(Biennial Message of William Larrabee, Governor of the Sta...)
Biennial Message of William Larrabee, Governor of the State of Iowa, to the Twenty-Second General Assembly: January 1888
https://www.amazon.com/Biennial-Larrabee-Governor-Twenty-Second-Assembly/dp/152789942X?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=152789942X
1888
(A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - r...)
A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses.
https://www.amazon.com/Railroad-Question-historical-practical-railroads/dp/B003YORJVM?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003YORJVM
Businessman legislator politician
William Larrabee was born on January 20, 1832, in Ledyard, Connecticut, United States. He was descended from Greenfield Larrabee who was in New London, Connecticut, in 1637. His father graduated from West Point in 1811 and served in the War of 1812. The family lived on a farm.
William Larrabee received a primary education, plus elements of business training from his father. He only completed eighth grade.
In 1853 William Larrabee moved to Iowa, taught school for a time, and was a foreman on a farm for a few years. In 1857 he bought a flour mill in the town of Clermont, in Fayette County, and remained in that business until 1874, when he sold out and went to Europe for three months. Afterward, he engaged in banking and farming and became one of the largest landowners in the state and had settled on a farm near Clermont.
During the Civil War William Larrabee raised a company of soldiers, but he was not accepted for service because he had lost the sight of one eye in his youth. In 1868 he was elected to the state Senate and remained a member until he resigned to accept the nomination for governor in 1885. He was four times reëlected to the Senate without opposition in a district that sent Democrats after his retirement. During most of the time of his service in the Senate, William Larrabee was chairman of the committee on ways and means. He was elected governor by a vote of 175, 504 against 168, 525 for his Democratic and fusion opponent, and he was reëlected two years later by a vote of 169, 595 to 153, 706.
These were the years when the third-party movements were reducing the Republican vote and increasing the Democratic support. The railroad question had been an active issue for a number of years. William Larrabee's experience with the building of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul across the northern part of the state from 1857 to 1878 had called his attention to the need for railroad legislation. His election to the Senate was due to the long delay in railroad construction in his portion of the state. In his second inaugural address in 1888, William Larrabee declared that he believed transportation charges were far too high and that they bore little relation to the cost of the service. He recommended that the railroad commission "should be authorized and required to exercise full and complete supervision over the railroads, compelling them to comply with the laws and to furnish adequate facilities at reasonable compensation." Such a message and such recommendations were far in advance of the times and his position was all the more remarkable inasmuch as he was a successful businessman and a banker.
(Biennial Message of William Larrabee, Governor of the Sta...)
1888(A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - r...)
William Larrabee had a large library and was fond of reading. He also experimented with fruit growing and liked to travel, at one point spending several months in Europe and Palestine in 1873.
William Larrabee married on September 12, 1861, Anna M. Appleton, whose family had emigrated from Connecticut to Iowa in 1854. They had seven children: Charles, Augusta, Julia, Anna, William, Frederic, and Helen.
