A Historical and Legal Digest of All the Contested Election Cases in the House of Representatives of the United States from the First to the Fifty-Sixth Congress, 1789-1901
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
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Chester Harvey Rowell was an American journalist and politician. He was a leader of the progressive movement in California.
Background
Chester Harvey Rowell was born in the prairie town of Bloomington, Ill. He was the eldest of five children and one of three sons of Jonathan Harvey Rowell and Maria Sanford (Woods) Rowell. His father, a native of New Hampshire, had moved west as a boy; his mother was born in Illinois. Jonathan Rowell, a lawyer, served as a Republican congressman from Illinois, 1883-1891; originally a member of the Disciples of Christ, he was a Unitarian during his son's boyhood. From his parents and from his early life in the Midwest, Chester Rowell derived certain values that remained with him throughout his public career: an admiration for the enterprising individual, a commitment to the welfare of the community, a high standard of personal integrity, and a critical but not radical assessment of the American economic and political systems.
Education
A highly motivated student, Rowell completed the four-year course in Bloomington's public high school in three years and then spent a year in the high school department of the state college at Normal. He next entered the University of Michigan, where he specialized in languages and graduated after three years (Ph. B. , 1888). Drawn toward both scholarship and the law, he stayed on at Michigan for a year of graduate work in philosophy. Later he studied philology and philosophy at the universities of Halle and Berlin.
Career
Then Rowell went to Washington to assist his father and serve as clerk of a congressional committee. Disillusioned with politics and the law, he went in 1891 to Europe and traveled extensively on the Continent. He returned to the United States in 1894. For the next four years Rowell taught a variety of subjects, including several foreign languages, at small schools and colleges in Kansas, Wisconsin, California, and Illinois.
In 1897 he was appointed instructor in German at the University of Illinois. Although Rowell had long desired a career in college teaching, in 1898 he accepted an offer from an uncle, Chester Rowell, the founder and owner of the Fresno (Calif. ) Republican, to become the paper's editor and manager. Although he had no previous newspaper experience, his intelligent and penetrating editorials soon attracted nationwide attention. Rowell's role as a progressive editor drew him inevitably into municipal and state politics. He fought for regulation of Fresno's rampant liquor, prostitution, and gambling establishments, and he backed a new city charter under which he unsuccessfully sought the mayoralty in 1901. Rowell was particularly angered by the political dominance in California of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1907 he was a leader in founding the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, which sought to convert the state Republican party to progressive principles and to emancipate California from Southern Pacific domination. Building up strength in key cities, the league elected a substantial number of the delegates to the Republican state convention of 1908, and two years later secured the nomination of Hiram Johnson for governor on a progressive platform. Rowell served as a close friend and personal advisor of the energetic and often irascible governor.
In 1914, at Johnson's request, Rowell sought the Progressive party nomination for United States senator in an attempt to thwart the ambitions of Johnson's rival Francis J. Heney, but lost after a lackluster campaign. He served on the Progressive National Committee, 1912-1916, and was chairman of the Republican State Central Committee, 1916-1918. In 1916 he managed Johnson's successful campaign for the United States Senate. The friendship of the two men was seriously impaired during World War I, when Rowell strongly championed the League of Nations, which Johnson, one of the "irreconcilable" senators, strongly opposed. Regarding Johnson as having strayed from the progressive faith, Rowell unsuccessfully opposed his renomination to the Senate in 1922. Although he served on the federal Shipping Board in 1920 and on the State Railroad Commission, 1921-1923, Rowell was never again intimately involved in politics.
The Fresno Republican, of whose ownership he had inherited a major share, was sold in 1920. During the next twelve years Rowell traveled, lectured on educational, civic. and political subjects, and wrote a syndicated newspaper column and many magazine articles. He then served as editor (1932 - 1935) and editorial columnist (1935 - 1947) of the San Francisco Chronicle. He opposed the New Deal program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as incipient "liberal revolution" (Yale Review, Spring 1936, p. 443). Rowell's principal interests of later years were international cooperation and world affairs. Sharply critical of isolationists in the mid-1930's, including Hiram Johnson, he was active in the Institute of Pacific Relations and served as president of the California League of Nations Association (1927 - 1939) and as a trustee of the World Peace Federation (1932 - 1939). He was also president of the California Conference on Social Work (1928 - 1929) and a longtime regent (1914 - 1948) of the University of California. A mildly religious man, Rowell did not attend any church regularly but upheld high ethical standards. He died at his home in Berkeley, California, at the age of eighty, of a cerebral vascular thrombosis. Following cremation, his ashes were placed in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, Calif.
Achievements
Rowell had long and distinguished career in journalism. He was the co-founder and chairman of the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, a coalition of progressive Republican activists. The league was instrumental in the election of Hiram Johnson as governor of California. Rowell played a crucial role in persuading the reluctant Johnson to run and, through the editorial pages of the Republican, in garnering support for his election, which was achieved by a narrow margin.
He played an active part in the passage of the California workmen's compensation laws of 1911 and 1913. Like other California progressives, he also endorsed the state's Alien Land Act (1913), which forbade the ownership of agricultural land by aliens (meaning Japanese), arguing that the welfare of the community must supersede individual rights.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Connections
On August 1, 1897 Rowell married Myrtle Marie Lingle of Webb City, Mo. They had five children, three of whom survived infancy: Cora Winifred, Barbara Lois, and Jonathan Harvey.
