Hon. Wellington R. Burt

Brief Sketch of a Busy and Successful Life. 

OUR NOMINEE FOR REGENT. 

A Broad-Minded and Successful Business Man, Whose Experience and Ability Will be of Great Value to the University. 

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In the nomination of Hon. Wellington R. Burt, of Saginaw, for regent of the University. the Democratic State Convention selected one of Michigan's foremost men. For many years Mr. Burt has been identified with the growth and progress of our state, and the rare business ability which has made him so successful in his own affairs is needed by the people of this state in the management of their great University. 

Wellington R. Burt was born in the state of New York in 1831, and came to Michigan eight years later, his parents locating in Jackson county. He received a common school education, and attended college at Albion and Adrian. He spent three years in travel through Central and South America and Australia, broadening his mind by contact with the world, and returning from his travels settled in Saginaw, which has ever since been his home, and the growth of which is largely the result of his energy and enterprise. 

He has always been a very successful business man, interested in several of the large enterprises of the Saginaw Valley. In early days he was engaged! in the lumber and salt business, retiring from those interests to turn his attention to manufacturing and banking. Later he became interested in the O. S. & M. R. R., and of which he [is] one of the promoters, and of which he has been for many years a director. When the Toledo & Ann Arbor road went into bankruptcy he was made receiver and for a number of years has been president of the road. 

Mr. Burt was mayor of the city of Saginaw, and in 1888 was nominated for governor on the Democratic ticket against Cyrus G. Luce. He made a wonderful campaign, and the taxpayers of Michigan would have saved millions of dollars had they listened to the warning words of Mr. Burt in that campaign, concerning the extravagance and corruption which were then, and have ever since been, piling up burdens upon the shoulders of the taxpayers. Mr. Burt represented his senatorial district in the state senate in the legislature of 1894, and the personal sacrifice which he made in accepting the office redounded to the profit of the state. In 1900 Mr. Burt accepted the nomination for congress in his district, and made a phenomenal run against overwhelming odds. 

Mr. Burt's strong personality, his genial manner. and dignified bearing, added to the qualifications with which his business and political training have endowed him, eminently fit him for the important position for which he has been nominated, and it will be money in the pockets of the people of Michigan if they will improve the opportunity to secure in the conduct of their great university the unexcelled business capacity which Mr. Burt will bring to the management of that institution.