Senator Lafayette Young View All Years

LAFAYETTE YOUNG was born on a farm in Monroe County, Iowa, near Eddyville, May 10, 1848, and died in Des Moines, November 15, 1926. His parents were John and Rachel (Titus) Young. He had but limited opportunities for attending school. When a small boy he worked in his father’s woolen mill at Albia, a mill run by horse power. When he was about thirteen this mill burned, after which he worked in woolen mills in nearby towns for a few years as the main support of his mother, while his father and older brother were in the Union Army. When he was fifteen he tried to enlist, but was rejected on account of his youth. He was a member at Albia of the Zouaves, the company being organized to defend that part of the state from threatened invasion of the Rebels from Missouri. About this time he entered the office of the Albia Sentinel to learn the printer’s trade, and for the next few years worked as a printer in Albia, Centerville, Keokuk, and Eddyville. By 1866 he was working for Mills & Co., printers of Des Moines, for ten dollars a week. In 1868-69 he worked in St. Louis and attended night school. In 1870 he returned to Des Moines and became city editor of the State Register. In February, 1871, he established the Atlantic Telegraph as a weekly paper but changed it to a daily in December, 1879. In 1873 he was elected senator from the district of Adair, Adams, Cass, and Union counties, was re-elected in 1877 from the district then composed of Adair, Cass, and Madison, and was again elected in 1885, the district then being Adair, Adams, and Cass. He was thus a member of the Senate in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Twenty-first, and Twenty-second general assemblies. He took early part in railroad legislation, and voted for the original act fixing railroad freight and passenger rates. He was a member of the Committee on Railroads in the Sixteenth, was its chairman in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth, and again a member on his return to the Senate in the Twenty-first and Twenty-second general assemblies. He was a chairman of the Committee on Printing in the Sixteenth, and a member of that committee during the other assemblies of which he was a member, and was throughout his service an active and efficient legislator. On March 31, 1890, he purchased the Des Moines Capital and remained as its editor and publisher during the rest of his life. In 1893 he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor and in the convention was second in the field of six or more candidates, receiving on the first ballot 241 votes to 493 for Frank D. Jackson, who was nominated on the second ballot. On March 15, 1894, the Twenty-fifth General Assembly elected him state binder, and he served for the six years of 1895-1900. During the Spanish-American War he was with Shafter’s Army in Florida and in Cuba as a newspaper correspondent, and acquired a personal acquaintance with Colonel Roosevelt and other eminent military and naval leaders. In 1900, as a delegate at large form Iowa to the Republican National Convention, he placed Theodore Roosevelt’s name before the convention for vice president. In 1905 he was a guest of the Taft party on its trip of inspection of the Philippines. The party consisted of Secretary of War Taft and a number of congressmen and ladies, among them were Nicholas Longworth and Alice Roosevelt. After his visit to the islands Mr. Young went on around the world, returning home by way of the Suez Canal, following which he wrote copiously for the press and lectured from platforms concerning his travels. In 1908 he was again a delegate at large to the Republican National Convention. Soon after the death of United States Senator Dolliver, or on November 12, 1910, Mr. Young was appointed by Governor Carroll to the vacancy until it was filled by the General Assembly, electing W.S. Kenyon on April 12, 1911. In 1913 Mr. Young spent several months in Balkan states as a newspaper correspondent, and then later made valuable contributions to the press and from the platform concerning conditions in those warring countries. For several months in 1915 he was a war correspondent in Europe and was for a time held as a spy by the Austrian government. In May, 1917, he was appointed by Governor Harding chairman of the Iowa State Council of Defense and did patriotic and meritorious service in its work during the time our country was involved in the World War. He was a successful newspaper man, a vigorous and an attractive writer, and a popular public speaker. As he approached the later years of his life, having grown in knowledge and experience, enriched by world travel, and by personal acquaintance with many of the great personages of the country, he came to be regarded as almost without a peer in Iowa as a speaker at important functions. His quaint style, homely philosophy, kindly and abundant humor, sparkling epigrams, and patriotic eloquence all contributed to give him that eminence.