Message of Governor Silas A. Holcomb to the twenty-fifth session of the Legislature of Nebraska. January 7th, 1897
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Silas Alexander Holcomb was an American lawyer and politician. He served as the 12th District judge, 9th governor of Nebraska, and justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court.
Background
Silas Alexander Holcomb was born on August 25, 1858 in Gibson County, Indiana, United States. He was the son of John C. and Lucinda Reavis (Skelton) Holcomb. His early life was that of the normal farmer's boy, involving hard work, especially in summer, and country or village school in winter.
Education
As a youth Holcomb taught school for four years, but he never realized his ambition to attend college, for in 1878 his father's death left him the family breadwinner.
Career
In 1879, accompanied by his mother and his brothers and sisters, Holcomb emigrated to Nebraska, settling on a farm in Hamilton County. In 1881 he began to read law with a Grand Island law firm, and in 1883 opened a law office of his own in Broken Bow. In the course of his practice as a country lawyer his sympathy with the debt-ridden pioneer farmers developed rapidly, and in 1891 he was nominated and elected district judge on a third-party ticket. Two years later the Populist party, now strongly organized in the state, named him for the state supreme court; and in a lively three-cornered fight he demonstrated his ability as a public speaker and a vote-getter, although he lost the election.
In 1894 Populists and Democrats, brought together by their common devotion to the cause of free silver, made Holcomb their joint nominee for governor, and with the help of the normally Republican Omaha Daily Bee, he won a remarkable triumph, considering the fact that otherwise this was a distinctly Republican year. Nebraska, like other frontier states, was a debtor community. It had been developed almost entirely with capital borrowed in the East; and, afflicted now by low prices and crop failures, its people found their financial obligations exceedingly difficult to meet. Indeed, extremists among Holcomb's supporters were not averse to schemes savoring of debt repudiation. Conservative businessmen in the state were much exercised, therefore, lest the election of Holcomb should be interpreted as the beginning of a war on outside investors that would make future borrowing impossible.
When in 1896 the Fusionists were able to reelect him and to choose a legislature upon which he could depend for support, the anxiety of the business interest knew no bounds. As it turned out, however, Holcomb proved to be the conservative leader of a radical party. No legislation calculated to demoralize business was allowed to pass; but instead the administration of the state institutions and the state lands was greatly improved, dishonesty in the handling of the state's finances was relentlessly prosecuted, and generally sounder financial policies were adopted.
When Holcomb retired from office as governor in 1899, he was promptly elected to the state supreme court, on which he served creditably for six years. He then resumed the practice of law, but in 1913 accepted appointment as member of the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions, a place which he held until 1920, when the failure of his health made it necessary for him to resign. With his powerful physique bent and broken by disease, he went to live with a daughter in Bellingham, Washington, where he died shortly afterwards.