A native of Georgia, where he was born at Columbus, in 1847, Mr. Spencer entered the Confederate army, serving the last two years and with much credit, after which he graduated from the University of Georgia with A.B., and subsequently from the University of Virginia with his engineering degree. Since leaving college in 1869 Mr. Spencer has devoted his energies uniformly to his ambition to rise to the highest round of the railroad ladder, with the result that he is now president of the Southern, the Mobile and Ohio, the Alabama and Great Southern, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Georgia Southern and Florida, and the Northern Alabama, aggregating a mileage of over nine thousand miles and employing more than forty thousand men. Besides innumerable other roads, in the management of which Mr. Spencer is director, he is also a director of the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Old Dominion Steamship Company, three large New York Trust companies, the Hanover National Bank of New York, and one of Boston’s large street railway systems. Mr. Spencer is identified with the American Society of Civil Engineers and other representative political, scientific and forestry associations, and is socially very much of a cosmopolite, being a member of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Macon clubs, besides that wealthy sportsman’s paradise, the Jekyl Island Club. One of the very few Southerners who have advanced into the circles of millionairedom, Mr. Spencer resides principally in New York and Washington, but is much in the South and is still in feeling and sentiment very much a Southerner. James Clarke McReynolds. [Illustration: JAMES C. McREYNOLDS ] In the appointment of James C. McReynolds to be Assistant Attorney General of the United States the President followed his revolutionary precedent in the selection of Judge Thomas G. Jones, of Alabama, as occupant of the Federal Bench. In this instance conventional custom was further ignored in the elevation of a man considerably younger than the age generally considered requisite. Born at Elkton, Ky., a little over forty years ago, Mr. McReynolds was graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia with his academic and law degrees, respectively, in both of which institutions he ranked high in scholarship and character. His initial experience in public life was gained as the private secretary of Judge Howell E. Jackson of the United States Supreme Bench, which, with his already ample legal equipment, served him in good stead in the general practice in Nashville where his career at the bar was characterized by ability, integrity and a high order of fidelity to the many large interests that he represented. In civic and political movements Mr. McReynolds’ record was signalized by a notably courageous, independent and unselfish interest.