used as a tool. While demanding that the employés should be unconditionally loyal to the Government, integrity, capacity, and faithfulness, were the chief requisites. The Mint was a branch of the Government especially requiring the public confidence, and he steadily refused to permit it to be prostituted to political ends; and this course met the entire approval of Mr. Lincoln and of several Secretaries of the Treasury. The remarkable success of Mr. Swain in the discharge of his duties for six years, we think, may in a great measure be attributed to this policy.

After holding the position for about two years, consulting rather his own tastes and inclinations than the notoriety of public station, he tendered his resignation of the Superintendency. It may be that this course partly grew out of an honest indignation in his own breast at the persistent misrepresentations by persons anxious to supplant him, to meet which Mr. Swain, with becoming dignity and conscious rectitude, would not descend to a contradiction. The letter was sent without the knowledge of his many friends and the public generally. His popularity and the estimation in which his services were held is shown by the fact that as soon as it became known that his resignation was in the hands of the Department at Washington, a paper, signed by all the bankers and many of the leading merchants of San Francisco, was presented to him, requesting that he withdraw the document, and a dispatch from the same gentlemen in reference to the matter was also sent to Secretary McCulloch. By a singular coincidence, this dispatch was crossed on the wires by one from the Secretary himself preferring the same request to Mr. Swain. Thus urged, he consented to retain his place at the head of the Mint, which he continued to hold until the summer of 1869-his administratien of its affairs compelling the unqualified endorsement of the Department, while the character and unimpeachable integrity of the Superintendent was made the theme for special encomium on the floors of Congress.

In 1865, Mr. Swain was one of the founders, in con

junction with other philanthropic gentlemen, of the San Francisco Benevolent Association, which patterns after a like society in New York known as the "Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor." Of this institu

tion Mr. Swain has been the President from the date of its organization. At its first anniversary meeting in May, 1866, in an address to the members, he gave a graphic statement of the scope of the Society's usefulness and charities during the year then just ended. Mr. Swain said:

It is not permitted to the trustees to relate in detail the facts that have been gathered bearing on the extent and nature of indigence and suffering in our city, because a proper regard for the peculiar sensitiveness of the poor has imposed upon them the obligation of secrecy. But if I could divulge a tithe of the information which we have gained-if I could tell of the poverty and despair that is nurtured in our very midst of the squalid destitution prevailing here -which exists not a stone's throw from the abodes of wealth and splendor-if I could make known to the generous-minded people of this city how, through the gentle beneficence of this society, which is but the wise concentration of the individual charities of the members, anguish has been assuaged, bleeding hearts cured, widowed mothers assisted to the necessaries of life, hungry little children fed. and their delicate, naked bodies clothed against the wet and cold; if I could relate a small portion of the tales of wretchedness and woe that have been whispered into the ears of the officers-tales of disappointed ambition, buried hopes and expectations, blasted fortunes, unexpected penury and discouraged hearts; and if I could paint a picture of the army of houseless, homeless, hungry, shivering, dejected, sorrow-stricken people whose sufferings they have relieved, and some of whom have been raised from the slough of despond beyond the necessity of further aid-if I could present such pictures as these to the full gaze of a kind, indulgent public-pictures which have had their reality in the experience of this Association-I am sure that parents who remembered their children, men who have wives, women who have husbands upon whom, perhaps in this capricious age, fortune may one day frown-I am sure that such would never allow this Society to want for funds. For its scope is broad and catholic. It extends the hand of charity to all. It is no respecter of persons, color or race. Whether the applicant be Jew or Gentile, Greek or Roman, American or foreign, black or white, young or old, Protestant or Catholic-whatever the sex, whatever the sect, whatever the skin, so long as it is a being bearing the impress of humanity and made in the image of God, the case receives immediate attention according to its nature and exigency. Nor does it supersede existing charities, but it cooperates with them, and so far as is practicable, makes them the more available to those

for whom they are designed. The work which it performs is various. Some are furnished with food, some with fuel, some with clothing. Some are assisted in the payment of rents, who would otherwise with their children be turned houseless into the streets. Some are assisted to employment; some furnished with the means to reach distant relations, who will care for them; and in one instance, to illustrate the scope and breadth and comprehensiveness of this Society, a beneficiary a very excellent woman-was provided with a worthy husband, with whom she is now living happily.

