Huck, Winnifred Sprague Mason, 1882-1936

<p>Winnifred S. Huck, the third woman elected to Congress, spent her short House career carrying on the legacy of her father, William Ernest Mason, as an ardent and articulate pacifist. As the first wife and mother elected to Congress, she vowed to look after the needs of married women and families and to promote world peace.</p>

<p>Winnifred Sprague Mason was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 14, 1882. She was the daughter of William, an attorney and a former schoolteacher, and Edith Julia White Mason. Winnifred’s father served as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1887 until 1891 and in the U.S. Senate from 1897 to 1903. He returned to the House in 1917 to fill an Illinois At-Large seat. During his congressional career, Mason consistently championed labor rights, took a strong antitrust position, and was an avowed pacifist. He was one of the first American politicians to advocate an independent Cuba following the Spanish-American War and to recognize an autonomous Irish Republic. Colleagues and the press denounced the pacifist Mason when he opposed American intervention in World War I, a conflict he shunned as a “dollar war.” Winnifred Huck attended public schools in Chicago until her father’s first election to the House took the family to Washington, DC. She graduated from Washington’s Central High School. In 1904 she married her high school sweetheart, Robert W. Huck. The couple raised four children: Wallace, Edith, Donald, and Robert Jr. Robert Huck Sr., a civil engineer, became a steel company executive, moving the family to Colorado. Later he worked as a construction engineer for the deep waterways commission, relocating the family to Chicago, where Winnifred Huck became active in her hometown community.</p>

<p>When Representative William Mason died in office on June 16, 1921, Winnifred Huck announced that she would be a candidate in the April 22nd primary to fill her father’s At-Large seat for the remainder of his term in the 67th Congress (1921–1923) and would also run for a full term in the 68th Congress (1923–1925). On her prospects, Huck commented, “I have come into the political world like a clap of thunder out of a clear sky,” but also cited a longtime interest in politics due to her father’s influence. Without spending any money on her campaign, and lacking the endorsement of the Illinois Republican Women’s Club, Huck narrowly won the nomination. In the primary for the full term, however, she lost the nomination to Henry Riggs Rathbone, who was later the runner-up in the general election to fellow Republican Richard Yates.</p>

<p>Winnifred Mason Huck (September 14, 1882 – August 24, 1936) was an American journalist and politician from the state of Illinois who became the third woman to serve in the United States Congress, after Jeannette Rankin and Alice Mary Robertson, the first woman to represent Illinois in Congress, the first woman to win a special election for the United States Congress, and the first mother. She was elected to fill the at-large seat of her father, Representative William Ernest Mason, after his death.</p>

<p>Huck was born Winnifred Sprague Mason in Chicago, Illinois, and attended public schools in Chicago and in Washington, D.C. She worked as her father's secretary.</p>

<p>Huck was elected as a Republican to the 67th United States Congress by special election to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her father. She served a partial term from November 7, 1922 to March 3, 1923, a term which overlapped with the one-day term of the first woman in the U.S. Senate Rebecca Felton. Unlike most first-term Representatives, she introduced several bills.</p>

<p>She was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination to the 68th Congress in 1922, and an unsuccessful candidate for nomination for a special election (February 27, 1923) to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative James Mann. After her term she joined the National Woman's Party.</p>