Frank Mondell: A Congressman for his Times

For 13 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, Frank Mondell was the voice of Wyoming. First elected in 1894, he represented Wyoming with the exception one term until he retired from Congress in 1923 after an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. Over the course of his career, he rose in the ranks of the Republican Party, as well as the esteem of his Wyoming and national contemporaries. He used his power to enact bills important bills on irrigation, dry farming—and the appropriation of tribal lands.

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Mondell’s legislation and political maneuvering cast a shadow over his long career. His 1905 push to secure tribal land along the Wind River in the name of irrigation contributed to this murky legacy. His actions during to the Teapot Dome scandal, however, show that he at least tried to help Wyoming benefit financially from a bad situation—and may not have wrung as much personal political advantage from it as he might have.

Arriving in Wyoming from Iowa during the economic depression of the 1880s, Mondell prospected for coal deposits along a proposed new line for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad at the western foot of the Black Hills. Newcastle, Wyoming Territory, incorporated in 1889, was named for the English coal-shipping town, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.[1] Shortly after arriving there, Mondell at the age of 29 voted for the first time in his life—winning the race for Newcastle’s first mayor in the same election.[2] It was the start of a lifelong passion for politics.

Mondell’s ambition, combined with Republican officials’ fears that a Democrat would win the seat, soon led him to run for the Wyoming Senate. He was elected in 1890.[3]

In the legislature he made many friends in Republican circles. In 1892, he was selected to represent Wyoming Republicans at the party’s national convention at Minneapolis.[4] He was so popular among his fellow legislators that during his second term he was elected president of the Wyoming Senate.[5]

By 1894, he was in such high esteem in the party that he was asked to run for Congress.[6] He won his first race. After that, his consecutive terms would be interrupted only once. In 1896, Wyoming Gov. John Osborne, Democrat, declined to run for a second term and ran for Congress instead. He defeated Mondell by just 266 votes. But Mondell ran again in 1898, Osborne lost a race for the U.S. Senate and Mondell was again elected to the House, where he would represent Wyoming for 12 consecutive terms.

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Washington became his permanent home. One of the most interesting aspects of Mondell’s years in Congress was his friendships with House Democrats. He and Congressman Champ Clark of Missouri formed a friendship that lasted into retirement.[7]

Shrinking tribal lands

Mondell’s public interest in irrigation, dry farming and tribal lands dates to his service in the Wyoming legislature.[8]In Congress he brought these interests to the national level. In 1904, he began work on legislation where his interests in irrigation and appropriation of tribal lands combined to reduce the size of Wyoming’s only Indian reservation by nearly half.

In 1904 and again in early 1905, Mondell introduced a bill to transfer 1.5 million acres in the reservation along the Wind River into the hands of white settlers, to irrigate that land and to irrigate some land on the Reservation as well. Funds for the purchase and development of the land, according to the bill, would come from white settlers, and would move through government coffers before being distributed to the tribes.

Longtime U.S. Government negotiator James McLaughlin negotiated with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. Early projections of revenues from land sales were high—up to nearly $2.2 million, or more than $62 million in today’s dollars. Although the agreement did not meet with universal tribal approval—a strong majority of Shoshone men eventually voted in favor of the idea, but only a minority of Arapahos—the legislation made it through the U.S. House in early 1904, with the agreement McLaughlin had negotiated largely intact.[9]

After some debate, the U.S. Senate passed the bill with amendments. Mondell supported these changes, but the original House version had the consent of the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho.[10] That is, it appears the tribes either did not know about or did not agree to this new version.

