John Tomlinson Brush was born in Clintonville, N.Y., on June 15, 1845. He died November 26, 1912, near St. Charles, Mo., on his way to California from New York, for his health. Left an orphan at the age of four years, he went to live at the home of his grandfather, in Hopkinton, where he remained until he was seventeen years old. At this age he left school and went to Boston, where he obtained a position in a clothing establishment, a business with which he was identified up to his death. He worked as a clerk in several cities in the East, and finally went to Indianapolis in 1875 to open a clothing store. The store still occupies the same building, and Mr. Brush continued at the head of the business until his death. It was in the early '80s that he first became interested in Base Ball in Indianapolis, and he made himself both wealthy and famous as a promoter.

In 1863 Mr. Brush enlisted in the First New York Artillery, and served as a member of this body until it was discharged, at the close of the civil war. He was a charter member of George H. Thomas Post, G.A.R.; a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason, and was also prominently identified with several social and commercial organizations of Indianapolis, notably the Columbia Club, Commercial Club, Board of Trade, and the Mannerchor Society. In New York Mr. Brush took up membership in the Lambs' Club and the Larchmont Club. For several years he made his headquarters at the Lambs' Club.

Mr. Brush is survived by his widow, Mrs. Elsie Lombard Brush, and two daughters, Miss Natalie Brush and Mrs. Harry N. Hempstead. His first wife, Mrs. Agnes Ewart Brush, died in 1888.

Mr. Brush's career in Base Ball, a sport to which he was devotedly attached, and for which he had the highest ideals and aims, began with the Indianapolis club of the National League.

It has been somewhat inaccurately stated that he entered Base Ball by chance. This was not, strictly speaking, the case. Prior to his first immediate association with the national game he was an ardent admirer of the sport, although not connected with it in any capacity as owner. He was what might be called, with accurate description, a Base Ball "fan" in the earlier stages of development.

An opportunity presented itself by which it was possible to procure for the city of Indianapolis a franchise in the National League. Mr. Brush was quick to perceive the advantages which this might have in an advertising way for the city with which he had cast his lot and subscribed to the stock.

Like many such adventures in the early history of the sport there came a time when the cares and the duties of the club had to be assumed by a single individual and it was then that he became actively identified as a managing owner, as the duty of caring for the club fell upon his shoulders.

From that date, until the date of his death, he was actively interested in every detail relating to Base Ball which might pertain to the advancement of the sport, and his principal effort in his future participation in the game was to see that it advanced on the lines of the strictest integrity and in such a manner that its foundation should be laid in the rock of permanent success.

Naturally this was bound to bring him into conflict with some who looked upon Base Ball as an idle pastime, in which only the present moment was to be consulted.

The earliest environment of Base Ball was not wholly of a substantial nature. It was a game, intrinsically good of itself, in which the hazards had always been against the weak. There was not that consideration of equity which would have been for its best interests, but this was not entirely the fault of the separate members of the Base Ball body, but the result of conditions, in which those whose thought was only for the moment, overshadowed the best interests of the pastime.

There was an inequity in regulations governing the sport by which the clubs in the smaller cities were forced, against the will of their owners, to be the weaker organizations, and possibly this was less due to a desire upon the more fortunate and larger clubs to maintain such a state of affairs, than to the fact that the organization generally had expanded upon lines with little regard to the future.

The first general complaint arose from the players who composed the membership of the smaller clubs. They demurred at the fact that they were asked to perform equally as well as the players of the clubs in the larger cities at smaller salaries. Not that they did not try to do their best, for this they stoutly attempted under all conditions. It was the effect of a discrimination which was the result of the imperfect regulations that existed relative to the management of the game.

This attitude of the players resulted at length in the formation of a body known as the Brotherhood. To offset not the Brotherhood, but the cause which led to its formation, Mr. Brush devised the famous classification plan. Imperfectly understood in what it intended to do for the players, it was seized upon as a reason for the revolt of the players and the organization of the Brotherhood League.

