81-10 K. Ross Toole Archives, University of Montana Montana Sen. James E. Murray inherited his money from copper, but took up the cause of the unions after seeing the abuses of big business in Montana.

10. James E. Murray

Montana's longest-serving senator was a man of quiet conviction, liberal ideals

By DON SPRITZER for the Missoulian

Ask longtime Montanans to name the state's most prominent U.S. senators, and most likely will acknowledge Mike Mansfield, Lee Metcalf, and perhaps Burton K. Wheeler and Thomas Walsh.

Yet the man who perhaps outshone all of Montana's senators, both in terms of years served and sponsorship of legislation with enduring impact, was an individual whose name few people today recognize – James E. Murray.

For more than 25 years, beginning in 1934, this unassuming, hard-working, principled man gained a reputation as the Senate's archetypical New Deal Liberal.

Throughout his career, Murray remained unbending in his conviction that no problem was so great that it could not be solved by a well-written bill calling for action and spending on a national scale.

A native of Canada, the son of Irish immigrants, Murray migrated to Butte at an early age. There he established a thriving law practice under the tutelage of his wealthy uncle, James A. Murray, one of Montana's lesser known copper barons.

After inheriting much of his uncle's sizable fortune, Murray quickly rose to prominence as a Democratic Party activist. He also gained a measure of national recognition as a leader in the fight to gain American support for the cause of Irish independence. And, after witnessing corporate greed and manipulation at its worst as practiced by the Anaconda Copper Co., Murray became a lifetime advocate of organized labor, small farmers and the other victims of big business. Heavy losses in the 1929 stock market crash led to Murray's deep mistrust of big banks and New York's financiers.

In 1934, he rode into the Senate on the election coattails of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Montana's popular senior senator, Burton K. Wheeler. Murray later parted company with Wheeler, after the senior senator began denouncing Roosevelt's plan to add new justices to the U.S. Supreme Court and the president's advocacy of the anti-German cause during the early years of World War II. Murray's feud with Wheeler captured statewide headlines, especially during election campaigns.

In all, Murray served 26 years in the Senate – longer than any Montanan before or since. At various times during his career, he chaired the important Senate Labor and Interior committees and played a key role on the Foreign Relations Committee. During World War II he helped establish and chaired the Senate Committee on Small Business. He used this committee to secure approval of a string of bills designed to assist and protect small entrepreneurs during a period when the nation was moving toward an economy dominated by a handful of giant corporations with lucrative military contracts.

After the war, Murray sponsored and steered through the Senate the Employment Act of 1946. This bill established the President's Council of Economic Advisers and called for a measure of federal responsibility in monitoring the nation's economy.

Two of Murray's longest Senate fights were over legislation which failed to gain the approval of a conservative Congress: a series of bills to establish national health insurance, and a measure to establish a Missouri Valley Authority which would have coordinated dams, irrigation and flood-control projects throughout the entire Missouri River basin.

At a time when big dams were not regarded as the ecological nightmares that many regard them today, Murray secured congressional approval of Montana's Canyon Ferry, Yellowtail, Hungry Horse and Libby dams. But he also was ahead of his time in sponsoring measures to develop wind energy and to control air pollution. He sponsored and held hearings on the first Senate bill designed to create a national system of wilderness areas. The bills providing for the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as the nation's 49th and 50th states also bear Murray's name.

During the 1950s, Murray's steadfast advocacy of labor and national health insurance incurred the wrath of the nation's Red-baiting McCarthyites. In 1954, the aging senator narrowly escaped electoral defeat in what still ranks as the dirtiest campaign in Montana's history. Murray's opponents circulated a series of scurrilous advertisements and thousands of copies of a booklet titled "Senator Murray and the Red Web Over Congress."

Despite such smear campaigns, Murray remained steadfast in his liberal convictions. After his retirement and his death in 1961, Murray's legacy endured. The Johnson administration's Medicare law, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and Wilderness Act of 1964 were direct descendants of bills first sponsored by Montana's quiet – and soon forgotten – U.S. senator.

– Don Spritzer is the author of "Senator James E. Murray and the Limits of Post-War Liberalism."