American politician, activist and publisher (1880–1944)
Ruth McCormick (née Hanna, also known as Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms; March 27, 1880 – December 31, 1944), was an American politician, activist, and publisher. She served one term in the United States House of Representatives, winning an at-large seat in Illinois in 1928. She gave up the chance to run for re-election to seek a United States Senate seat from Illinois. She defeated the incumbent, Senator Charles S. Deneen, in the Republican primary, becoming the first female Senate candidate for a major party. McCormick lost the general election. A decade later, she became the first woman to manage a presidential campaign, although her candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, failed to capture his party's nomination.
Politics were a part of McCormick's life from an early age. She was the daughter of Mark Hanna, a Senator and politician who was instrumental in the election of President William McKinley. McCormick learned politics by watching her father, and put those lessons to use fighting for causes such as women's suffrage and improved working conditions for women. McCormick was instrumental in passing a partial suffrage law in Illinois in 1913, allowing women to vote in municipal and Presidential elections. She also married two politicians, Senator Medill McCormick and, after Senator McCormick's death, Congressman Albert Gallatin Simms. McCormick had the fame, the background and the determination to build a career on the new opportunities for women in high level politics. As a spokesperson for the suffrage and for the Republican party, she made political activism attractive for partisan women.
McCormick's endeavors were not limited to politics. Throughout her life, she maintained an interest in agriculture. She owned and operated ranches in Illinois, New Mexico, and Colorado. She also owned several newspapers, founding the Rockford Consolidated Newspapers in Rockford, Illinois.
Early life and family.
Ruth Hanna was born on March 27, 1880, in Cleveland, Ohio. She was the third child of businessman and Republican politician Mark Hanna and Charlotte Augusta Hanna (née Rhodes). Her mother descended from a wealthy Vermont coal and iron family. She began riding ponies after her father gave her one as a gift when she was five years old. Instead of riding sidesaddle, as was common for girls at the time, Hanna rode astride the way boys did. She attended Hathaway Brown School in Cleveland, The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and the Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut.
Hanna's father was a close friend and political ally of Ohio Governor William McKinley, and she would often listen to the pair's political discussions. In 1896, Hanna traveled the country with her father, who was campaigning for then-presidential candidate McKinley while also running his own campaign for the United States Senate. Their stops included Dakota where Hanna stepped in to give a speech for her ill father, and Thomasville, Georgia, where she met her future husband Joseph "Medill" McCormick. Both McKinley and Hanna's father won their races, with Hanna's father earning the nickname "the President Maker".
By age 16, Hanna was an avid horseback rider and never wore dresses. She was said to have an independent spirit. A practical joke she played on the McKinleys, in which she pretended to have killed a wildcat on her own, led to reports that Hanna was an avid hunter.
After high school, Hanna went to Washington, D.C., to work as a secretary for her father who was serving as United States Senator from Ohio. Her duties included taking notes of events from the Senate Gallery. Her father hosted political breakfasts at their Washington, D.C. home where Hanna would socialize with political elites, including Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. She was well known in the social circles of Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Although her family was wealthy, Hanna did not limit her friends based on her social station.
In 1902, Hanna became engaged to Medill McCormick. They were married on June 10, 1903, with President Roosevelt attending the wedding. Like Hanna, Medill was from a well-connected family. His grandfather, Joseph Medill, started the "Chicago Tribune", which the family continued to own. Hanna and Medill had three children: Katrina (born 1913), John Medill (born 1916), and Ruth "Bazy" (born 1921).
Early career.
Ruth Hanna McCormick relocated to Chicago after marrying, where Medill briefly worked as publisher of the "Chicago Tribune". McCormick began working at the paper as well. The McCormicks were a wealthy couple, and their wealth increased when, less than a year after their marriage, McCormick's father died, leaving her one of the primary beneficiaries of her father's $3 million estate (). In spite of their personal wealth, the couple lived at the University of Chicago Settlement, which introduced McCormick to many working women and helped her to understand the problems they faced. During their time living in Chicago, McCormick owned a dairy farm to provide untainted milk to locals, as part of the pure foods movement.
By 1908, McCormick was a member of the Women's Welfare Committee, an organization for helping workers. She was also an active member of the Women's City Club of Chicago, a group that sought to convince lawmakers to pass legislation to help women, but found women's concerns were being pushed aside because they were not voters. This observation led to McCormick becoming a suffragist. In 1911, she and her husband lived in France and Great Britain where they studied European politics. Upon her return to the United States, McCormick joined the Progressive Party in 1912. She had long supported Progressive Party leader Theodore Roosevelt and found the switch to be consistent with the principles of her father, even though he had been a staunch Republican. Her husband also joined the Progressive Party, winning a seat in the Illinois General Assembly in that same year. McCormick served as chairman of the women's welfare section of the National Civil Federation.
Suffrage.
