BURNHAM 



1010 



BURNS 



BURNHAM, SHERBURNE WESLEY (1838- ), 

 an American astronomer, noted for his great 

 achievement in discovering and cataloguing 

 double stars, his accomplishments along those 

 lines exceeding those of any other observer. 

 He was born at Thetford, Vt., and educated in 

 the local academy. He began the study of 

 astronomy while a stenographer, and after his 

 appointment as clerk of the United States 

 circuit court for the northern district of Illinois, 

 he spent his spare time in studying the heavens 

 and became an amateur astronomer of remark- 

 able ability. In 1876 he became connected 

 with the Chicago Observatory. From this posi- 

 tion he went to the Lick Observatory, Cali- 

 fornia, and on the opening of the Yerkes 

 Observatory in Wisconsin by the University of 

 Chicago, he was appointed professor of practi- 

 cal astronomy in that institution. He pub- 

 lished a catalogue of stars discovered by him 

 from the founding of the Yerkes Observatory 

 to 1900, also a general catalogue of all known 

 double stars visible in the northern hemisphere, 

 in 1907, and Measures of Proper-Motion Stars, 

 in 1912. 



BURNS, JOHN (1858- ), the first laboring 

 man and the first Socialist to hold a seat in 

 the British Cabinet. Nothing better expressed 

 the keynote of his character than the statement 

 he once made about himself: "Came into the 

 world struggling, struggling now, and prospects 

 of continuing." From a place as an unknown 

 ten-year old boy working for a shilling or two 

 a week in a candle factory to the post of a 

 prominent Cabinet minister, entitled to the 

 prefix "Right Honorable" and a salary of 5,000 

 a year, is a long, toilsome journey. 



Burns was right when he said that his life 

 was a struggle. But if he grew up to man- 

 hood in comparative poverty, he did not grow 

 up in ignorance. He read much ; Robert Owen, 

 Tom Paine and William Cobbett were his 

 favorite authors. He also read some of the 

 works of John Stuart Mill, whose arguments 

 against socialism were so weak, he said, that 

 they converted him to it. After serving for 

 seven years as an engineer's apprentice, Burns 

 worked as gang foreman on the West African 

 coast for a year. The year's earnings were 

 promptly spent on a six-months' tour of 

 France, Germany and Austria, to study eco- 

 nomic conditions. 



Becoming a firm supporter of socialism, his 

 eloquence made him a conspicuous figure in 

 labor circles. .He was arrested in 1878 and in 

 1886, charged with inciting mobs to violence, 



but both times proved his innocence. He con- 

 tinued to proclaim the right of free speech on 

 London's streets, and in 1887 was again arrested 

 and imprisoned for six weeks. His lawyer on 

 this occasion was Herbert H. Asquith, a young 

 man about his own age, who later became 

 Prime Minister. 



Burns was still working in Hoe's printing- 

 press shops in 1889, when he was elected to 

 the London County Council. In 1892 he was 

 elected to Parliament for Battersea, and has 

 been regularly reflected since. In the Camp- 

 bell-Bannerman and Asquith Ministries he sat 

 in the Cabinet as President of the Local Gov- 

 ernment Board. In 1914 he was for a few 

 months President of the Board of Trade, but 

 resigned in August because he was opposed to 

 British participation in the War of the Nations. 

 To some extent his acceptance of a Cabinet 

 position lessened his prestige among the radi- 

 cals, but on various occasions he proved his 

 loyalty to union labor and to socialism. 



BURNS, ROBERT (1759-1796), one of the 

 world's greatest writers of verse, the idolized 

 "Bobbie Burns" whom every Scotchman re- 

 gards with a deep, personal love. Though most 

 of his very best poems were written in the 



ROBERT BURNS 



The "poet of homely human nature, not half 

 so homely or prosaic as it seems." 



Kellogg. 



Scottish dialect they belong no more to Scot- 

 land than to the world at large, for their 

 tenderness, passion and sweetness have in them 

 a universal appeal. 