Mondell notes in his memoirs that House opposition to the Senate version was led by New York Representative John Fitzgerald, a Democrat, on the grounds that the amended bill was missing the consent portion that the House passed in early April 1904.[11] While Mondell’s memoirs recorded Fitzgerald’s argument accurately, his claims concerning tribal consent for the amendments proved to be false. The Congressional Record from the Apr. 27, 1904, debate shows Mondell speaking on the House floor against Fitzgerald’s objection:

Major McLaughlan [James McLaughlin, the government negotiator] has recently been to the reservation and made a treaty with the Indians, and we have a message giving us the two particulars in which the agreement differs from the bill. We have changed the bill in accordance with those two changes, [so] that the bill now corresponds with the agreement by the Indians.[12]

Mondell contended that the agreement between the government and the tribes was a settled matter because the changes in the Senate version of the bill had already received tribal agreement via McLaughlin. Despite Mondell’s assertions, there isn’t evidence that either tribe had been formally informed of the amendments, let alone given consent. Fitzgerald claimed to have heard differently from Interior:

My understanding, based upon information received from the Department of the Interior, differs from the statement made by the gentleman. Without, of course, impugning the gentleman’s veracity.[13]

Fitzgerald wanted to hold up the bill long enough to get the full story and to learn why Mondell was reporting one thing and the Interior Department another, presumably from the same source. Debate went well into the early morning of April 28. But the telegram Mondell and the Interior Department supposedly received from McLaughlin indicating the tribes had approved the changes, was lost. Mondell admitted, “I do not know where the telegram is.”[14]

Nearly a year later, thanks to Congressional timelines, opposition, and the Interior Department’s odd silence, Mondell finally got the modified bill passed in March 1905. The two tribes had no representatives at the debate or in Congressional conferences.

Lone Bear, a Northern Arapaho Council Chief, sent a message to Congress claiming the agreement was changed: “We think treaty ratified by Congress not agree with original treaty signed by tribe.”[15]

In fact, differences between the two versions of the agreement and subsequent bills were significant enough to be felt on the Reservation. The bill passed in March 1905 included the original text as negotiated in 1904 with the tribes. But it modified three articles of the agreement. The original agreement, for example, stipulated for payments of $50 per capita to persons on the reservation, with the funds coming from the sale of specific sections of land at $1.25 per acre. In the amended version of the bill, the sale provisions were removed, reducing the funds available to make the proper per capita payments to tribal members. [16] These changes were far more favorable to the United States than to the tribes, as there was less money to be spent overall. By 1907, the tribes were sending representatives to Washington to share their grievances on the lack of payment from the land transfer.

Besides his political maneuvering, the incident underscores Mondell’s enthusiasm for irrigation—achieved, in this case, by taking reservation land. He continued to pursue this agenda for much of his Congressional career and backed similar policies across the nation. These successes led to his chairmanship of the House Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands for two terms, to a place on the Public Lands Committee and finally as House majority leader—the second most powerful job in the House—for his last two terms.

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Teapot Dome

A less discussed portion of Mondell’s time in Congress were his actions during the Teapot Dome scandal. While the scandal permeated politics during his last term in office from 1921-1923, Mondell largely kept his head down. But he didn’t pass up the opportunity to try to use the scandal to his advantage or to benefit Wyoming in some way. The matter is complicated by the fact that in 1922, Mondell was planning to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat John B. Kendrick.

The scandal drew the nation’s attention to corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Government scandals were nothing new, but this one revealed such blatant corruption that it dwarfed anything before it.

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The scandal got its name from the teapot-like appearance of a rock formation north of Casper, Wyo. The oil deposits in question were on a nearby reserve owned by the U.S. Navy. Machinations that led to the scandal began when President Harding, elected in 1920, was convinced by Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall to allow control of the Teapot Dome reserve to pass from the Navy to the Interior Department, an apparently casual move.

On the surface, this move was benign. But Fall needed to pay off some Republican campaign debts from the 1920 election to friends in the oil business. The debts totaled about $1.5 million. For Fall, a quick way to get wealthy and pay back his new friends was to open the Teapot Dome reserves for drilling, a deal that Henry Sinclair of Sinclair Consolidated Oil was all too happy to oblige.

The eventual deal and lease granted Fall a 10% kickback. Sinclair, under the name of Mammoth Oil Company, stood to make more than $400 million in profits after paying royalties on the sale of Teapot oil from the former Navy reserve. By 1922 the lease was agreed to, and Mammoth Oil began to move into Wyoming.

