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RAFTS, WILBUR FISKE, Ph.D., pastor, editor, author, lecturer, reformer, and "reform lobbyist," was born in Fryeburg, Maine, January 12, 1850. His father, Reverend Frederick Alonzo Crafts, was a Methodist minister. His son characterizes him as "strong not only in religious ardor, but in ethical devotion, to the antislavery and prohibition crusades especially." His son was not strong, but he habitually worked when not in school, "thinking an hour a day, and half of Saturday, sufficient for play." "We cut our wood in the forest, sawed and spHt wood for our neighbors, drove cows and worked as book agents," he says of himself and his brothers. He paid his own expenses at college and seminary, except for a small loan, which he afterward repaid. He is "glad that he had to work hard for his education," and thinks it "dangerous to make education too easy by undue help."

He was prepared for college at Brockton, Massachusetts, and was graduated from Wesleyan university, Middletown, Connecticut, in 1869, and from the Boston university school of theology, in 1871. He received the degree of Ph.D. from Marietta college, Ohio. He began preaching occasionally when seventeen, and when nineteen preached regularly. He held pastorates in Nahant, Haverhill, Dover, New Bedford and Chicago, from 1870-79. In 1880 he traveled in the East, and from 1880-83 he was pastor of the Congregational Christian Endeavor church, Brooklyn, New York. He had charge of the First Union Presbyterian church, New York, for five years. In 1889 he founded the American Sabbath Union and became its field secretary. In 1892 he became editor of the "Christian Statesman" at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and lectured on reforms. In 1895 he established in Washington, District of Columbia, "The International Reform Bureau," which in 1904 purchased permanent headquarters near the Capitol, and has for its main object the promotion of measures of reform which come before congress. Much has been accomplished, for prohibition and temperance, and in 1905 Doctor