Thomas David Schall was a United States Representative and Senator, perhaps best known as the first blind member of the House of Representatives, and the first blind Senator from Minnesota. He served as a Representative from Minnesota’s 10th District from 1915-1925. He ran as a Progressive from 1915-1919, returning to the Republican Party thereafter. He then was elected and served as a Republican Senator from 1925-1935, when he was tragically killed in a street accident.
A Blind Man Goes to Congress
Overcoming a hard-scrabble childhood, Thomas Schall received his law degree in 1904 after he attended Hamline University on a scholarship, and graduated from the University of Minnesota.
In 1907, when he was in private practice and arguing a case in Fargo, he went out for lunch and shopping at a local cigar store. He tried to light his cigar with a new electric cigar lighter. Unwittingly, he plugged the 110 volt lighter into a 220 volt outlet, which shocked him so much that he was hurled backwards, suffering a searing burn on his arm, and double vision. Despite this, he went back to finish his argument in court. Over the next several months (stories differ on how long), his vision deteriorated into legal blindness.
Schall went to several doctors looking for a cure. Within a year, he and his wife had exhausted the savings they had accumulated over his years in practice; and they had to sell all of their belongings, including Schall’s law library. When Schall heard about a possible new surgical procedure to cure his blindness, he determined that he had to go back into practice to pay for it. He resumed practice in the offices of a friend, focusing on personal injury law, though he ultimately gave up his search for a cure for his blindness.
Schall’s wife Margaret, who had been married to him only a year when his accident occurred, fortunately had experience in reading to a sight-impaired professor when she attended the University of Minnesota, so she became his personal secretary both In his practice and when he went to Washington.
Schall refused to let his blindness deter him. He loved to speak to any crowd that would have him, at community picnics, on street corners, even from the back of his car. People joked that he would mount the retaining wall of his Lake Harriet home to speak if he saw three or more people standing outside of his home.
Schall was photographed in 1932 using a white walking stick with a red tip to permit motorists to see him, accompanied by another blind Senator, Thomas Pryor Gore. He was also filmed doing target shooting with a pistol, with the aid of a man who pointed a stick at the target. Work with “seeing eye” dogs in Germany was in its infancy, but when an American started to train these dogs, he made Senator Schall the gift of his first trained dog, a German shepherd police dog named Lux. Thus, Senator Schall became perhaps the first American to use a seeing eye dog as he roamed the streets of Washington D.C. Lux became so famous that he became the poster boy for a dog food brand until his death in 1933, when he was replaced by Rex.
Schall also became a legislative advocate for the blind. Congress voted to grant him a special page to accompany and assist him because of his blindness. As he traveled back and forth between Minneapolis and Washington, sometimes without his wife or aides, Schall was forced to put Lux in the baggage car. In response, in 1926, Schall and Senator Wadsworth successfully introduced a bill in Congress that permitted guide dogs to accompany their owners on public transportation and in other public places, which initiated the practice throughout the United States.
Schall was also the first legislator to speak to the convention of the Minnesota State Organization of the Blind (MSOB) in June of 1924. MSOB was regularly in touch with him as they attempted to pass such legislation as pensions for the blind, and he was instrumental in passing the Randolph-Sheppard Act that gave a legal preference to blind people in operating vendor stands on federal property.
Schall responded to questions about how he was able to be so successful as a sight-impaired lawyer and Congressman by saying:
“From 27 to 30 I practiced law with marked success. From 30 to 37 I have been in total darkness. I have demonstrated that I can still take care of the interests of my clients against the best legal minds of this or any other state. The heart’s the source of power. Men are as great as their hearts are great. Not in reveling palaces nor pillared halls are the deepest emotions felt, grandest conceptions born, or most vital truths discovered. But from Sinai’s slopes [and] from the felon cell at Bedford, from the chamber of blindness in London have come the inspirations that have blessed mankind.”[1]
A Mistrustful, Non-Interventionist Politician
Representative and then Senator Schall made his political name as someone who distrusted big government, wealthy elites, and intervention in foreign affairs. A friend and admirer of Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, the father of the famous aviator, Schall was one among many in Minnesota who urged small farmers and business people to organize to prevent large corporate interests from gaining political and economic power. Indeed, he applauded local governments that refused federal aid, choosing to solve their economic problems on their own.
In that vein, Schall also lobbied hard for a ban on imports to protect American jobs. As a Progressive, he cast the deciding vote for the Speaker of the House, Champ Clarke, who was a critic of President Wilson’s internationalist foreign policy. He blamed American participation in World War I as the foundation of the 1928-29 economic panic that led to the Depression. During the war, he also frequently attacked General John J. Pershing, whom he described as imperial and associated with the elites, accusing him of building up a sycophantic, cowardly following.
