Arthur M. Hyde (R)

Overview

At a Glance

• Slashed property, corporate franchise, and income tax rates
• Built more than 8,000 miles of paved road
• Increased funding for public education
• Designated Missouri's School for Blind and School for Deaf as educational institutions
• Helped to disseminate research by University of Missouri School of Agriculture and the agricultural extension service

Personal History

Arthur Mastick Hyde was born on July 12, 1877, in Princeton, Missouri where he attended public school before attending Oberlin Academy in Ohio. He received his undergraduate education at the University of Michigan, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1899. In 1900, he earned his law degree from the University of Iowa and after admission to the Missouri Bar, he began to practice law in his father's Princeton firm.

Hyde continued to practice at his father’s law firm until 1915, when he moved to nearby Trenton to establish a practice with Judge Sam Hill and began a number of business enterprises. He owned automobile dealerships in several northern Missouri counties, represented numerous insurance companies, operated a loan and investment service and held farming and lumber interests.

In 1933, Hyde practiced law in Kansas City for a year before returning to Trenton. He opposed the New Deal's agricultural policies and, in defense of Hoover's policies, collaborated with Ray Lynam Wilbur, the former secretary of the interior in the Hoover administration, in compiling the speeches and state papers of the former president.

Hyde also served as a trustee of Missouri Wesleyan College and Southern Methodist University. He received honorary degrees from Park College in 1922; Drury, Marshall, and Westminster Colleges in 1923; and from his alma mater, the University of Michigan, in 1929. As a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Princeton since 1909, he served as a bible class leader and as one of the conveners of the 1935-1936 Conference of Methodist Laymen. He belonged to the Sons of the American Revolution and various fraternal organizations, achieving the rank of thirty-third degree in the Masonic order. He and his wife, Hortense Cullers, had one daughter, Caroline.

Hyde championed for cutting taxes, applying business principles to government, promoting voluntary associations for producers and manufacturers, private charity, and individual responsibility with equality for all. These policies served him well during his term as governor.

Hyde died of cancer in New York City and was buried in Trenton Cemetery, also known as IOOF Cemetery, in Trenton, Missouri.

Political History

Following in the footsteps of his father, former U.S. Rep. Ira Barnes Hyde, Arthur Hyde became interested in politics after graduating from law school. He served two terms as the mayor of Princeton, Missouri, from 1908 to 1912. In 1912, Hyde was the nomination on the Progressive ticket as state attorney general, although he lost this first bid for a statewide office.

In 1920, Hyde was elected as the Governor of Missouri after returning to the Republican party. Hyde became the second Republican to hold the governorship since the end of Reconstruction. The 1920 election also found the voters approving a Prohibition enforcement act by a substantial margin.

Hyde pledged to give all Missourians, regardless of race, color or creed, "a fair hearing and a square deal." The voters approved a referendum in 1921 that enabled women, recently enfranchised by the 19th Amendment, to hold any office in the state. Segregation of the races in public education was still active in Missouri, and counties with a population of more than 100,000 Black Missourians were authorized to establish high schools for Black students. The state's school of higher education for Black students, Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, was designated as Lincoln University in 1921.

Hyde's promise to give the state an efficient, businesslike administration that spent fewer tax dollars was quite popular. Accordingly, the Hyde administration, in 1921, secured the lowering of the general property assessment from fifteen cents to seven cents per $100 valuation. State income tax was cut from 1.5 percent to 1 percent, and the corporation franchise tax was cut in half. A state bond issue permitted the expansion of the state highway system by almost 8,000 miles of paved roads.

The Hyde administration also invested substantially in the state's public education system, with increased spending for schools at all levels. The state's School for the Blind and the School for the Deaf were designated as educational institutions. Gov. Hyde also worked to assist the agricultural extension service and the University of Missouri's School of Agriculture in the dissemination of scientific agricultural information to the Missouri farmers.

Hyde's interest in agriculture, as well as his keen business skills acquired before and during his tenure as president of the Sentinel Life Insurance Company in 1927- 1928, led to his appointment as secretary of agriculture in the Herbert Hoover administration. The passage of the Agricultural Marketing Act in 1929 made Hyde an ex-officio member of the Farm Loan Board, the lending and marketing mechanism designed to deal with two chronic problems in American agriculture: overproduction and the marketing of crops at harvest time. Farmers were urged to reduce crop acreage voluntarily and to form cooperatives for the orderly marketing of crops with credit provided by the Farm Loan Board. The Department of Agriculture under Hyde also promoted practices to make farmers more efficient and more productive through the use of power equipment, pest control, and business practices. By 1933, when Hyde left office at the end of the Hoover administration, it was apparent that the voluntary business-efficiency approach to agriculture's distress was not working and foreshadowed a new method when the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration came into office that year.

Historical Significance

Hyde's promise to run the state more efficiently with lower taxes directly conflicted with the goals of his Democratic predecessor. Lowering taxes that had been created only a few years before, hindered the state's ability to pay down its deficit. However, even with the lower tax revenue, Hyde was able to further fund education and see Gov. Gardner's highway plan to fruition.