Robert Hale (Maine)

Robert S. Hale (November 29, 1889 – November 30, 1976) was a U.S. Representative from Maine, and first cousin of U.S. Senator Frederick Hale, also of Maine.

Born in Portland, Maine to Clarence Hale (U.S.District Judge, Maine) and Margret Jordan Rollins, Hale attended the public schools. He was graduated from Portland High School in 1906, from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1910, and from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, in 1912. He attended Harvard Law School in 1913 and 1914. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1914, the Maine bar in 1917, and the District of Columbia bar in 1959. Practiced in Portland, Maine from 1917 to 1942. During the First World War served in the United States Army in grades up to second lieutenant, with overseas service from 1917 to 1919.

Hale served in the Maine House of Representatives 1923-1930, and was elected as Speaker in 1929-1930. In 1923 and 1925 he was instrumental in defeating the Barwise Bill, a measure supported by the majority of his party, which would have changed the Maine Constitution to outlaw all state aid to parochial schools. The bill (introduced and defeated twice) was strongly opposed by Maine's Catholic population, and just as strongly favored by the Ku Klux Klan whose state headquarters and center of support was in Hale's home city of Portland. The measure split the Maine Republican Party and embroiled state politics for three years. It was favored by Governor Owen Brewster but opposed by a faction that included Hale and his cousin, U.S. Senator Frederick Hale, whose Senate seat Brewster would eventually (but unsuccessfully) contest.

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