McCormick worked closely with Grace Wilbur Trout to enact partial equal suffrage legislation in Illinois, which gave women the right to vote in municipal and presidential elections. Suffragists in Illinois pursued partial suffrage because full suffrage required a public referendum which activists believed they were likely to lose. Illinois had frequently passed such legislation through one house of the legislature before it ultimately stalled. McCormick adapted techniques she learned from her father to devise a campaign to pressure every member of the legislature. Trout, McCormick, and their associates met with every legislator and were present at the state capital every day of the 1913 legislative session until the measure passed both houses. Governor Edward F. Dunne signed the equal suffrage bill into law on June 26, 1913, gifting McCormick with one of the pens used in the signature. With the enactment of the law, over one million women gained the right to vote, doubling the number of women voters nationwide.
McCormick remained an active worker for national suffrage until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. In 1913, she became chairman of the Congressional Committee for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She took over leadership from Alice Paul, who went on to form the Congressional Union as a separate national suffrage organization. The new position had McCormick relocate from Illinois to Washington, D.C., where she promptly found a new headquarters for the Committee. From that headquarters, she was tasked with getting more pro-suffrage candidates elected to state level offices. During her time as leader of the Congressional Committee, McCormick and Lewis J. Selznick of the World Film Corporation produced the melodrama "Your Girl and Mine", which was intended to help gain support for the suffrage movement. The film never circulated broadly, despite critical praise from contemporary film reviewers, because the distribution agreement between NAWSA and the World Film Corporation fell apart shortly after the premiere in 1914 and the film was confined to private screenings. That same year, McCormick showed solidarity with black activists. McCormick marched alongside Irene McCoy Gaines in a Washington, D.C. suffrage parade, one year after NAWSA had insisted black women march separately. As chair of the campaign committee, McCormick donated a gold elephant to be melted down and sold to help finance suffrage efforts in several states. The elephant had been a gift from members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) to thank McCormick for traveling the country as part of the McKinley campaign.
Return to Republican Party politics.
Medill served one term in the United States House of Representatives before being elected to the United States Senate from Illinois in 1918. McCormick was highly involved in her husband's political career, and he often credited her for his success. In 1918, McCormick served as the chairman of the first woman's executive committee of the RNC. As chair, she devised a plan to get women to become active members of the Republican Party across the country. She resigned from the position after less than a year due to poor health. Next, McCormick became an associate member of the RNC, a position she held from 1919 to 1924. In 1924, she became the first elected national committeewoman from Illinois and served until 1928.
When not working on politics, McCormick managed her 1,500-acre farm in Illinois. The farm at Byron, Illinois, served as a model dairy, and it remained open as other similar farms closed for being unprofitable. McCormick and her children spent time at the farm during the summer months.
Medill lost the Republican primary in 1924 to Charles S. Deneen. Months later, on February 25, 1925, as he was preparing to leave office, Medill died. Although not publicized as such at the time, his death was considered a suicide. One of the factors leading to his suicide was his loss in the 1924 election. Medill had returned to Washington, D.C., days before his death, while McCormick stayed behind to spend time with her close friend of 30 years Alice Roosevelt Longworth after the birth of Longworth's first child. In her grief, McCormick considered giving up politics herself. At Longworth's urging, McCormick decided to continue.
Two months after Medill's passing, McCormick threw herself into working at the Woman's World's Fair as general executive and as a member of the event's Board of Directors. The goal of the event was to demonstrate the progress of women. As part of her responsibilities, McCormick recruited President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge to participate in the opening of the Fair.
Congressional career.
McCormick was convinced her husband had lost the primary due to the lack of engagement of Republican women voters. She turned her attention towards organizing Republican women, starting Republican Women's Clubs in 90 of Illinois's 102 counties. McCormick used that newly mobilized voting base when, in 1928, she ran in a heavily contested primary race for one of Illinois's at-large congressional seats. In the April 1928 primary election, she finished in first place in a field of eight candidates, including two sitting Congressmen, to win one of the two Republican nominations. In November 1928, McCormick won first place in the general election with 1,711,651 votes, elected along with the incumbent. Her vote total was a larger vote share than any other Republican on the ticket in Illinois, besides presidential nominee Herbert Hoover, and larger than any other member of the House of Representatives that year. McCormick was one of eight women elected to serve in the Seventy-first Congress, and one of three women elected for the first time. By the time she entered Congress, McCormick had built a reputation as an astute politician for her years of working with her husband, and her ability to navigate the factions of Illinois politics.
Once in Congress, McCormick was appointed to the House Committee on Naval Affairs. She was the first woman to serve on the influential committee. Although she was not placed on the Agriculture Committee, despite her knowledge of farming, she pushed legislation to relieve farm overproduction. McCormick worked to ensure Oscar DePriest, elected to represent First Congressional District of Illinois, was seated over the objections of southerners who wanted to block the seating of an African-American. She supported a proposed amendment to the Census and Reapportionment Bill which aimed to enforce the 14th Amendment by counting disenfranchised individuals of voting age in the census. She also aided constituents who were veterans of the Spanish–American War who were having difficulty with their pensions.
U.S. Senate campaign.
In September 1929, McCormick announced her intention to run for the Senate against Republican incumbent Charles S. Deneen, who had