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Senate Years of Service: 1939-1953 Party: Republican
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TAFT, Robert Alphonso, (son of President William H. Taft, nephew of Charles Phelps Taft, father of Robert Taft, Jr.),
a Senator from Ohio; born in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 8, 1889;
attended the public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio, and of Manila, Philippine
Islands, and Taft School, Watertown, Conn.; graduated from Yale University in
1910 and from Harvard University Law School in 1913; admitted to the Ohio bar
in 1913 and commenced practice in Cincinnati, Ohio; director in a number of
business enterprises in Cincinnati; assistant counsel, United States Food
Administration 1917-1918; counsel, American Relief Administration 1919; member,
Ohio house of representatives 1921-1926, serving as speaker and majority leader
1926; member, Ohio Senate 1931-1932; elected as a Republican to the United
States Senate in 1938; reelected in 1944 and again in 1950 and served from
January 3, 1939, until his death; majority leader 1953; co-chairman, Joint
Committee on the Economic Report (Eightieth Congress), chairman, Committee on
Labor and Public Welfare (Eightieth Congress), Republican Policy Committee
(Eightieth through Eighty-second Congresses); sponsored the Taft-Hartley Act,
designed to create equity in collective bargaining between labor and
management; unsuccessful candidate in 1940, 1948, and 1952 for the Republican
presidential nomination; died in New York City, July 31, 1953; lay in state in
the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, August 2-3, 1953; interment in Indian Hill
Episcopal Church Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Patterson, James T.
Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1972; Wunderlin, Clarence E.
Robert A. Taft: Ideas, Tradition, and Party in U.S. Foreign
Policy. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005.
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