Joseph Medill McCORMICK, Congress, IL (1877-1925)

McCORMICK, Joseph Medill, (husband of Ruth Hanna McCormick), a Representative and a Senator from Illinois; born in Chicago, Ill., May 16, 1877; attended preparatory school at Groton, Mass.; graduated from Yale University in 1900; engaged in newspaper work as reporter, publisher, and owner of the Chicago Daily Tribune, and later purchased an interest in the Cleveland Leader and Cleveland News; war correspondent in the Philippine Islands in 1901; vice chairman of the national campaign committee of the Progressive Republican movement 1912-1914; elected to the State house of representatives in 1912 and 1914; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fifth Congress (March 4, 1917-March 3, 1919); elected to the United States Senate in 1918 and served from March 4, 1919, until his death; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1924; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Labor (Sixty-sixth Congress), Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments (Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth Congresses); committed suicide in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 1925; interment in Middlecreek Cemetery, near Byron, Ogle County, Ill.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Miller, Kristie. Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics, 1880-1944. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1992; Stone, Ralph A. “Two Illinois Senators Among the Irreconcileables.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50 (December 1963): 443-65.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present