Louis Folwell Hart is Born

Today in Masonic History Louis Folwell Hart is born in 1862.

Louis Folwell Hart was an American politician.

Folwell was born on January 4, 1862 in High Point, Missouri. He attended public schools and after finishing the eighth grade he was in charge of a branch of his family store. He decided he didn’t want to be a merchant, so he attended Washington University in St. Louis. In 1881 at the age of nineteen he started working in a law office in California, Missouri.

Looking to do better in life, he and his wife headed to Washington arriving March 1889. They found their way to the small town of Snohomish. He had heard that Washington was a promising place for lawyers. For ten years Snohomish was where he practiced law, not making a great deal of money but making many friends. 1898 found him in Seattle working for the U.S. Special Census Department.

Three years later, 1901, he moved to Tacoma to be the grand secretary of the Washington State Odd Fellows fraternity. Appointed to the office by IOOF Grand Master Samuel Cosgrove, the State’s sixth governor, Hart held the position until 1915 after he became lieutenant governor. During World War I Hart was chairman of the Selective Service Appeals Board for Southwest Washington.

He ran for lieutenant governor in 1912 as a Republican. He defeated nine other candidates in the primary election and three in the general election moving into the office in January 15, 1913. He modernize the office, doing away with a practice of a senate president pro tempore presiding and leading the Senate. The Seattle Post Intelligencer wrote of his time in the office "no decision of his was ever overruled," The city’s evening paper The Seattle Times observed, "... His rulings were regarded as uniformly correct and impartial. He gained the reputation of being one of the state’s best parliamentarians."

He was reelected to office in 1916. Governor {brother} Ernest Lister died on June 14, 1919, a Saturday morning, Hart was immediately sworn into office at 10:00 a.m. in the Temple of Justice in Olympia. One of his first actions after taking office was with much reluctance to call a special session of the legislature to deal with a number of urgent matters not the least of which was to vote on the 19th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution given women the vote nationwide.

In 1920, he defeated Robert Bridges of the Farmer-Labor Party by more than 22 percentage points for election as governor in his own right. One of his major achievements was the reorganization of the executive offices, reducing the seventy-five agencies down to ten and overseeing a modern administrative code. The latter was to become known as the Revised Code of Washington (RCW).

During his term of office, construction was started on the current Executive {Capitol} Building and campus. A strong supporter of highways and road development, he is recognized as one of the fathers of the “good roads” movement in Washington. To support building new and better roads, in 1921 he proposed a one cent per gallon gas tax. The tax and his proposal for a state highway patrol were passed into law by the legislature. Some supporters of the legislation advocated that the patrol be used to enforce Prohibition or deal with labor unrest. However as Governor he insisted that the patrol operate as an actual highway patrol. By 1923 he succeeded in getting the gas tax raised to two cents. He vetoed a bill that would have raised the speed limit on state highways from 30 to 35 miles an hour.

After the 1921 legislative session, he signed into law the Alien Land Act that was targeted primarily against Japanese living in the State. It barred non-white immigrants from buying, owning or even leasing land, it went so far as to mandate the confiscation of lands purchased before or after the law went into effect. The law was passed without any form of compensation. {The law remained books until 1967 when it was formally repealed, their rights officially restored.}

In 1924 he did not run for reelection but rather retired from office, moving back to Tacoma where he practiced law and continued to work with the State Good Road Association serving as the organization’s president.

He was hospitalized December 1, 1929 suffering from diabetes and peacefully died of a massive stroke in his sleep four days later, December 5. He is buried in The Masonic Memorial Park in Tumwater, Washington. But his services were presided over by his Odd Fellows Grand officers.

He was Raised in Centennial Lodge #25 {City of Snohomish} June 17, 1893, he demitted December 11, 1901 to become a petitioner for Dispensation for Ferry Lodge No. 111 in Republic on November 16, 1899. He was chosen as the first Master of that Lodge. He moved to Tacoma and then affiliated with Fern Hill Lodge #80 (Tacoma) December 20, 1902 – Served as Master in 1908.

This article provided by Brother Coe Tug Morgan – Honorary Grand Secretary, Past Grand Historian Grand Lodge F. & A. M. of Washington.