Background
He was born on October 6, 1863 at Crystal Springs, Mississippi, the only son and second child of Joseph B. and Harriet (Dees) Bailey.
(Excerpt from The Lorimer Case: Speech of Hon. Joseph W. B...)
Excerpt from The Lorimer Case: Speech of Hon. Joseph W. Bailey of Texas in the Senate of the United States, February 13 and 14, 1911 I can easily understand how a Senator who feels that the testimony elicited by the committee leaves him in doubt as to his duty might complain, and it would be for the committee to answer whether the doubt of such a Senator could have been removed by any testimony within their reach. If any Senator should describe himself as in that mental condition and he could indicate any witness who might enlighten him on any disputed point, I would, without hesitating a moment, vote to recommit this report to the committee, with instructions to pro cure such additional evidence. But, sir, it is utterly impossible for me to comprehend how any Senator can complain at the committee for having taken, or for having omitted to take, any testimony, and then in the next breath declare that on this record as now made up he does not hesitate to pronounce a judgment which will undo what the legislature of a great State has done, deprive Illinois, for a time at least, of a seat in the Senate, and drive one who holds the commission of a great Commonwealth from the Senate Chamber with a stigma upon his name which neither his children nor his children's children can outlive. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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He was born on October 6, 1863 at Crystal Springs, Mississippi, the only son and second child of Joseph B. and Harriet (Dees) Bailey.
He was prepared for college at the academy at Clinton, and entered the University of Mississippi at seventeen. He quickly made his mark as an undergraduate speaker and debater but was less assiduous as a student. Then as later he was impressive in appearance, being tall of frame with a well-modeled head and features. He was affable, witty, and genial with his fellow students but resentful of the exercise of authority over him and resigned from his classes before the year was out. During the next two years he attended first Vanderbilt University and then the University of Virginia, where he began the study of law. He completed his legal training at the Lebanon School of Law in Tennessee and was admitted to the bar in Copiah County, in 1883.
He at once entered politics, but his belligerent nature brought him into difficulties and in 1885 he moved to Gainesville, Texas. He continued the practice of law and entered into local activities of the dominant Democratic party.
In the House of Representatives during Cleveland's second administration he vigorously opposed the President's policies relating to currency and silver, civil service, and patronage, and as minority leader of the Democrats in the McKinley administration he was a major factor in forcing that Republican president to wage war on Spain.
In 1890 he was elected to Congress from the then 5th congressional district of Texas on a platform of free silver, low tariff, and regulatory measures for railroads. He served for five terms. In the House of Representatives during Cleveland's second administration he vigorously opposed the President's policies relating to currency and silver, civil service, and patronage, and as minority leader of the Democrats in the McKinley administration he was a major factor in forcing that Republican president to wage war on Spain. The legislature of Texas elected Bailey to the United States Senate in 1901.
Victory came only after a tense political fight had been waged against him on the ground that he had aided the Waters Pierce Oil Company to secure a permit to do business in Texas again after it had been expelled for violating the state anti-trust laws. This was but the premonitory flash of what was to become the Bailey controversy, one of the bitterest episodes in the political life of the state. Then and later Bailey denied that he had acted as the paid attorney of the oil company. The high point in his first term as senator came in his brilliant espousal and leadership in 1906 of the passage of the Hepburn Rate Bill, by which the Interstate Commerce Commission was empowered to fix and regulate the rates of the railroads. His reputation as a constitutional lawyer stemmed from his part in this congressional debate, as well as from his cogent reasoning in behalf of other measures, including a federal income tax and a reorganization of the currency and banking system - two reforms which he saw adopted in 1909 and 1914, respectively. In 1909, President Taft offered Bailey a place on the Supreme Court bench, which he declined.
The main fight in the so-called Bailey controversy flared up in 1907 when Bailey became a candidate for reеlection to the Senate. The State of Texas in the meantime had brought suit again to oust the Waters Pierce Oil Company, and in the course of the proceedings Henry Clay Pierce revealed that he had personally lent Bailey several thousand dollars about the time his company sought to reënter Texas in 1901. . Bailey now openly avowed the loan but denied that it had been in payment of legal services. Nor was it, he contended, in any sense a bribe, since he never held any state office and he had appeared before state licensing authorities solely in the capacity of a "friend of the court. " The issue was drawn, however, and culminated in charges preferred before the legislature. At the end of a month-long investigation Bailey was exonerated by large majority votes in both houses of the legislature and he was immediately reelected by that body. Both his supporters and his opponents recognized, though, that this was but a truce and in 1908 Bailey insisted upon submitting the issue to the voters of Texas. He chose to be a candidate for delegate-at-large to the Democratic National Convention of that year and agreed to resign from the Senate if he was defeated. The ensuing campaign was especially acrimonious.
At its conclusion Bailey won a clear-cut, statewide victory. With this vindication in his supreme fight - "the great crisis of my life" - he returned to his duties at Washington, but the course of his own party in as well as out of Congress, already passing under the influence of Woodrow Wilson. became increasingly disappointing to him and on the eve of the inauguration of Wilson, he resigned from the Senate. Bailey remained in Washington in the private practice of law. He was increasingly critical of the Wilson administration, particularly of moves that he considered to be leading to involvement in the European War. He also stoutly opposed the drift toward national prohibition and equal suffrage. He returned to Texas to make his home in Dallas shortly before 1920 and in that year campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for governor. He put aside his law practice in 1924 to help crush the power of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas.
During his last years he was widely acclaimed over Texas as an elder statesman whose views on the past and future of the Democratic party were eagerly heard and applauded. He died of a heart attack in a district courtroom at Sherman just after concluding an argument in a case that involved the authority of the federal government to fix rates on a toll bridge connecting Texas and Oklahoma. He was buried in his old home of Gainesville. His widow and two sons, Weldon and Joseph, survived him.
(Excerpt from The Lorimer Case: Speech of Hon. Joseph W. B...)
He had been politically active as a Democrat in both Mississippi and his new home and had a reputation as an excellent public speaker who promoted Jeffersonian democracy.
He was affable, witty, and genial with his fellow students but resentful of the exercise of authority over him and resigned from his classes before the year was out.
He was married to Ellen Murray, whom he had met when both were students in Mississippi. Following the death of his first wife in 1926 he was married on December 21, 1927, to Mrs. Prudence Rosengren of Austin.