Walter L. Fisher

Walter L. Fisher

Walter Lowrie Fisher (born July 4, 1862 in Wheeling , Virginia , †  November 9, 1935 in Winnetka , Illinois ) was an American politician ( Republican Party ) who belonged to the cabinet of US President William Howard Taft as Home Secretary .

Walter Fisher was born in 1862 in Wheeling, which became part of the new state of West Virginia the following year . He later moved with his family to Indiana , where his father Daniel Webster Fisher assumed the office of president at Hanover College . After attending Marietta College , Fisher continued his education in Hanover , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1883 . He then studied law and opened his own law firm in Chicago .

There, in 1906, Fisher became president of the Municipal Voters League of Chicago , an electoral organization that wanted to fight the corruption that had spread among the city's aldermen. So successful were his efforts that candidates for office had to sign a declaration of honor from his league before they could be elected. He also managed to curb corruption in the Chicago Transportation Department. His commitment to the National Conservation Association , which is committed to nature conservation, made him a final candidate for a seat in the cabinet.

President Taft, with whom he had been friends for many years, initially appointed Fisher to the Railway Safety Commission before he took him to his cabinet on March 13, 1911, as the successor to the resigned Interior Minister Richard Achilles Ballinger . Walter Fisher held this office until March 5, 1913. He also supported Taft in his re-election efforts, but ultimately had to leave the government together with the president after the defeat in 1912 .

Walter Fisher then withdrew from politics and died in 1935 in his home town of Winnetka, Illinois.

In 1915 his brother, Dr. Howard Lowrie Fisher, the sinking of the British passenger liner RMS Lusitania by a German submarine. He was on his way to France to run a hospital for war victims at the front.

Web links

Commons : Walter L. Fisher  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Walter L. Fisher in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)