At heart it was the idea of Mr. Brush so to equalize salaries that the players of all clubs should be reimbursed in an equitable manner. As always had been the case, and probably always is likely to be, the players who received the larger salaries were in no mood to share with their weaker brothers any excess margin of pay which they thought that they had justly earned, and it was not a difficult matter for them to obtain the consent of players who might really have benefited by the plan to co-operate with them on the basis of comradeship.

The motives of Mr. Brush were thoroughly misconstrued by some, and, if grasped by others, they were disregarded, because they conflicted with their immediate temporary prosperity.

The dead Base Ball organizer had looked further ahead than his time. His plan was born under the best of intentions, but it unfortunately devolved upon the theory that players would be willing to share alike for their common good. Later in life, through another and unquestionably even better method, he succeeded in bringing forth a plan which attained the very end for which he sought in the '80s, but in the second resort, by a far more efficacious method.

The Brotherhood League came into existence and rivaled the National League. The players of the National League and the American Association deserted to join the Brotherhood League, upon a platform that promised Utopia in Base Ball. Unquestionably it was the idea of the general Brotherhood organization that the National League would abandon the fight and succumb, but the National League owners were built of sterner stuff.

They fought back resolutely and hard and while for a time they were combated by a fickle opinion, based upon sentiment, it developed within two months that the public had learned thoroughly the reasons for the organization of the new league and declined to lend it that support which had been predicted and expected.

Meanwhile, Base Ball had received a setback greater than any which had befallen the sport in an organized sense from a professional standpoint.

The Brotherhood League was a pronounced and emphatic failure. This is not the verdict of personal opinion, but a record which is indelibly impressed upon Base Ball history.

It was the theory of the Brotherhood League that it, in part, should be governed by representative players, but the players would not be governed by players. Discipline relaxed, teams did pretty much as they pleased, and the public remained away from the games. It may be added with truth that the National League games were not much better patronized, but that was due to the prevalent apathy in Base Ball affairs throughout the United States.

When the Brotherhood League was formed and withdrew so many players from the National League the latter organization undertook to strengthen itself where it could and when Brooklyn and Cincinnati applied for membership in the circuit both were admitted.

The New York National League club had lost many of its players and, upon the substitution of Cincinnati for Indianapolis in the National League circuit, procured from Mr. Brush many players of note, among them Rusie, Glasscock, Buckley, Bassett and Denny.

Relative to the withdrawal of Indianapolis from the circuit it may be said that Mr. Brush flatly refused to give up his club, asserting stoutly that he was perfectly able to continue the fight, but when he felt that the exigencies of the occasion demanded that Cincinnati become a member, he agreed to give up the franchise, providing that he be permitted to retain his membership in the National League, and transfer such of his players as New York desired to the latter city. It has been alleged that he demanded an exorbitant price from New York for the transfer of the players.

This is untrue. He asked the price of his franchise, the value of his players, and the worth of giving up a Base Ball year in a city in which there was to be no conflicting club and, as he had expressed full confidence in his ability to make a winning fight for the National League, it was agreed that his rights to be considered could not be overlooked. To retain his National League membership he accepted stock in the New York club.

Toward the close of the Base Ball season the Brotherhood League dealt what it believed to be a death blow to the National League by the purchase of the Cincinnati franchise. It proved to be a boomerang, for before the first day of January, 1891, the Brotherhood League had passed out of existence. The backers of the organization, tired of the general conduct of the sport, were only too willing to come to an acceptable agreement and retire.

A.G. Spalding, John T. Brush, Frank De Hass Robison, Charles H. Byrne and A.H. Soden were prominent members of the National League to bringing this result about. Of these, Mr. Spalding and Mr. Soden survive, but have retired from active participation in Base Ball affairs.

It was through this settlement, resulting upon the Base Ball war, that Mr. Brush's activities were turned toward Cincinnati. The National League had a franchise in that city, but no one to operate it. Mr. Brush agreed to take up the franchise and attempt to operate and rebuild that club. That, however, is a detail which relates purely to the continuance of a major league circuit.

