He was born on September 14, 1873 in Warrenton, North Carolina, the second son and third of five children of Christopher Thomas and Annie Sarah (Bailey) Bailey. Both parents were natives of Virginia. The father, a Baptist minister, soon moved his family to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he edited the Biblical Recorder, a Baptist weekly newspaper with the second largest circulation of any periodical in the state.
Bailey attended local schools, the Raleigh Male Academy, and Wake Forest College, where he read extensively in the English classics and studied Greek.
After graduating with the B. A. degree in 1893, he took over the editorial duties of his father, who had suffered a stroke; he officially became editor of the Recorder after his father's death two years later. Almost immediately Bailey became involved in the attempt to improve North Carolina's public schools, a crusade begun under the leadership of such reformers as Charles D. McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, but Bailey followed his own course. In his editorials he proposed financing public schools through legislative appropriation, instead of through local taxes as the reformers preferred, and he advocated a compulsory four-month school term. His campaign drew him into political life.
Although a Democrat, he was appointed in 1895 by the Republican-Populist fusion governor, David L. Russell, to the state Board of Agriculture. Bailey resigned three years later and allied himself with the state Democratic chairman, Furnifold M. Simmons, in the successful "white supremacy" campaign which that year broke the political control of the fusionist alliance. In return, Simmons saw to it that the legislature enacted Bailey's educational proposals in 1899. A prohibitionist, Bailey served as chairman of the executive committee of North Carolina's Anti-Saloon League (1903 - 1907), but resigned when the league abandoned support of local option in favor of state prohibition.
Bailey was never happy as an editor, and in 1905, believing that a legal career provided the best foundation for politics, he began to study law. He resigned as editor of the Biblical Recorder in 1907, was admitted to the bar the following year, and set up a law practice in Raleigh. As his political activity increased, he served on the Wake County Board of Education (1909 - 1911) and as chairman of the state Child Labor Committee (1911 - 1913). Although a lieutenant in the Simmons machine, Bailey gained a reputation for progressivism by urging the adoption of state election reforms, helping to establish a commission form of government for Raleigh, and working to improve the law limiting child labor. In 1914 he led a concerted attempt to induce the state Democratic convention to adopt a program of progressive measures, but without success.
Meanwhile President Woodrow Wilson, whom Bailey firmly supported, had in 1913 appointed him collector of internal revenue for the eastern district of North Carolina, a post (broadened in 1919 to cover the whole state) that Bailey held for eight years and administered with marked efficiency.
Bailey had continued his close ties with the political organization of Senator Simmons, but during the 1920's he came to feel he could achieve higher office only by breaking away. He therefore waged an independent, but unsuccessful, race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1924. In the presidential campaign of 1928, when Simmons bolted the party and backed Herbert Hoover, Bailey loyally supported Alfred E. Smith. Two years later, taking advantage of Simmons' irregularity, Bailey ran against him in the primary and won Simmons' seat in the United States Senate. He remained in the Senate until his death. An early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bailey acquiesced in much of the early New Deal legislation, including the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act (1935). Increasingly, however, he grew uneasy over the New Deal's tendency toward centralization.
After 1936, declaring himself a "conservative by nature, " he began actively to oppose the administration on such measures as the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act (1937) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). He also played a major role in the defeat of Roosevelt's "court-packing" plan in 1937. By then a leading spokesman for a bipartisan group of anti-New Deal senators, Bailey drafted, with Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg, a "conservative manifesto" expressing the group's determination to limit government intervention in the free enterprise system.
Bailey nevertheless remained on good terms with Roosevelt and consistently, if tacitly, endorsed him in his reelection campaigns. In foreign affairs, Bailey abandoned a lifelong isolationism to support the president's policy of preparedness. He backed both increased defense expenditures and the Selective Service Act in 1940, and the following year worked diligently for passage of the Lend-Lease Bill. During World War II, antagonized by labor strikes, he repeatedly but unsuccessfully promoted a "work or fight" law to draft civilians who were exempt from military service into essential war industries. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Bailey throughout the war played an important part in overseeing the acquisition of merchant vessels for defense purposes and in determining national maritime policy.
During much of 1945 and 1946 illness kept him from his work in the Senate. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Raleigh, and was buried in that city's Oakwood Cemetery.
Bailey remained on good terms with Roosevelt and consistently, if tacitly, endorsed him in his reelection campaigns. In foreign affairs, Bailey abandoned a lifelong isolationism to support the president's policy of preparedness. He backed both increased defense expenditures and the Selective Service Act in 1940, and the following year worked diligently for passage of the Lend-Lease Bill.
Quotations:
"They who forgive most shall be most forgiven. "
"Since we humans have the better brain, isn't it our responsibility to protect our fellow creatures from, oddly enough, ourselves?"
A solemn, dignified man who saw politics as the clash of moral and constitutional principles (he was dubbed "Holy Joe" by the press), Bailey believed in the traditional virtues of states' rights, self-help, and balanced budgets.
Never robust, Bailey suffered throughout his career from migraine headaches.
He married on August 16, 1916, to Edith Walker Pou allied him with one of the state's most influential families. They had five children: James Hinton Pou, Annie Elizabeth, Josiah William, Edith Pou, and Sally.
