Background
Daniel Joseph Keefe was born on September 27, 1852 at Willowsprings, Illinois, United States, the son of John and Catherine Keefe. When he was ten his mother died.
Daniel Joseph Keefe was born on September 27, 1852 at Willowsprings, Illinois, United States, the son of John and Catherine Keefe. When he was ten his mother died.
Keefe left school with a fourth-grade education.
At twelve Keefe began driving for his father, who was a teamster in Chicago, but two years later his father's death left him to make his own way. A strong, good-looking boy, at eighteen he was a lumber handler and longshoreman. Later, developing his Irish knack for leadership, he contracted with shipping companies to furnish men, largely recent immigrants, to load and unload vessels, and in 1882 was elected president of the Lumber Unloaders' Association.
When the National (now International) Longshoremen's Association was formed in 1892, he became its president, serving, except for three years, from 1893 until 1908. He was also from 1897 to 1901 a member of the Illinois State Board of Arbitration. Like a brother who became a capitalist, Keefe was a shrewd businessman who knew how to deal successfully with employers and under his leadership the longshoremen developed a system of cooperative contracts, taken directly by the union for specific pieces of work, which soon became general on the Great Lakes. Though he was a conservative, the practical needs of the situation which he confronted in the international union led him to favor an industrial rather than a craft form of organization. He was also a member of the executive council of the American Federation of Labor from 1903 to 1908, first as seventh and later as sixth vice-president.
On December 1, 1908, he was appointed by President Roosevelt commissioner-general of immigration. In that office he soon found himself merely an instrument for the administration of an act which he considered entirely inadequate as interpreted by the solicitor of the Department of Commerce and Labor. In defense against criticisms of his administration by former associates in the labor movement he could only recommend in his annual reports methods of strengthening the law--recommendations which fell with Taft's veto of the bill imposing a literacy test.
Shortly after leaving office on May 31, 1913, he made a tour of the Orient and Europe studying labor conditions and organizations. During the World War he was a conciliation commissioner for the United States Department of Labor, and from August 1921 until his retirement in April 1925, he was engaged in the prevention and settlement of labor disputes for the United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation. His last years were spent at Elmhurst, a suburb of Chicago, where he died.
Keefe voted with the Republican Party on national issues and supported Republican William Taft in the 1908 Presidential Election.
Keefe was genial, self-reliant and adaptable.
In 1878 Keefe married Ellen E. Conners and in 1904, after her death, took as his second wife Emma L. Walker who died in 1925.