Politics
His life had been one of great activity and usefulness. He had been called to various offices of trust and responsibility, serving from 1881 until 1886 as assistant United States attorney for the district of Minnesota, as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1909 until 1913, and from 1903 until his death he was a member of the Duluth charter commission. Minnesota in 1916 made him a member of the Republican National Central Committee and his opinions carried weight in the councils of the party. He was a member of various professional, historical, scientific, social and fraternal societies and associations. He had membership with the Kitchi Gammi, Northland Country, Commercial and Duluth Boat Clubs, all of Duluth; the Minnesota Club of St. Paul; the Minneapolis Club of Minneapolis; the University Club of Chicago; the Duquesne Club of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Bankers Club of New York; the Commercial Club of North Yakima; and with various college fraternities, including the Upsilon Kappa, Psi Upsilon, Theta Nu Epsilon and Phi Beta Kappa. A contemporary biographer has said of him: "Those who really knew Mr. Congdon found in him a man of tender heart and warm, human sympathies. His philanthropy was general and quite well known, although he sought to keep it under cover and shrank from publicity in this regard. He was a close student of government and state policies, a foe of waste and inefficiency, a friend of political progress as he saw it, a champion of clean public life and sound government. He was always the good citizen, eager to have his part in every forward movement in directions that he judged to be wise."
Read more about this topic: Chester Adgate Congdon
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His talk was like a spring, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.”
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)