Joseph M. McCormick

Joseph Medill McCormick was born in Chicago on May 16, 1877. His father was the future diplomat Robert Sanderson McCormick (1849–1919), who was a nephew of Cyrus McCormick.

McCormick attended the Groton School, a preparatory school at Groton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University in 1900, where he was elected to the secret society Scroll and Key.

He worked as a newspaper reporter and publisher, and became an owner of the Chicago Daily Tribune. He later purchased interests in The Cleveland Leader and Cleveland News. In 1901 he served as a war correspondent in the Philippine Islands.

McCormick was a grandson of the Tribune owner Joseph Medill. His mother Katherine Medill McCormick hoped that leadership of the paper would pass from her brother-in-law, Robert Wilson Patterson, to her first son. Joseph McCormick took over much of the management of the paper between 1903 and 1907, but became increasingly depressed and developed alcoholism. In 1907–1908, he spent some time under the care of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung in Zurich, and subsequently followed Jung's advice to detach himself from the family newspaper.[3]

His younger brother, the famed "Colonel" Robert McCormick (1880–1955) became involved in the newspaper, worked closely on it for four decades, and was a leading isolationist figure in the Republican Party.[4]

McCormick was vice chairman of the national campaign committee of the Progressive Republican movement from 1912 to 1914. He was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1912 and 1914.

Afterward he advanced to national office, being elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served one term from March 4, 1917, to March 3, 1919. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1918, and served from March 4, 1919, until his death at age 48 in 1925. In the Senate, McCormick was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Labor and the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments.

McCormick lost the nomination in 1924 to Charles S. Deneen, who had previously served as the 23rd Governor of Illinois. He died on February 25, 1925, in a hotel room in Washington, DC.[5] Although it was not publicized at the time, his death was considered suicide.[6] McCormick was interred in Middle Creek Cemetery, near Byron, Illinois.[7]

• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49)

• American National Biography
• Dictionary of American Biography
• Miller, Kristie. Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics from 1880 to 1944. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1992
• Stone, Ralph A. "Two Illinois Senators Among the Irreconcileables." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50 (December 1963): 443-65.

• Media related to Joseph M. McCormick at Wikimedia Commons
• Newspaper clippings about Joseph M. McCormick in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW