Chase Salmon Osborn, a biography by Robert M. Warner

CHASE SALMON OSBORN

by Robert M. Warner, Michigan Historical Collections, Bulletin No. 10, January 1960.

In 1920 Chase S. Osborn wrote about himself, "Because of Osborn's independence and temperamental Liberalism, he was charged with being erratic, not a few called him crazy, and everybody agreed to the fact that he would not stand hitched." No better brief characterization of Osborn could be written. He fitted no well defined pattern and the only consistent theme running throughout his life was his complete independence of thought and action. There was in his long and highly complex career an absence of orthodoxy and conformity which was both baffling and refreshing to friend and foe alike.

Many of his life patterns and attitudes can be traced to his forebears and his early life. His parents, George and Margaret Osborn, who were married in 1847, left their home state of Ohio the following year to seek a new life in east central Indiana, first in Blackford County and ten years later in Huntington County. In this Wabash River country they made their home in a small log cabin which had two rooms and three windows- one filled with real glass, the other two covered with greased paper. The nearest town was Wabash, fourteen miles distant, with a population of two hundred.

Despite the rough surroundings, however, the Osborn home contained a goodly supply of books, many of which were medical treatises, since both the Osborns studied and at times practiced medicine. Both possessed keen intellects and were well educated for their day. George Osborn, always interested in political and reform movements, was deeply involved with the most important one of them all for that period: the ever expanding struggle to free the slaves. Strong Methodist religious fervor coupled with equally pronounced abolitionist sentiments characterized the Osborn home in the troubled years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

It was into these rustic but intellectually vigorous surroundings that Chase Salmon Osborn was born on January 22, 1860. Even his name reflected the spirit of the time and the political interests and sympathies of his father. The new son was named in honor of Salmon P. Chase, distinguished senator from Ohio and like George Osborn an ardent abolitionist.

As a baby Osborn was sickly and sometimes near death, but safely past his hazardous infancy, he grew robust in the outdoor life of the Indiana frontier. His childhood years, by his own account, were happy ones, spent in exuberant activity, ranging from riding a bull calf to eating luscious watermelons from the family's patch. But there was also strict family discipline for any violators of a stern code of behavior. His parents found that a substantial home library and stimulating family discussions were no substitute for formal education. As educational opportunities were slight in their backwoods area of Indiana, the family decided to move to LaFayette where the children could go to school. Young Chase was just past six when the family left Huntington County. Since the Osborns were prosperous at this time, the move was an easy and pleasant one. Their new home was a large three-story frame house located on four acres of garden and orchard lands.

Prosperity did not last, however, and the family was forced to leave its comfortable big house for a much smaller home scarcely adequate for the needs of George and Margaret Osborn and their eight children. Chase's education continued despite poverty, but his school work had to allow time for added jobs to bolster the family income. Yet there were always extra hours for the rough and tumble pleasures of a Hoosier boyhood-hunting, fishing, a swim on a hot summer day, and a few fights with neighborhood rivals.

Osborn was born with a wanderlust that eventually took him to the most remote corners of the world. This yearning for travel and adventure was a dominant feature of his character. It led him when still a boy to leave home on several occasions, traveling on one such excursion as far away as Newaygo County, in west central Michigan. Once he settled down long enough to begin a college education at Purdue University. Although his scholarship was above average, he left without taking a degree and returned to help his family on their newly acquired farm.

This pastoral life did not last long. Following a not unusual pattern, Osborn decided to seek his fortune in the city. He headed for the bright lights of near-by Chicago, but here the country boy found only sharp disappointment. Chicago was no Elysium; it was, he discovered, a "human jungle" where the faces of all the people "were hungry and hard." After working at a variety of odd jobs, he secured a minor position with the Chicago Tribune. Hard times, however, pushed Osborn off the payroll. With no job or prospect of any he decided in 1879 to leave the Illinois metropolis to seek employment in Wisconsin. Here, too, his luck was poor, but he managed to find a succession of hard, manual labor tasks including working on a railroad construction gang and driving a coal wagon. Eventually he got a job soliciting subscriptions for the Milwaukee Signal. Success in this position set Osborn on a course of steady advancement in the city's newspapers.

By 1881, he was earning ten dollars a week as a reporter for the Evening Wisconsin. The young newspaperman felt that he was now sufficiently prosperous to marry a pretty young girl he had been courting for some time, Lillian Jones of Milwaukee. "We were wed one Saturday night," Osborn later reminisced. "Our wedding trip was on a streetcar-five cents apiece. In fact I had passes. My wedding bouquet for her was a five-cent one bought at the German market." Mrs. Osborn was to take an active part in many phases of her husband's strenuous career, but her chief role was to care for their growing family. Six children were born to them, of whom Ethel, George, Emily, and Chase, Jr., lived to maturity.

