David I. Walsh
David Ignatius Walsh was an American politician from Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the state's 46th governor before winning election to several terms in the United States Senate, becoming the first Irish Catholic from Massachusetts to fill either office.
Born in Leominster, Massachusetts, Walsh was educated at the College of the Holy Cross, subsequently entering a legal practice in Boston after graduating from the Boston University School of Law. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1900 to 1901, establishing a reputation as an anti-imperialist and isolationist. In 1912, he won election as the 43rd lieutenant governor, becoming the state's first Democratic lieutenant governor in seventy years. He served as governor from 1914 to 1916 and led a successful effort to call for a state constitutional convention.
Walsh won election to the Senate in 1918, earning a reputation as a supporter of Irish independence and as a strong opponent of the Treaty of Versailles. He lost his re-election bid in 1924 but returned to the Senate two years later. Walsh supported Al Smith over Franklin D. Roosevelt at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. During the Roosevelt Administration, he introduced the Walsh-Healey Act that established labor standards for government contractors. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Walsh opposed American involvement in World War II and was a leading member of the America First Committee. However, in a reversal from his earlier stance on the League of Nations, he voted to ratify the United Nations Charter in 1946.
Walsh lost his 1946 re-election bid to Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and died the following year. A maverick in the Senate who regularly broke with his own party, he was remembered chiefly for his isolationism, as well as his passionate defense of Irish and Catholic interests. Walsh, who never married, was also dogged by accusations of homosexuality during his lifetime, including a sensationalized scandal in his final term that he privately called "a tragic Gethsemane" to his political career.
Early life and education
Walsh was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1872, the ninth of ten children. His parents were Irish Catholic immigrants. Walsh attended public schools in his birthplace and later in Clinton, Massachusetts. His father, a comb maker, died when he was twelve. Thereafter, his mother ran a boarding house.Walsh graduated from Clinton High School in 1890 and from the College of the Holy Cross in 1893. He attended Boston University Law School, where he graduated in 1897. Walsh was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1897, later practicing in Boston.
Career in state politics
Walsh was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for two terms in 1900 and 1901, elected from a longtime Republican district. From the start of his political career, he was anti-imperialist and isolationist and opposed America's authority over the Philippines as part of the settlement of the Spanish–American War. Walsh's vote to restrict the hours that women and children could work to 58 led to his defeat when he sought another term. He next lost the race for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 1910, but ran again and won in 1912, becoming the state's first Democratic lieutenant governor in 70 years. He became the first Irish and the first Catholic Governor of Massachusetts in 1914, successfully challenging the incumbent Democratic governor Eugene Foss for the party nomination, and then defeating a divided Republican opposition with a comfortable plurality. He served two one-year terms.He offered voters an alternative to boss-dominated politics, expressing a "forthright espousal of government responsibility for social welfare". Walsh proposed increased government responsibility for charity work and the care of the insane and reorganized the state's management of these areas with little opposition. In his 1914 campaign for re-election, he cited as accomplishments an increase in the amounts paid for workman's compensation and improved administration of the state's care for the insane. As governor, Walsh fought unsuccessfully for a Women's Suffrage Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution. He also campaigned for film censorship in the state after large protests were mounted against the racial depictions in D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation. Several progressive labor laws were also introduced during his time as governor.
He supported the work of the Anti-Death Penalty League, a Massachusetts organization founded in 1897 that was particularly active and nearly successful in the decade preceding World War I.
As governor he asked the legislature to call a Constitutional Convention without success. When the legislature later called a convention, Walsh won election as a delegate-at-large as part of a slate of candidates who endorsed adding provisions for initiative and referendum to the state constitution, key Progressive-era reforms. He served as a delegate-at-large to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1917 and 1918 that saw those reforms passed. His speech on behalf of initiative and referendum shows him in the role of populist and reformer:
In 1914, Walsh was challenged for the governorship by Samuel W. McCall, a moderate Republican. He narrowly won reelection, probably due to the presence of a Progressive candidate who took votes from McCall. McCall successfully reunited the Republicans and the Progressives the next year, and defeated Walsh, in part by supporting Walsh's call for a constitutional convention.
Walsh returned to the practice of law after leaving office, working with his older brother Thomas in his hometown of Clinton.
Career in national politics
In 1918, Walsh was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, serving his first term from March 4, 1919, to March 3, 1925. He was the first Irish Catholic senator from Massachusetts, and second Massachusetts senator to be elected by popular vote, after the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A noted orator, he introduced Irish Republic President Éamon de Valera at Fenway Park on June 29, 1919.Walsh broke with Democratic President Woodrow Wilson on the subject of the Treaty of Versailles, joining fellow Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge in opposition. His initial objections stemmed from the fact that the proposed League of Nations would "make secure and assured the rights of every single nation in the world except Ireland." In general, he felt that the Treaty failed to adequately provide for the right to self-determination, which had been articulated in Wilson's Fourteen Points. Walsh also became a vocal critic of Article 10, which would have allowed the League of Nations to make war without a vote by the US Congress. Consequently he was labeled one of the "Irreconcilables", a bloc of 12–18 mostly Republican senators who refused to pass the treaty even with the "reservations" proposed by Lodge.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1924, he spoke in favor of condemning the Ku Klux Klan by name in the party platform: "We ask you to cut out of the body politic with the sharpest instrument at your command this malignant growth which, injected, means the destruction of everything which has made America immortal. If you can denounce Republicanism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism. If you can denounce Bolshevism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism." Walsh was one of nine Senators to oppose the Immigration Act of 1924.
