Glass was born on June 7, 1858, in Centreville, Bibb County, Alabama, the only son of Benjamin F. Glass, planter and business man, by his second wife, Caroline (Potts) Trucks Glass. He was of Scottish ancestry, his great-grandfather having emigrated from Scotland to Charleston, South Carolina, about the close of the American Revolution.
After preparatory schooling under private tutors, Glass entered the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) in 1873, when only fifteen. Although he passed examinations for entrance to the sophomore class, he was at first refused admission because of his extreme youth but was finally allowed to enter the freshman class. Princeton awarded him the degree of A. B. in 1877.
Returning home, Glass founded the weekly Bibb Blade, which he sold after a year to acquire the Selma Daily Times. There his editorial vigor attracted the attention of Maj. William Wallace Screws, editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, who took him in as a partner, with a half interest, in 1886. For the next thirty years Glass was general manager of the Advertiser, then the leading paper in Alabama, and a frequent contributor of editorials. Screws and Glass made a notable team. Both were men of exceptional force and ability, of strong convictions and courage. They made the Advertiser a militant paper and gave it a place of political dominance in the state. The Advertiser frequently engaged in sharp political battles. It fought the Populists when they were strong in Alabama. In 1896 it bolted Bryan, an act of courage in the circumstances. It opposed prohibition steadily and vigorously. In the 1920s it made a fight on the Ku Klux Klan for which it won distinction. In state political campaigns it was always in the thick of the controversy. In 1910 Glass became editor, vice-president, and part owner, with Victor H. Hanson, of the Birmingham News, which, in a rapidly growing industrial city, was to become the largest daily in Alabama. As editor of the News for ten years, he enlarged his reputation as a forceful writer. His national eminence was attested by his inclusion in an article entitled "Seven Super-Pens" (Everybody's Magazine, March 1916), in which he was ranked as one of America's leading editors. After becoming editor of the Birmingham News he continued also as general manager of the Montgomery Advertiser until 1915, when he sold his interest in the latter. In 1920 he sold his interest in the News and retired as editor. From 1923 to 1925 he was part owner and editorial director of the St. Louis Star. In 1927 he returned to Montgomery and his old love, the Advertiser, buying a majority interest in the paper and becoming its publisher, to round out his years where he had served longest and, probably, best. Always active in civic affairs and public life, Glass won many honors. From the 1890s on, he was a delegate to Democratic National Conventions. When he and the Advertiser bolted Bryan in 1896, he was a delegate to the convention which nominated Palmer and Buckner. In 1912 he took a leading part in the nomination of Wilson. He barely missed being a United States senator from Alabama. In 1913 Gov. Emmet O'Neal appointed him to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Joseph F. Johnston, but the Senate, by the margin of a single vote, 32 to 31, declined to seat him, on a construction of the Seventeenth Amendment denying the governor the right of appointment under existing state statutes. In 1933 he was appointed a member of the United States Board of Mediation, charged with the settlement of railroad labor disputes, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom he and the Advertiser had warmly supported for the Democratic nomination in 1932. After a short illness he died in Birmingham at the age of seventy-five and was buried in Montgomery.
A stanch Presbyterian, Glass was one of the founders of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Birmingham.
President of the American Newspaper Publishers Association (1918-1920), president of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, vice-president for America of the World's Press Congress
Glass enjoyed conversation, liked humor and anecdotes, and was a gifted raconteur.
Glass was married to Mattie Byrd Purnell, of Solitude, Texas, on April 2, 1884. They had six children.
