Homer Truett Bone photograph collection, circa 1940

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Washington Public Utilities Districts' Association
Title
Homer Truett Bone photograph collection
Dates
circa 1940 (inclusive)
Quantity
3 b/w photographs, 3 negatives (1 box)
Collection Number
PH2004-080
Summary
Images of a Washington Water Power Company billboard advertisement featuring school children
Repository
University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
Special Collections
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA
98195-2900
Telephone: 2065431929
Fax: 2065431931
speccoll@uw.edu
Access Restrictions

Presume the collection is open to the public.

Request at UW

Additional Reference Guides

Languages
English

Biographical NoteReturn to Top

Homer Truett Bone was born in Indiana, but the family moved to Tacoma, Washington in 1899. Homer studied diligently on his own, in addition to working full-time. In 1907, he enrolled in night classes at the Tacoma Law School, and passed the bar in 1911. His law practice specialized in labor cases and he actively pursued socialist causes, although in 1916 the Socialist party purged him from its ranks as too moderate. He won his first political office when elected in 1922 to the Washington House of Representatives as a member of the Farmer Labor party. Convinced that state ownership of the region's abundant water power was necessary to ensure all citizens access to cheap electricity, he quickly became a prominent leader of the forces supporting public power. He became the Democratic Senator from Washington to the U.S. Senate in 1933.

Homer Bone transferred his concern for public power to the national stage. When bickering between the Interior Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over control threatened to derail the Bonneville Dam project, he fashioned the compromise that kept it alive, and insured that public and cooperatively-owned utilties were given preference for purchasing the cheap federally produced electricity. Even though Bone's fame rests on his fight for public power, his accomplishments in the Senate exceeded this one issue. He called attention to the profits some American munition manufacturers, had made from wars abroad, and he authored legislation creating the National Cancer Institute, at Bethesda, Maryland. Bone won a second term to the Senate in 1938, but the effects of an injury dissuaded him from a third term. In 1944, President Roosevelt nominated him to the more sedate position of justice on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Bone remained on the federal bench full-time until his retirement in 1954.

Content DescriptionReturn to Top

Images of a Washington Water Power Company billboard advertisement featuring school children.

Use of the CollectionReturn to Top

Restrictions on Use

Creator's literary rights not transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.

Administrative InformationReturn to Top

Custodial History

The current photograph collection, Photo Acc. 2004-080, was received together with the materials that form Accession No. 3456-002 in the Manuscripts Collection on August 3, 1961. Please refer to the appropriate manuscripts finding aid to use those collections. The photographs were transferred to the Visual Materials Collection on August 10, 2004.

Acquisition Information

Gift of the Washington Public Utilities Districts' Association, August 3, 1961.

Processing Note

Unprocessed.

The photographs were relocated from the Homer Truett Bone Papers, Accession No. 3456-2, in the division in 2004.

Detailed Description of the CollectionReturn to Top

 

PhotographsReturn to Top

Container(s) Description Dates
Box/Folder
1/1
Washington Water Power Company
Three b/w prints and three corresponding negatives of a billboard advertisement stating "22,000 Children Could Go To School On Taxes We Pay!"
ca. 1940

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Form or Genre Terms

  • Photographs

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Visual Materials Collections (University of Washington)