HARRISON 



2696 



HARRISON 



who died in the War of Secession; and in 

 Capitol Park is a column of Maryland marble, 

 seventy-six feet high, erected in honor of those 

 who lost their lives in the Mexican War. A 

 statue of General John F. Hartranft stands 

 on the west side of the Capitol. 



The institutions of the city include Saint 

 Genevieve's Academy, the Young Ladies' Sem- 

 inary, the Home for the Friendless, the Chil- 

 dren's Industrial Home, a city hospital, a 

 state insane hospital and a county prison. 



Industries. Harrisburg is near large iron and 

 coal mines, and this location, together with 

 excellent railroad facilities, has led to the ex- 

 tensive manufacture of iron and steel. The 

 city has an important trade in lumber, and has 

 foundries and machine shops, rolling mills, tin 

 mills, nail works, furnaces, typewriter factories, 

 boot and shoe factories, pipe-bending works, 

 and large manufactories of cars, coaches, 

 tanned leather, lumber products, cotton goods, 

 beds, mattresses, coffins, silk 

 goods, brooms, brick and tile, 

 marbleized slate and galvan- 



ized-iron cornices. Several thousand men are 

 employed in the roundhouses and repair shops 

 of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which are lo- 

 cated here. 



History. The town of Harrisburg was 

 named in honor of John Harris, who settled 

 there in 1726, near what he considered a good 

 ford of the river. It was organized in 1785 

 by his son, who had established a ferry at 

 this place, and was made the county seat in 

 1785, becoming the state capital in 1812.. In 

 1860 it became a city. The Harrisburg Con- 

 vention, assembled here in 1828, was responsi- 

 ble for the high protective-tariff bill of that 

 year. Harrison and Tyler were nominated in 

 the city in 1839. An extensive project for 

 municipal reform, which included the improve- 

 ment of the water supply, sewerage system, 

 the building of a dam, and park improvement, 

 was successfully undertaken in 1901, and a 

 board of public works continues to carry out all 

 plans made by the au- 

 thorities for city im- 

 provements. M.W. 



ARRISON, BENJAMIN (1833-1901), an 

 American lawyer and soldier, the twenty-third 

 President of the United States. Like nearly all 

 the Presidents, Harrison was a lawyer by pro- 

 fession, but he differed from them in that he 

 was not a politician or a political leader. With 

 the exception of the Presidency, Harrison held 

 but two public offices in his life, and one of 

 these, that of reporter of the Indiana supreme 

 court, was strictly in the line of his profession. 

 He was a loyal member of the Republican 

 party and took an active interest in politics, 

 but he was not, strictly considered, a popular 

 leader. As a soldier in the War of Secession 

 he had won considerable distinction, but his 

 military career lacked the spectacular element 

 which played so large a part in the career of 

 his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, who 

 also was President, but for only a month. 



Benjamin Harrison was a hard-working, con- 

 scientious official, but he did not inspire en- 



thusiasm. He was called "cold," so cold that 

 "grass would not grow on the White House 

 grounds," and it was said, most unkindly, that 

 "his political advisers rode in ice wagons." 

 Such exaggeration was ridiculous, but there is 

 no doubt that Harrison's integrity, his devo- 

 tion to principle and his refusal to recognize 

 the demands of "everyday political expedi- 

 ency," all combined to give him an air of 

 aloofness. In some respects he was not unlike 

 Grover Cleveland, his predecessor and his suc- 

 cessor, and it is noteworthy that both men won 

 their greatest personal popularity after the 

 close of their terms of office. 



Youth and Education. Benjamin Harrison 

 was born on August 20, 1833, at North Bend, 

 Ohio, where his grandfather, William Henry 

 Harrison, was also then living. He was named 

 for his great grandfather, one of the signers of 

 the Declaration of Independence. His father, 

 John Scott Harrison, was Representative in 



