Synopses & Reviews
Text extracted from opening pages of book: Edwin Tj Metedittt 1876-1928 A Memorial Volume Des Moines Meredith Publishing Company MCMXXXI Contents HIS LIFE 7 THE MEMORIAL SERVICE 25 FROM HIS MAGAZINES 2p FROM THE PRESS 39 THE RESOLUTIONS 53 His Life IT AD the story of Edwin T. Meredith's life been written as an anonymous romance, critics would have called it a thing of inspiration, a story of happiness mixed with bits of disappointment, a story in which the hero moved rapidly to his place at the top, and then they would have summed it all up with the label highly improbable or perhaps even totally impossible. Had a Highland Park College student suggested to a classmate 35 years ago, that young Ed Meredith, whose tangible assets were non-existent, would in a short quarter of a century rise from the obscurity of a little printing shop to the fame rightfully granted to the leaders of a great nation, that classmate might have been jeered. It would not have been unreasonable to suggest that this Iowa farm boy might some day become a leader among farmers; it would have been conceiv able that he might become an authority on farming and farm problems. It would not have been unreasonable to suggest that he might renounce his interest in agriculture and win for himself a place in the world of business. It would not have been difficult to believe that he might, by dint of earnest effort, make of himself an able politician and by the time he had served his party for forty or fifty years, become a political power and a party leader. But it would have been too much to suppose that a farm boy could, in a period of twenty-five or twenty-six years, climb to a commanding place among the leaders ofAmerican agriculture, become an outstanding figure in the field of American busi ness and finance and win thru recognition of sheer ability a powerful seat in the councils of a great political organization. Yet Edwin T. Meredith accomplished all of these things* Because he had mastered all that the little one room country schools, the rural schools of the i88o's, had to offer, Ed Meredith, farm born and reared, came to Des Moines to matriculate in the business school of Highland Park College. His grandfather was a Des Moines publisher a well-to-do retired farmer whose enthusiasm for the cause of Populism and Greenbackisni had led him to found a weekly county farm paper under the name of The Farmers* Tribune. But The Farmers' Tribune was very much of a struggling paper and always had been. It was kept alive only thru Uncle Tommy Meredith's practice of increasing his capital invest ment. Too, by the time young Ed had reached the 8] age of 16 and had graduated from the country schools. Uncle Tommy was getting old. During the first few months at Highland Park College, young Ed had been helping his grandfather on The Farmers' Tribune. At first, Ed's job was one of general assistant to everybody. As such, he learned the printing business. And before Ed had completed even his first year at Highland Park, Uncle Tommy asked him to spend all of his time helping on the paper. Soon Ed was bookkeeper, then he began to help his grand father conduct the correspondence, and he started to sell advertising. When Ed at 19 was married, Uncle Tommy gave Ed The Farmers* Tribune as a wedding present. The Farmers' Tribune was still very much of a struggling paper it wasn't paying its own way Populism was onthe wane. The prospects were not very bright for this ip-year-old boy and his wife, with no capital and a dying paper on their hands. But the young publisher had ideas, a tremendous enthusiasm, and an unbelievable supply of energy. He told his mother that the days were gone in which The Farmers' Tribune had been a county farm paper, that he was going to send a sample copy of The Farmers* Tribune to every farmer in the state of Iowa and his mother thought her son crazy. The champion of Greenbackism was turned into 9]