Two years after their marriage Osborn and his wife left Milwaukee for the Wisconsin country near the Michigan border and settled in Florence. This marked the real beginning of Osborn's career. Here Osborn had his first introduction to politics, ran his first newspaper, and did his first prospecting for iron. In this border village he became well acquainted with the wild northwoods country which he came to love above all places in the world.

Osborn was highly successful in Florence. When he sold his holdings there in 1887, he had nearly ten thousand dollars-a substantial sum for one who had depended on a small newspaper for his income. After selling his Florence newspaper, Osborn returned to Milwaukee briefly, but his new-found love of the north country soon brought him to what was to become his permanent home, Sault Ste Marie, a little city of about 3,ooo people on the banks of the mighty Soo Canal.

At Sault Ste Marie the ambitious journalist continued in the newspaper business, purchasing, in partnership, a struggling weekly, the Sault News. Eventually he gained sole ownership of this paper, which, under single control and with good management provided Osborn with sufficient income for his growing family and allowed him time to search for iron, to travel, and to participate actively in local politics. In 1890, he reaped his first political reward when he was appointed postmaster as the compromise candidate of two local Republican factions. He held the post only briefly, however, for the spoils system still reigned supreme, resulting in his loss of the office when Democrat Grover Cleveland took over the presidency again in 1893.

In January, 1895, Governor John T. Rich appointed him state game and fish warden. Osborn was ideally suited for this position since he was, in the words of one Osborn booster, "a good Republican, an honest fearless man, and [a] genuine sportsman." Since the office of game warden was located in Sault Ste Marie, Osborn easily continued his newspaper work along with his new responsibilities. The wardenship paid a modest salary, but more important it provided an excellent avenue by which to enter politics. The position was important politically, for the warden had many appointments at his disposal. Osborn could, and in fact did, use them to enhance his political standing. Although Osborn involved the department deeply in politics, he was more efficient and energetic in enforcing the game laws than any of his predecessors in office had ever been. The new warden was an ardent wildlife conservationist and saw to it that the state game laws were strictly observed. However, he tempered their enforcement with humanitarianism. For instance, when he discovered that some game-law violators were illegally taking game because of actual need of food, he let them off with only a reprimand.

In 1896, Osborn made a bid for the nomination for congressman, which, though unsuccessful, gave him valuable campaign experience and added to his political importance. Osborn's four-year term as state game warden was to end in 1899 unless Hazen S. Pingree, Michigan's reform governor who had been elected in 1896, would appoint him for a second term. Osborn was in Pingree's good graces. He had supported the colorful governor in his campaign for re-election in 1898 and so it appeared that Osborn would be given a second term.

Other considerations intervened, however, and Osborn instead was appointed state railroad commissioner. This position was more important than the office of game warden, but it had only a two-year term and the headquarters of the railroad commissioner was in Lansing, not in Sault Ste Marie.

Nevertheless, Osborn was glad to have the post and readily accepted reappointment two years later. The press of his duties forced him to give up his Sault newspaper in 190l, but less than a year later he re-entered the newspaper business, when, together with an old friend, Walter J. Hunsaker, he bought the Saginaw Courser Herald. Osborn, however, left the actual operation of the paper to Hunsaker.

Osborn attacked his job as railroad commissioner with the same vigor he had displayed as game warden. During his four years in office he personally inspected the eleven thousand miles of track in the state, often while riding in a special cab placed right over the inspecting engine's cowcatcher. There were hints of his later Progressivism in his urging of the extension of the state's authority to cover freight as well as passenger rates. He also advocated a more effective control of railroads by a regulatory commission; such a commission was in fact created after Osborn left office. By the end of his term, his thinking on railroad problems had advanced to the point where he concluded that outright government ownership of the railroads would be best for both railroads and the nation. This was indeed an advanced position for his era, yet Osborn held to this belief for the rest of his life. Osborn's greatest contribution to safer railroads in Michigan was his unequivocal insistence on separated grade crossings when two or more steam or electric railroads crossed.

But Osborn found irresistible the siren song of active elective politics. In 19OO, he considered seeking the nomination for Congress again, but decided instead to try for the top position on the state ticket. Osborn was enough of a political realist to know that his chances of winning the gubernatorial nomination were slim. He hoped for a deadlocked Republican convention which would throw the prize to him instead of one of the three major candidates. The other aspirants, however, had too much influence and too much money with which to line up delegates. One of them, Aaron T. Bliss, was nominated and subsequently elected in usually Republican Michigan .

