Owen, Robert L. (Robert Latham), 1856-1947

<p>A successful attorney in Indian Territory (I.T.) and a prominent U.S. senator, Robert Latham Owen, Jr., was born on February 2, 1856, in Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of Robert Latham Owen, Sr., a railroad president, and Narcissa Chisholm, part Cherokee and originally from I.T. Owen attended preparatory schools in Lynchburg and in Baltimore, Maryland, and college at Washington and Lee University, earning a master's degree in 1877. Two years later, following the untimely death of his father, Owen and his mother moved to I.T., and he became the principal teacher in the Cherokee Orphan Asylum at Salina, and after eighteen months, secretary of the Cherokee Board of Education.</p>

<p>During the early 1880s Owen studied law, passed the bar, edited the Vinita Indian Chieftain for several months, and presided over the Indian International Fair at Muskogee. Demonstrating shrewd understanding of expanding economic opportunities, he unsuccessfully attempted to rent 250,000 acres of grazing land in the Cherokee Outlet. He did successfully acquire an oil lease for the entire Cherokee Nation, though no producing well was drilled before the rights expired.</p>

<p>In 1885 officials appointed Owen to head the Union Agency overseeing the Five Tribes. In his four-year tenure he dealt steadfastly with white intruders, citizenship disputes, and political controversies among tribal factions. During his last two years as agent he also used his position to personal advantage, injecting himself into the debate over re-leasing the Cherokee Outlet and taking sides in a controversial townsite dispute in Wagoner. He also purchased a ranch in the northwestern corner of the Cherokee Nation.</p>

OWEN, Robert Latham, a Senator from Oklahoma; born in Lynchburg, Campbell County, Va., February 2, 1856; attended private schools in Lynchburg, Va., and Baltimore, Md.; graduated from Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., 1877; moved to Salina, Indian Territory, and taught school among the Cherokee Indians; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1880 and commenced practice; federal Indian agent for the Five Civilized Tribes 1885-1889; member of the Democratic National Committee 1892-1896; organized the First National Bank of Muskogee in 1890 and was its president for ten years; upon the admission of Oklahoma as a State into the Union in 1907 was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate for the term ending March 3, 1913; reelected in 1912 and 1918 and served from December 11, 1907, to March 3, 1925; declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1924; chairman, Committee on Indian Depredations (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on the Mississippi River and Its Tributaries (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Pacific Railroads (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Banking and Currency (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on the Five Civilized Tribes (Sixty-sixth Congress); resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C.; organized and served as chairman of the National Popular Government League from 1913 until his death in Washington, D.C., July 19, 1947; interment in Spring Hill Cemetery, Lynchburg, Va.

<p>Robert Latham Owen Jr. (February 2, 1856 – July 19, 1947) was one of the first two U.S. senators from Oklahoma. He served in the Senate between 1907 and 1925.</p>

<p>Born into affluent circumstances in antebellum Lynchburg, Virginia, the son of a railroad company president, Owen suffered an almost Dickensian reversal of fortune when his family was ruined financially by the Panic of 1873 and his father died while he was still in his teens.</p>

<p>Owen, who was part-Cherokee on his mother's side, responded by heading west to Indian Territory, where he built a new life as, in turn, a schoolteacher working with Cherokee orphans; a lawyer, administrator and journalist; a federal Indian agent; and the founder and first president of a community bank. Among the achievements that brought him to wider public notice, and helped pave the way for his election to the U.S. Senate in 1907 when Oklahoma (incorporating the former Indian Territory) achieved statehood, was his success as a lawyer in 1906 in winning a major court case on behalf of the Eastern Cherokees seeking compensation from the U.S. Government for eastern lands the Cherokees had lost at the time of the Indian removals.</p>

<p>A Democrat active in many progressive causes, including efforts to strengthen public control of government, and the fight against child labor, Owen is especially remembered as the Senate sponsor of the Glass-Owen Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which created the Federal Reserve System. In discussions at the time, he resisted a campaign to put the Federal Reserve formally under the control of the banking industry, and the 1913 Act emerged broadly in line with Owen's compromise proposal, creating a central Federal Reserve Board nominated by the Government alongside twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks dominated by the larger banks. Owen subsequently became highly critical of what he saw as the Federal Reserve's bias towards deflationary policies during the early 1920s and again in the early 1930s, which he attributed to excessive influence by the largest banks upon the Fed, and which he identified as largely responsible for causing the Great Depression: a minority view at the time, but one that has, in recent decades, gained wide acceptance among Conservative economists (having been popularized by Milton Friedman in the 1960s). In 1920 Owen unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency.</p>