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Henry was born on May 19, 1873 in Clopton, Alabama, United States, the second son and fourth of ten children of Mary Jane (Peacock) and William Collinsworth Steagall. His mother was the daughter of a local farmer. His father, a native of Georgia and the son of a Methodist minister, was a prosperous physician, trained at the New York Medical College; he was also active in local Democratic politics and served two terms in the state senate.
Henry Steagall attended private schools, the Southeast Alabama Agricultural School in Abbeville, from which he graduated in 1892, and the University of Alabama, where he received the LL. B. degree in 1893.
When Steagall finished his studies, he established a law practice in Ozark, the county seat.
In 1914 he unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent Congressman from his district, Henry D. Clayton. Later that year, however, Clayton was appointed to the federal bench, and Steagall was victorious in a special primary to complete his unexpired term. He was never seriously challenged for reelection and served continuously until his death.
In Congress, Steagall devoted himself to his major committee assignment, the Banking and Currency Committee, which considered legislation affecting farmers as well as the financial community. He was a loyal but relatively unimportant supporter of the Wilson administration, making a minor contribution to the creation of the Federal Land Bank System.
As a member of a small and often querulous Democratic minority during the 1920's, he joined the bipartisan farm bloc and frequently attacked Republican claims of prosperity on the ground that farmers were not sharing in the general affluence. He supported the McNary-Haugen farm bills, attacked the growth of branch banking - which, he contended, favored great Eastern institutions at the expense of the South and West - and proposed federal insurance of bank deposits.
At the same time he extended his influence in the Democratic party by speaking in behalf of candidates in New York, New England, and the Midwest, and by supporting Alfred E. Smith, albeit reluctantly, in the 1928 presidential campaign. When the Democrats won control of Congress in 1930, Steagall became chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee. Aware of the gravity of the depression, he sought to cooperate with President Hoover in efforts to revive the economy.
The Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, which he sponsored, broadened the acceptability of commercial paper for rediscount by the Federal Reserve System. He warmly endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and campaigned for him. Steagall's position as chairman of one of the most powerful House committees gave him an important role in shaping the economic programs of the New Deal. For the most part, he translated the ideas of others into legislation.
An exception, however, was the provision for federal deposit insurance that, with assistance from Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, he managed to include in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, overcoming the combined opposition of the Roosevelt administration, Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and the powerful American Bankers' Association.
Steagall prevented Glass and his allies from forcing state banks into the Federal Reserve System in order to maintain membership in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and he helped push through Congress the Banking Act of 1935, which gave the board of governors of the Federal Reserve greater authority over rediscount rates and reserve requirements of member banks.
An advocate of free silver, he and other inflationists also forced upon an unwilling President the Silver Purchase Act of 1934.
Steagall supported most New Deal measures and co-sponsored the Wagner-Steagall National Housing Act of 1937, which created the United States Housing Authority to subsidize local construction of public housing. His rural bias, however, made him increasingly skeptical of legislation benefiting labor and the urban poor, and in the latter years of his career he concentrated on agricultural issues.
He also vehemently fought the administration policy of controlling food prices by granting subsidies to consumers. Ignoring his physician's warning that his heart could not endure the strain, Steagall launched an impassioned attack on the subsidy policy in the fall of 1943. In the midst of the debate, he collapsed in the House cloakroom of a heart attack.
He died a few days later in the George Washington Hospital, Washington.
Henry Bascom Steagall represented Alabama's 3rd District in the United States House of Representatives for many years. He was also chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency and co-sponsored the Glass–Steagall Act with Carter Glass, an act that introduced banking reforms and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Alongside Senator Robert F. Wagner he co-sponsored the Wagner-Steagall National Housing Act of September 1937 which created the United States Housing Authority.
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A friendly extrovert, he was active in the Methodist Church and joined the Masons, the Woodmen of the World, and the Knights of Pythias.
Although Steagall sympathized with the aims of the Populist movement of the 1890's, he embarked upon a political career in the Democratic party. He gained a reputation for eloquence and in 1898 was appointed county solicitor. Popular and ambitious, he won election in 1906 to the state house of representatives. There he supported the reform program of Gov. Braxton Bragg Comer and was rewarded for his loyalty with the post of solicitor (district attorney) of the third judicial circuit.
On December 27, 1900, he married Sallie Mae Thompson of Tuskegee, Alabama, who died in 1908. They had five children: Margaret Thompson, Mabelle Massey, Myra Mitchell, Porter Collinsworth, and Sallie Mae.
