Prentiss Marsh Brown was an American congressman and senator. He is regarded for his service at the United States Senate and for being a member of the Banking and Currency Committee.
Background
Prentiss Marsh Brown was born on June 18, 1889 in St. Ignace, Michigan, the son of James John Brown, a lawyer, and Minnie Gagnon. His father served as city attorney of Detroit and prosecuting attorney of Cheboygan and Mackinac Counties in northern Michigan.
Education
Brown attended St. Ignace public schools and graduated from high school in 1906. He earned a bachelor of arts degree with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1911 from Albion College, where he played baseball. After studying political economy for one year at the University of Illinois on a scholarship, he was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1914 and practiced law with his father at St. Ignace.
Career
A Democrat, Brown served as prosecuting attorney of Mackinac County from 1914 to 1926 and city attorney of St. Ignace from 1916 to 1928. Brown, who chaired the Democratic party state convention five times, lost bids for election in 1924 to the U. S. House of Representatives and in 1928 for justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. He also belonged to the state board of law examiners from 1930 to 1942 and presided over the St. Ignace school board. In 1932 Brown became the first Democrat ever elected to the United States House of Representatives from Michigan's Eleventh Congressional District, encompassing the northern tip of lower Michigan and parts of the Upper Peninsula.
Brown, who had developed an interest in economic issues in college, specialized in monetary legislation as a senator. Brown's committees included finance, banking and currency, and commerce and manufacturing. He chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1938, the Special Committee on Taxation of Governmental Securities and Salaries from 1938 to 1940, the Claims Committee, and the Democratic Steering Committee in 1941 and 1942. The Steering Committee determined the Senate legislative process and filled vacancies on all other committees. Although normally a liberal/progressive politically, Brown acted independently of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he disagreed with the president's positions.
For example, he opposed Roosevelt's Supreme Court reorganization plan in 1937 and led a Senate group advising the president to withdraw it. He also rejected Roosevelt's 1938 proposal to reorganize executive branch agencies and his 1940 plan to place the independent Civil Aeronautics Authority under control of the Commerce Department.
During World War II the Selective Service Act of 1940 and the 1941 act to extend the service of trainees beyond the one-year limitation likewise dismayed Brown. But Brown generally supported Roosevelt's domestic and international programs.
He backed the Neutrality Act of 1939 that repealed the arms embargo and in 1940 sponsored legislation advancing a $20 million credit to Finland, victim of an attack by the Soviet Union. Brown, who represented numerous Scandinavian constituents, stressed the Finns' desperate need for food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other nonmilitary products. Brown amended the Excess Profits Tax Act, subjecting federal and state employees to the same rates as all other Americans and also making government securities taxable.
His attempts to tax future state, county, and municipal bonds failed. Other Brown legislation continued or broadened the lending authority of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Federal Housing Authority. In 1941, he supported the Lend-Lease Act and secured Senate approval of legislation authorizing the issuance of defense bonds. The farm bloc disagreed with Brown over agricultural price ceilings.
In December 1941 Brown framed a bill setting limits on farm prices. The farm bloc protested Brown's plan to sell government crop surpluses below parity prices. Parity involves a system of regulating prices of farm commodities, usually by government supports, to provide farmers with the same purchasing power they had in the 1909-1914 period. Brown predicted that such action would add a billion dollars per year to the country's cost of living and claimed that the average of all farm prices was actually 102 percent of parity when government farm benefit payments were taken into account.
In September 1942, the Senate approved Brown's measure, authorizing President Roosevelt to stabilize wages and salaries and to set farm prices at or above the 1909-1914 level as compared with the prices of nonfarm commodities. Farm lobbyists persuaded the House to raise the ceiling to 112 percent of parity, but the Senate retained Brown's version.
Republican Homer Ferguson defeated Senator Brown in his bid for reelection in 1942. Brown's resistance to the farm bloc contributed to his defeat. President Roosevelt then appointed Brown director of the Office of Price Administration (OPA), where he served from January to October 1943. Brown vowed to keep price increases to one-half of 1 percent per month. Organized labor and consumers favored stricter price controls, while the food industry protested rollbacks in meat, butter, and canned vegetable prices.
Congress rejected Brown's requests for increased federal subsidies to control prices and for more OPA investigators, and slashed his budget considerably.
Lou Maxon, his deputy, resigned in July, sharply criticizing OPA policies. Chester Bowles, Maxon's replacement, reorganized the OPA, consulted with business about price controls, and simplified pricing and rationing regulations. Nevertheless, the OPA largely controlled rising prices and inflation during Brown's tenure. Consumer prices increased only 12 percent, while farm income jumped 90 percent, worker wages 33 percent, and corporate profits after taxes 15 percent. In December 1943, Brown entered a law partnership with Edward Fallon, Mackinac County prosecuting attorney, and Wendell Lund, War Production Board special assistant, with offices in Detroit and Washington, D. C.
Besides chairing the board of the Detroit Edison Company from 1944 to 1954, Brown headed the First National Bank of St. Ignace, the Arnold Transit Company, and several utility companies and served on the board of directors of several corporations. His most satisfying personal achievement came as chairman of the Mackinac Bridge Authority, when he secured financial backing to construct the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge. The structure had the world's longest total suspension span (8, 344 feet) when it was completed in 1957.
It crosses the Mackinac Straits, where Lakes Huron and Michigan meet, and connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas.
An inveterate doodler, Brown shunned the Washington social life and often attended Detroit Tigers baseball games.
He resided in St. Ignace, where he died.
Achievements
Religion
In his religious affiliation Brown was a Methodist.
Politics
In 1933, he was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-third Congress and Seventy-fourth Congress, serving until 1936. He was then elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of James Couzens, serving (1936-43).
Interests
Brown was an ardent baseball fan.
Connections
Brown married Marion Elizabeth Walker of St. Ignace, Michigan, on June 16, 1916, and had seven children.