Osborn's involvement in politics waned after this defeat and other interests began to claim more of his attention. During most of the years after he came to Sault Ste Marie, he had undertaken regular summertime expeditions to prospect for iron. He enjoyed these trips into the wilderness, tramping through the northern forest regions and participating in the rough pleasures of strenuous physical activity. Osborn was a true outdoorsman-physically powerful and robust. He loved nothing better than to roam the woods in search of an elusive deer or a well hidden mineral deposit. The fellowship of the campfire, early morning swims in the icy waters of Lake Superior, the challenge of long treks through the great forests-these were sources of stimulation and inspiration for him.

A wide knowledge of nature and a renewed physical and mental vigor were not the only results of Osborn's journeys into the northern forests. In January, 1903, newspapers announced the discovery of a vast iron range in Ontario, Canada, and the organization of a new mining company for its development. This new find, christened " Moose Mountain, " was discovered by Osborn about l900, and its full exploitation began in 1902. Osborn's profits from this venture, together with his financial interests in timber lands, the Courier Herald, and other investments, assured him a modest fortune.

Osborn's growing bank account made it possible for him to fulfill another of his desires: to travel extensively throughout the world. Before he was fifty, he had covered much of the globe. The search for iron drew him to many out-of-the-way places, while the desire for firsthand study of governments and peoples of other nations provided further incentives for his journeys. He so thoroughly enjoyed travel that he found ways to go even before increased earnings made it easy. One of his longest trips, taken in 1906, was not strictly for adventure or pleasure, however, but was recommended by his doctor to help him recover from a serious physical breakdown. Again, in 1907, Osborn took an extended tour through South America, leading to his first book-length publication: The Andean Land (Chicago, l909), a two-volume history and travel narrative of the region.

Although Osborn had been almost out of politics since his second term as railroad commissioner had expired, his ambitions in this area remained. In 1908, fully restored to good health and occupying a strong financial position, he re-entered the full stream of Michigan politics. In that year he was chairman of the Michigan delegation to the Republican National Convention which nominated William Howard Taft, he was a delegate to the National Conservation Congress, and, most important of all, he was appointed to the Board of Regents of The University of Michigan. He especially enjoyed his work with the regents and performed his duties faithfully and enthusiastically. Although sometimes erratic in his positions, he was perhaps the ablest member of the board, and throughout his life he was always a firm friend and generous benefactor of the University.

The three important posts Osborn received in 1908 made him a well publicized public figure, a pleasant situation for any man with political ambitions. These three influential roles were not fortuitous; they were the result of careful planning by Osborn and his friends.

On October 16, l909, Osborn announced that he would be a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination in the Republican primary eleven months hence. A host of eager followers--old time professional politicians, associates from the newspaper world, and many personal friends, hurried to aid his campaign. Most important of these was Osborn's fellow townsman, an energetic, red-haired young man, editor of Osborn's old newspaper in the Sault, Frank Knox. Knox in later life achieved considerable fame himself as vice-presidential nominee in 1936 and as Secretary of the Navy during the Second World War. Knox ably, though not without error, played the chief management role in Osborn's l910 primary campaign for the governorship.

Chase Osborn was an honest politician and his campaign was carried on in an honest way. This did not mean, however, that the Osborn forces did not employ the widest possible variety of campaign techniques, including specially tailored appeals to national and religious groups and the use of paid campaign managers. The most important factor in the battle, however, was the candidate himself and the program he sponsored.

Osborn was a natural campaigner-energetic, colorful, egotistical, but very warm hearted. Unquestionably he possessed to a remarkable degree a strong "personal magnetism" that "irresistibly" drew to him men of widely differing backgrounds. As one of Osborn's associates recalled, the rugged campaigner "radiated power . . . by sheer force of personality he won men over or wore them down."

Osborn successfully projected this rare quality to the people of Michigan in a vigorous stump-speaking tour of the state. Considering that it was the first full-scale automobile campaign in Michigan, it was truly amazing in its scope. One newspaper reported that he traveled twelve thousand miles during the campaign and made over seven hundred speeches. Osborn himself said that he made over one thousand speeches. Even during the hot weeks of July and August the peripatetic candidate was averaging eleven speeches daily, with a minimum of seven and a maximum of nineteen. A "Cutting-40" auto was the chosen vehicle to carry him over Michigan's rough roads, and Knox testified that "as a hill climber and on sandy roads it never met its superior." Sometimes the candidate's car would be joined by others. as was the case in Eaton County, where the Osborn cavalcade consisted of "fifteen big touring cars filled with representative Republicans . . . including ten cars of Charlotte Civil War veterans."

