He attended public schools and spent one term at Muhlenberg College before completing a five-year apprenticeship at Baldwin Locomotive Works, a factory owned by the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company.

He worked at the company for thirteen years and rose into management while launching his own lines of business in coal and real estate.

He also worked as treasurer of the Frank Queen Publishing Company in New York and served in the 1st Regiment, Pennsylvania National Guard.

He won the November 1907 election to become Pennsylvania State Treasurer, handily defeating Democratic nominee John G. Harman of Columbia County and serving a single term from 1908 to 1911.

[1] He died of a stroke on June 25, 1922, at the Hotel Raleigh in Atlantic City, New Jersey,[3] and was interred at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.