Eventually, in 1923, a bipartisan U.S. Senate Special Committee would make evidence of Fall’s and Sinclair’s crimes public. The lease was deemed illegal, Fall fell from power and served a year in prison, Sinclair was slapped on the wrist and the Teapot Dome reserve returned to the Navy Department. The scandal left a stain on the Harding Administration and jeopardized Republican electoral chances. Harding died in 1923. Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president and won a full term in 1924.

In his memoirs, Mondell recalled he had “nothing whatever to do with the lease and had no inkling of it until after it was accomplished.”[17] We have no evidence to suggest that this statement is untrue. Apparently he was not concerned with the fact that it happened and made little attempt to stop the existing lease. Ultimately, Mondell recognized that it was signed, and Wyoming should benefit from it.[18]

Senator Kendrick, meanwhile, had already started moving against the interests of the oil lease in April 1922. Mondell received a copy of Kendrick’s letter to President Harding objecting to the Administration’s actions without proper Wyoming involvement. Kendrick even attached a timeline of events as he saw them for Mondell’s and Harding’s benefit, which happened to include Senate maneuvers to form inquiries into the suspicious activity surrounding the lease.[19]

Interestingly, a few days later, in a telegram dated April 27, 1922, Mondell informed Wyoming Gov. Robert Carey of his plans to push for 37.5% royalties to the state, from the sale of the Teapot Dome lease to Mammoth Oil.[20] This was an extremely high royalty rate, probably more than half of what a company would normally pay out in all other royalties. Mondell’s bill, which would have amended the lease that had already been signed, made it through Congress—but the royalty rate for the state was watered down to 20% and finally, with Kendrick’s amendments in the Senate, to 5%.

This back and forth is curious, because Kendrick had already by this time informed the president and his Congressional colleagues through his letter in early April of his intent to investigate the lease. So why would Mondell move to have Wyoming benefit from something that was quickly blowing up in the Administration’s and GOP’s face? It could stem from Mondell’s Senate ambitions. Perhaps he was trying to gain whatever he could for Wyoming to strengthen his electoral chances. But that is speculation.

Despite the Senate’s changes and Mondell’s efforts, the bill failed to gain any real traction and died. Mondell blamed California’s congressional delegation for the failure.[21] Their objections were unclear, but the other culprit could easily have been Interior Secretary Albert Fall. Fall refused to speak with Mondell or other members of Congress about the lease and orchestrated much of it behind the scenes.

Fall’s refusal to parley with Congress is noted by Mondell in a separate telegram to Gov. Carey on April 26, 1922: “Secretary Fall…is in New Mexico and is not expected here for several days…Am pushing my bill for royalty and hope that it may be possible to secure favorable action though this is also delayed owing to the Secretary’s absence.”[22]

It seems likely that Fall’s refusal to appear hurt the chances of modifying the agreement in any way that made the lease less profitable to Mammoth Oil and the other conspirators. The scandal was still a year from major national attention. In essence, Fall chose to stick with his oil friends rather than work with Congress.

These actions demonstrate that Mondell was committed to getting a solid deal for Wyoming out of the scandal—but there was another possible motive. Nineteen twenty-two was an election year, and, as noted above, Mondell was planning a bid for the Senate. In his memoirs he claims not to have wanted to run for the Senate—only agreeing to run because newspapers in Wyoming and elsewhere urged him to and he faced no other serious Republican opposition.[23]

By late April, Mondell was aware how the voters and the state Republican Party were feeling about the Teapot lease. Wyoming State Tribune Editor W.C. Deming wrote to Mondell expressing his personal objections to the lease, speculating also that the move was a “political mistake,” citing six “prominent” Republicans who were “all against the contract.”[24] Deming’s letter helped provide Mondell with an excuse to act.