Walsh failed to win reelection by just 20,000 votes in 1924, the year of the Coolidge landslide, and briefly resumed the practice of law in Boston. Following the death of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republicans fought hard to retain his seat. Though Herbert Hoover and Charles Evans Hughes campaigned for his opponent, in the November 1926 special election Walsh won the right to complete the remaining two years of Lodge's term, defeating William Morgan Butler, a friend of Coolidge and head of the Republican National Committee.
Walsh's 1924 defeat also marked a turning point in his political philosophy. He had previously endorsed an activist role for government, but after 1924 his rhetoric increasingly attacked the "federal bureaucracy" and "big government". Though he had once advocated in favor of federal child labor legislation, he became one of its most consistent opponents.
In 1929, Time published a detailed profile of Walsh and his voting record. It noted that he voted for the Jones Act of 1929 that increased penalties for the violation of Prohibition, but said the Senator "votes Wet, drinks Wet". Its more personal description said:
A bachelor, he is tall and stout. A double chin tends to get out over his tight-fitting collar. His stomach bulges over his belt. He weighs 200 lbs. or more. Setting-up exercises every other day at a Washington health centre have failed to reduce his girth. He is troubled about it. His dress is dandified. He wears silk shirts in bright colors and stripes and, often, stiff collars to match. His feet are small and well-shod. Beneath his habitual derby hat his hair is turning thin and grey. Society is his prime diversion. Of secondary interest are motoring, sporting events, the theatre. In Washington he occupies an expensive suite of rooms at the luxurious Carlton Hotel on 16th Street. A good and frequent host himself, he accepts all invitations out, is one of the most lionized Senators in Washington.
Time reported that some commented on the contrast between his political populism and his luxurious life style. The profile noted he was a "gruff and bull-voiced debater" but that "in private conversation his voice is soft and controlled." In sum, Time said that "Impartial Senate observers rate him thus: A good practical politician, a legislator above the average. His political philosophy is liberal and humane, except on economic matters which affect the New England industry, when he turns conservative. His floor attendance is regular, his powers of persuasion, fair."
When attacking the Hoover administration following the 1930 elections, Walsh identified two principal causes of voter dissatisfaction: "the administration's indifference to economic conditions and its failure to recognize the widespread opposition to prohibition".
Walsh won reelection in 1928, 1934 and 1940, failing in his final bid for reelection in 1946. During his Senate service, Walsh held the posts of chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor and of the Committee on Naval Affairs. In 1932, he supported Al Smith against FDR for the Democratic nomination for president. He objected to Justice Hugo Black's failure to disclose his earlier membership in the Ku Klux Klan and promoted the appointment of Jews to the judiciary, notably that of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, a longtime friend. Though a Democrat, he gave only reluctant support to President Roosevelt's agenda. In 1936, when some Democrats looked for an alternative presidential candidate, he supported Roosevelt, "although their relations are none too good". A newspaper reported that "He is not of the insurgent type ... At heart, observers say, he dissents from many of the policies of the New Deal", but "he will stay on the reservation" and "he will avoid an open break". During the campaign, he failed to speak in support of the President until October 20, 1936.
In 1936, Walsh, as head of the Senate Labor Committee, lent his name an administration bill to establish labor standards for employees of government contractors, known as the Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act It provided for minimum wages and overtime, safety and sanitation rules, and restrictions on the use of child and convict labor.
In 1937, he declared himself an opponent of the administration and joined the opposition to FDR's plan to enlarge the Supreme Court. Speaking at New York City's Carnegie Hall, Walsh argued his position in terms of the separation of powers, judicial independence, and the proper role of the executive. He described the public's reaction as "a state of fear, of apprehension, of bewilderment, of real grief, as a result of the proposal to impair, if not indeed to destroy, the judicial independence of the Supreme Court". He also emphasized the role of the Court in protecting civil liberties, citing two examples:
He continued:
One Cabinet official described his overall relationship to the administration as "not sympathetic ... to put it mildly".
Despite his differences with the Roosevelt Administration, Walsh was nevertheless ideologically progressive, supporting various social reform proposals during the course of the Roosevelt presidency such as those aimed at improving housing, social security, and working conditions.
Along with four of his colleagues, Walsh condemned antisemitism in Nazi Germany in a Senate speech on June 10, 1933.