Nearly every nook and cranny of lower Michigan received a bit of Osborn oratory. Knox reported that on one trip meetings were held "wherever we found a crossroads, a blacksmith shop and a bird's nest." To cover the ground much of the traveling was done at the hair-raising speed of "3o miles or more an hour." Knox did not share Osborn's enthusiasm for this "cow-path campaigning." as he called it. He complained that this vote harvesting was "all Gen. Sherman said war was, and then some." When the touring candidate reached a town an hour or two behind schedule, Knox found himself having to "organize the gang" and "drum up a crowd and then Chase would tell 'em how to run the government (prolonged applause)."

These speeches Osborn made on his barnstorming tour were sometimes disorganized and florid, but they were delivered with great vigor and in a way that aroused much popular enthusiasm. Frequently, issues were ignored while the candidate told of his travels or talked on the history of the town he was visiting. Yet Osborn also presented a strong reform platform to the voters calling for a variety of changes, both major and minor, in Michigan government.

His program, which he called the "New Deal," fitted into the spirit of the Progressive movement. Concerned with the preservation of the capitalist, free enterprise system, and the basic democratic governmental forms of the United States by making them more effective through reform, Progressivism had two broad objectives. One sought stronger and more effective state action to prevent abuses by powerful organized interests, and to promote the general welfare. The second moved toward reforms to make government more directly responsive to the will of the majority. Osborn in his own Progressive program called for stricter child and female labor laws, modest conservation measures, increased state regulation of business, clean and efficient state government, improved primary laws and a workmen's compensation act. He coupled this positive program with vehement attacks on incumbent governor Fred M. Warner and criticisms of the conservatism in the Taft administration.

On Monday afternoon, the fifth of September, a weary Osborn returned to the Sault to vote the next day and await the results of his efforts. His spirits were boosted by an enthusiastic welcome from his home town. Over 3000 of the town's citizens greeted him and a band escorted him to his home. He felt he would win and his optimism was not misplaced. In the voting on September 6, he conquered his opponents by a substantial plurality.

After the primary victory, his campaign against the Democratic nominee, Lawton T. Hemans, was almost anti-climactic. It was a much shorter battle and in many respects much easier than the primary. There was little doubt as to the final outcome. Since the Civil War, Michigan nearly always had gone solidly Republican and 1910 proved to be no exception. When the vote was counted, Chase S. Osborn was elected by a comfortable margin of 43,ooo votes.

On January 1, 19ll, Osborn put aside the lead pencil with which he ordinarily recorded daily events in his diary and scrawled a single sentence in bright blue: "I am Governor of Michigan.'' Since it was Sunday, however, he had to wait until the next day for his inauguration. There was unusual bustle at the Capitol in Lansing on the snowy second day of January. The crowd milled around in the corridors and on the steps outside. Almost as much attention was given to a little old lady, looking "scared and sweet" among the jostling spectators, as to the new governor himself. Eighty-four year old Margaret Ann Osborn had come up from her South Bend, Indiana, home to see her son sworn in as Michigan's twenty-eighth governor.

On Thursday of the same week Osborn came before the legislature to outline his program. His speech to the assembled lawmakers was, according to Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, "a strong state paper." Even a Detroit newspaper not in sympathy with the new governor admitted that it was the best gubernatorial message presented in the state in the past ten years. In his address he called for enactment into law of all of his campaign proposals plus several other important reform measures including the initiative, referendum and recall, those three issues so dear to the hearts of all Progressives of the period. His proposals in fact encompassed practically all of the reforms associated with the Progressive movement of that time.

Osborn might introduce a good program with ease and have it well received, but to see it survive the harsh, rough and tumble treatment it was bound to encounter in a Michigan legislature was an entirely different matter. Although the members of Osborn's own Republican party held strong majorities in both houses, this did not insure an easy time for the new governor. One contemporary observer commented that the House was "generally admitted" to be "the worst bunch that ever have been gotten together in that capacity; they lack leadership and some of the members lacked other things, mostly brains and decency." More to the point was the fact that the legislature, particularly the Senate, was split by factionalism. A large number of its Republican members were friendly to the previous administration, which Osborn had criticized strongly in his campaign. There was another group composed of Detroit legislators from both parties who often disregarded party loyalty in the interest of common objectives-the "vote swappers' league," Osborn called them. This group was generally anti-reform and usually hostile to the new governor.