The next most noticeable achievement in Mr. Brush's Base Ball career and, to the mind of more than one, the greatest successful undertaking in the history of the game, was a complete revolution in the distribution of financial returns. By his success in effecting this Mr. Brush brought about the very purpose which he had sought to attain by his classification plan.

But the method was better, for the instruments of this readjustment of conditions were the owners and not the players. Briefly, it was the following:

There was still war in Base Ball between the American Association and the National League. Recognizing that the best method to bring about a cessation of this war was to effect an amalgamation of the conflicting forces Mr. Brush sought, with the assistance of others, to weld both leagues into one. He was aided in this task, though indirectly, because A.G. Spalding was actively out of Base Ball, by that gentleman, Frank De Hass Robison, Christopher Von der Abe, and Francis C. Richter, editor of "Sporting Life" of Philadelphia. The writer also essayed in the task in an advisory capacity.

The amalgamation was brought about, though not without some opposition; indeed, much opposition. It was conceded at that time that a twelve-club league, which was the object sought, was cumbersome and unwieldy, but there was no other plan of possible accomplishment which suggested itself.

But the principal consideration and the result accomplished in this consolidation of leagues was that all gate receipts should be divided, share and share alike, so far as general admissions were concerned.

That was the greatest and most far-reaching achievement in the history of Base Ball. Prior to that time the principle of a fixed guarantee for each game played had given each home club a stupendous bulk of the sums paid by the public toward the maintenance of the sport. The inevitable outcome of such an arrangement was that the clubs in the larger cities completely overshadowed the clubs in the smaller cities.

The teams in the cities of less population were expected to try to place rival organizations on the field that would equal in playing strength those of New York, Boston and Chicago, but they were unable to do so unless their owners were willing to go on year after year with large deficits staring them in the face.

When Mr. Brush and his associates succeeded in placing Base Ball upon a plane of absolute fairness, so far as the proper distribution of the returns of the sport could be made between clubs, Base Ball began to prosper, and, for the first time in all its history, the owners of so-called smaller clubs felt that they could go forward and try to rival their bigger fellows with equally strong combinations.

More than that, and which to the ball player is most important of all, it "jumped" the salaries of the players in the smaller clubs until they were on equal terms with their fellow players in the larger clubs, so that Mr. Brush helped to accomplish by this plan the very aim which he had at heart when he proposed the classification plan—a just, impartial and equal reimbursement to every player in the game, so far as the finances of each club would permit—and without that bane to all players, a salary limit.

Thus, while it is always probable that some players may receive more than others, based upon their preponderance of skill, it is now a fact that two-thirds of the major league ball players of the present day owe their handsome salaries to the system which John T. Brush so earnestly urged and for which he fought against odds which would have daunted a man with less fixity of purpose.

Having brought forth this new condition in Base Ball, which was so just that its results almost immediately began to make themselves manifest, the owner of the Cincinnati club devoted his time and his energies to the endeavor to place a championship club in Cincinnati. He never was successful in that purpose, although his ill fortune was no greater than that of his predecessors.

The time came that Mr. Brush learned that the New York Base Ball Club could be purchased. He obtained the stock necessary to make him owner of the New York organization from Mr. Andrew Freedman, but before he did so another Base Ball war had begun between the National League and the American League, a disagreement starting from the simplest of causes, but which, like many another such disagreement, resulted in the most damaging of conditions to the prosperity of the pastime.

As had been the case in the prior war brought about by the organization of the Brotherhood League, Mr. Brush fought staunchly for his rights. Prominent National League players were taken by the American League clubs, and this brought retaliation.

At length the National League opened negotiations to obtain certain American League players and succeeded in doing so. Among these were the manager of the Baltimore club, John J. McGraw, who felt that he was acting perfectly within his rights in joining the New York National League club. Directly upon his acceptance of the management of the New York club Mr. Brush became its owner and the era of prosperity was inaugurated in New York, which was soon enjoyed by every club throughout the United States.

In its first year under the new management the team was not in condition to make a good fight, but the next year it was ready and since then has won four National League championships and one World's Championship.

