tions have been Pennsylvanians. His great-grandfather on his mother's side, John Moore, was a member of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention of 1776 and was subsequently the first president judge of Westmoreland county and afterwards a member of the state senate. Mr. Swank received a common school and academic but not a collegiate education. When clerking in his father's store in his twentieth year, in 1852, he was asked to take charge of the local Whig newspaper, which was without an editor, which invitation was accepted and thenceforth for many years he was its editor and publisher. In 1853 its name was changed to the Cambria Tribune and afterwards to the Johnstown Tribune, under which name it is still published. Parting with the Tribune in December, 1869, Mr. Swank passed the next three years in Washington, first as clerk of the committee on manufactures of the House of Representatives and afterwards as chief clerk of the Department of Agriculture. In December, 1872, he resigned the last named position to take charge of the work of the American Iron and Steel Association, which has always had its office in Philadelphia. As its secretary and general manager he has devoted thirty-five of the best years of his life to its service.
Mr. Swank had special qualifications for the new work he had undertaken. Born in Western Pennsylvania and reared in Johnstown he was familiar with the development of the iron industry in that important field of iron production. A journalist by profession and an adherent of the old Whig party, and having also inherited a liking for public affairs, he had become familiar with the country's tariff legislation and with the policy of protection to home industry. He was personally familiar with the disastrous effects upon our iron industry of a purely revenue policy from 1846 to 1861. We had no steel industry in those years worthy of the name. His residence in Washington familiarized him with the methods of Congressional legislation and secured for him the acquaintance and friendship of many public men.
The American Iron and Steel Association, which was organized in 1864, was from the first intended to be a bureau of general information for the American iron trade and to be a central agency for the promotion of the tariff interests of the trade. As a bureau of general information Mr. Swank early decided that its statistical reports should appear annually and in uniform style, and that a directory to the iron trade, which
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