Congressman Schall followed his hero Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party when Roosevelt lost the Republican nomination for President to William Howard Taft and formed the Progressive Party in 1912. When Schall returned to the party in 1919, he found himself out of favor because he had switched parties, and because he did not always follow the party line. Isolationist publisher William Randolph Hearst supported him and published numerous front-page stories about his work, which prompted his Minnesota opponents to tar him as an Eastern elitist politician unconcerned with affairs back in Minnesota.
The then-Democratic leaning Minnesota press also excoriated him, but he brushed the criticism aside. His friends described him as “unyielding” and “not afraid of any man,” a legislator not afraid of using strong language to make his points.
Representative Schall took both his legislative and his constituent work seriously, boasting that he returned all correspondence within twenty-four hours. In the House, he chaired the Committee on Alcohol Liquor Traffic and the Committee on Flood Control, and served on the Rules Committee. He also chaired the Committee on Interoceanic Canals in the Seventy-first and Seventy-second Congresses.
As a legislator, Schall voted to repeal Prohibition. Somewhat out of keeping with his anti-federal stance on some issues, he supported child labor laws, some federal regulation of major corporations, and federal protection for Minnesota’s Quetico-Superior wilderness.
Senator Schall was the first Senator to strongly and vocally oppose President Roosevelt’s New Deal, claiming on the Senate floor in 1935 that Franklin Roosevelt was “…the first communist president of the United States and was acclaimed in the communists’ Russian newspapers.” He criticized the creation of the Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation as a takeover of private business during a “…planned or artificial emergency, under which Congress can be scared or stampeded into making FDR a dictator.”[2]
Election Scandals
After ten years in the House of Representatives, Schall decided to run for the United States Senate. Opposed by the establishment Republicans who thought he did not represent the image they wanted for a Republican and that he was too radical, Schall lost the party nomination. Undeterred, Schall ran in the Republican primary anyway, defeating Associate Justice Oscar Hallam and former State Senator Ole Sageng. He then went on to defeat popular Swedish-born Farmer-Labor incumbent Senator Magnus Johnson and Democrat John J. Farrell, as well as two independent candidates. In line with his non-interventionist views, Schall excoriated Johnson for refusing to fight America’s membership in the League of Nations and the World Court, accusing him of selling his vote to international interests. During the campaign, Schall told a colorful tale of a man who came to his office with a “highly perfumed” cigar and offered him $25,000 if he would return to Minnesota and work on behalf of the World Court, insinuating that the man may have made the same offer to Johnson.
After he was defeated by Schall just 8,000 votes, Johnson returned the accusations with a challenge to the election results in the Senate on February 2, 1925, only one month before his term was to end. When Schall appeared to take his oath of office, the Senate ordered the Committee on Privileges and Elections to investigate Johnson’s claims. The claims included excessive campaign expenditures, defamation of Johnson, Schall’s alleged promises of illicit political appointments, his abuse of Congressional franking privileges, unlawful distribution of a scandalous campaign newspaper, and coerced campaign contributions from bootleggers and other shady characters.
On June 8, 1926, after twelve days of hearings, the Committee on Privileges and Elections recommended, and the Senate voted, to deny Johnson’s request for a recount and the claim was dismissed for lack of evidence of the charges. The committee also dismissed a claim under the Minnesota corrupt practices act, suggesting that this claim should have been presented to Minnesota courts before it could be considered. Schall had a clerk read a lengthy prepared statement into the record about “these unfounded, baseless slanders” against him. His colleagues then agreed to order that the hearings be printed, and authorized a $15,000 payment for his expenses in defending the challenge. Schall later described Johnson, who was subsequently elected to the House of Representatives, as “a marionette who kicked and waved his hands and opened his mouth according to the tension of the string.”[3]
In 1930, Schall once again faced a charge of election wrongdoing. After beating popular Governor Theodore Christiansen in the primary, Schall survived another tough three-way race against Ernest Lundeen, the Farmer Labor candidate, and Einar Hoidale, the Democratic candidate. Although Schall won by 11,000 votes with 37% of the vote, Hoidale accused Schall of campaign violations similar to those Johnson raised, including the claim that bootleggers had bribed Schall to vote against Prohibition-type laws. Once again, the Senate determined not to sanction Schall, noting that Hoidale had failed to file his state law claims in Minnesota within the statute of limitations. The Senate also claimed that the alleged $100 violation of the franking privilege was not worthy of their time, and that countering affidavits from individuals who had allegedly illegally received jobs were sufficient to refute those claims.
A Last Political Struggle
By the next Senate election in 1936, Schall recognized that he would have a formidable challenge, most likely by the popular Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson, a supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt and the person most associated with the emerging coalition which became the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party.
