COL. DICK WOODS

"HAVE YOU MET DICK WOODS?"

How familiar the above words have become to each of us! How often have they appeared in our daily papers! Originality in advertising. Yes; and they must have had an origin. They did; and a very dramatic one. Here it is: Colonel Dick Woods, of Sioux Falls, general agent in South Dakota for the Northwestern Mutual Insurance Company, of Milwaukee, was riding on a passenger train in this state, several years ago, when the question of "bald heads" became a part of the conversation between him and his friends.

"I'll bet," said Dick, "that I've got the baldest head of any man, my age, on the train."

A stranger sitting nearby, who, up to that time, had taken no part in the conversation, broke in with the friendly query, "How old are you?"

"Thirty-one," responded Dick, with his accustomed frankness and courtesy.

"Well," said the stranger, "I guess we better 'show up.' You are several years older than I am."

Simultaneously both men snatched off their hats. Dick was awfully bald for a man of his age. Approximately the same amount of hair fringed his cranium that clusters about it to this day, but of course at that time it more nearly retained its orignal color.

"He's got you, Dick!" interjected one of his friends. And sure enough he had. The young stranger's head was so near toally bald that he had to rub alum on his scalp twice every twent-four hours in order to pucker it enough to draw his hair up under his hat.

"I want to hire you," said Dick, as a crescent grin stole playfully over his full-moon face.

"What is your business?" interrogated the fellow.

"I'm an insurance man," replied the genial Woods.

"How much will you pay me?" queried the gentleman eagerly.

"Twenty-four dollars a month and your expenses," promptly responded the Colonel.

"It's a bargain,' said the stranger, quite emphatically. "What will my work consist of?"

"Oh!—well, that's a different proposition," muttered Dick. "You're not going back on me, are you?"

"Not for a minute!" snapped out the new employee, evidently distressed with the implied suggestion.

"Well, I'll tell you," said the Colonel, "I want to paint these words, HAVE YOU MET DICK WOODS?, on top of your bald head. You are to keep your hat off all the time, except when you're out of doors; and every time anybody says anything to you about your sign, tell them to write me at Sioux Falls. You needn't tell them what your business is, or mine either."

The fellow readily assented; a stencil artist painted the sign clear across the bald area of his cranium, beginning well down on his forehead and extending it backwards to the base of the fellow's medulla oblongata.

Dick Wood's fortune was made. It was an idea born of the moment, yet it got results. Letters came to him thick and fast from farmers, farmer's daughters, factory hands, railroad employees, hotel clerks, and what not. It beat Tom Murray' "Meet me face to face" all hollow.

Following this, a number of traveling men ordered the fellow's "head" sign painted artisitcally on a board, had it hung up in the Cataract Hotel at Sioux Falls, and, for a joke, had the bill— $25—sent to Dick Woods, himself. He paid it willingly, and often remarked to the fellows who did it that it was the cheapest advertising he ever got.

Dick is an Irish-American or an American-Irishman; as the case may be,—take your choice. At any rate, he was born in Belfast, Ireland, of American parentage, January 17, 1863. While yet a mere babe his parents returned with him to America, and his father engaged in business in New Orleans, at which place the latter died in 1872. The mother at once took the family and went back to Ireland, returning again to America the next year, after exhausting the family fortune, and settled in Philadelphia where she died the following year in obscure poverty.

Young Woods had in him a mixture of bloods and of sentiments. His father, during the Civil War, was a firm sympathizer with the North; his mother was equally loyal to the South. Family dissentions arose. This accounts for their trip abroad during the war, and Dick's birth on foreign soil. The intense convictions of his mother's soul found their most rigid expression in the naming of her children. For instance, one boy was named Albert Jeff Davis Woods, another one, George Beauregard Woods, while our subject himself was named Richard Jackson Woods, and a daughter was christened Virginia Lee Woods. This intense loyalty on her part to the South was very commendable, right or wrong, and the patriotic devotion to her own convictions was transmitted to her successful son—Colonel Dick Woods, of Sioux Falls.

