Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/177

 WILLIAM E. MASON

, of Chicago, was born in Franklinville, Cattaraugus County, N. Y., July 7, 1850; removed with his parents to Bentonsport, Iowa, in 1858; attended school at the Bentonsport Academy and Birmingham College; taught school from 1866 to 1870, the last two years at Des Moines, Iowa; entered the law office of Hon. Thomas F. Withrow, and was admitted to practice law in Des Moines; went to Chicago in 1872, and has practiced law there ever since; was elected to the general assembly in 1879, to the State senate in 1881; was elected to the Fiftieth and Fifty-First Congresses and defeated for the Fifty-Second in the landslide of 1892; was elected to the United States Senate January 20, 1897, by a strict party vote, receiving 125 votes, against 78 votes for John P. Altgeld, Democrat. He took his seat March 4, 1897. His term of service will expire March 3, 1903.