Memorial and biographical record of Iowa, Part 3

Author:
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1360

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Institute, where he graduated May 5, 1879- receiving the degree of B. D. Previous to de- ciding upon his life work, Mr. Howe spent one year in the study of law at Muscatine. In 1880 he was admitted to the Des Moines Conference, and his first appointment was at Altoona, where he served as pastor one year. Afterward he filled appointments successively at Carlisle, two years; Farmer City, one year; Hamburg, three years; Sidney, three years; Shelby, two years; and since 1892 has served as pastor of his present charge at Guthrie Center.

Mr. Howe is a man of. strong individuality and is thoroughly in earnest in his work. As a temperance worker and an advocate of all moral reforms he is as radically in earnest as he is in the spread of the gospel, and his labors at the various stations where he has been located have been attended with success. During his pastorate here at Guthrie Center he has had over two hundred accessions to the church. The Methodists at this place erected their house of worship in 1891, at a cost of about $12,000, and they own a parsonage which is valued at $1, 500.

Of Mr. Howe's family history we would also make mention in this connection. His parents were the Rev. Jared and Mary Ann (Young) Howe. His father was a native of Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, born in the year 1812. At about the age of thirty-five years he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, joining the Erie Conference, and to the work of the ministry he devoted the rest of his active life. After his removal to Iowa lie retired, sustaining a supernumerary relation to the conference. He died at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, in December, 1871. His wife survived him until December, 1883. The Howes are of Scotch origin, have had among their ranks many professional men, and have been noted for longevity. The Young family, of which Mrs. Howe was a member, are de- scended from the Irish, and they are an excep- tionally long-lived family, averaging seventy years. Rev. Jared Howe and his wife had five sons and three daughters, all of whom are liv- £

Vang Truly yours W, Balliken

RECORD OF IOWA.

ing, namely: Morrison Y., a prominent edu- cator, having been principal of the First ward school in Muscatine, for nineteen consecutive years; John E., one of the leading architects of Muscatine; Jennie, a resident of that place; Simeon K., an attorney of Kansas City, Mis- souri; Horatio S., an architect and builder; William E., whose name appears at the head of this review; Luella H., wife of John S. Lyon, a contractor and builder, now in Texas; and Leona E., assistant principal of the Muscatine high school. Two of the sons, Simeon K. and Horatio S., were Union soldiers in the Civil war.

The Rev. William E. Howe was married in Muscatine, Iowa, September 16, 1880, to Miss Adda Boydston, a native of that place and a daughter of James and Mary Boydston. Mr. and Mrs. Howe have had four children, -Mary Myrtle, Edwin Raymond, Mabel Estelle and Robert Edmund. All are living except Ed- win R.

ON. WILLIAM B. ALLISON, Du- buque. - The American public, and more especially that portion of it which keeps in touch with the living issues and affairs of the day, are more or less familiar with the career of Iowa's senior United States Senator. They know that he is accounted one of the foremost and most influ- ential members of the Senate, and that as a financier he is recognized both by members of his own and of the Democratic party as one of the ablest in the land; whose opinions carry weight, and whose acts are the outcome of careful and deliberate thought and study. They are familiar with his success and reputa- tion, yet many lack the detailed knowledge of the causes that have contributed thereto.

William Boyd Allison was born on a farm in Perry township, Wayne county, Ohio, on the second day of March, 1829. His parents, John and Margaret (Williams) Allison, the former of whom was born in Center county, Pennsylvania, in 1798, removed to Ohio in

1823, and engaged in farming on a tract of land containing eighty acres. Here, six years later, in his parents' log house, the subject of this sketch was born. Brought up to the hardy occupation of farmer, his early life was quiet and uneventful. During the summer months he assisted his father on the farm, and in the winter seasons walked nearly two miles to what was known as an old "field school- house," where he acquired an excellent ele- mentary education, and laid the foundation of his future success.

