IHTRODUCTION 



Herbert Coggins' biography Is of Interest to 

 seholara both as a ease study of a twentieth centiiry 

 American and as one eye-witness account of life in the 

 San Francisco Bay Region, 



About the man himself » interpreters of American 

 thought and folkways might ask what are his salient 

 characteristics f of how large a group are they typical^ 

 what in the An^rican environment helped to produoe them^ 

 is he a vanishing typ# and if so why? 



His roots are in the huaanitarian reform movements 

 which absorbed so many illustrious Americans in the 

 pre-Civil War era, movements for temperance, peace, 

 women* 8 rights and abolition of slavery* He has also 

 shown tfas tine -tested traits of Yankee ingenuity end 

 individualism — when he started to work as a $3-a<»week 

 errand boy and subsequently became an editor in the 

 fizna which published Horatio Algeria stories; or in middle 

 age when he reorganized an automotive parts business 

 to give the workers both a share in the decision*making 

 and a share in the profits and thus managed to weather 

 the great depression of the 1930*8 while other businesses 

 failed; or when he began writing for publication when 

 he was past 60 and produced a successful children's 



