Thomas David Schall was an American lawyer and politician. He was a Representative from Minnesota.
Background
Thomas David was born on June 4, 1877 near Reed City, Michigan, United States, son of David and Mary Ellen (Jordan) Schall. The family was left destitute upon the death of his father, who had been a captain in the Union army.
Thomas and his mother moved to Taylor Township, Traverse County, Minnesota, where they were living in 1885. The mother found work in a hotel and turned her son over to a well-to-do family. Thomas, however, quarreled with his foster parents and when he was about nine years old ran away to join a circus. For the next few years he fended for himself, wandering about the Middle West as a circus roustabout, and selling papers in Chicago, where, he confessed, he sometimes spent the nights "over warm gratings and on an ironing-board in a laundry. "
Education
By 1893 Schall was back in Minnesota, attending school in Wheaton, where his sister stimulated his interest in study.
At Hamline University, which he attended in 1898-99, he won a state oratorical contest while a freshman, and earned his board by manual labor and professional baseball. Transferring to the University of Minnesota, he won further oratorical honors, and was graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1902. Two years later he received the degree of LL. B. at St. Paul College of Law and began to practise in Minneapolis.
Career
After studies, being a Progressive candidate for Congress in 1912 Thomas David Schall was defeated, but in 1914, running again as a Progressive, he was successful. Two years later he was reelected and found himself the only remaining Progressive in the House. When he helped to secure Champ Clark's election as speaker in 1917, Schall was appointed to the rules committee.
Sent to investigate conditions in France in 1918, he narrowly escaped death when his ship was torpedoed. He was chairman of the committee on flood control (1923 - 25).
Although he ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primaries of a special election in 1923 to fill the unexpired term caused by the death of Senator Knute Nelson, the following year he defeated Nelson's successor, the Farmer-Laborite Magnus Johnson. Johnson filed a contest, charging Schall with violation of Minnesota's corrupt practices act. The case was dropped by a committee on lack of evidence; it was revived and dropped again two years later.
In 1930, following a strenuous campaign, Schall defeated Theodore Christianson in the primaries, and Ernest Lundeen, Farmer-Laborite, in the fall elections, to retain his senatorship. He was a member of the committees on Indian affairs, pensions, post-offices and post roads, and interoceanic canals and was chairman of the last named (1929 - 31).
He died in 1935 from injuries received when he was struck by an automobile.
Achievements
Politics
Throughout his career Schall identified himself with the Republican party. He spoke against chain stores and for the Nine-foot Channel, emphasizing his efforts to prevent lumber companies from locating power projects in the northern woods of Minnesota. He became an acrid, and sometimes vituperative, critic of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Personality
Schall was blinded by an electrical shock from a cigar lighter.
He has been described as a fluent and bombastic speaker who frequently won his campaigns with little backing from party or press. His foes believed that in running for public office he capitalized on the public sympathy aroused by his blindness.
Connections
On November 5, 1902, Schall married Margaret H. Huntley of St. Paul; they had three children - Thomas D. , Richard Burton, and Peggy.