A company of noted men assembled by invitation at No. 71 Broadway, Manhattan, In the offices of Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the U. S. Steel Corporation. Among their distinguished numbers were Richard Washburn Child, onetime (1921-24) Ambassador to Italy; George W. Wickersham, onetime (1909-13) U. S. Attorney General; W. H. Pouch, President of the National Association of Credit Men; William E. Knox, President of the American Bankers' Association; C. K. Woodbridge, President of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World; Governor Silzer of New Jersey; Judge Ewing Cockrell of Missouri, one of the organizers of the Missouri Crime Survey and son of the late Senator Francis M. Cockrell; Attorney George Gordon Battle, and, of course, Judge Gary himself.
The distinguished company was there to organize a national movement for the reduction of crime (TIME, Aug. 10). Mr. Wickersham brought in a report of a committee on organization. It provided for a National Crime Commission, an informal body of prominent citizens, to be headed by a chairman, who should select a small committee, a finance committee and proceed by indirect means to a war on crime.
The report was approved. Besides providing in general for an organization, it also provided specifically who should be Chairman of the Commission and fill its vacant posts with flesh and blood, famed, able, interested. Who was chosen for this responsible post? The Press had anticipated that it would be Judge Gary—but it was not he. Who else of the notables? A merchant prince? A captain of industry? A potent segnor of the law? None of these. Judge Gary and his associates centered their selection upon a young man, only 29; a member of the New York Assembly (lower house of the legislature).
How dared they? How could they hope to succeed in founding a national movement by picking a local politician for its head? Being able men, they doubtless had their reasons.
One may conjecture what their reasons were: Here is this young Assemblyman, F. Trubee Davison. He is not of the ordinary run of local politician. No indeed. He is in politics more after the old British fashion—by which a distinguished family sends one of its sons into public life. What is more, he is able. He ought to be. Look at his father.
That father was a young man who began earning his living at 16 as a school teacher. He never got a college education. He got a job as office boy in a small bank owned by his uncle. He went to Manhattan looking for a job, but did not find it, went on to Bridgeport, Conn., where he got a job as bank runner. He was promoted to bookkeeper, then teller. He heard of a new bank opening in Manhattan (the Astor Place Bank) and by sheer persistence worried its cashier into giving him a job. He was paying teller of that bank when he had his first experience with crime. A man came in with a check for $1,000 made out to God Almighty. He pointed a revolver at Davison's head and demanded the money. Davison read the amount aloud, and began to count out the money in a loud voice. Before he had finished, the bank detective had arrested the man.