“Man + Opportunity = Success”: D. Clem Deaver Sells Himself

In the context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century West, David Clement Deaver (1864–1914) served as both advocate and example of the maxim “Man + Opportunity = Success.”¹ He used that phrase when he advertised for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (cb&q) Railroad; articulated that belief in his Populist optimism that farmers and laborers could remake their lives; and demonstrated his own perseverance as he made multiple opportunities for himself. An Omaha, Nebraska, resident most of his short life, Deaver sought personal employment and political influence as a practical farmer, business secretary, administrator, newspaperman, land agent, and finally immigration promoter for the cb&q Railroad. Initially he also embraced labor union and Populist politics. Historians have characterized the West as a region of consistent historical revision as dreams and perceptions change.² A broad theorem writ specifically in an individual life, D. Clem Deaver responded to changing opportunities and dreams. At the same time a consistent populist thread wove through Deaver’s life: applied advocacy to better the lives of peer farmers and laborers.

Only a Farm Boy

Just before he died, Deaver and a friend published a middle school textbook: Sixty Lessons in Agriculture.³ Deaver signed himself “Practical Farmer,” an appellation that harkened back to his family and early life. Born August 28, 1864, near Deaverton, Morgan County, Ohio (a rural settlement founded in 1808 by his Welsh immigrant and Revolutionary War veteran grandfather, Levi DeVere), David Clement Deaver grew up a “farm boy.”⁴ Opportunity attracted Deaver’s father, Reuben, farther west, first to Carroll County, Missouri, in 1867, and a decade later to Thayer County in southeast Nebraska, along the Little Blue River near what became the community of Gil-ead.⁵ Young David Deaver worked both family land and as a hired hand for ten to twenty dollars per month as far away as Illinois.⁶ He played fiddle well enough to perform publically and described himself as a nondrinker, in good health, who enjoyed hard work.⁷ While a young man, he encountered former Nebraska territorial governor and Republican senator Alvin Saunders, and took to heart the politician’s admonition to purchase a dictionary and go to school.⁸ At twenty-two Deaver used education to reframe his future as urban, not rural—in Omaha, a burgeoning metropolis of 100,000-plus souls along the Missouri River’s eastern Nebraska edge. He enrolled in a two-year clerical program at George Rath-burn’s Omaha Business College, graduating in June 1888 at the top of his class.⁹ Deaver’s public and private education provided mastery of language beyond words in a dictionary. He wrote well, spoke clearly and comfortably in public, and came across as an amiable, well-informed individual—all qualities that served him fully in adult life.

Coincident with Deaver’s graduation, the medical partnership of Dr. Edward W. Lee and Dr. Michael A. Reberts, with offices in Omaha’s Granite Block, advertised for a clerk, akin today to office manager, administrative assistant, and bookkeeper. Deaver applied; they hired him on July 18, 1888.¹⁰ Perhaps fortuitously for Deaver’s later career, Lee not only had his private practice but also served as the official Omaha area physician for three railroads, among them the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy.¹¹ For the next nine years, Deaver appeared consistently as Lee and Reberts’s clerk and performed rewarding work he envisioned as a career.¹² Employed and established, the young man made two personal decisions; he changed his public name from David C. to D. Clem Deaver, and on September 25, 1888, the twenty-four-year-old clerk married nineteen-year-old Theresa McSherry in a Catholic service. They moved into a rented apartment at 106 South Fourteenth Street.¹³

Clem Deaver also moved into public life. Fraternally, he joined the Elks Club and Camp 120, Woodmen of the World.¹⁴ Professionally, he became a member of both the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor as...