Affairs at Washington [excerpt]

IT is fitting and appropriate that a boyhood chum and playmate of William McKinley should inaugurate and take a prominent part in promoting the erection of a memorial building at Niles, Ohio, the birthplace of the beloved and martyred president. Colonel Joseph G. Butler, Jr., of Youngstown, Ohio, has for many years been a prominent figure in the business world, and has had the rare privilege and honor of knowing every president from Lincoln’s time down.
     When I met him in Washington recently—after he had had a chat with President Wilson, his tribute to the successive presidents in their order was eloquent and terse. Colonel Butler knows how to concentrate ideas, and his one great purpose now is to complete the work of the McKinley Birthplace Memorial in the little city of Niles, Ohio, including a museum wherein the contemporaries of President McKinley can find relics and mementos associated with the career of the Ohio soldier boy, later leader in Congress and [172][174] President of the United States. The more the events of the past twenty years are studied, the more important appear the successive events culminating during the administration of William McKinley. His kindly, sympathetic and noble personality will always remain an ideal inspiration to American youth, and leave its impress upon the centuries.
     Colonel J. G. Butler has already secured one hundred thousand dollars, one half of the amount necessary, and the town of Niles has donated a park for the site of the new building, and agreed to care perpetually for this memorial, which will also include a hall and building to be used as President McKinley would have wished them to be, for practical and social purposes.