Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/404

304. All the members of the firm were descendants of James Draper who founded a textile business in Massachusetts in 1650. General Draper actively engaged in the business of the firm and after the death of his father in 1887 he took the place of senior member of the firm of George Draper and Sons, which was subsequently incorporated as The Draper Company of which he was elected president. He became connected with other manufacturing concerns, was elected president of the Milford and Woonsocket Railroad, became a director in various banks and in numerous other manufacturing and financial institutions. He inherited the mechanical and inventive talent of his ancestors and patented more than fifty different inventions for use in machinery for manufacturing cotton goods, including improvements in spindles and the famous Northrop loom. Many of his inventions have been introduced in Europe and other parts of the world. He served as colonel on the staff of Governor Long from 1880 to 1883, was a delegate to the Republican national convention of 1876 which nominated Rutherford B. Hayes for president and was an elector-at-large from Massachusetts in 1888 on the Harrison and Morton ticket. He received a large vote in the Republican state convention of 1888 for the nomination for governor, and in 1889 he declined the nomination for the same office, although his election was practically assured. He was a representative from the eleventh district of Massachusetts in the fifty-third and fifty-fourth Congresses, 1893-97, and served on the committees on Foreign Affairs, and Patents, holding the second place on the former and the chairmanship of the latter in the fifty-fourth Congress. In 1897 he was appointed United States ambassador to Italy by President McKinley, which position he resigned in 1900.

General Draper served, 1891-92, as president of the Home Market club, the strongest and most influential protective organization in New England, and second nationally to the American Protective Tariff League. He was elected a member and an officer of the Arkwright club and the American Protective Tariff League; a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States and commander of Massachusetts division, 1901-02; a comrade in the Grand Army of the Republic and a member of the Sons of the Revolution; the General Society of Colonial Wars; the Algonquin and Union clubs of Boston, the Metropolitan and Army and Navy clubs of Washington, District of Columbia, and of other social and patriotic