William Squire Kenyon was an American politician, jurist, attorney, judge, and U.S. senator. He served as the United States Senator from Iowa, from 1911 to 1922, and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, from 1922 to 1933.
Background
William Squire Kenyon was born on June 10, 1869, in Elyria, Ohio, United States; one of four children of Fergus L. and Hattie A. (Squire) Kenyon. His father, a native of New York of Scottish parentage, had studied for the ministry at Princeton. His mother's English ancestor had emigrated to Massachusetts in 1642. Young Kenyon's boyhood was passed in a typical parsonage home. When he was a year old the family moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, and in 1878 to Iowa City, Iowa.
Education
Kenyon attended Iowa College, now Grinnell College, for two years before transferring in 1888 to the Law Department at the State University of Iowa in Ames, Iowa, United States, where he received a law degree, in 1890.
In 1891 Kenyon was admitted to the bar, and began to practice law in Fort Dodge. Law was Kenyon’s love, and he rose rapidly in the profession. In 1892 he was elected prosecuting attorney of Webster County and held that position for five years. He was elected judge of the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa in 1900, but the low salary caused him to resign and resume private practice after two years.
On May 11, 1893, he married Mary Duncombe, whose maternal grandfather, Major William Williams, was a founder of Fort Dodge and whose father, John F. Duncombe, was an attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Kenyon formed a partnership with his father-in-law and, after John Duncombe’s death, became general counsel for the Illinois Central during the first decade of the 20th century. President Taft appointed him assistant to U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham in March 1910. His antitrust suits against packinghouses, railroad rebates, the Southern Wholesale Grocers’ Association, the Chicago Butter and eggs trust and a harvester trust won him the political spotlight.
That step in his career was cut short when Jonathan P. Dolliver, U.S. senator from Iowa, died in October 1910. After 67 ballots during a three-month deadlock in the state legislature, Kenyon, on the day of adjournment, April 12, 1911, was elected to fill the unexpired term. Thus Kenyon, a proponent of direct election of senators, was the last Iowa senator to be elected by the state legislature. The 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution providing for the direct election was adopted on May 31, 1913, just after he was elected to his first full term, and he was re-elected without opposition by direct ballot in 1918.
Kenyon, a progressive Republican, was a popular senator known for his hard work, integrity, moral courage, and sympathy for the common person and his independent views sometimes engendered the labels “Insurgent” and “nonconformist.” His legislative list is long and varied: support for the revision of tariffs downward, an income tax, a federal corporation tax, increase of soldiers’ pensions, regulation of interstate liquor traffic and the coal industry, a federal tribunal to settle employee-employer disputes, prohibition of using patents to create monopolies, and opposition to wasteful expenditures. Three bills bear his name: an amendment to the Sherman Antitrust Act allowing jail sentences for trust offenders, a freight bill, and the Webb-Kenyon law preventing the shipment of liquor to dry territories. He was opposed to World War I but became an ardent supporter of the effort once the United States entered the conflict. In 1918 the republic of Czechoslovakia decorated him for assisting its liberation. Although he supported Taft in 1912, he opposed some of the roughshod tactics used against the progressives.
Some of Kenyon’s most outstanding work was related to agriculture. When Warren G. Harding became president in 1921, Kenyon supported the appointment of fellow Iowan Henry C. Wallace as secretary of agriculture and worked closely with him to enact a spate of legislation in the early 1920s. Following World War I, depression came early to the nation’s farmers. Kenyon led a bipartisan effort to enact relief for farmers. The legislators involved in that effort became known as the Farm Bloc, which grew into a powerful force that produced landmark legislation, the regulatory Packers and Stockyards Act and Grain Futures Act, the Emergency Agricultural Credits Act, two amendments to the Federal Farm Loan Act, the Capper-Volstead Cooperative Marketing Act, and the Intermediate Credits Act. Despite these accomplishments, dissension emerged after several years regarding the dumping of agricultural commodities, tariffs, and credit policy, and the Farm Bloc disintegrated.
Two additional factors contributed to the bloc’s decline: Henry C. Wallace’s death in 1924 and Kenyon’s resignation from the Senate to accept appointment to the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on February 24, 1922. Kenyon’s lifelong ambition was thus fulfilled, and he remained in that position until his death. Two offers by President Calvin Coolidge to accept cabinet posts and urgings to run for another Senate term, the vice-presidency, and the presidency were all rejected. While on the bench, he did accept the appointment by President Herbert Hoover to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, better known as the Wickersham Commission. Kenyon’s most noted contribution, which showed his dispassionate posture, was an individual report in which he stated that Prohibition was a failure, despite his strong advocacy of Prohibition.
As a judge, Kenyon was lauded for his rectitude, intellectual acuity, fearlessness, and sense of justice. A scandal at the Wyoming naval oil reserve, Teapot Dome, led to his most famous ruling. During the Harding administration, Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall improperly leased the site to the private Mammoth Oil Company. Kenyon, using strong words, overturned the Cheyenne District Court’s ruling that there had been no fraud.
In Kenyon's later years, he spent summers in Sebasco, Maine, where he acquired a taste for golf. While playing on a course near his home with his friend, former Iowa Governor Nathan E. Kendall, he had a heart attack. Six weeks later he died. Gover- nor Kendall delivered the eulogy at Kenyon’s funeral in Fort Dodge, immortalizing him as “a noble personality, the noblest I ever encountered in private life or public station.”
Kenyon was a member of the Republican Party. He strongly opposed the entry of the United States into the First World War and was one of the "little group of willful men" who opposed President Wilson's plan to arm merchant ships. When the war was declared he supported its prosecution whole-heartedly and demanded the conscription of wealth as well as of manpower. His proposal for the cancelation of the French debt, well received at the height of the struggle, was contrary to public sentiment in the days of reconstruction.
Personality
Kenyon was a progressive and reformer without becoming a fanatic or demagogue. He kept his sense of balance and in the midst of the party and factional strife retained the respect of all groups. He was tall and dignified in appearance and had the bearing, methods, and habits of the student. His tastes and manners were simple and unaffected.
Kenyon’s lifestyle was simple and unassuming. His passion for good causes and philanthropy for the unfortunate was carried out unostentatiously, and he was active in local organizations such as the Congregational church and Masons.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
Golf
Connections
On May 11, 1893, Kenyon married Mary J. Duncombe. They had no children.
The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa
Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.