William Squire Kenyon (June 10, 1869 – September 9, 1933) was a United States senator from Iowa, and a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Education and career

Born on June 10, 1869, in Elyria, Lorain County, Ohio, Kenyon attended Grinnell College and the University of Iowa, then read law in 1891. announced his candidacy for election to the United States Senate by the 1911 Iowa General Assembly. Considered "a conservative with progressive proclivities," and November 1918 (by direct popular election, following ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution), defeating Democrat Charles Rollin Keyes, a noted geologist.

In April 1917, Kenyon received a letter from Iowa Attorney General Horace Havner concerning the 1912 Villisca axe murders.

In the Senate, Kenyon was considered a leading progressive and co-sponsored the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Child Labor Act. In 1921, he formed the bipartisan "farm bloc" in the Senate, which led to the enactment of several farm-related bills, such as the Packers and Stockyards Act, regulation of grain futures and futures trading in grain, and the Fordney–McCumber Tariff. However, after Wilson asked Congress to declare war one month later, Kenyon voted in favor of the declaration. Following the Armistice, when Wilson pressed the Senate to support the United States' membership in the League of Nations, Kenyon became a member of the moderate faction known as the "mild reservationists," who allowed for the possibility of membership so long as the treaty were amended to address a specified list of reservations held by those senators and pursued compromise solutions. However, when Wilson refused to compromise, Kenyon continued to oppose United States membership.

Kenyon served as Chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of State in the Sixty-second Congress, Chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department (also in the Sixty-second Congress), Chairman of the Committee on Standards, Weights and Measures (in the Sixty-fifth Congress), Chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor (in the Sixty-sixth Congress and Sixty-seventh Congress), and Chairman of the Committee on the Philippines (in the Sixty-sixth Congress). Kenyon resigned from the Senate on February 24, 1922, to accept a federal judgeship.

Federal judicial service

Kenyon was nominated by President Warren G. Harding on January 31, 1922, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated by Judge Walter I. Smith.

Political offers

While a sitting federal judge, Kenyon was the subject of numerous offers of appointive and elective office. In January 1923, before the death of President Harding, newspapers speculated that Judge Kenyon would be Harding's leading opponent in the 1924 presidential race. At the 1924 Republican National Convention, he was touted as a potential vice-presidential candidate with Calvin Coolidge, and he received 172 votes on the first ballot. While a judge, he also served as an active member of a blue-ribbon "National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement," better known as the "Wickersham Commission," appointed by President Herbert Hoover to assess the lessons learned from Prohibition, among other things.

Supreme Court consideration

In 1930, following the death of United States Supreme Court Justice Edward Terry Sanford, Kenyon was considered by some as a favorite to succeed him, but President Hoover instead nominated John J. Parker (who failed to win Senate confirmation) and then Owen Roberts (who was confirmed). In January 1932, when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes retired, Kenyon's name was again included on short lists of potential successors, but this time Hoover selected New York Court of Appeals Judge Benjamin Cardozo.

Death

On September 9, 1933, at age 64, Kenyon died in Sebasco Estates, Maine, where he kept a summer home.

References

  • William S. Kenyon Papers are housed at University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & Archives

Sources