1905 History of Crawford County Kansas

Hon. P. P. Campbell, the brother of John J. Campbell, and present congressman from the third Kansas district, is a lawyer and professional man of whom the state has greatest reason to be proud. He was born in Nova Scotia in 1862, and grew up on his father's claim in Neosho county, working hard at farm duties during his youth. He received a district school education, and afterward entered Baker University, where he helped pay his expenses by the vigorous use of a bucksaw. Such energy, combined with his native talent, was a certificate in advance for good results, and after hard work he graduated six years later. He studied law while on the farm and in the office of Coggswell and Kinney, at Osage Mission, Kansas, and was admitted to the bar at Fredonia, Wilson county, Kansas, in 1889.

He began practice at Pittsburg immediately after his admission, and his ability and enterprising resourcefulness soon won him a place among the leading members of the bar in Crawford county. He made his first political speech at Chanute, Kansas, in 1884, and ever since that time has been in great demand as a campaign orator, and has delivered effective speeches in sixty-five different counties of Kansas. One of his notable addresses was delivered before the Marquette Club at Chicago, at the Lincoln Day banquet, February 12, 1902, and was entitled "Responsive Powers of the Republic."

On June 12, 1902, the Republican convention of the third Kansas district, in session at Winfield, Kansas, nominated him for Congress, with the unanimous endorsement of his county, and in the following November he was elected by an overwhelming majority, and is now one of the intelligent representatives of his state in the lower house of the national legislature.