Henry Thomas Rainey was born on August 20, 1860 on a farm near Carrollton, Illinois, eldest child and son, in a family of three, of John and Kate (Thomas) Rainey. Of Scotch-Irish and Kentucky ancestry, he was a descendant, on both sides, of a long line of farmers.
After graduating at the Carrollton high school, he attended Knox Academy and Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, and later entered the junior class of Amherst College, where he excelled in athletics and public speaking. In 1883 he received there the degree of A. B. , and in 1886, that of A. M. In 1885 he graduated from the Union College of Law, Chicago, the valedictorian in a class of more than fifty.
In 1885 began the practice of his profession at Carrollton. From 1887 to 1895 he was master in chancery for Greene County. His political activity began in the national campaign of 1896 when he made speeches for the Democratic party in many of the doubtful states.
The turning-point in his career came in 1902 with his election to the Fifty-eighth Congress, from the 20th Illinois district. He was elected to each succeeding Congress until his death, with the exception of the Sixty-seventh - a failure that resulted from the Republican landslide accompanying President Harding's election. As a Democrat, and a new member in a House controlled by the Republicans, 1903-11, he did not receive important committee assignments. They included Pacific railroads, enrolled bills, irrigation of arid lands, and labor. When the Democrats reorganized the House in 1911 he was assigned to the important ways and means committee, on which he ranked third, 1913-17, and second, 1917-21.
During the First World War, in the absence of its chairman, Claude Kitchen, he presided over the committee and acted as majority floor leader. On his return to Congress in 1923 he was given a place among the minority members of the committee. In the years 1931-33, under Speaker John N. Garner, he served as its chairman and as majority floor leader and speaker pro tempore. With the ascendency of the Democrats under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was elected speaker, March 9, 1933.
On entering Congress Rainey lined up with the progressives of his party, an affiliation that he maintained until the end. His special interests were tariff reform and revenue; and he favored free silver.
In 1906 he made a series of speeches in the House showing that American goods were often sold more cheaply abroad than at home. These attracted wide attention and more than a million copies were circulated by the Democratic National Committee.
In 1913 he assisted in the preparation of the Underwood Tariff Bill, had charge of some of its schedules on the floor of the House, and served as one of the three House conferees.
An ardent supporter of President Woodrow Wilson, he was the author of the tariff commission law, a measure warmly favored by the White House.
On the declaration of war, April 1917, he tendered his resignation as a representative and asked to be assigned duties with the army, but remained at his post when requested by the President.
He was much interested in measures taken to restrict the use of narcotics and served as chairman of a committee appointed by Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo to investigate the subject. He actively supported the proposal for a deep waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and helped to draft a state amendment providing for the extension of the Chicago Drainage Canal to the Illinois River.
From 1931 to 1933 he strove to obtain an international conference on tariff reduction and the passage of laws for the relief of farmers and other sufferers. Presiding over the noisiest sessions of the House to occur during his career, in 1933-34 he pushed to passage President Roosevelt's reform measures with scarcely a change. In the last session twenty-two such measures were passed by the House without an amendment. Only over the veterans' measure was there a revolt, and only over silver did he oppose the President.
He died, without issue, at the De Paul Hospital, St. Louis.
He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1903 to 1921 and from 1923 to his death as a Democrat from Illinois, and was its Speaker during the famous Hundred days of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, and the last Speaker of the House born before the Civil War. He had an important part in the drafting and passage of the war revenue bills, 1917-21.
With his tall stature, shock of white hair, deep voice, and flowing tie, he had a commanding presence.
On June 27, 1889, Rainey was married to Ella McBride, of Harvard, Nebraska, whom he had met at Galesburg, and who for many years served as his secretary.