In the spring of 1911, at the very dawn of the National League season, the grand stand of the New York National League club burned to the ground. A man less determined would have been overcome by such a blow. Nothing daunted and while the flames were not yet quenched, Mr. Brush sent for engineers to devise plans for the magnificent stadium which bears his name and which, on the Polo Grounds in New York, is one of the greatest and the most massive monument to professional Base Ball in the world.

In connection with this wonderful new edifice of steel and stone, which is one of the wonders of the new world, it is appropriate to add that two world's series have been played on the field of the Polo Grounds since it has been erected.

The rules for these world's series were formulated and adopted upon the suggestion and by the advice of Mr. Brush and since a regular world's series season has been a feature of Base Ball the national game has progressed with even greater strides than was the case in the past.

At a meeting of the National League the following resolutions were adopted:

Whereas, The death of Mr. John T. Brush, president of the New York National League Base Ball Club, comes as a sad blow to organized professional Base Ball and particularly to us, his associates in the National League.

As the dean of organized professional Base Ball, his wise counsel, his unerring judgment, his fighting qualities and withal his eminent fairness and integrity in all matters pertaining to the welfare of the national game will be surely missed.

He was a citizen of sterling worth, of high moral standards and of correct business principles, and his death is not only a grievous loss to us, but to the community at large as well. Be it, therefore,

Resolved, That the members of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, in session to-day, express their profound grief at the loss of their friend, associate and counsellor and extend to the members of his bereaved family their sincere sympathy in the great loss which they have sustained by his death. Be it further

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be spread on the records of the league.

In connection with the death of Mr. Brush, Ben Johnson, president of the American League, said: "Mr. Brush was a power in Base Ball. He will be missed as much in the American League as in the National League."

More than three hundred friends, relatives, business acquaintances, lodge brothers and Base Ball associates attended the funeral of Mr. Brush, on Friday, November 29, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Indianapolis. Fifty or more of Mr. Brush's Base Ball associates and acquaintances, principally from the East, were present.

The service was conducted by the Rev. Lewis Brown, rector of St. Paul's, and was followed by a Scottish Rite ceremony in charge of William Geake, Sr., of Fort Wayne, acting thrice potent master, and official head of the thirty-third degree in Indiana. The Scottish Rite delegation numbered more than 150. There were also in attendance fifty Knights Templars of Rapier Commandery, under the leadership of Eminent Commander E.J. Scoonover.

The Grand Army of the Republic, the Indianapolis Commercial Club and a number of local and out-of-town clubs and social organizations of which Mr. Brush was a member also were represented.

The Episcopal service was given impressively. The Rev. Dr. Brown, in reviewing the life of Mr. Brush, spoke of him as one of the remarkable men of America, who, in his youth, gave no promise of being in later life a national figure. In the course of his remarks Dr. Brown said:

"The death of John Tomlinson Brush removes from our midst one of the most remarkable men of our generation. His life was that of a typical American. He began in the most unpretentious manner and died a figure of national importance.

"He went through the Civil War so quietly that the fact was unknown to some of his most intimate friends. He was mustered out with honor and entered the business world in Indianapolis. His labors here put him at the forefront for sagacity, squareness, honorable treatment and generosity.

"His love of sport made him a patron of the national game. In a perfectly natural way, he went from manager of the local team to proprietor of the New York Giants. He was a Bismarck in plan and a Napoleon in execution. His aim was pre-eminence and he won place by the consent of all. The recent spectacular outpouring of people and colossal financial exhibit in the struggle for the pennant between New York and Boston were but the legitimate outcome of his marvelous skill.

"He was an early member of the Masonic fraternity. He took his Blue Lodge degree in his native town and to demonstrate his attachment he never removed his membership. Where he had been raised to the sublime degree of a master there he wished to keep his affiliation always.

"He became a Knight Templar in Rapier Commandery and was one of its past eminent commanders. He was a member of the Scottish Rite bodies in the Valley of Indianapolis in the early days and performed his work with a ritual perfection unsurpassed. He received the thirty-third and last degree as a merited honor for proficiency and zeal.

"The conspicuous feature of his life was its indomitable purpose."