Senator Joseph Irvin France

Joseph Irwin France (October 11, 1873 – January 26, 1939) was a Republican member of the United States Senate who represented the State of Maryland from 1917 to 1923. Serving one term in the Senate during a significant period in American history that encompassed World War I and its aftermath, he participated actively in the legislative process and represented the interests of his Maryland constituents as a member of the Republican Party.

France was born in Cameron, Missouri, the son of Hanna Fletcher (née James) and Joseph Henry France. He attended the common schools in the area and later studied at Canandaigua Academy in Canandaigua, New York. Demonstrating an early work ethic, he was employed as a telegraph messenger at the age of eleven. These formative experiences in the Midwest and New York laid the groundwork for a career that would combine scientific training, medicine, finance, and public service.

France pursued higher education at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, from which he graduated in 1895; while there he was a member of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. He continued his studies abroad at the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany, and then returned to the United States to study medicine. In 1897 he completed work in the medical department of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. That same year he began teaching natural science at the Jacob Tome Institute in Port Deposit, Maryland, a position he held until he resigned to enter the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore, Maryland. After completing his medical studies there, he commenced the practice of medicine in Baltimore in 1903.

France’s political career began at the state level in Maryland. In 1906 he was elected to the Maryland State Senate, where he served until 1908. After leaving the State Senate in 1908, he turned his attention to the field of finance, broadening his professional interests beyond medicine and education. He remained connected to the medical profession, however, serving as secretary to the Medical and Surgical Faculty of Maryland from 1916 to 1917. During this period he built a profile that combined medical expertise, financial experience, and legislative service, positioning him for national office.

In 1916 France re-entered electoral politics and was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican from Maryland, taking office in 1917. His Senate service, which lasted until 1923, coincided with the 65th Congress and the United States’ involvement in World War I. During his term he served as chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Health and National Quarantine, where his medical background informed his legislative work. He attempted to introduce an amendment to the Sedition Act of 1918 that would have provided limited protections for free speech; although the amendment was defeated, France publicly denounced the Sedition Act as criminal, repressive, and characteristic of the Dark Ages. In March 1920 he warned that “Republican liberals” might break from the party to form an “Anti-Prohibition Party,” and in the same month he introduced a joint resolution calling for pardons for dissenters imprisoned during World War I. He spoke at a 1920 meeting of the NAACP in support of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, opposed voter disenfranchisement, and proposed an amendment to a railroad bill to ensure that Black passengers paying first-class fares would receive first-class accommodations. Despite this record, he was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1922, losing his seat to Democrat William Cabell Bruce.

France’s Senate career also had an international dimension, particularly in relation to the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. He was the first U.S. Senator to visit Russia following the revolution and consistently advocated cordial relations between the United States and the Soviet government. In 1921 he was sent to Russia to study economic conditions and met with leading officials, including Vladimir Lenin. During this visit he worked to secure the release of Marguerite Harrison, an American journalist and convicted spy, whose imprisonment, Lenin noted in correspondence with Soviet Foreign Commissar Georgy Chicherin, was politically sensitive in Maryland because she was the sister-in-law of the state’s governor and her continued incarceration could jeopardize France’s re-election prospects. France attracted controversy at home by accusing Colonel Edward W. Ryan of the American Red Cross of fomenting the Kronstadt rebellion, further underscoring his unorthodox and outspoken approach to foreign affairs.

After his defeat in 1922, France returned to private life while remaining active in business and professional pursuits. He became president of the Republic International Corporation and resumed the practice of medicine in Port Deposit, Maryland. During this period he also joined the Freemasons. He continued to engage in national politics, and in the 1932 presidential election cycle he opposed incumbent President Herbert Hoover in the Republican primaries. France campaigned vigorously and, although he won some contests and reportedly received more popular votes in the primaries than any other candidate, including Hoover, he secured few delegates and was decisively defeated at the Republican National Convention. While delivering a speech at the convention in Chicago, he continued speaking even as a malfunctioning microphone left much of his address unheard while the sound system was being repaired. In 1934, when Senator Phillips Lee Goldsborough announced his retirement, France again sought a Senate seat from Maryland but was unsuccessful, losing to Democrat George L. P. Radcliffe.

France’s personal life intersected with both finance and international affairs. In 1903 he married Evalyn Smith Tome, the widow of millionaire Jacob Tome; Evalyn France became notable in her own right as the first woman to serve as president of a national bank. After her death in 1927, France remarried three months later in Paris to Tatiana Vladimirovna Dechtereva, a Russian woman. That marriage ended in divorce in July 1938, less than a year before his death. His connection to the Tome family and the Port Deposit community remained central to his later years.

Joseph Irwin France died of a heart attack on January 26, 1939, at his home on the Tome estate in Port Deposit, Maryland. He was interred at Hopewell Cemetery in Port Deposit. His career, spanning medicine, state and national politics, international advocacy, and civil rights–related initiatives, reflected the complex political and social transformations of the United States in the early twentieth century.