Arthur Capper

Infobox Governor
name= Arthur Capper


caption=
order=20^th
office= Governor of Kansas
term_start= January 11, 1915
term_end= January 13, 1919
lieutenant= William Yoast Morgan
predecessor= George H. Hodges
successor= Henry J. Allen
birth_date= July 14, 1865
birth_place= Garnett, Kansas
death_date= December 19, 1951
death_place= Topeka, Kansas
spouse= Florence Crawford
profession= printer, newspaper editor
party= Republican
religion= Quaker
footnotes=

Arthur Capper (July 14, 1865 - December 19, 1951) was twentieth Governor of Kansas and a United States Senator.

Capper was born in Garnett, Kansas. He attended the public schools and learned the art of printing. He became a newspaper publisher, eventually owning several newspapers and two radio stations. The best known of his publications, "Capper's Weekly", had an enormous readership among farm families and served as the base of his political support in Kansas.

Capper first entered politics in 1912 when he became the Republican candidate for governor of Kansas. In addition to a reputation built from his newspapers, he was also the son-in-law of former governor Samuel J. Crawford. He was defeated by Democrat George H. Hodges. However, Capper was elected governor in the next election in 1914 and served as governor of Kansas from 1915 until 1919, winning re-election in 1916. He was the first native Kansan to serve as the state's governor.

Having served two full terms as Governor, Capper was not permitted to run for a third term by the Kansas State Constitution. Instead, in 1918 he ran for election to the United States Senate and won. Capper became a long-serving senator, representing Kansas as one of its two senators for five 6-year terms. He was in the Senate from 1919 to 1949, and prominent among Republicans who supported the relief efforts and other policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration. He did not seek reelection in 1948.

Capper was particularly interested in issues relating to agriculture. Before his time as governor, he served as President of the Board of Regents of Kansas State Agricultural College from 1910 to 1913. While in the United States Senate, he at times served as chairman of the Committee of Expenditures of the Department of Agriculture and the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. He also at times served as chairman of the Committee on Claims and the Committee on the District of Columbia. He co-sponsored the Capper-Volstead Act. In 1923 Senator Capper brought forward an anti-miscegenation constitutional amendment outlawing mixed-race marriages, but was forced to retreat by the protest of African-American organizations. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,716163,00.html Miscegenation] , "Time Magazine", July 23, 1923]

After retiring from the Senate, Capper returned to his home in Topeka, Kansas where he continued the newspaper publishing business until his death. He was buried in Topeka Cemetery in a plot adjacent to Governor Crawford.

Further reading

* Socolofsky, Homer. "Arthur Capper: Publisher, Politician, and Philanthropist" (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press), 1962.

References

External links

* [http://www.kslib.info/ref/message/capper/capper.html Capper speeches] on State Library of Kansas web site
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