Background
Jouett Shouse was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, near the village of Midway, the son of John Samuel Shouse, a Disciples of Christ minister, and Anna Armstrong. In 1892 his father accepted a pastorate at Mexico, Missouri.
Jouett Shouse was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, near the village of Midway, the son of John Samuel Shouse, a Disciples of Christ minister, and Anna Armstrong. In 1892 his father accepted a pastorate at Mexico, Missouri.
Jouett attended high school in Mexico, Missouri. He entered the University of Missouri in 1895, and while there, he worked for the Mexico Ledger and the Columbia Herald, a country weekly. He left the school at the end of his junior year.
In 1898, Shouse returned to Kentucky, where he served on the staff of the Lexington Herald. In Lexington he helped organize the Fayette Home Telephone Company, in protest against the inferior service furnished by the existing Bell company. He also edited the Kentucky Farmer and Breeder, a weekly devoted to livestock, especially Thoroughbred horses. In December 1911 he left Lexington for what he thought would be a brief stay in Kinsley, Kansas, to help his father-in-law resolve some business affairs. Instead, he became involved in local politics and in 1912 became a Democratic candidate for the state senate. He defeated a longtime resident and former mayor of the largest community in the district. In the legislature he chaired the Committee on Ways and Means.
In 1914 he became a candidate for Congress when he won a Democratic primary by carrying thirty of the thirty-two counties in the Seventh Congressional District, the largest wheat-growing area in Kansas. He won the election by 1, 559 votes. Before taking his seat in Congress, Shouse completed his term in the state senate, where in 1915 he waged a battle with the Republican governor, Arthur Capper, who was seeking to slash appropriations for educational institutions. Shouse, supported by a large portion of the Kansas press and many Republicans in the legislature, led the successful fight in favor of the appropriations.
In December 1915, Shouse entered Congress. He became a member of the Banking and Currency Committee; formed a close friendship with its chairman, Carter Glass; and was active in developing the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916. That year Shouse was reelected by the largest majority (7, 500 votes) received up to that time by a congressional candidate in the Seventh District. In the Sixty-fifth Congress he endorsed President Wilson's war measures even when the House leadership opposed a measure, as was the case with the Selective Service Act.
In 1918, in reaction to the president's plea for a Democratic Congress to help him in peacemaking, Shouse was defeated for reelection to Congress by a landslide. Instead of returning to his business affairs in Kansas, Shouse became assistant secretary of the Treasury, at the invitation of Carter Glass, who had replaced William Gibbs McAdoo as secretary. At the Treasury, Shouse devoted his attention to the War Risk Bureau, the agency responsible for the allotments and allowances of military personnel, compensation for wounded soldiers, and the government insurance policy urged upon all new recruits.
The bureau, which employed about 18, 000 people, was scattered in twenty-seven buildings throughout Washington. When Shouse resigned from the department in November 1920, the personnel of the bureau had been reduced to about 6, 000 and was housed in one building. Criticism of its performance had all but disappeared in Congress and among the public. Following his resignation, Shouse became a director of several corporations and formed a tax-counseling partnership with another former Kansas congressman, Dudley Doolittle. They established offices in Kansas City, Mo. , and Washington.
Shouse remained active in Kansas Democratic politics and led the Kansas delegation to the 1920 and 1924 Democratic National Conventions. At the latter convention in New York City, he originally supported McAdoo but later shifted the Kansas delegation to John W. Davis.
In 1928 he was able to convince the Kansas delegation to join him in endorsing Alfred E. Smith. Though Shouse twice refused to become a Democratic national committeeman, during the 1928 campaign he served in the Smith campaign on the Executive and Advisory Committee, where John J. Raskob, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, leaned heavily upon him for advice. Following Smith's defeat, Raskob asked Shouse to take charge of the newly created party headquarters in Washington. Shouse accepted with the understanding that he would have no responsibility for fundraising.
In May 1929 he became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, with responsibility for resuscitating his badly defeated and demoralized party. He began a continual barrage of publicity against the program and policies of the Hoover administration, charging it with responsibility for the economic collapse evident since the autumn of 1929.
Shouse traveled throughout the country speaking against the Hoover administration, particularly against the inequities he found in the Smoot-Hawley tariff. At the same time, he endorsed Democratic candidates for Congress, and in 1930 his party regained control of the House of Representatives.
In 1932 he was defeated by Senator Thomas J. Walsh (who was favored by Franklin D. Roosevelt) for the post of permanent chairman of the Democratic National Convention. He was also thwarted in his desire to deliver the keynote address.
In 1934, with the endorsement of such friends as Raskob and du Pont, Shouse became the president of the American Liberty League, an isolationist organization that opposed Roosevelt and drew much support from anti-New Deal Democrats. He called the administration's social program "the attempt in America to set up a totalitarian government, one which recognizes no sphere of individual or business life as immune from government authority and which submerges the welfare of the individual to that of government. " Shouse served as the president of the league until its dissolution in 1940.
After leaving this post, Shouse maintained a Washington office, maintained his numerous business connections, and vigorously endorsed Republican presidential candidates, most notably Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 and Richard M. Nixon in 1960. He continued his interest in Thoroughbred horses and developed one in boxer dogs.
From 1915 until a few years before his death, he owned one or more Thoroughbreds, which he bred or raced, either under his own name or in association with others, and won a number of stakes. He also took an active interest in racing matters and endorsed legislation that legalized pari-mutuel betting at Kentucky tracks. Shouse died in Washington on the day on which it was announced that the Wolf Trap cultural center in Vienna, Virginia, would be constructed on land donated to the nation by Shouse and his wife.
In August 1932, at the request of Pierre du Pont, he became the president of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. During the campaign he delivered but one radio address for the Democratic ticket and in November voted for Roosevelt. He acknowledged that thereafter he never again voted the Democratic ticket. This ended Shouse's connection with the Democratic party. Shouse opposed the New Deal in all of its aspects, and as he grew older he became more and more conservative, believing the Democratic party had abandoned its traditional tenets and teachings by ignoring states' rights and by succumbing to privileged groups and big-city machines.
On October 18, 1911, Shouse married Marion Edwards. They had two children before being divorced in 1932. In 1932, Shouse married Catherine Filene Dodd, the daughter of the Boston departmentstore owner.