Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/606

 ELLA FLAGG YOUNG By John T. McManis THE public schools of the second city of America are ad- ministered by a woman. Li this great cosmopolitan city of many interests and many tongpies, the superintendent of schools determines the welfare of three or fonr hundred thousand children^ of six and a half thousand teachers and employes and the annual expenditure of seventeen or eighteen millions of dollars. To handle adequately so vast a problem requires courage, insight, patience, unselfishness, and loyalty — in fact, all of those strong traits of character and mind which we usually attribute to great men, but which in this case we find embodied in an unassuming woman, Ella Flagg Young. To talk to Mrs. Young about herself or her qualifications for the position she holds is not an easy task. She is ready and anxious to discuss the education of children, or the train- ing and comfort of teachers, but meagre in her information about her own achievements. She will tell you that she is do- ing nothing that many another person might not do far more successfully than she. Allegiance to the welfare of her adopt- ed city is the strongest trait of her character and in a quiet, direct way she gives her heart to bettering opportunities for Chicago 's future citizens. Behind her quiet exterior there is an indomitable will. Courage marks every step she takes. No matter how difficult the task, nor how uncertain the outcome, she sticks to it until results are obtained. Stalwart in her own honesty, she hates sham. She demands honesty in others and is able to inspire them with some measure of her own spirit of loyalty. Her judgment is quick and unerring. No one can work with her long without feeling her keen, fine sympathy, her quick, subtle sense of humor, and her whole-hearted devotion to the cause of education and the care of the young people of the city. Every admirer of success in human life will ask how a woman like Mrs. Young came to occupy this place of leader-