HON. FRANK Q. STUART
Earnest, purposeful, recognizing ever the obligations
and the duties as well as the opportunities and advantages of
citizenship, Frank Q. Stuart of Chariton stands with the
eminent men of Iowa who have labored persistently and
effectively for the welfare of state and nation. A member of the
bar, he brings to bear upon the questions of vital interest to
the country the analytical power and logical reasoning of the
lawyer. His
utterances indicate a mind trained in the severest school of
reasoning and it is a recognized fact that policy never sways
him in his position, which is the outcome of an earnest belief
in the cause which he advocates.
Iowa
is proud to number Mr. Stuart among her native sons, his birth
having occurred in Monroe county on the 24th of
January, 1856. He
acquired a high school education and afterward studied under
special instructors for several years. In fact, throughout
his entire life he has been a student--of books, of men, of
events--and in the school of experience he has learned many
valuable lessons. In
early life he took up the study of telegraphy and was employed
as an operator until 1874.
He regarded this merely as an initial step to higher
things, and taking up the study of law, was admitted to the
bar in the year in which he attained his majority. He then entered
upon active practice, in which he has since been engaged save
for intervals spent in editorial work and upon the public
platform. Along
with those qualities indispensable to the lawyer--a keen,
rapid, logical mind plus the business sense, and a ready
capacity for hard work--he brought to the starting point of
his legal career certain rare gifts--eloquence of language and
a strong personality. He
has ever been remarkable among lawyers for the wide research
and provident care with which he prepares his cases. In no instance has
his reading ever been confined to the limitations of the
question at issues; it has gone beyond and compassed every
contingency and provided not along for the expected, but for
the unexpected, which happens in the courts quite as
frequently as out of them.
His logical grasp of facts and principles of the law
applicable to them has been another potent element in his
success; and a remarkable clearness of expressions, an
adequate and precise diction, which enables him to make others
understand not only the salient points of his argument, but
his every find gradation of meaning, may be accounted one of
his most conspicuous gifts and accomplishments.
Mr.
Stuart was married in Chariton, Iowa, September 14, 1876 to
Miss Ida M. Penick, and they have two children living. Martha was married
in 1906 to William F. Jackson, of Lake Forest and Chicago,
Illinois, and they have two children: Virginia Stuart,
born in 1908; and Barbara Jackson, born in 1912. Adelbert, the only
son of our subject, was born in 1885.
Mr.
Stuart was for some years a resident of Colorado and served as
a member of its legislature from 1885 until 1887, during which
period he introduced and secured the enactment of nine bills
into laws, among which was a law preventing non-resident alien
ownership of land in that state, a law prohibiting the
contracting of convict labor, and a law prohibiting the
blacklisting of discharged employees. He also actively
supported a proposed law for the regulation of railway rates
and charges, which was passed by the house, but was defeated
in the senate.
In
the year of his retirement from the Colorado assembly Mr.
Stuart published a brochure, entitled: “Natural Rights,
Natural Liberty and Natural Law.” Commenting upon this, one of the daily
papers of Denver said: “Mr.
Stuart’s statement of the social problem and the land question
is the clearest, most concise, most dispassionate and
altogether the ablest we have seen, and we commend it to the
thinkers of the country.”
A Cleveland (Ohio) paper wrote editorially: “The author states
the points of his case without ambiguity of language, and his
argument is clear, logical and comprehensive. * * * It is
eminently worthy of the careful perusal of all students of the
social problems of the day.”
In
1891 Mr. Stuart returned to Chariton, Iowa, and almost
immediately afterward was elected mayor of the town, but soon
resigned that position to become editor of the Des Moines
Daily Leader, which he made one of the leading newspapers of
the country in the discussion of social, economic and
governmental subjects. His
editorials were widely read by deep thinking men. It is well known
that Mr. Stuart has always opposed monopoly, special privilege
and legalized injustice in all their various forms and guises. He has agitated
questions connected therewith in arousing public sentiment to
the enormity of prevailing social, economic and industrial
wrongs, and all of his public efforts, whether as speaker,
writer or political worker, have been in the direct interest
of social, economic and political reform. He has often been
heard on the lecture platform and his oratory has enabled him
to sway his hearers, while his logic has carried conviction.
It
is well known that Mr. Stuart’s position has never been an
equivocal one. He
stands fearlessly for what he believes to be right and nothing
can swerve him from a course which his judgment sanctions as
honorable and straightforward in the relations of man with man
and in the duties of citizenship. This has been particularly notable in
his recent espousal of the principles of the progressive
party, in which connection a contemporary writer said: “Prior to the
campaign of 1912, Mr. Stuart had for many years been
affiliated with the democratic party, and at different times
he was signally honored by that party. In 1894 he was the
democratic candidate for congress in the ‘Big Eighth’ district
of Iowa. In the
state campaign of 1897 he was in charge of the democratic
press bureau of Iowa. In
1898 he was the temporary chairman of the democratic state
convention, making the keynotes speech—which speech drew from
Governor John P. Altgeld of Illinois the encomium, ‘It has a
tremendous ring,’ and caused Leslie M. Shaw, then republican
candidate for governor of Iowa and afterwards secretary of the
treasury of the United States to class Mr. Stuart as one of
the foremost political orators of the time. During the
presidential campaign of 1900 Mr. Stuart was official editor
to the executive committee of the democratic national
committee at headquarters in Chicago. In 1902 he was
acting chairman of the democratic state committee of Iowa
during the campaign of that year. In 1907 (for a time residing in the
south) he was appointed as a delegate from Louisiana to the
national conference which was held at Des Moines on the
subject of election of United States senators by direct vote
of the people. In
1910, having returned to Iowa, he for a second time was
nominated for congressman from the eighth Iowa district,
making a splendid race against a large opposition majority. In promoting his
candidacy in that campaign his home friends issued the
following statement, signed by the treasurer, auditor, clerk
of district court and county attorney of his home county: ‘We know of no man
who has fought so aggressively against all forms of trusts,
more earnestly for an honest reduction of the tariff, so
constantly for conservation, or so untiringly for honesty in
government. He
has sacrificed more time and more labor battling for the equal
rights of all mankind than any man of our acquaintance. In him as
congressman the people will have one who is safe and fair in
all things, frank and honest in every way, able and courageous
in every battle.’ While
for years Mr. Stuart supported the democratic party when it
was hopelessly in the minority in his home state, and
nationally—that party appearing to him to afford greater
latitude than the dominant party for the free discussion of
social, economic and governmental problems—in 1912, at a time
when the democratic prospects were brighter than they had been
in twenty years, he severed his connection with that party,
resigning the eights district vice presidency of the Iowa
State Jefferson Club and other honorary positions, and came
out promptly in support of the great declaration of principles
promulgated by the progressive party in national convention at
Chicago.” Mr.
Stuart entered aggressively into the campaign and his ability
as a speaker led to his cooperation being sought not only
throughout Iowa, but in many other states, and he contributed
much to the success which his party won in the campaign of
that year. His
utterances make strong appeal because of their clearness and
simplicity of style to the average hearer; they leave an
equally strong impress upon the mind of the logical thinker
who readily sees the relation between cause and effect. The breadth of his
own nature and of his vision are manifest in all that he says,
and the record of Frank Q. Stuart, lawyer, orator and
publicist, is one which reflects credit and honor alike upon
the state of his nativity.