Joseph Rider Farrington was an American newspaper editor and statesman who served in the United States Congress as delegate for the Territory of Hawai'i.
Background
He was born in Washington, D. C. , the son of Wallace Rider and Catherine McAlpine Crane Farrington.
His father was successively managing editor of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, president of the Hawaiian Gazette Company, which published the paper, managing editor of the Evening Bulletin, and president and general manager of the Honolulu Star Bulletin before being appointed governor of the Territory of Hawaii in 1921.
A year after his father's death in 1933, he was named president and publisher of that newspaper.
Education
Farrington was taken to Hawaii in infancy and received his primary and secondary education at Punahou Academy in Honolulu, graduating in 1915 with honors.
He then studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin but interrupted this work in June 1918 in order to volunteer for service in World War I.
Career
After graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1919 with the B. A. degree in journalism, Farrington became a reporter for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, which assigned him in early 1920 to its Washington bureau.
There he represented not only Philadelphia and New York newspapers, but also the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and profited from almost four years of service in the press gallery of the United States Congress.
Farrington returned to Honolulu in 1924 to serve as managing editor of the Star Bulletin. A year after his father's death in 1933, he was named president and publisher of that newspaper.
He was elected to the territorial senate from Oahu in 1934 on a platform of equal rights and statehood and was reelected in 1938. He prompted that body to have the legislature create an Equal Rights Commission, which later became the Statehood Commission. During his tenure in the senate he urged the people of Hawaii to support statehood and argued that since there was no hope of restoring the monarchy Hawaiians could control their own government only as first-class citizens with full voting rights in the United States Congress.
Farrington's most difficult task was in changing the attitudes of the sugar planters and leading businessmen who felt more comfortable with the status quo. But after the passage in 1934 of the Jones-Costigan Act, sugar planters discovered that they would not get their quotas automatically unless Hawaii was a state.
Gradually they also realized that Hawaii, although paying its full share of federal taxes, would not receive its fair share of federal aid without statehood.
In 1942, while recovering from a severe thrombosis suffered in 1940, Farrington succeeded Samuel Wilder King as Hawaii's territorial delegate to Congress. He won a sweeping victory for the vacancy and was then reelected for five successive terms. (As a delegate Farrington could speak on the floor and serve on committees but had no vote. )
In Congress his first effort on behalf of Hawaii was to press for the restoration of civil liberties, which had vanished when the territory was placed under martial law after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Farrington's service in Washington was marked by his endeavors to secure full rights and privileges of American citizenship for his constituents, to win equal treatment for the territory with the states in all federal-aid appropriations, to remove racial restrictions from immigration and naturalization laws, to obtain recognition and equitable treatment for Hawaii's veterans of different national origins, and to secure fair treatment for Hawaii's basic industries and large and small businesses.
The territorial legislature petitioned Congress fifteen times for statehood and between 1920 and 1953 no fewer than fifty-three bills with that provision were introduced. Farrington carried the issue to the Republican National Convention in 1948 and obtained an outright "immediate statehood" plant in the GOP platform of 1952.
He persistently attempted to influence members of Congress, the cabinet, and the press.
He and his wife entertained frequently and at times fabulously, making the occasions as Hawaiian as possible. By personal charm alone he is said to have persuaded many friends to support statehood for Hawaii. Elizabeth Farrington also helped to publicize the issue by appearing before various women's groups throughout the country.
The House of Representatives passed a statehood bill in 1947, but it bogged down in the Senate. The principal reason then and for a dozen years thereafter was Hawaii's racial composition.
Farrington introduced another statehood bill in the House in 1953, to which the Senate attached an amendment providing for Alaskan statehood. The amended bill rested on the desk of the Speaker of the House until the following summer, while Farrington, although ill, labored to secure sufficient votes to ensure its passage.
He died of a coronary occlusion at his office desk while working on this legislation. It took another five years before Hawaii gained statehood. Alaska, which had oil resources, preceded Hawaii and was admitted as the forty-ninth state in 1958.
Hawaii, more advanced politically, socially, and economically, finally entered the union as the fiftieth state in 1959. Farrington was no pedestrian politician, confining his efforts exclusively to his island constituency.
He argued that the United States would have to deal with these issues squarely if it were to sustain its leadership.
Achievements
He achieved a notable legislative record, sponsoring more bills in the Eighty-second Congress than any other member of the House of Representatives. Eighteen of his bills were enacted into law.
In addition, he was president and director of the Hilo Tribune-Herald, president of the Star Bulletin Printing Company, and director of the Hawaiian Broadcasting Company.
Rather, he demonstrated a broad and intelligent interest in the United States Pacific territories.
As a newspaperman he accompanied a congressional commission on a visit to American Samoa in 1931 to study the problems of that Polynesian group under United States Navy administration and with a fellow journalist, Reuel S. Moore, prepared the narrative of the visit that was incorporated as part of the official report.
Later, as a delegate to Congress, Farrington made several tours to the Trust Territory of the Pacific (Micronesia), visiting Japan, the Philippines, and other Pacific areas en route. Farrington also urged the granting of citizenship to residents of American-owned Pacific islands, maintaining that "our leadership, our ideas of life and government" were being confronted at every important point by the U. S. S. R. 's ideology involving ideals of racial equality.
Politics
Farrington became a Republican precinct and district worker, serving as secretary of his precinct club and participating actively in party conventions. As a result of a racial flare-up over a lynching, the territory--fearing the loss of some of its privileges--established a legislative committee and named Farrington as its executive secretary. In that position he drafted the brief that was used successfully to defeat recommendations aimed at depriving Hawaii of even the limited degree of self-government possible under territorial status.
Membership
He served three years as a member of its Washington bureau.
Connections
Shortly after arriving in the capital he married (May 17, 1920) Mary Elizabeth Pruett, who was herself a Washington correspondent for several Midwestern newspapers. They adopted two children.
He and his wife entertained frequently and at times fabulously, making the occasions as Hawaiian as possible.