To many public charities during the last ten years, Mr. Swain has been a contributor, and of several to this day an active working member, devoting time, money, and labor to alleviating the necessities of his fellowcreatures. At the Southern Relief Meeting held in April, 1867, in San Francisco, he was one of the officers, and took a prominent part by word and action in forwarding the object of the assemblage; during the war, he was an indefatigable member of the Sanitary Committee; for many years he has been Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Ladies' Protection and Relief Society; is Treasurer of the San Francisco Lying-in Asylum and Foundling Hospital, and an officer in several other charitable institutions that need not be mentioned. In the debates and proceedings of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Swain has been a constant participant for many years, and from its earliest days has been Vice President or a Trustee of the institution. The records are replete with the results of his practical suggestions on commercial subjects. His especial pride in life is his mercantile education. At the opening of the new Merchants' Exchange in July, 1867, being introduced in his official capacity of Superintendent of the Mint, he said in the course of a speech of considerable length:

But I am not overpleased, Mr. President, with the association into which you have brought me. It is not as a public officer that I desire to be known. Creditable as it may appear to enjoy the confidence of the people and the Government, I regard the vocation of the merchant in the broadest and the most comprehensive acceptation of that word as the most important of all. In the one case, the accident of position or office may give a factitious importance to the individual, to which he may not be entitled. But in the case of the merchant, his influence, his power, his importance, are not reflected, are not derived, are not uncertain. They spring out of the depths

of his own nature, and no external surroundings can raise him to a place higher than that to which his own genius may lift him. I claim to rank as a merchant; as a merchant I believe I hold a public office. I desire no prouder honor than to hold humble rank with men who have so distinguished their class. I regard honorable distinction as a merchant as infinitely more valuable than I do the highest glory that can come from any office in the gift of people or President. Whose name stands higher in the catalogue of merchants, higher in the roll of fame, higher in the annals of history, than that of George Peabody? What office in the gift of Prince, Potentate, or President, can confer such distinction as has been earned by this simple, unpretending merchant and banker? Indeed, does not his name shine out more glowingly than that of any Prince or President himself? And this, not because he has become possessed of huge wealth, but because his mind has been disciplined while accumulating that wealth, to a correct knowledge of the uses to which it should be applied, which so few understand. Such men, too, were Robert B. Minturn, Jonathan Goodhue, and Peter Cooper, now living, and a host of others.

Mr. Swain not only possesses the faculty of expressing himself readily and neatly on public occasions, but he is also peculiarly happy in the composition of addresses, while his pen has frequently been engaged in contributions to the press, both by editorials and communications, on a variety of subjects, but usually in the discussion of topics of pressing public interest. His style is compact and logical, and when occasion seems to require it, men and measures are handled with a force and directness that leaves nothing to be inferred.

In retiring from the responsibilities and cares of office, he gladly resumed his place as a private citizen, enabling him to pursue his regular mercantile business, which, however, he had never abandoned during his superintendency of the Mint. The office came to him unsought, and he left it without regret, satisfied to know that the department over which he had presided for so many years, continually enjoyed the confidence of the people and of the Government, that in the discharge of his duty he established many valuable precedents which no successor can set aside, and that during his official career not a word was whispered even among his political enemies against the upright management of an institution which sends forth two-thirds of the coinage of the conntry.

Notwithstanding that he has figured conspicuously as a man of affairs-as a public man-those who know him. intimately are aware that he does not court prominence or notoriety has no ambition to be a leader. If he has taken a leading part in public matters, it was with the consciousness that duty demanded the consecration of time and influence to useful objects, and the building up of a purer and more elevated tone of society, while his own impulses leaned to the studious seclusion of his library or the quiet of his legitimate calling. Together with a strict fidelity to every engagement, and unclouded clearness and accuracy in business, he has a cheerful, elastic, ingenuous manner that invites confidence, and is in keeping with a kindly, sympathetic nature. Still in the prime of life, Mr. Swain has been fortunate in retaining, through many years, all his valuable early friendships, while the range of his commercial connections has widely extended on both sides of the continent.