East High School - Redjacket Yearbook (Pawtucket, RI)

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Lester Knox Little OF all the many graduates of Pawtucket High School, none has had a more interesting career than Lester Knox Little. Commissioner of Customs at the Port of Canton. China. Mr. Little graduated from Pawtucket High School in 1910, as president of his class, and entered Dartmouth College in the fall of that year. While at Dartmouth he received his Phi Beta Kappa key. and was made a member of Psi Epsilon fraternity, the Casque and Gauntlet, and Paleopitus. the senior governing body. He was elected President of the Dartmouth Christian Association, and won his “D” on the varsity track team. After graduating with an A. B. degree in 1914, Mr. Little sailed for Shanghai to enter the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, which was then offering positions to promising young Americans. Mr. Little has since served the Republic of China continuously for twenty-four years, working in many different branches of the Service. The Chinese customs is a proud old service, extremely important to Chinese finance, as there is no system of national taxation in the Republic. Besides the actual collection of customs, the service supervises light houses and all harbor activities. thus having almost absolute control over China’s commerce. During his first leave of absence from China Mr. Little spent several months in advanced collegiate study and was awarded his Master of Arts degree by Brown University in 1921. Commissioner Little has been stationed at various times in Pekin. Amoy, Tien-Tsin, and Shanghai. His duties have required a complete mastery of Mandarin, the official Chinese language, as well as several of the hundreds of native dialects. During the Japanese incident of 1932. Mr. Little was stationed at Shanghai as personal secretary to the Inspector General of Customs. After this affair he was sent to Geneva as the official advisor to the Chinese delegation to the League of Nations Conference. At the present time he is serving as Commissioner of Customs at the Port of Canton. Here he is in charge of several hundred Chinese and foreign workers, administering the customs at this large river port. Canton, one hundred miles up the Pearl River from British Hong-Kong, is now doubly important because it is the only large Chinese port that is not under Japanese domination. In his latest letters home the Commissioner praises the loyalty of his native staff, none of whom has deserted his desk despite the constant physical danger and tremendous mental strain of war-time work. The thought uppermost in their minds is Commissioner Little's often repeated motto. The integrity of the Customs must be preserved”. Modest and retiring, Mr. Little has never claimed any of the honors and publicity that many a lesser man would consider his due He has worked faithfully and quietly for the Chinese government, keeping cool and level-headed in the midst of the mass hysteria of the frequent air-raids. Surely Mr. Little is a worthy example for the youth of America to follow. The class of 1938 is proud to add the name of Lester Knox Little to Pawtucket High School's Roll of Honor. Jean Hendricks [ 13 ]

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Tk omas Gardiner c orcoran Thomas gardiner corcoran. eminent member of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Brain Trust”, was born in Pawtucket on December 29, 1900. At the age of six Tom entered Grove Street Grammar School, where Nelson Eddy too began his education. He was graduated from here in 1914 and entered Pawtucket High School in the fall of the same year. From here, in the early summer of 1918, Tom was graduated at the head of his class. Tom’s father had begun life by working with his hands, and insisted that his son do likewise. From the age of twelve Tom was a wage-earner. He sold papers, worked in stores, and in the summer on a farm. After graduation from Pawtucket High School he proceeded to put himself through Brown University by the three means he had discovered of making money. His skill as a piano player assured him of paid employment in dance orchestras. Then he set about capturing most of the prizes in sight. It is estimated that he earned an average of fifty dollars a month in prize money throughout his college career at Brown. In his senior year he won the hundred dollar prize offered to the student who became captain of the Debating Team. Incidentally this year he was also president of Brown's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. His third way of making money was to act as guide during the summer vacation for the Appalachian Mountain Club at Mount Washington, New Hampshire. Tom was graduated from Brown University in 1922 with the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts. He had specialized, prophetically, in English composition. From Brown he went to Harvard Law School, where he once more led his class. Tom wished to be a professor of law, and won a fellowship in research under the great Felix Frankfurter. He was graduated from Harvard Law School in 1925 as a Bachelor of Law, and remained there one more year to earn the degree of Doctor of Social Jurisprudence, being one of the few holders of this degree in the state of Rhode Island. After graduation he went to Washington as secretary to the late Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. As is well known, it was the amiable practice of that revered jurist to choose a new secretary each year from the current crop of law graduates. This twelve-month period was the most beneficial year Lorn ever had. At the end of his secretaryship he returned to INew York, where a place had been reserved tor him in the corporation law firm of Cotton and Franklin. Tom was the active counsel in charge of brokerage clients and was the firm s representative in the Stock Exchange. In the early part ol 1 32 he was about to become general couns tor an important industrial corporation when he was dratted by President Herbert Hoover to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Except for a few months in the .Treasury Department, Tom served on this board. The rest is history. Corcoran rose from one government position to another, until in 1937 he was recognized as the personal counsel to President Roosevelt. It has been hinted that genial Tommie has written many of the President's speeches, and has been the corrector of many others. His home at 1610 K Street in Washington, which he shares with Ben Cohen, another member of the Kitchen Cabinet, has often been referred to as The Little White House. It was here that White House Tommie” drew up the Securities Act of 1934, and the Public Utility Holding Act of 1935. Tommie prefers to consider himself, in the sense of the British Civil Service, as a professional government servant, to whom a task is now and then assigned, which he dispatches to the best of his zeal and capacity. Herbert Katz [ 15 1