Warfare between the governor and the Senate broke out at once about the question of appointments. Osborn, pledged to "cleaning house" and also anxious to have sympathetic men in state agencies, submitted a list of nominees. Outgoing Governor Warner also had sent the Senate a list of prospective appointees, in nearly all cases different from Osborn's. A bitter contest over which group should be confirmed raged in the Senate and behind the scenes. Despite vigorous efforts of the Osborn forces, the governor received a stinging defeat when, with scarcely an exception, the Senate confirmed the Warner men rather than his. Through gradual expiration of these appointees' terms of office together with a Supreme Court ruling upholding Osborn's contention that it was his right to make recess appointments, the determined chief executive later in his term largely nullified this setback. Despite these animosities, lack of effective leadership in both houses of the legislature, and Osborn's own inexperience as a leader, the governor in the regular session of 19ll gained the enactment of a substantial program of Progressive reform.

But Osborn was far from finished with the legislature. In February, 1912, he called a special session of the Michigan lawmakers, and when it adjourned without accomplishing all that had been asked, the persistent governor immediately called a second special session. These calls brought forth mixed reactions. Progressives in both political parties were generally favorable, while conservatives looked with annoyance and downright anger upon the move. Despite the fact that his action calling for the special sessions angered many of his friends and aroused a powerful segment of the state's press into fiery opposition, he won many converts to his stand, including, most importantly, many of the members of the legislature. Osborn, who never shrank from a fight, found ample opportunity to exercise his belligerency in this battle for his reform program. Now a seasoned veteran of legislative skirmishes, he threw the full weight of the power of his office into the fray and was rewarded by the passage of several vital measures.

Although a little weary from all the struggles, there was no doubt the governor liked the heated exchanges and tough battling. He told a friend that he had "enjoyed the friction of the special sessions because I have felt something like a crusader, just possibly a tin plated one, but still one who was fighting for the right."

From the struggle with the legislature in its regular 1911 session and its two special sessions in 1912 emerged a substantial program of legislative reform. No doubt the most important and most lasting accomplishment was the enactment of Michigan's first workmen's compensation law: Osborn had advocated such a measure in his campaign, a competent committee appointed by the governor drew up the act, and he vigorously pushed it through the legislature. The legislature passed other laws protecting and enlarging the rights of labor and expanding the state's power and authority in a wide range of activities. Regulation of business, a favorite reform of Theodore Roosevelt and like minded Progressives, was expanded in the area of railroads, express companies, telephone companies, banks, insurance companies and saloons. Important tax legislation granted more power to the state tax commission, set up an expert reappraisal of mines, and authorized a commission to review the entire tax structure of the state. In addition, the Sixteenth (income tax) Amendment to the Federal Constitution was ratified. There was a scattering of a wide variety of other reform measures including improved school laws, reorganization of the politically sacrosanct National Guard, and modest improvements in conservation and in agriculture. Measures expanding popular government were advanced in Michigan with the passage of a presidential primary law, the extension of the state primary law, and legislation enabling Michigan voters to vote on woman suffrage.

Even when turned down by the legislature, the governor's requests for legislation often served a positive purpose. For that matter, Osborn never expected to win all of his contests. "I do not mean," he wrote early in his term, ". . . that I expect all of the legislation I have suggested, to crystallize into law, but I do believe that I shall be able to sow some good seeds in fertile soil that will bring forth fruit at the proper time." There is no question that Osborn's determined legislative battles for such proposals as the initiative, referendum, and recall aided the Progressive cause by dramatizing these measures and by creating a favorable public sentiment which led to their eventual enactment.

Besides attending to the problems of governing Michigan and state politics, Osborn took an active part in national politics throughout his term of office. The Michigan governor, along with other Progressive governors and Republican United States Senate and House leaders, became increasingly dissatisfied with what was viewed as a strong shift to conservatism in the administration of President William Howard Taft, and they began looking for other leaders to carry the Progressive banner for the Republican party in the 1912 election. One of those leaders was Robert M. La Follette, a staunch advocate of Progressive reform in the Senate. Osborn, however, though looking with favor on the program of the Wisconsin senator, disliked him personally. It was characteristic of Osborn throughout his life that he often was affected more strongly by personalities than by philosophies and principles. In a nationally publicized speech in January, 1912, Osborn dealt a crippling blow to La Follette's presidential prospects. In this same speech criticizing La Follette, the Michigan governor unfurled the campaign banner of Theodore Roosevelt. Osborn, a great admirer of the former president and in many ways similar to him in outlook, interests, and way of doing things, proposed that Roosevelt be returned to the White House. Frank Knox, a member of Roosevelt's famous Rough Riders, was also in close contact with the ex-president and together with Osborn took the lead in the movement to bring forth Roosevelt's candidacy. It was first agreed that Knox, with full support of Roosevelt, would visit governors sympathetic to the former president to secure their signatures to a letter asking the Colonel to run. News of this plan became public before it could be completed. Governor Osborn, on his own initiative, came forward at this crucial juncture to propose that all the Roosevelt governors and other supporters of the ambitious Colonel should meet in Chicago to sound out Roosevelt sentiment. This method of bringing about Roosevelt's candidacy was immediately accepted. The conference dutifully drew up a request signed by Osborn, six other governors, and ex-governor Fort of New Jersey, calling upon Roosevelt to enter the 1912 race. Roosevelt, of course, said yes with appropriate publicity, and the battle for the Republican nomination was on.