The 1922 campaign

About the same time, the Wyoming Republican Party Chairman P. C. Spencer sent Mondell a letter asking how to best use the Teapot Dome scandal to discredit Senator Kendrick. Spencer was referring to a 1920 law that gave the Navy Department control of oil reserves and the authority to make contracts like the one soon made with Mammoth Oil.[25](This was made dubious by the President’s transfer of the reserves to the Interior Department in 1920.) The idea was to smear Kendrick for voting for the bill in the first place.

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Though Spencer avoids criticizing the Harding Administration, he was very much upset that the Republican Party had not responded in a more proactive way: “The silence on the subject which has been maintained by the administration has left me in doubt as to just what procedure should be followed,”[26] Spencer wrote. It stands to reason Mondell would be interested, due to his upcoming race against Kendrick.

But Mondell did not use Teapot Dome to criticize Kendrick. He replied to Spencer, “This is the provision of law under which the Teapot Dome contract was made. There was no recorded vote in the Senate.”[27] In fact, the Congressional Record of June 4, 1920, when the amendment was approved, gives no record of a roll call.[28] Perhaps, for Mondell, this news was disappointing. If a vote had been recorded, it seems likely he would have used it against Kendrick.

Or perhaps Mondell did not find the issue substantial enough to run a campaign on. Mondell lost the Senate race by a large margin, 35,734 votes to 26,627—more than 9,000 votes. Curiously, the Republican candidate for U.S. House, Charles Winter, would earn 30,885 votes to win his race by about 3,000 votes.[29] The results suggest that voters, including those who preferred the Republican candidate for House, wanted Kendrick over Mondell in the Senate. It is difficult to claim the Teapot Dome scandal was responsible for Mondell’s loss. Rather it could be that voters identified Mondell with the U.S. House to such a degree that they could not see him in any other office.

Later life

The end of the scandal and his election ended end Mondell’s Congressional aspirations, but he stayed in politics, nevertheless. His handling of the scandal publicly was enough for him to remain a major figure in his party. His relationship with President Coolidge led to his appointment as chairman of the Republican National Convention in 1924.[30] Mondell remained a star of the Republican Party, campaigning nationally for Republicans in the 1926 midterms.[31]

Once retired from Congress, he never returned to Wyoming full time. He lived the rest of his days in Washington, D.C. where he claimed to have kept the “Wyoming home and interests” until his death in 1939 at the age of 78.[32]

Mondell’s career in Congress lasted through turbulent times in United States and Wyoming history. He backed bills that took land and power from the tribes on what became the Wind River Reservation and took great leaps to make Wyoming a more powerful player in Congress. His legacy is mixed, but it’s clear Frank Mondell played a key role in Wyoming’s place on the national scene.

[Editor’s note: Special thanks to the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund for support which in part made this article possible.]

