Reed Smoot
United States Senator from Utah
Died when: 79 years 30 days (948 months)Star Sign: Capricorn
Reed Smoot (January 10, 1862 – February 9, 1941) was an American politician, businessman, and apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
First elected by the Utah State Legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1902, he served as a Republican senator from 1903 to 1933.
From his time in the Senate, Smoot is primarily remembered as the co-sponsor of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which increased almost 900 American import duties.
Criticized at the time as having "intensified nationalism all over the world" by Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan & Co., Smoot–Hawley is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the worsening Great Depression.
Smoot was a prominent leader of the LDS Church, chosen to serve as an apostle in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1900.
His role in the LDS Church (together with rumors of a secret church policy continuing polygamy and a secret oath against the United States) led to a lengthy controversy of four years after he was elected to the Senate in 1903.
A Senate committee investigated his eligibility to serve, known as the Reed Smoot hearings, and recommended against him, but the full Senate voted to seat him.
Smoot continued to be reelected to successive terms until he lost his seat in the 1932 elections. Smoot returned to Utah in 1933.
Retiring from politics and business, he devoted himself to the church. At the time of his death, he was third in the line of succession to lead the LDS Church.
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