When sixteen years of age he was sent to Professor Parrot's school at Wooster, Ohio, where he remained for a year and then taught a neighborhood school for the winter. The next spring he entered Allegheny College at Meadville, where he remained until the close of the college term, and the following year he spent at the Western Reserve College, located at Hudson, Ohio. He then returned to Woos- ter and began the study of law in the office of Hemphill & Turner. After two years of close and assiduous application to his studies he was in 1852 admitted to the bar, and at once entered upon the practice of his profession at Ashland, Ohio. An old friend of his father, Mr. Jennings, was made clerk of the new county of Ashland, and the young man had received from him an appointment to the Deputy Clerkship,-a position he occupied for a year, thus acquiring an excellent knowledge of conveyancing and of the different forms of legal instruments then used.

After having practiced his profession alone for a year he formed a partnership with J. W. Smith, that continued for two years, at the expiration of which time he entered into part- nership with B. W. Kellogg. In these first years of his practice, clients were not numerous, and he occupied his leisure hours in storing his mind on a variety of questions on finance, pol- itics and history, thus equipping himself for future service in the nation's councils. His father, an old-line Whig, had voted for Henry Clay in 1824, and was a friend and supporter of John Sloan, who afterward became Treas-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

urer of the United States under President Taylor. From him and from the Whig news- papers and pamphlets, taken by his father, he received his political impressions, and partici- pated in the Scott campaign of 1852, when John Sherman came to Ashland to make a ratification speech. He began to be sent as a delegate to State conventions, being a mem- ber of the one that nominated Salınon P. Chase for governor in 1855, and was an ar- dent supporter of General Fremont in 1856.

Mr. Allison saw that if he remained at Ash- land there was but little prospect of his realiz- ing more than a competency, and having mar- ried a daughter of Daniel Carter, in 1854, he deterinined that he would go West. He re- mained in Chicago for a week without finding any opportunities opening. The Rock Island road had just been completed and he made a trip to Davenport, returned to Chicago and then went to Dubuque. Finding an opening in that city he returned to Ohio for his wife, and finally located there, in April, 1857. Iowa had been politically controlled by the Demo- crats previous to 1854, when James W. Grimes was elected governor on the anti-Nebraska ticket, and an organization was formed to assist in the support of free territory, free speech, and free labor, which culminated in the forma- tion of the Republican party. The young lawyer became an active supporter of this party, but he did not in any way neglect his profes- sion, in the practice of which he was very suc- cessful, -as junior member of the firm of Samuels, Cooley & Allison,-the pecuniary embarrassments that followed the panic of 1857 causing a great deal of litigation.

In 1859 Mr. Allison was a delegate from Dubuque county to the Iowa Republican State convention that nominated Samuel J. Kirk- wood for governor, and in 1860 was a dele- gate to, and an assistant secretary of, the Re- publican national convention at Chicago, which nominated Lincoln for the presidency.

When Fort Sumter was attacked in April, 1861, and President Lincoln issued his first call for men to suppress the rebellion, Gov-

ernor Kirkwood was requested to furnish Iowa's quota of troops. At his urgent request, Mr. Allison became a member of his staff, and in that capacity superintended the enlistment of the regiments of his section of the State, having unlimited authority to make such con- tracts as were necessary for recruiting and sub- sisting the regiments until they were sent to the front. This service was performed with fidelity, and the regiments were provided and sent into the field. The next year, 1862, two more regiments were raised in northern Iowa under the direction and supervision of Mr. Alli- son on behalf of the State.

Prior to the census of 1860, Iowa had but two members of the House of Representatives, but under the census of that year she became entitled to six. Mr. Allison was persuaded to become a candidate from his district, by a con- vention in August, 1862. There were four candidates, the delegates from Dubuque county presenting the name of Mr. Allison, and he was nominated on the second ballot.

In the summer of 1862 Mr. Allison was the first to suggest to Governor Kirkwood the ad- visability of calling a special session of the Leg- islature for the purpose of enacting a law that would allow the soldiers in the field to vote, and a call for the special session was issued at once. At the fall election Mr. Allison received 12, 112 votes, as against 8,452 cast for his Democratic opponent, D. A. Mahoney, the leader of the anti-war party in the State.