Resources

Endnotes

1. Nicole Lebsack, “Newcastle, Wyoming,” Wyohistory.org, Nov. 8, 2014, accessed Jan. 2, 2023, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/newcastle-wyoming.
2. Frank Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, My Life, vol I, Box 1, Collection 1050, Autobiography, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, 156-157.
3. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol I, 163.
4. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol I, 188.
5. “Mondell, Frank Wheeler,” History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives, accessed December 21, 2022, https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/18401.
6. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol I, 190.
7. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol I, 196.
8. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol I, 186.
9. Wyohistory.org, “The Tribes Sell Off More Land: The 1905 Agreement,” Wyohistory.org, Dec. 10, 2018, accessed Jan. 14, 2023, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/tribes-sell-more-land- 1905-agreement.
10. Wyohistory.org, “The Tribes Sell Off More Land: The 1905 Agreement,” Wyohistory.org, Dec. 10, 2018, accessed Jan. 14, 2023, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/tribes-sell-more-land-1905- agreement.
11. Frank Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, My Life, vol II, Box 1, Collection 1050, Autobiography, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, 311.
12. Representative Mondell, speaking on H. R. 13481 to ratify and amend, on Apr. 27, 1904, Cong. Rec., 58th Cong., 2nd sess., 1904, vol. 38, pt. 6: H5806.
13. Representative Fitzgerald, speaking on H. R. 13481 to ratify and amend, on Apr. 27, 1904, Cong. Rec., 58th Cong., 2nd sess., 1904, vol. 38, pt. 6: H5806.
14. Representative Mondell, speaking on H. R. 13481 to ratify and amend, on Apr. 27, 1904, Cong. Rec., 58th Cong., 2nd sess., 1904, vol. 38, pt. 6: H5808.
15. Wyohistory.org, “The Tribes Sell Off More Land: The 1905 Agreement,” Wyohistory.org, Dec. 10, 2018, accessed Jan. 14, 2023, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/tribes-sell-more-land-1905- agreement.
16. HR 17994, public No. 185, US Statues at Large, Chapter 1452 (1905), 58th Cong. 3rd Sess. (Mar. 3, 1905).
17. Frank Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, My Life, vol IV, Box 2, Collection 1050, Autobiography, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, 805.
18. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol IV, 811.
19. Kendrick to President Harding, letter, Apr. 20, 1922, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Correspondence, American Heritage Center. University of Wyoming.
20. Mondell to Carey, telegram, Apr. 27, 1922, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Correspondence, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
21. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol IV, 811.
22. Mondell to Carey, telegram, Apr. 26, 1922, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Correspondence, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
23. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol IV, 847.
24. DW Deming to Mondell, letter, Apr. 25, 1922, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Correspondence, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
25. Spencer to Mondell, letter, May 3, 1922, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Correspondence, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
26. Spencer to Mondell, letter, May 3, 1922.
27. Mondell to Spencer, letter, May 8, 1922, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Correspondence, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
28. Cong. Rec., Jun. 4, 1920, 66th Cong. 2nd sess., 1920, vol. 59, pt. 8:S 8470.
29. History, Art, & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, “Election Statistics: 1922, https://history.house.gov/Institution/Election-Statistics/Election-Statistics/, accessed Feb. 16, 2022.
30. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol IV,. 887.
31. Frank Mondell, “Speech at the Republican State Convention,” Durham, North Carolina, Apr. 8, 1926, Box 3, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Speeches, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
32. Mondell, Unpublished Autobiography, vol IV, 905.

Bibliography

• Frank W. Mondell papers, 1894-1959, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Teapot Dome Correspondents. American Heritage Center. University of Wyoming.
• ______________, Box 2, Folder 2, Collection 1050, Speeches. American Heritage Center. University of Wyoming.
• History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. “Mondell, Frank Wheeler,” Accessed Dec. 21, 2022. https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/18401.
• Lebsack, Nicole. “Newcastle, Wyoming,” Wyohistory.org. November 8, 2014. Accessed Jan. 2, 2023. https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/newcastle-wyoming.
• MacKinnon, Anne. Public Waters: Lessons From Wyoming For the American West. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2021.
• McCartney, Laton. The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country. New York: Random House, Inc., 2008.
• Mondell, Frank. Unpublished Autobiography, My Life, vol I-IV, Box 1-2, Collection 1050, Autobiography, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
• Roberts, Phil. “The Teapot Dome Scandal,” Wyohistory.org. Nov. 8, 2014. Accessed Feb. 16, 2023. https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/teapot-dome-scandal
• US Congress. Congressional Record. 58th Cong., 2nd sess., 1904. Vol. 38, pt. 6.
• __________. Congressional Record. 66th Cong., 2nd sess., 1920. Vol. 59, pt. 8.
• Wyohistory.org. “The Tribes Sell Off More Land: The 1905 Agreement.” Wyohistory.org. Dec. 10, 2018. Accessed Jan. 14, 2023, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/tribes-sell-more-land-1905-agre….

Illustrations

• The photos of Mondell as a young man and the image of the campaign flyer are from Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.
• The other photos are from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. The campaign flyer is from Box 23, Folder 8, in the AHC’s Frank W. Mondell Collection, accession no. 1050. The photo of Mondell with President Harding is from Box 31, Folder 5 in the AHC’s Francis E. Warren Papers, accession no. 13.