After his mother's early death, Dick was sent to the Lincoln Institute, an orphan asylum, in Philadelphia. It was run by Mrs. J. Bellanger Cox. Later she acquired some land in Lincoln county, South Dakota, and organized the famous Mead farm. To this ranch she assigned young Woods and several of his orphan associates. This is how Dick happened to become a Dakotan. The most unfortunate thing about it was that he only got two weeks of schooling in his entire career. Yet, somehow, sometime, somewhere, some way, he learned to read, write, cipher, and spell, and today he is one of the best informed men in our state. It is an admitted fact that Dick Woods has the widest personal acquaintance of any man in South Dakota. He can start in at Elk Point, go north through the state, making every town in it, and call more people by name as he meets them, than any three other men in our commonwealth.

COL. DICK WOODS

He is also a very ready speaker. Once upon a time he was present at our State Training School at Plankinton when the official board was there. They urged him to address the school. Without preparation, he recited the graphic story of his life. There wasn't a dry eye in the room, as he proceeded. Yet he brought them all out nicely by assuring the youthful criminals that when a boy he was as bad as the worst of them, only he had escaped getting caught.

Since early manhood Dick has been active in the politics of the state. He has attended every territorial and state convention of the republican party since 1884. It was he who first "discovered" and brought out the lamented A. B. Kittredge. His admiration and affection for the latter was signalized in his first and only child whom he saw fit to name Alfred Kittredge Woods. (This was merely the outcropping of his inherited loyalty to his friends, manifested by his mother.) Upon the senator's death he was made secretary of the Kittredge Memorial association which has for its object the creation of funds J- with which to erect marble bust of the Senator in our state capitol, just opposite that of General Beadle.

Dick is a thirty-second degree Mason, an Odd Fellow, a member of the Knights of Pythias, grand-treasurer of the South Dakota U. C. T., and he has held every office in existence in the Grand Lodge of Elks. For eight years he was president of the State League of South Dakota Republican clubs; was twice president of the State Elks' association; was twice president of the State Firemens' Association, and is secretary of the South Dakota Peace Society; was appointed by President Taft a member of the Mint Commission, last spring; and on September 18, 1912, he was elected treasurer of the old-line republican organization effected in the city of Mitchell.

However, the greatest single achievement in Dick Wood's life, and the one which above all others showed him to be master in the political game, was a "stunt" pulled off by him some sixteen or more years ago at the national convention of republican clubs in the city of Detroit, Michigan.

DICK'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT

The president of the national organization wrote him prior to the convention that if he would attend, and bring with him an active delegation from South Dakota, he would make him chairman of the committee on credentials. This looked good to Dick. He started, taking with him Messrs. Herreid, Sterling, Burke, and others. When he arrived at Detriot he was all alone, his comrades having stopped off, one by one, at various points along the way. Dick wanted that chairmanship. He had with him credentials for a number of South Dakotans, but he could not vote these very handily on the fioor of the convention. His wit saved him. Rushing out of the hall he hailed a stranger.

"Can you spare a few minutes?" shouted he to the fellow. "Certainly?" responded the gentleman. "What is it you wish done?"

"I want you to go into the convention hall yonder and when the name 'Charlie Day' is called, say 'Present'," (at the same time giving the fellow a liberal "tip").

Then he hailed another and named him Charlie Burke, and another, Charlie Herreid (these strangers must have thought that South Dakota was peopled with "Charlies"), and so on until his list was exhausted. He then gave each fellow a slip of paper with his new name on it.

They attended the convention in a body; were seated, and when the proper time came, they each one voted —and voted as Dick Woods told them to vote. The victory was his! After it vas over, and the truth leaked out, the "New York Sun" devoted an entire column to a laudation of Dick's cleverness and political sagacity.

HIS TITLE

Oh! yes; I forgot to mention that title of his—"Colonel." Now, this is genuine. Dick is a patriot. He was not given this title for standing on a stump and auctioneering off blooded steers. No sir! he earned it. Away back in our early territorial days, when a man had to pay out money instead of receiving it, in order to belong to our militia, young Woods joined old Company "B" of Sioux halls, as a private. Then, step by step, he rose to the rank of corporal, of sergeant, and on up to lieutenant. Finally, in 1889, at the inception of our statehood, there was created by law two special military departments—engineers and finance. Governor Sheldon afterwards united these into one department and appointed Lieut. Richard Jackson Woods, chief of it, with the rank of Colonel.

"Have you met Colonel Dick Woods?"