Personal Background
Cummins was born in a log house in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania to Thomas L. Cummins, a carpenter/farmer, and Sarah Baird (Flenniken) Cummins. He lived in Pennsylvania until about 1869, and attended Greene Academy. As a young man, he worked as a carpenter with his father. He attended country schools and completed a four-year course in two years at Waynesburg College, but did not graduate because of a dispute with the College's president. After leaving the College, he initially was a tutor and taught at a country school.
At age nineteen, Cummins came to Iowa, working in a county recorder's office in Elkader, Iowa. He then became a civil engineer and helped to build railroads in Indiana. After moving to Chicago, where he studied law, he was admitted to the bar in 1875. After practicing law in Chicago for three years, he and his brother set up a practice in Des Moines. In his most famous case as an attorney, he represented a group of farmers in an attempt to break an eastern sydicate's control of the production of barbed wire. However, historians consider his representation of farmers in the barbed wire case to be an anomaly, because more often he represented corporations or businessmen.
In 1887 Cummins was elected to a single term in the Iowa State Senate representing Des Moines. He was asked to serve as temporary chair of the 1892 State Republican Convention. He unsuccessfully pursued a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1894. In 1896 he was active in the William McKinley campaign, and was appointed as Iowa's representative on the Republican National Committee.
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