Osborn himself was seriously considered as a running mate for Roosevelt if he won the Republican nomination, but the Michigan governor was not enthusiastic over this move to make him, in his own words, "the extra tire on the motor car of government" and the plan never materialized.

Although the Michigan governor strongly favored Roosevelt, he did not endorse the former president's maneuvers to organize a third party after the Republicans had denied him their nomination. Instead, Osborn startled the nation by proposing that all Progressives in both parties support Woodrow Wilson, who had been nominated by the Democrats. This allegiance to the scholarly Democratic nominee, however, proved to be only a temporary abandonment of Roosevelt. Although he never joined the new Bull Moose party, before the end of the 19l2 electoral battle Osborn actively stumped for Theodore Roosevelt.

Besides fighting actively and vigorously in the legislature and on the battlefield of national politics, Osborn carried on a successful campaign to reform the state administrative organization. There is no doubt that despite occasional confusion of duty with politics, Osborn assumed the task of governor with a sincere desire to better conditions by means of an honest, efficient administration of the state's business, free from all influence of special interest groups. People holding public office. he wrote to a friend shortly after his election, 'must take a public view point and must not be suspected of being even unconsciously influenced by so called 'special privileges,' and those who hold or desire them. The people from this time out expect their [public] servants to fight their battles actively and interestedly, as paid lawyers fight for a strong and rich client. The people feel that they and the public domain have been exploited by the few long enough."

In Osborn's view, the chief executive office was more important than either the legislative or judicial branches of government. His administration of state affairs fully exemplified this conviction. The energetic governor kept his finger on nearly every detail of the complex machinery of his office and on the myriad responsibilities that fell to him. He listened with care and consideration to the numerous complaints about state government, the pleas for favors, and the petitions for pardons and paroles. If the requests appeared reasonable, they were referred to the proper agencies for action or investigation; otherwise, they received a firm refusal. He insisted that his appointees and, in fact, all public officials perform their duties honestly and with dignity. Never during his term of office was there the slightest hint of dishonesty or corruption .

Though the governor was frustrated in his attempt to reform the basic administrative structure of Michigan, he compensated for this failure by making the existing setup one of the most effective the state had seen for many years. He accomplished this end by appointing able, public-spirited men to the many state commissions and departments. Labor, Banking, Insurance, and the Game, Fish and Forestry departments together with lesser boards like Health posted a record of close attention and effective service to the various segments of the public welfare which fell under their supervision. When, in the governor's view, a commission was not performing its duties with sufficient zeal, he did not hesitate to prod its members both privately and in public.

He paid special attention to the problem of state taxation. The state tax commission, filled with his appointees chosen from both parties, and at times roughly pushed into action by Osborn, increased its scope, enlarged and improved its staff and began a thorough program of equalizing the tax levies in Michigan. Perhaps of greater importance was the first expert valuation of Michigan mines, which was conducted by the Osborn administration and resulted in a more than quadrupled value being placed on them. As a result of reforms in taxation, close economy in operations, and a new use of the executive veto to reduce appropriations, the state changed into a surplus the half million dollar deficit that existed when Osborn entered office.

In his two full years, Osborn managed to make an inspection tour of every state institution. Sometimes, to the consternation of the unsuspecting superintendents these visits were unannounced. He took a particularly keen delight in inspecting the Michigan National Guard. This official duty he accomplished with a gallant flair. He brought his own fine horse to camp and rode the line, giving "the troops and the crowd one of the finest exhibitions of horsemanship any of them ever saw." "Grand review of all forces by Gov. C.S.O. on horseback," Osborn noted in his diary. "Great and successful."

As the state's first citizen and a man noted for his oratorical abilities, Osborn was in constant demand for speeches. Though occasionally wearied by the drain on his time, he took on his speaking engagements with gusto as an effective means for expressing his views. He also used the newspapers and his voluminous correspondence to advance his ideas. His position regarding the great issues of the day kept pace with and was at times in advance of the liberal thought of the Progressive era. He supported organized labor during a period when it had little influence and lacked popular favor. He attacked the unbridled growth of giant corporations, a burning Progressive issue, suggesting that they should be closely regulated by government and in some cases should be owned outright by the public. One of Osborn's major services to the Progressive movement came through this ceaseless publicizing of reform issues in his public and private expressions. If Theodore Roosevelt was the "publicity man of reform" on a national scale then Chase Osborn with his outspoken manner that both delighted and dismayed the people was the publicity man of reform in Michigan.

