Willkie was born 48 years ago in Elwood, Indiana. His. grandparents came to this country after the collapse of a revolutionary movement in Germany. They spelled their name His parents were both lawyers, his mother having been the first woman admitted to the bar in Indiana. Willkie, whose boyish reading tastes ranged from poetry to the more abstruse sciences, developed a taste for law from his parents and, with it, a considerable training in liberal sociology. At 16 he helped his father, Herman F. Willkie, prepare a case for union labour in opposition to a picketing injunction.
In high school and college Willkie distinguished himself as a debater of a slightly radical tinge. He became a follower of the late Senator Robert M. LaFollette after hearing the Wis-cousin Progressive speak.
During summer holidays Willkie earned money by working in harvest fields from Oklahoma to the Canadian border. The World War interrupted his efforts to get started in the law. He served in France with the 325th Field Artillery and after the Armistice joined the law firm of Mather and Nesbitt in Akron, Ohio, first practicing for a time in Fort Wayne.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.