Mr. Buffington is an excellent example of the generation that was born after industrial conditions in the South had been altered by the Civil War. He was born in 1863, in Huntingdon, West Virginia, his father belonging to a prominent family there, and his mother being a member of the Nicholas family, of Culpeper County, Virginia. After the close of the war, Mr. Buffington’s father moved his family to Covington, Kentucky, and he spent his youth in that city, studying in the public schools and at Chickering Institute, Cincinnati. In the year 1881 he entered Vanderbilt University, where he remained for two years, returning to Covington to engage in the manufacture of wire and nails. Close application to business, earnestness and an unlimited capacity for pushing his work along, built up the business, and in 1890 his company moved to larger quarters in Anderson, Indiana. After eight years of telling work in this new and enlarged field, Mr. Buffington was called to assume the directorship of the American Steel and Wire Company in Chicago, and a year later was made President of the Illinois Steel Company, the largest concern of its kind west of Pittsburg. [Illustration: E. J. BUFFINGTON] Mrs. Buffington was Miss Drucilla Moore, daughter of Judge Laban T. Moore, of Catlettsburg, Kentucky. Their handsome home is in Evanston, where may be found quite a colony of Kentuckians. * * * * * It was eminently fitting that the most intimate friend of the late Sam Jones should succeed him as mayor of Toledo. Mr. Whitlock, while understanding better than any other man in Toledo the political beliefs of “Golden Rule Jones,” is, like him, a man of marked individuality, and will not be bound by the traditions of any man or party. Like Mr. Jones, he owes his nomination and election directly to the people and pays no allegiance to any political machine, boss or party. Like Jones, his only ambition is to make Toledo a city where the Golden Rule is really the governing principle and not merely an empty phrase; and to make the men of the city realize and live up to the liberty and independence of their manhood. At the death of Jones, the corruptionists flocked to the city hall and endeavored to resume their old-time control of municipal affairs, but the common people, whom Jones had taught to recognize the rights and duties of citizenship, went unorganized, but solidly, to the polls and elected Brand Whitlock. [Illustration: BRAND WHITLOCK]