as chief clerk at the White Rock Indian Reservation in Utah during the administration of Democratic President Grover Cleveland. John Pritchett Swanson operated the Swanson Supply Company, a wholesale grocery and farmers supply business, and the family also had interests in the South Atlantic Lumber Company and Clement Lumber Company in Greensboro, North Carolina. Merchant to teacher to lawyer Swanson studied under Celestia Parrish then worked for his father in the family business, and taught as a schoolteacher himself for two years (for $30/month when he was 15 and 16 years old) when the bright tobacco market collapsed in 1876. When Virginia's fiscal crisis meant teachers were not paid, and having earned enough to fund his further studies, Swanson entered the new state agricultural college in Blacksburg, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (or Virginia Tech). Another family financial crisis led him and his brother to work in Danville as clerks in John Carter's grocery. Four Danville Methodists lent Swanson funds to attend Randolph Macon College in Ashland. He graduated in 1885 after winning oratorical prizes and editing the college newspaper as well as the Hanover and Caroline News. He then went to Charlottesville and received a law degree from the University of Virginia. After admission to the Virginia Bar, Swanson set up a legal practice in Chatham, the Pittsylvania county seat. Congressman and Virginia politician The young orator Claude Swanson had drawn the attention of Democratic party politicians in Richmond when he was studying in Ashland just up the railroad line. He won his first public office in 1892, a seat in the U.S. Congress representing Virginia's 5th congressional district. Swanson would serve seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1893 until 1906. The district extended from Pittsylvania and Franklin counties into the Republican-leaning mountain counties of Floyd, Carroll and Grayson. Swanson survived two close election contests. During the 1893 depression, Swanson became Virginia's most outspoken congressman endorsing William Jennings Bryan's inflationary fiscal reforms, i.e. allowing both silver and gold as legal tender. By 1896, Swanson had allied himself with Henry D. Flood, James Hay, Francis Lassiter and Thomas Staples Martin (whom he helped elect to the Senate in 1893). Although his family's mercantile background had shown Swanson the importance of credit, his views (and those of his allies) outraged the conservative creditor class. Railroad developer Joseph F. Bryan, who owned the Richmond Times analogized Swanson to