Background
He was born on May 18, 1869 on a farm near Salem, Ohio, United States, the youngest son of David and Maria (Hope) Porter, who had emigrated from Scotland in 1848. When he was eight years old the family removed to Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
He was born on May 18, 1869 on a farm near Salem, Ohio, United States, the youngest son of David and Maria (Hope) Porter, who had emigrated from Scotland in 1848. When he was eight years old the family removed to Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
He attended the public schools and graduated from the high school in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He graduated in pharmacy and studied medicine for a short time.
He read law in the office of his brother L. K. Porter, with whom he formed a partnership after his admission to the bar in 1893. He served as city solicitor of Allegheny from 1903 to 1906.
In 1910 he was elected as a Republican to the federal House of Representatives and was reelected to every Congress until his death. In 1919 he became chairman of the House committee on foreign affairs. During the World War he had been frequently consulted by President Wilson, and under the subsequent Republican administrations he came to be one of the most influential figures in the determination of American foreign policy. In 1921, as a member of the advisory committee of the Washington conference on limitation of armaments, he was chairman of the subcommittee on the Pacific and Far Eastern questions. He played an active part in the framing of the four-power and nine-power Pacific pacts. He wrote the resolution remitting the remainder of the Chinese Boxer indemnity in 1924, and at one time he was urged by Filipino leaders for appointment as governor-general of the Philippines. He was the colleague of the secretary of state, Charles E. Hughes, on the Pan American economic commission of 1922 and represented the United States at the centennial of Brazilian independence later in the same year.
A close student of the narcotic drugs problem, he was appointed head of the delegation of the United States to the session of the opium advisory committee of the League of Nations at Geneva in 1923. The 1923 meeting accepted the American program in principle and called two conferences to be held in November 1924. Porter again headed the American delegation at the second conference and with Bishop Brent protested against the domination of the first conference by the "opium bloc" and the restriction of the second conference to export problems only. A joint committee of both conferences, formed to examine the American program, produced compromise protocols unsatisfactory to the direct limitationists. In an atmosphere of great tension Porter declared that there was evidently no hope of the American principles being adopted, and the American and Chinese delegations withdrew from the conference on February 6, 1925.
He died in Pittsburgh.
Porter thought that the only effective means of control the opium traffic would be a world agreement limiting the amount of raw opium and coca produced annually to quantities necessary to supply the "legitimate" needs of medicine and science.
His critics complained that his intransigent attitude was impractical, and that he treated the opposing powers with discourtesy. On the other hand, he was widely praised in America and China for his vigorous leadership.
He was married in 1895 to Elizabeth Foster Ramaley of Allegheny. They had two daughters.