Harry Stewart New was an American journalist and politician. He served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee, a United States Senator from Indiana, and United States Postmaster General.
Background
Harry Stewart New was born on December 31, 1858 in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. He was the only child of John Chalfant New and his first wife, Melissa Beeler. He had two half-sisters, daughters of his father by a second marriage. His father was long prominent in Indiana banking, newspaper, and political circles, serving for a year under President Grant as Treasurer of the United States, for two years under President Arthur as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and for four years under President Harrison as consul-general of the United States in London.
Education
Harry New's formal education began in the Indianapolis public schools, but he was also permitted as a teen-age boy to travel more or less alone in Europe for several years.
Career
In 1878 New became a reporter on the Indianapolis Journal, long recognized as one of the most influential newspapers in the Middle West, and two years later he and his father purchased the paper. In 1903, after twenty-five years in newspaper work, New sold out and engaged in business, becoming president of the Bedford Stone and Construction Company.
By this time he was deep in politics, an interest that flowed naturally from his newspaper activities and his family background. He was a state senator from 1896 to 1900, volunteered in 1898 for the Spanish-American War, saw no service in Cuba but achieved a captaincy, and became adjutant-general of his brigade in Jacksonville, Florida. By the end of his senate term he was one of the Republican inner circle in Indiana, and from that time until 1912 he represented his state on the Republican National Committee, where his increasing influence made him vice-chairman in 1906 and chairman in 1907-08. Because he preferred to devote his time to the committee's work he declined Theodore Roosevelt's offer of the assistant postmaster-generalship. New was elected to the United States Senate in 1916, where he served one term, 1917-23. Here his previous political prominence won him immediate recognition; during the critical war years he served on the powerful Committee on Military Affairs and its subcommittee on aviation, while as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 1919 he was able to deal President Wilson's League of Nations many body blows. He participated in the campaign that followed as chairman of the Republican speakers' committee. New was defeated for renomination in 1922 by Albert J. Beveridge after a fight so bitter that in the election Beveridge lost to a Democrat. In March 1923 Harding appointed New as Postmaster-General, a post he held for the next six years.
New died of pneumonia at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, and was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis.
Achievements
Politics
In the Senate chamber he became well acquainted with Warren G. Harding of Ohio, and as a delegate to the Republican National Convention of 1920, though instructed for Leonard Wood, he worked behind the scenes for Harding. But he strongly denied that the nomination of Harding was in any way due to the activities of a "senatorial oligarchy. "
Connections
In 1880 New married Kathleen Virginia Milligan, by whom he had one daughter, Kathleen Virginia, who died in infancy. Mrs. New died in 1883, and in 1891 New married the actress Catherine McLaen Brown of Toronto, Canada. They had no children. New suffered considerable embarrassment in 1919 when a young man named Harry S. New, Jr. , who claimed to be his illegitimate son, confessed in Los Angeles to the murder of his fiancée and was sentenced to San Quentin prison; New was reported to have furnished funds for his defense.