James E. Murray was born on May 3, 1876, near St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, the son of Andrew James Murray, a farmer and railroad worker, and Anna Mary Cooley. His parents had emigrated in 1874 from County Clare, Ireland, and had settled on a farm near St. Thomas.
Murray attended schools in St. Thomas and worked in the dining service at the railroad depot there. After his father died in 1885, his uncle James Andrew Murray supported the family. The uncle was wealthy, owning mines in several western states and in South Africa, as well as public utilities and real estate in the Pacific states.
Murray graduated in 1897 from St. Jerome's College in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario, and moved to Butte.
He then entered New York University, where he received the Bachelor of Laws and the Master of Laws degrees in 1900 and 1901, respectively. He became a naturalized citizen at that time.
In 1901, Murray returned to Butte, where his uncle helped him establish a law practice. Along with his uncle he specialized in mining law, and he often clashed with the powerful Anaconda Company. He was president of the U. S. Building and Loan Association and vice-president of the Monidah Trust Corporation of Butte.
From 1906 to 1908 he served as county attorney of Silver Bow County and in 1920 as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, he had concentrated on building a successful law practice in Butte. Soft-spoken and gentle he became very wealthy in 1921 when he inherited much of his uncle's estate.
After attending the 1932 Democratic National Convention, he campaigned vigorously for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president. In 1933, Roosevelt rewarded him with appointment as chairman of the State Advisory Board of the Public Works Administration. Murray sought the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat left vacant by the death of Thomas J. Walsh. Governor John Erickson, a conservative Democrat sympathetic to the Anaconda Company, resigned and was appointed by his successor, Frank H. Cooney, to the Senate pending an election. This maneuver provoked widespread controversy within the state Democratic party, and Murray was persuaded to challenge Erickson in the 1934 primary. Although not well known outside Butte and much less experienced politically, he narrowly defeated Erickson. After a lively campaign defending the New Deal, he easily won the Senate seat.
Murray was reelected in 1936, 1942, 1948, and 1954. He barely defeated Republican Wellington Rankin in 1942. In this contest Senator Burton K. Wheeler's state Democratic party organization did not support him. Wheeler had disagreed with Murray over President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies.
In 1954, Murray narrowly defeated Republican Congressman Wesley D'Ewart, after opponents accused him of having Communist connections. Murray supported most of Roosevelt's domestic policies. Although remaining silent on the Supreme Court reorganization plan, he endorsed the Wagner, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards acts and executive reorganization. He was an isolationist until the outbreak of World War II, opposing United States entry into the World Court and other Roosevelt foreign policies. But after September 1939 he regularly aligned himself with the internationalists. Murray voted to repeal the arms embargo and in favor of lend-lease, but opposed the Selective Service Act of 1940.
In 1940 - 1946, Murray served as chairman of the Senate Special Committee to Study and Survey Problems of Small Business Enterprises. Its investigations disclosed that the federal government awarded nearly all defense production contracts to large businesses. Murray figured prominently in reconversion legislation terminating war contracts and disposing of surplus property. Murray promoted a number of far-reaching economic and social welfare measures. He cosponsored the Employment Act of 1946, establishing the principle that the government should guarantee every employable American a job and creating the Council of Economic Advisers. He was coauthor of comprehensive legislation to extend social security, broaden old-age and unemployment benefits, and provide federal medical and hospital insurance for all workers and their families. Although Congress did not enact national health insurance, it eventually approved hospital construction and federal aid for medical students.
During the early 1950's Murray introduced the nation's first Medicare bill. In 1945, Murray became chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. Sympathetic to organized labor, he opposed the Taft-Hartley Act and directed an unsuccessful effort to repeal the measure.
During the 1940's and 1950's he sponsored several bills for federal aid to education. In 1951, Murray was involved in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) scandal. The luxury Sorrento Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, had applied to the RFC for a $1 million loan to pay off mounting debts. Republican Senator Wallace Bennett, a member of the subcommittee on banking investigating the scandal, charged that Murray had used his personal and political influence to obtain the loan. In a letter to RFC chairman Harley Hise, dated October 24, 1949, Murray had suggested that the loan application warranted "further action" and that the RFC had been established to provide this type of relief. Murray considered the letter a routine inquiry made at the request of constituents and others. Murray's son James, a Washington attorney, received a fee of $21, 000 for this and other cases. A second son, Charles, Murray's administrative assistant, attended a conference between the attorney for the Sorrento Hotel and RFC director Walter Dunham two days before the loan was granted.
Besides coauthoring the first national wilderness bills, he favored establishment of a Point Four program for American Indians. Murray supported unsuccessful attempts to secure legislation authorizing the government to build, operate, and finance a huge dam and hydroelectric plant at Hell's Canyon on the Snake River in Idaho. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower opposed this legislation as wasteful, preferring that private interests develop electric power. To Murray's dismay, the Federal Power Commission in 1955 permitted a private firm, the Idaho Power Company, to build three smaller dams. Murray originally intended to seek another term in 1960. By this time he was the second oldest member of the Senate, and family and friends convinced him that he could not be reelected. He therefore retired. Murray died on March 23, 1961, in Butte, Montana.
James Murray was a staunch liberal and aggressive supporter of the New Deal Coalition. He broke with Montana's senior senator, Burton K. Wheeler, when Murray backed Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937; unlike Wheeler, Murray gave up his isolationism in foreign affairs, and backed Roosevelt's aggressive foreign policy against Germany and Japan in 1939 - 1941.
During the war Murray became an avid supporter of small business, and Murray's resolution created the Senate's Special Committee on Small Business, with him as the committee's first chairman. He used his influence in the committee to introduce bills designed to assist America's small businesses, securing for them highly sought after military contracts. At the close of the war, Murray's prime concern was the loss of those wartime contracts, and he drafted reconversion legislation to ease the burden on the small businesses. These legislative bills and Murray enjoyed the support of the Senate Republicans, because of America's free enterprise system.
During the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, Murray did not fare so well with the Republicans or the conservative Southern Democrats; the conservative coalition managed to thwart or alter virtually all of Murray's legislation. An example of this was the Murray sponsored bill, the Employment Act of 1946. The bill was to establish a formal system of compensatory government spending to ease the burden of the cyclical dips in the private economy, but the law that emerged from the Senate virtually eliminated that principle.
James E. Murray was president of the American Association for Recognition of the Irish Republic.
Murray served as chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Labor-Management Relations, chairman of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, and also served on the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.
On June 28, 1905, James E. Murray married Viola Edna Horgan; they had six sons.
