Businessman attorney politician
Jonathan Bourne Jr. was born on February 23, 1855, in New Bedford, Massachusets. He was the only son and the last of six children of Jonathan and Emily Summers (Howland) Bourne.
His father, who came of an old Massachusetts family, was a leader in the New Bedford whaling industry and later a textile manufacturer, and Bourne himself served as president of the family's Bourne Mills, 1890-1906.
Bourne attended Harvard College in the class of 1877 but did not graduate.
On May 16, 1878, after a sea voyage that had ended in a shipwreck off Formosa, Bourne arrived in Portland, Oregon. Settling there, he practiced law for a time (1881 - 86) but soon turned to mining and real-estate speculations and to Republican politics.
An ardent free-Silverite who resigned as secretary of the Republican State Central Committee to support Bryan in 1896, Bourne led in preventing the reelection of Senator Joseph N. Dolph in 1895 and of Senator John H. Mitchell at the "hold-up" session of the legislature in 1897, though his methods on the latter occasion won him little credit. In company with William S. U'Ren, however, Bourne soon after championed the direct election of Senators.
In 1904, Oregon adopted a senatorial preference primary, a majority of the state legislators pledging themselves to abide by its results. After an unprecedented direct-mail campaign, in which Bourne sent to every voter a series of letters first explaining the new primary system and then announcing his own candidacy, he was chosen Senator in 1906.
In Oregon, Bourne led the campaign for the presidential preference primary, which was adopted in 1910. In 1907-08, he urged a "second elective term" for Theodore Roosevelt; in December 1910, with Robert M. La Follette and others, he planned the National Progressive Republican League, whose president he became when it organized on January 21, 1911.
Meanwhile, failing to return to Oregon for the campaign, he lost the Oregon Republican primary to Ben Selling, and in November, running as an independent, he lost to Harry Lane, Democrat.
Remaining in the Republican party, Bourne organized and headed the Republican Publicity Association (1915 - 25) and endeavored to heal the split of 1912.
Originally friendly toward Woodrow Wilson, he soon opposed him bitterly, attacking his tariff policy and later the League of Nations. Bourne supported Alfred E. Smith in 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932-33. His opposition to special privilege for organized labor, high-income taxes, government ownership of public utilities, and the growth of bureaucracy left him out of step with most latter-day reformers.
Although he had built up elaborate systems of personal alliance and indebtedness in Oregon, he never developed a reliable organization of his own. Bourne retained his properties in Oregon but never ran for public office after 1912; he remained in Washington, where he died of complications following a hip injury and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
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In his political affiliation Bourne was a Republican. He became one of four Republican Senators who opposed the Aldrich Currency Bill of 1908, although he voted for the Payne-Aldrich Tariff in 1909. He favored restricting presidential patronage so that it could not be used as a coercive power over legislation.
Bourne was a member of the Republican Publicity Association (1915 - 25).
Bourne was a man of less than average height but of erect bearing. He was not a skillful orator and seldom spoke in the Senate except on matters of great concern to himself and after careful preparation, reading from a manuscript and pacing restlessly. He was subject to great if sometimes impulsive and short-lived enthusiasms, of which free silver was the most abiding.
Quotes from others about the person
La Follette always spoke warmly of him, and personally endorsed him in Portland in 1912; Roosevelt apparently did not greatly value his support.
Jonathan Bourne was married three times and without issue. In 1893, he was married to Lillian Wyatt of Linn County, Oregon. They divorced in1913. In 1918, Bourne was married to Carol B. Sperry of Baker City, Oregon. In 1924, they divorced, and to Frances Barker Turner of Baltimore, he was married in 1925, who survived him.
1811 - 1889
1814 - 1909
15 April 1844 - 8 May 1879
1835 - 1922
1838 - 1897
10 September 1840 - 11 February 1914
4 September 1867 - 24 January 1947
5 October 1878 - 6 September 1960
1896 - 1960
