An earlier blog (“Meet the Press…”) looked at letters from leading magazine and newspaper editors. Among them was George Lorimer, Editor of The Saturday Evening Post who declared that he, Lorimer, had…”always been a Mather man and a great admirer of your devoted work…”
Seven years earlier, in 1922, when the Gibson Girl was the iconic image of the American woman, The Saturday Evening Post published a glowing article about Stephen in its “Who’s Who—And Why” section sharing that an interviewer had recently referred to Stephen as a “Gibson Man.”
The article goes on to recall Stephen’s college summer job when he acted “as a book agent up and down the Pacific Coast” and that “…Wherever he went he made great numbers of friends, especially among elderly ladies…”
On a more serious note, the article delves into the “two schools of thought on the subject of travel in the national parks.” One side felt that roads should be built to the “topmost peaks” for automobile-borne visitors, while the other wanted maintain pristine parks devoid of cars and buses altogether.
The article reveals, “Mather holds a middle course. He insists that the people be enabled to enjoy their parks; but since the parks belong to the people, he argues that there ought to be at least a few bridle trails in them where a peace-loving man can find surcease from the cares that infest the day without having his nerves shattered by the hoarse hoot of a seven-dollar horn.”
And finally, the article looks back at the Mather family tree where one branch led to farmer Timothy and Deacon Joseph and the other to Cotton and Increase. And concludes: “If debating societies…ever get to debating over the question as to which of the two Mather boys, Cotton or Steve, has exercised the greater amount of influence on the people of America, Cotton won’t have a…chance with the judges.”
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