In The Maine House: Opposition To The Barwise Bill and The Ku Klux Klan
Hale served in the Maine House of Representatives 1923-1930, and was elected as Speaker in 1929-1930. In 1923 and 1925 he was instrumental in defeating the Barwise Bill, a measure supported by the majority of his party, which would have changed the Maine Constitution to outlaw all state aid to parochial schools. The bill (introduced and defeated twice) was strongly opposed by Maine's Catholic population, and just as strongly favored by the Ku Klux Klan whose state headquarters and center of support was in Hale's home city of Portland. The measure split the Maine Republican Party and embroiled state politics for three years. It was favored by Governor Owen Brewster but opposed by a faction that included Hale and his cousin, U.S. Senator Frederick Hale, whose Senate seat Brewster would eventually (but unsuccessfully) contest.
In leading the 1923 debate against the Barwise Bill, Hale said it was "conceived in intolerance against the Roman Catholic Church" and related that he "knew of a person (n Europe). . . who was killed for the only reason that he was a Jew". He then read extracts from speeches by the King Kleagle of the Maine Ku Klux Klan, F. Eugene Farnsworth, calling him "an ignorant demagogue". In his 1925 speech against a new version of the same bill, Hale cited examples of recent intolerance in American political life, including the rejection of German language teaching during World War I and Tennessee's law against the teaching of evolution. Referring again to the Ku Klux Klan of Maine, who had demonstrated their strength during a recent Maine State Senate debate on the same bill, Hale said that only the defeat of the Barwise measure would "appease this hysteria". Hale was a convincing champion of the Anti-Barwise forces because he was a Protestant Republican from Portland, a Klan hotbed. The bill was defeated, but Hale's opposition to it likely defeated his own initial bid to become Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives in 1926. Hale made a second successful bid for the House Speakership in 1929, by which time the Klan was a spent force in the Maine Republican Party.
Read more about this topic: Robert Hale (Maine Politician)
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