The Thirty-eighth or "war" Congress, as it was called, met on the 7th day of December, 1863, and among the new members who en- tered upon their Congressional careers with Mr. Allison were James A. Garfield and James G. Blaine. The three soon became friends, and during the eighteen years they served to- gether in the House and Senate their friend- ship was never marred. Mr. Allison was placed on the committee on public lands and on roads and canals. His first Congressional action was the introduction of a bill instructing the last named committee to inquire into the ex- pediency and necessity of improving the upper

RECORD OF IOWA.

rapids of the Mississippi river by a canal, com- inencing at Davenport. Mr. Holman, of Indi- ana, since known as the "Great Objector," moved to lay the resolution on the table, but the House voted him down and Mr. Allison's resolution was agreed to. When certain amendments to the Pacific Railroad bill were under consideration, Mr. Allison obtained unanimous consent to enable him to offer the. following proviso: "Provided, That no bonds shall be issued, or land certified by the United States; to any person or company for the con- struction of any part of the main trunk line of said railroad west of the one hundredth merid- ian of longitude and east of the Rocky moun- tains until said road shall be completed from or near Omaha on the Missouri river to the said one hundredth meridian of longitude." The other amendments proposed were lost, but that of Mr. Allison was agreed to.

Mr. Allison's first speech in the House of Representatives of any length was made on the 4th day of May, 1864, in favor of a bill secur- ing to persons in the military and naval service homesteads on confiscated or forfeited estates in insurrectionary districts.

Upon the expiration of Mr. Allison's term as member of that Congress, he was by his party elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress in 1864, receiving 16, 130 votes, against 10,578 votes for the Democratic candidate. When the Thirty-ninth Congress met, in 1865, Mr. Allison was honored as a comparatively young member of the House by being placed on the committee on ways and means, the most im- portant of the House committees, of which Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, now a senator, was chairman. He was also appointed on the committee on expenditures in the Interior De- partment, but he continued to take an interest in roads and canals.

In March, 1866, Mr. Allison entered the field of financial debate, in which he has since been such a conspicuous figure. The question under discussion was a new loan bill, and those who opposed its passage had presented argu- ments in favor of or against the particular

policy that should be furnished by the secre- tary of the treasury under its administration.

It was during the session of the Fortieth Congress that the House of Representatives agreed to the articles of impeachment of Presi- dent Johnson, and proceedings were at once instituted. While the trial was progressing no business of any importance was transacted in the House, and the sub-committee of its com- mittee on ways and means, consisting of Messrs. Schenck, Hooper and Allison, sat daily in a room in the Treasury Department, placed at their disposal by Secretary McCul- lough. One result of their deliberations was a new tax bill, drafted by the sub-committee, and adopted by the full committee on ways and means, which was a consolidation of twenty- five different acts of Congress, spreading through the statute book from August, 1861, to the time it was prepared. It was the long- est bill ever submitted to Congress. With this old legislation codified, compressed and abridged, were many new provisions that seemed necessary for effecting the proposed legislation, prominent among which were the provisions for collecting the duties on whisky, beer and tobacco by "stamps " thus inaugu- rated. The law thus drafted by the sub com- mittee is substantially the present law for the collection of taxes on distilled liquor, beer and tobacco, though modified fron time to time to meet changed conditions.

In the Forty-first Congress Mr. Allison con- tinued a member of the ways and means com- mittee. Though an eminent friend of protec- tion to American industries, he did not fully agree with his Republican associates on the committee respecting the details of the tariff bill proposed in 1870, and criticised their de- tails in the committee room and on the floor of the House. The criticisms made by Mr. Allison and other Republicans met the approval of the House and resulted in a modification of the bill in such a way as to secure the support of all Republicans upon its final passage. Mr. Allison contended that the conditions were such as to justify the reduction of duties in

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

many cases rather than an increase. This view was held by the next House, when under the leadership of Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, a general reduction of ten per cent was inade on the then existing rates.