After Osborn made it clear that he would not seek a second term, a prominent Detroit Weekly paper lamented: "Let Osborn run for something. Anything is better than this awful monotony. With all his faults we love him for the 'copy' he makes, for the things he gives Michigan to think about, for his dissolving views, for his vocabulary, for the opportunities he gives the legislature to exhibit its sweetbreads, for the people he makes mad, and the people he makes sad, and the people he makes glad, and for putting this state on the map of national politics. Michigan is going to sleep again. Let Osborn start something."

In the late summer of 1912 Osborn wrote: "I have had a fighting, belligerent happy year." Undoubtedly, Osborn had relished his life as chief executive of Michigan, yet he was ready to relinquish the post with no reluctance. The governorship had been a financial burden as well as a drain on his energies. He was satisfied with what he had done. It was a feeling of accomplishment that was never dimmed by the passing years. In his eighty-first year, Osborn wrote of his term as governor: "I had the time of my life."

After the expiration of his term, Osborn characteristically found rest and relaxation by embarking on an extended world tour. This was no comfortable visit to popular European tourist centers and famous cities of the Far East. It was, instead, an arduous trek through the length and breadth of the African continent and Madagascar, visits to the remote Russian cities of Tashkent and Samarkand, to Siberia and to various ports of call in the Far East: He was out of the country for more than a year.

Even before his return to the United States in June, l9l4, Osborn had already been approached on the possibility of running again for the Michigan governorship. It did not take much pressure to persuade the ex-governor to enter the contest. and he began campaigning almost as soon as he got back in the state. He ran on an outspoken Progressive platform which included support of recall of judges, electoral reforms and improved workmen's compensation legislation. He successfully won the Republican nomination but lost to incumbent Governor Woodbridge N. Ferris in the final count, defeated by the votes of two directly opposing forces: the diehard Bull Moose party who ran their own ticket, and the conservatives among the Republicans who looked upon Ferris as a "safer" candidate than Osborn.

Never again did Osborn actively seek the governorship. In 1916, he considered running in the presidential primary in Michigan, but did not do so when Senator William Alden Smith chose to. From that time on, Osborn's office-seeking attempts were directed at winning a seat in the United States Senate. When Senator Smith decided not to seek re-election in 1918, Osborn unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination. In 1930 he fought one more primary election battle. Running largely on a platform of all-out support of prohibition, he attempted to unseat Senator James Couzens but again he was defeated. On other occasions he was mentioned as a possible appointee when vacancies occurred in the Senate, but nothing ever happened. Once in 1928, Osborn was endorsed as Michigan's favorite son for the vicepresidential nomination and he was nominated on the floor of the convention. His name received an ovation but no place on the ticket.

None of these defeats nor his advancing years daunted him. If anything, his setbacks only stimulated him, for Osborn loved a political fight even more than holding office. "I like the strife and the pawing and the goring and the tragedy and the comedy that form the friction of a public contest.... I have a good temperament for a row. " He explained that " the things that scare most persons in politics are the most attractive to me. I mean the friction and the impacts and the slander and the abuse. Its kinda like seeing how much you can . . . lift."

Throughout Osborn's life after his term as governor, ran a constant stream of liberalism and reform tempered somewhat by personal eccentricities. About the only time he was willing to put aside reform was during World War I. "It is all right to reform things and there will always be a lot of it to do," he wrote in December, 1917, "but there is a right time to do it and a wrong time. One should not try to . . . derail the nation when it is deep in trouble and war and people are dying to save it. That is the time to carry the flag and march to the music of union, harmony and cooperation."

With the war over, Osborn was ready to return to reform, but he was out of step with a nation whose aim was to hurry "back to normalcy." Osborn, as a matter of fact, had little enthusiasm for the chief representative of the national mood in 1920. "Harding," Osborn wrote soon after the Ohio Senator's nomination for president, "is the weakest man who was ever on any responsible ticket for president .... [He is] temperamentally a standpatter and a servant rather than a master of action and thought...."

Harding's successor, Calvin Coolidge, was equally distasteful to Osborn. He could see little good in the taciturn Vermonter, and did not hesitate to heap the severest kind of criticism on him.

