James Eli Watson

US representative and senator, born in Winchester, Indiana, USA. A lawyer, he served in the US House of Representatives (Republican, Indiana, 1895–7, 1899–1909) and the Senate (1916–33), becoming majority leader (1929–33). As a party loyalist, he supported big business, isolationism, and restrictions on immigration.

James Eli Watson (November 2, 1864?

He was born in Winchester, Indiana, one of six children. At the age of twelve, Watson accompanied his father to the 1876 Republican National Convention. Watson attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana and graduated in 1886. Watson campaigned for Republican candidates throughout the 1880s and moved to Rushville, Indiana in 1893.

He was defeated for reelection in 1896, but was elected in 1898 to the 56th Congress and reelected to the 57th, 58th, 59th and 60th Congresses (1899-1909).

Shortly after his arrival in Washington, Watson became the "right-hand man" and protege of Speaker Joe Cannon. Cannon ensured his selection as the Republican whip, trusted him with party strategy in the House of Representatives, and placed him on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. While Cannon had his share of adversaries in the House, Watson enjoyed the attention of a wide circle of friends. As one writer observed, Watson "would work himself up to an astonishing pitch, tear off his collar and necktie, then throw aside his coat and vest, until, clad in trousers, shirt, and suspenders, he could really let himself go."

He did not run for reelection in 1908, instead running unsuccessfully for governor of Indiana. He resumed a private law practice in Rushville,

Watson left the House to run for governor of Indiana in 1908. He resumed a private law practice in Rushville, though he continued to participate in Washington politics, supporting Cannon after House Democrats and Republican "insurgents" attempted to oust the speaker in 1909. The following year, Watson wrote Cannon's famous speech defending the leadership's authority, party government, and the rights of the majority.

In the years after the House rebellion, Watson remained a prominent figure on Capitol Hill.

In 1916, Watson entered the U.S. Senate race against Democratic Senator John W. Watson won the majority of primary delegates, but according to one source, New had "convincing affidavits of fraud" committed by Watson. New defeated Kern, and Watson won the remainder of Shively's term.

Watson quickly earned a reputation as a "horse trader", able to convince reluctant senators to toe the party line. Henry Cabot Lodge, the Senate Republican Conference chairman, recognized Watson's skills at persuasion, and in 1919 he had Watson organize the Senate's opposition to the League of Nations provision in the Versailles Treaty. Nevertheless, Watson quietly accepted the position's duties during the two separate occasions when the Senate voted to reject the treaty.

Prior to the second treaty vote in March 1920, President Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations' chief advocate, met with Watson in the White House. Watson then predicted the vote on each of Lodge's fourteen treaty reservations. The anecdote, recounted in Watson's memoirs, illustrates two aspects about the senator: he always knew the outcome of a vote, and even his greatest rivals enjoyed his company.

Throughout the 1920s, Watson faced no serious challenges from Indiana politicians. Watson tested his party's support in 1928 when he ran against Herbert Hoover for the Republican presidential nomination. Hoover won the nomination, and Watson, as a party liner, supported his candidacy.

Much to Hoover's dismay, on March 5, 1929, the Senate Republican "regulars" selected Watson to succeed Charles Curtis as majority leader and chairman of the Republican Conference. In October, the stock market crashed, and Watson's response with high-tariff legislation did little to ward off the financial depression. By the end of his term, Watson was considered the Republican leader in name only.

In 1929, he was a defendant in a lawsuit wherein it was alleged by William M. Rogers, an avowed Klansman, that Watson had forced him to sign an affidavit recanting testimony before a Senate committee that Watson was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Democrats swept both Congress and the presidency in the election of 1932, and Watson lost his Senate seat in a landslide defeat. Following the election, however, Watson remained a fixture of the Washington scene, practicing law and trading stories with his former colleagues in the Republican cloakroom. Wendell Willkie, a Republican convert and fellow Hoosier, could attest that Watson's support, or lack thereof, meant everything in the state. When Willkie ran for president in 1940, Watson would not endorse the former Democrat.

Watson died in 1948 in Washington D.C. Until the end, Watson remained well liked, if not well respected, by House and Senate members. Indeed, even his harshest critics considered Watson the man "impossible not to like".

During his Senate tenure, he was

majority leader 1929-1933 chairman, Committee on Woman Suffrage (1919-21), chairman, Committee on Revision of the Laws (1919-21), chairman, Committee on Enrolled Bills (1923-25), chairman, Committee on Interstate Commerce (1925-1929), chairman, Republican Conference (1929-33)

Watson is credited with originating the saying If you can't lick 'em, jine 'em