Businessman politician public official
Truman Handy Newberry was born on November 5, 1864 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. He was the eldest of three children (two boys and a girl) of John Stoughton Newberry by his second wife, Helen Parmelee Handy; there was one older son by the first marriage. A wealthy manufacturer of railroad cars and a partner of James McMillan, afterward a Republican Senator from Michigan, John S. Newberry was in 1878 elected to a single term in Congress.
Truman Newberry attended Michigan Military Academy at Orchard Lake, Charlier Institute in New York City, and Reed's School at Lakeville, Connecticut, before entering the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. In 1885 he graduated Bachelor of Philosophy and started his business career on the staff of the Detroit, Bay City, and Alpena Railroad.
Because of his father's failing health, the son had to assume the major responsibility for managing the family's business enterprises, taking complete control at his father's death in 1887.
Newberry shrewdly managed the fortune he had inherited and became a multimillionaire. Together with such families as the Algers, Buhls, and McMillans, the Newberrys ranked as leaders of that Michigan society of established wealth, position, and orthodox Republicanism that had its business headquarters in Detroit and its social center in Grosse Pointe. He was a director of several firms, among them the Union Guardian Trust Company, Parke Davis & Company, and the Michigan Bell Telephone Company, all in Detroit, and the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. He was one of a group of Detroit investors, including Henry B. Joy, who brought the Packard Company from Warren, Ohio, to Detroit just after the turn of the century, thus helping to make Detroit the center of the automotive industry; he became a director of the Packard Motor Car Company in 1903.
Newberry in 1893 organized a naval militia unit, known after 1894 as the Michigan State Naval Brigade.
During the Spanish-American War he served on the cruiser Yosemite and saw action off the Cuban coast. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1905, and three years later Newberry became Secretary of the Navy, a position he held for the last three months of the Roosevelt administration. In this capacity he attempted to overhaul the administrative system of the navy; but his plan was criticized by Admiral William S. Sims, President Roosevelt's naval aide, and was not adopted.
When the United States entered the First World War, Newberry was a lieutenant commander in the naval reserve; that July he was appointed assistant to the commandant of the Third Naval District, with headquarters in New York City. In June 1918 President Wilson induced Henry Ford to run for the Senate from Michigan as a Democrat and an administration supporter; and the state Republican organization chose Newberry to oppose him. Since the Michigan open primary law permitted the nominally Republican Ford to be entered in the primaries of both parties, the G. O. P. regulars feared that cross-filing might work to the advantage of the popular auto maker and deprive them of a candidate in the November race. Primed with money from Newberry's wealthy friends, his campaign committee spent some $176, 000 on advertising and publicity, despite federal and state laws which limited a Senatorial candidate to contributions or expenses of $3, 750. Newberry's aides, fired by wartime passions, made harsh attacks on Ford for his pacifism, and insinuated that Ford's son Edsel, who had been deferred from military service, was a draft dodger. In the primary, held in August, Ford won the Democratic nomination, but lost the Republican contest to Newberry by 43, 163 votes. Throughout the primary and general election campaigns, Newberry remained at his naval post in New York. He won the November election by a slim margin of 7, 567 votes out of 432, 541. Since the state was normally strongly Republican, this was hardly an impressive showing. Nevertheless, it was generally assumed that the wealthy Newberry had purchased his election, and the still lively progressive antagonism toward plutocracy worked against him.
Newberry's Senate career, however, was soon put in jeopardy when Henry Ford, still rankling from the campaign attacks on his son and himself, petitioned the Senate to look into Newberry's primary expenditures; an investigation was voted in December 1919.
Meanwhile, in November, a federal grand jury had indicted Newberry and 134 others on a charge of criminal conspiracy to violate the Corrupt Practices Act. At the trial, much of the evidence was amassed by lawyers and a corps of field agents whose undercover operations across the state were subsidized by Ford. In March 1920 Newberry was found guilty and was given the maximum sentence of two years in prison and a $10, 000 fine; sixteen of his co-defendants were also convicted. The convictions, however, were overturned by the Supreme Court in May 1921 by a 5-to-4 decision. In January 1922 the Senate, after debating the findings of its investigation for two months, voted 46 to 41 to adopt a resolution declaring Newberry entitled to his seat but expressing grave disapproval of the sum spent to obtain his election as "harmful to the honor and dignity of the Senate. " The Corrupt Practices Act of 1925 was a direct consequence of the Newberry case.
In November 1922, when a new move was launched to unseat him, Newberry resigned from the Senate. Retiring from politics, he devoted the rest of his life to business affairs.
Newberry died at his home in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, in 1945, of myocardial failure, complicated by severe arteriosclerosis and diabetes, and was buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit.
In the Senate in 1919, Newberry signed the Lodge Resolution opposing the covenant of the League of Nations.
On February 7, 1888, he married Harriet Josephine Barnes of New York City. They had three children: a daughter, Carol, and twin sons, Barnes and Phelps.