Mr. Allison declined a re-nomination for the Forty-second Congress. On the death of Senator Grimes, he was brought forward by his friends as a candidate to succeed him for the long term, but was defeated by George G. Wright, of Des Moines, Iowa. In 1872, his friends again brought him forward, when he defeated James Harlan, of Mount Pleasant, one of the ablest men in the State, who had previously represented Iowa in the Senate and had been a member of President Lincoln's cab- inet as Secretary of the Interior. On the 4th day of March, 1873, he took his seat, and was sworn in as a member of the Senate, and ap- pointed a member of the committee on appro- priations and of the committee on Indian affairs, and later in the session was appointed on the committee on pensions, and for the in- vestigation of the government of the District of Columbia. Of the last named committee he was the chairman, and made the report which changed the government of the District of Columbia, by providing for its government through a commission, which form of govern- ment was made prominent in 1878, and re- mains to-day the government of the district. The refunding of the public indebtedness at a low rate of interest; a proposed amendment to the bankruptcy act; the appropriation for the Indians; the bridging of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers by railroads; and the entangled affairs of the District of Columbia were among the matters which received Mr. Allison's special attention during the protracted session of 1873-4.

In the spring of 1874, Mr. Allison was ap- pointed a member of the board of visitors to attend the annual examinations at the United States Military Academy, and met with it at West Point.

The great question before the last session of the Forty-third Congress was that of the

resumption of specie payments, the Repub- licans still having a majority of both houses. A committee of eleven senators, one of whom was Mr. Allison, was appointed to propose a plan which would receive the support of every shade of the Republican party. After a great many sessions and much deliberation, a re- sumption bill was agreed to, which passed both houses of Congress and became a law on Jan- uary 14, 1875.

Mr. Allison entered heartily into the polit- ical campaign of 1876, but after making sev- eral speeches he was obliged to leave for the Black Hills to act there as chairman of the commission appointed by the President to treat for the cession of the Sioux reservation to the Government. After performing this duty, he returned home and took an active part in the campaign. In March, 1877, Mr. Allison be- came a member of the finance committee of the Senate, upon the retirement of General Logan from the Senate, and has since con- tinued as such, and has been prominently con- nected with all financial matters discussed by the Senate. Shortly afterward, the question of paying United States bonds in coin came before the Senate, and was debated at great length. Mr. Allison took an active and prom- inent part in the discussion of the question and in the course of his remarks said:

I admit it is a delicate and difficult ques- tion, and should be changed or touched only after full debate and upon the strongest con- sideration of public necessity. For myself I would not, by any act of this Congress, so regulate the value of money as that in the country a dollar in silver would be less than a dollar in gold as an instrument of exchange or measure of value. * Now, with refer- ence to the question of the obligation of the Government to pay the present indebtedness, either in gold or silver, I think that depends not so much upon what may be the currency of to-day as what will be the money of the country when these obligations are payable. But in the meantime we are compelled to pay semi-annually the interest upon these obliga- tions, and the money in which this interest is paid should be the money contemplated by the contract under which the bonds were issued.

RECORD OF IOWA.

In the meantime the House of Representa- tives passed a bill, known as the Bland bill, which contemplated the immediate, unre- stricted, and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one without cost to the owner of silver bullion. When the bill reached the Senate it was referred to the committee on finance, where it received the support of four members and was opposed by a like number. This equal division left the casting vote with Mr. Allison, who had proposed amendments looking to the use of both gold and silver and the utilization of both as the metallic money of the country, not only then, but in the future, by limitations in the beginning, to be followed at an early day by the unrestricted coinage of both metals, and a full legal tender of both, by means of an international agreement.

The advocates of the single standard of silver, in the Senate committee on finance, adopted Mr. Allison's amendment in preference to the free coinage established by the House bill under consideration; and the advocates of silver coinage accepted them as preferable to no legislation on the subject. Mr. Allison's amendments were thus adopted by the com- mittee on finance, and he as their author re- ported the bill, as amended, to the Senate. Mr. Allison supported these amendments in an exhaustive argument replete with informa- tion upon the' metallic and coinage questions, and showing by their adoption the time would come when silver and gold would circulate side by side upon a common ratio, and each would be exchangeable for the other, through an in- ternational agreement, or by the concurrent action of leading conimercial nations. The bill was amended, passed the Senate by a vote of 48 yeas against 24 nays, seven senators being absent. The House concurred in the amendment by a vote of 196 yeas against 71 nays, twenty representatives not voting.

