, pp. 6. . 1904. 
 
 Speech in the Thirteenth Republican National Conven- 
 tion Nominating the Hon. Charles W. Fairbanks 
 for the Vice-Presidency. (See Proceedings 1904, p. 
 173.) 
 
 A Fragment of the Chronicles of Nathan Ben Saddi. 
 4to, pp. 49. Philadelphia, 1904. 
 
 Message of the Governor to the General Assembly, Jan- 
 uary 3, 1905. 8vo, pp. 22. Harrisburg, 1905. 
 
 Laws passed at the Session of 1905. 8vo, pp. 697. 
 Harrisburg, 1905. 
 
 Vetoes, pp. 217. Harrisburg, 1905. 
 
 Address at the Memorial Proceedings of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Legislature upon the Death of Senator Matthew 
 Stanley Quay. 8vo, pp. 13. Harrisburg, 1905. 
 
124 Samuel Whitaker Pennypacher. 
 
 Speech at the American Academy of Music, October 18, 
 1905. 8vo. 
 
 Message of the Governor. Svo, pp. 7. Harrisburg, 
 1906. 
 
 Address at the Congress on Uniform Divorce Laws. 
 8vo, pp. 6. Harrisburg, 1906. 
 
 Laws passed at the Extraordinary Session of 1906. 
 8vo, pp. 128. Harrisburg, 1906. 
 
 Address at Antietam in the Volume, ' ' Pennsylvania at 
 Antietam," page 23. Harrisburg, 1906. 
 
 Address at the Dedication of the State Capitol of Penn- 
 sylvania, October 4, 1906. (See volume on the State 
 Capitol, p. 92.) 
 
 Message of the Governor. 8vo, pp. 18. Harrisburg, 
 1907. 
 
 The Library of the Hon. Samuel W. Penn3rpacker. 
 Catalogues. 6 vols. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1905-8. 
 
 Bobbers Township and the Dutch Patroons of Pennsyl- 
 vania. 8vo, pp. 18. Philadelphia, 1907. 
 
 The High-water Mark of the British Invasion of the 
 Northern Colonies during the Revolutionary War. 
 Pennsylvania Magazine, October 1907. 
 
 Anthony Wayne : An Address at the Dedication of the 
 Equestrian Statue at Valley Forge. 8vo, pp. 48. 1908. 
 
 Introduction to Dr. Martin G. Brumbaugh's Works of 
 Christopher Dock. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1908. 
 
 Introduction to Dr. Marion D. Learned 's Life of 
 Francis Daniel Pastorius. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1908. 
 
 Samuel John Atlee : A Biographical Sketch. 8vo, pp. 
 11. 
 
 In re Application for the Extension of the Charter 
 Route of Royersford Street Railway. 8vo, pp. 3. 
 
 Orations on Lincoln, by Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker 
 and Col. Alexander K. McClure, delivered at a meet- 
 ing of the Law Association of Philadelphia, held in 
 the Rooms of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 
 Februaiy 12, 1909, in Commemoration of the Centen- 
 
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker. 125 
 
 nial of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln. 8vo, pp. 28. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1909. 
 Pennsylvania in American History. Svo, pp. 494. 
 
 Philadelphia, 1910. 
 The Desecration and Profanation of the Pennsylvania 
 
 Capitol. Svo, pp. 104. Philadelphia, 1911. 
 Judicial Experience in Executive Office: An Address 
 
 before the Maryland State Bar Association, June, 
 
 1911. 8vo, pp. 19. 
 Pennsylvania, the Keystone: A Short History. Svo, 
 
 pp. 316. Philadelphia, 1914. 
 Introduction to Hon. Hampton L. Carson's ''Pedigrees 
 
 in the Ownership of Law Books. ' ' Philadelphia : 
 
 The Philobiblon Club, 1916. 
 War and Christmas (180 words). Collier's Weekly, 
 
 December 23, 1916.