Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/98

Anton J. Cermak,
President of Cook County Board.

When writing of Anton J. Cermak, the President of the Board of Cook County Commissioners and candidate for Governor of Illinois, it is necessary to reflect back on one of Horatio Alger’s books or some similar record of the absolutely unknown boy rising to a position of an outstanding public leader and business man.

The lives of Lincoln, Garfield, Russell Sage, Governor Al Smith of New York, and D. F. Kelly of Chicago, are all blended into one in the biography of this man who rose from a “mule boy” in the mines at Braidwood, Illinois, to President of perhaps the greatest county in the United States.

There were no college yells or inspiring crowds to spur the young boy that left Braidwood, Ill., at the age of 16 years, to reach the goal he set out to attain. In the first place, he was born in Bohemia in 1873, or rather Czechoslovakia that land across the sea with its athletic organizations which inspired first of all love of freedom, liberty and country; and secondly, created a love for physical exercise which gives the strength of body to carry out the will of mind. He came to the United States with his parents in 1874.

And in 1889 we find a 16 year old Czech boy, standing at the outskirts of Cook County with his fists clinched, his jaw set, his mind full of determination, all of this backed by a foundation of honesty and love for his fellowmen.

Here we have an opportunity to observe what makes for success in the unknown boy, who apparently is the clay from which American successes are molded.

Our next view of this leader is atop a wood-wagon in the vicinity in which he chose to make his home. Humbly, honestly and industriously the young Czech boy pursued his first business venture, serving his people courteously and well. He attended business college at night and later studied law.

Public officials of those days soon learned of this young man,