The 1936 campaign promised to be nasty as well. It was rumored that editorials by Walter Liggett in the Rochester Midwest American that accused Olson of misdeeds from the sale of political appointments to personal immorality were linked to Schall and his campaign. Schall also got help from Olson enemies James Laughlin, who had written an ouster petition against Olson in 1935, and Harold Birkeland, who wrote what have been described as “lurid” 1934 campaign pamphlets against Olson. In response, Olson was collecting information that would link Schall to some of the recent Prohibition scandals in the state.
On a higher note, both candidates had arranged for well-known politicians to vouch for them. Schall was planning to have Democratic Senator Huey Long come to Minnesota to stump on his behalf, while Olson had committed President Roosevelt to campaign for him.
However, as the two sides were preparing, the entire Senate contest began to unravel. In September 1935, Huey Long was assassinated in Baton Rouge. On December 19, 1935, Schall stopped on his way home to shop with an aide. As they were crossing the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Cottage City, Md, Schall and his aide were hit by a reckless driver and Schall died a couple of days later, on December 22, 1935. Although his staff asked for an investigation after rumors of a conspiracy circulated in Washington, the matter eventually died down.
Ironically, Schall’s likely opponent Floyd B. Olson died the next August of stomach cancer (link.) The much-anticipated match-up between these two well-known Minnesotans, both graduates of MHSL legacy schools, was over; and Schall was succeeded for brief time by Elmer Benson, also a MHSL legacy school graduate, appointed by Olson to take his seat.
Personal Life
Thomas David Schall was born in a log cabin in Reed City, Michigan on June 4, 1878 The historians dispute whether his father died in 1880 or left the family; but in any case, his mother moved around, eventually working as a cook in Travers City, Michigan and in Campbell, MN, on the border with the Dakotas. Schall did not attend school or learn to read until age 12.
In his telling, like many children of that era, Schall had to sell newspapers in the streets until late at night to help support his family, and slept in a box after he was done for the night. Because of his dancing and voice skills, Schall joined the circus for several months. When he returned home, his mother bartered Schall’s adoption by a wealthy farmer for an education for her son. When, however, Schall was put to work on the farm instead of being permitted to attend school, he ran away twice, the second time returning to his mother.
A baseball and fighting enthusiast, Schall went to Ortonville High School, where he discovered his love of oratory, winning first prize at school and second prize in a state oratorical contest. An 1898 oratory contest which the president of Hamline University attended won him a scholarship to Hamline, where he put himself through school by organizing a laundry service. However, he transferred to the University of Minnesota in 1900, continuing to win contests in the Northern Oratorical League and the Pillsbury Prize. After earning his A.B. degree in 1902, he received his LL.B. degree from Saint Paul College of Law in 1904. He was admitted to the bar and married Margaret in 1905. They had three children.
Schall had many hobbies. He loved horses and was a competent equestrian, including in jumping horses. He loved to fly, often flying from the Capitol to his Maryland home on an autogiro, an aircraft something like a helicopter; and his sons both had pilots’ licenses. He also loved target shooting at home.
References
*The quotations in this biography are taken from the references below.
Curt Brown, Thomas Schall Overcame Blindness to Serve Minnesota in Congress, Star Tribune (Nov. 19, 2016)
Peggy Chong, Thomas David Schall, Nat’l Fed’n for the Blind, (last visited Nov. 5, 2020)
Karen Cooper, Nation’s First Guide Dog Lived in Linden Hills, Southwest Journal (Jan. 28, 2020), (last visited Nov. 5, 2020)
G. Daniel Harden, The Blind Senator from Minnesota, Front Porch Republic (Dec. 13, 2010)
Mr. Herbert for the Comm. on Privileges and Elections, Senator from Minnesota, S. Doc. No. 1066, (2d Sess. 1933),
George H. Mayer, The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson (1951)
Paul Nelson, Schall, Thomas D. (1878-1935), Mnopedia, (last visited Nov. 5, 2020)
U.S. Senate Historical Office, The Election Case of Magnus Johnson v. Thomas D. Schall of Minnesota (1926), adapted from Anne M. Butler & Wendy Wolff. United States Senate Election, Expulsion, and Censure Cases, 1793-1990. S. Doc. No. 103-33. Washington, GPO, 1995, (last visited Nov. 5, 2020)
Schall, Thomas D (1878-1935), Biographical Directory of the U.S. Cong., 1774-present, (last visited Nov. 5, 2020)
[1] Harden, The Blind Senator from Minnesota
[2] Harden, The Blind Senator from Minnesota
[3] Paul Nelson, Schall, Thomas D. (1878-1935), MnOpedia