In 1881 Mr. Allison became chairman of the committee on appropriations, and con- tinued as such until March, 1893, when, the political control of the Senate being changed, he was succeeded by Senator Cockrell, of Mis-

souri. Mr. Allison is still a member of the committee and stands at the head of the Re- publican members.

When General Garfield was inaug' rated in 1881 as President, he invited Mr. ^ .son to enter his cabinet as Secretary of the reasury. Personal reasons, however, compelled the dec- lination of the position thus tendered. In the summer of the same year, seeing that the national bank circulation would gradually di- minish in value with the payment of the na- tional debt, he studied the question carefully and embodied the result of his investigations in an article entitled "The Currency of the Future," which appeared early in 1882, in the North American Review. In this article at- tention was called to three things, namely: First, that our present national bank currency is adapted to our wants. Secondly, that the system must be materially modified, or it will die presently by the payment of the national debt. Thirdly, that its circulation will gradu- ally diminish and that we will have a substi- tute for it.

In June, 1882, a bill reached the Senate from the House to enable national banking institutions to extend their corporate existence. This was referred to the Senate committee on finance, and in due time was reported from that committee by Mr. Allison, with several important amendments. One provided that national banks might deposit lawful money as security for their circulating notes, and another for the issue of gold and silver certificates, which should be a legal tender. This last amendment led to a prolonged discussion on the silver question, in which Mr. Allison took a prominent part.

The question of civil-service reform came before the Senate early in the second session of the Forty-seventh Congress. Mr. Allison expressed his regret that at an early stage of the debate an attempt was made to give a political character to the measure. He was willing to give the benefit of his best ability to the perfection of the bill, but he should dis- courage political discussion in connection with

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

it. In due time he offered a substitute for the first section of the bill, making the proposed commission entirely separate and distinct from each and every one of the executive depart- ments and to have no relation to any of these departments. This amendment was adopted and the civil-service commission, as suggested by Mr. Allison, was in due time organized.

In the Forty-ninth Congress, when the ed- ucational bill was under discussion, Mr. Allison offered an amendment providing that in each State in which there shall be separate schools for white and colored children the money paid in such State shall be apportioned in the pro- portion that the illiteracy of the white and colored people, aforesaid, bear to each other as shown by the census. When the river and harbor bill came up in the Senate Mr. Allison vigorously supported the amendments pro- viding for the enlargement of the Hennepin canal.

In the winter of 1886 Mr. Allison was made chairman of a sub committee of the finance committee to examine into the methods of the administration of the customs laws. For two years this investigation was carried on, receiv- ing the cordial co-operation of Secretary of the Treasury Manning, and early in 1888 a bill was reported to the Senate by Mr. Allison, making a complete revision of these laws and providing a new method and new machinery for the appraisement and classification of im- portant merchandise. This bill, with but slight modifications, passed the Senate at the first session in 1888, but was not acted upon by the House, which at this time had a Democratic majority. At the short session in 1889, it was again passed as a portion of the Senate sub- stitute for the Mills bill.

In the Fifty-first Congress, the House being Republican, Mr. McKinley, chairman of the ways and means committee, re-introduced this bill, and it then became a law.

Mr. Allison was a chairman of the sub- committee which prepared the substitute for the Mills bill in 1888 and had charge of the

bill in the Senate, up to the time of its passage by that body in 1889. While this substitute was not considered by the House, it neverthe- less formed the basis of the bill which became a law in 1890. Mr. Allison was also a mem- ber of the sub-committee which prepared the amendments to the Mckinley bill, in 1890, and heartily supported the reciprocity provisions inserted by the Senate in the bill.

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Memorial and biographical record of Iowa, Part 3

Author: Publication date: 1896 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1360

Author:
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1360