When Osborn's old friend Frank Knox admitted in 1925 that age had made him more conservative, Osborn chided him on his retreat from liberalism. "Now as to age causing a conservative growth," he told Knox, "I think not if the heart and soul grow with the belly and the intellect.... I am more 'liberal' now than ever before...." And this was true.

When the controversial sit-down strikes swept through Michigan in 1937, arousing much unfriendly criticism of labor, Osborn urged the state government to meet the problem without resorting to violence or extreme measures. His counsel to his good friend Governor Frank Murphy helped encourage the governor to settle the strike peaceably.

Osborn was not only interested in the great domestic problems of his day, but as a cosmopolitan world traveler he was much concerned with international relations. Imperialistic to a degree in his younger years, when men like Theodore Roosevelt were championing such sentiments, his views evolved into a broadly-based positive internationalism .

At the end of the First World War, Osborn came out strongly in support of Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations. Throughout the isolationist 1920'S and 1930's Osborn urged more active participation by the United States in world affairs. With the end of the Second World War, he welcomed enthusiastically the creation of the United Nations. His strong support of this organization caused him to undertake a movement to seat the United Nations permanently on Sugar Island in the St. Mary's River on the United States-Canadian border. Although an impractical scheme, the move reflected Osborn's continued love of this northern area, his pride in the longstanding international friendship symbolized by this locale, and his faith in international cooperation.

In the last twenty years of his life, Osborn promoted a variety of civic projects that were particularly close to his heart. The two most important of these appropriately were concerned with the development of his home area. He was a leader in the movement to have Isle Royal became a national park and lived to see the establishment of this primitive wilderness area as Michigan's only national park. He did not, however, live to see the fulfillment of another great dream: the construction of a bridge to link the two peninsulas of Michigan. Convinced of the feasibility of the project, Osborn as early as 1935 began agitation for building the giant structure. He personally conferred with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and won his backing. Political opposition, however, and the coming of the Second World War prevented the old governor from realizing his dream of a Michigan united by a Straits of Mackinac bridge.

Politics, great national questions, and civic projects were, however, far from being Osborn's only interests in his post gubernatorial years. Prior to his death at his beloved winter home at Possum Poke, Worth County, Georgia, on April 11, 1949, he covered nearly every corner of the earth, met thousands of people, spoke to hundreds of audiences on a multitude of subjects, wrote blistering criticisms of men, views and ways of life, earned and gave away several fortunes and was called "about everything from a Roman noble to the kindred of a polar bear." His benevolences included large tracts of land to Purdue University, to Tulane University and to The University of Michigan. Recognizing his generosity, intellectual accomplishments and years of public service, several colleges and universities bestowed on him honorary degrees.

He wrote a number of books on a multiplicity of subjects, varying from a six-hundred page treatise on the legend of Hiawatha to a study dealing with errors in the official United States area figures pertaining to the boundaries of Michigan and the Great Lakes, a statistical compilation which caused a friend to exclaim: "Moses brought water from the rock. Joshua made the sun stand still. But it took Chase Osborn to double the area of Michigan." In writing these works and in many of the activities of his later years, Osborn was aided by Stella Brunt, an honors graduate of The University of Michigan, who became his second wife. As Osborn advanced into his ninetieth year, increasingly troubled and incapacitated by illness and infirmities, she helped the aged governor continue his writing and aided his communication with the world.

Chase Osborn once said of himself: "I suppose I am more or less like the Northland, which has rugged terrain and rough facets." The rough facets were indeed obvious. His personal egotism for example, which in 1920 caused one correspondent to refer to him as "the Insufferable Egotist of the Soo" and which carried him from one political campaign to another, was not dimmed by advancing age. In 1937, Osborn typically remarked: "It seems that I was never before on a higher crest in Michigan."

But beneath the rough exterior of his rugged personality lay a gentle side, striking in its simplicity. Osborn loved nature, children, and his friends. His whole philosophy was simple: "I laugh at everything that is funny, enjoy the sky, study the winds and weather, know the birds and flowers and bugs and rocks and stars somewhat, love my friends, and work 16 hours a day." Osborn, though always possessing ample means, lived modestly, almost primitively. When he was in his eighties, he preferred to live in his camps at Possum Poke, Georgia, or Duck Island, Michigan, where he slept outdoors on a bed of balsam boughs.

He was a friend of the great, the highly placed, the powerful, the wealthy, whose company he kept and whom he counseled and advised, but his affection and his labors were with the ordinary citizenry. As one northern Michigan resident wrote at the end of his governorship: "You have did [sic] well for the common people.... The other class provide for themselves, you have cared for us. We realize that you have had a hard Battle with the elements from start to finish & you have won the Hearts of the common people. We rejoice in your courage . . . & Integrity."