San Francisco County
Biographies
WILLIAM
DENMAN
Mr. Denman was born in San Francisco on November 7, 1872. He is the son of James and Helen Virginia (Jordan) Denman. His father arrived in San Francisco in 1850, became the principal of the first school in San Francisco in the state system established under the constitution of 1850, and remained a member of the school department for upwards of fifty years, being alternately superintendent of schools, principal and finally chairman of the board of education, which position he held at his retirement. During his superintendency, he established and organized many of the schools now existing. Young Denman attended the public schools of San Francisco, the University of California, from which he graduated in 1894, and afterwards the Harvard Law School, receiving his Bachelor of Laws degree there in 1897. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Scholarship Society of the University of California. In 1898, he was admitted to the California state bar and shortly after to the supreme court of the United States and the federal courts of California. He has practiced continuously, both in Washington and the Pacific states, his litigation including a considerable portion of maritime causes.
From 1902 to 1908, he was assistant professor of law and lecturer at the Hastings College of Law and the University of California. In 1908, he was appointed by the mayor of San Francisco chairman of the committee to report on the cause of municipal corruption of San Francisco, as disclosed in the then pending “Graft Prosecution,” and he drafted a report which was published by the city. In 1908, he organized a state-wide movement for the non-partisan election of judges, and this new idea became a law in the state in the year 1911. He drafted the non-partisan majority election law as a part of the city charter of San Francisco, and actively participated in the campaign for its passage.
In 1915 and 1916, he conducted in Washington various cases involving the question of freedom of the seas, during which time he contributed to the legislation for the creation of the United States Shipping Board. He was appointed the first chairman of the board and up to our entry into the Great war vigorously asserted President Wilson’s policies of resistance to the invasion of our commerce by the belligerent nations. On the declaration by the United States of war against the empire of Germany, he advocated the policy of building a large merchant fleet of steam and motor steel ships and prepared the bills which congress shortly afterwards passed conferring the power to stop steel construction for general domestic purposes and turn the flow of steel into the construction of vessels and munitions. In addition to his major plan for a large fleet of steel vessels, he accepted, under General Goethal’s advocacy, a plan for an auxiliary fleet of wooden ships, to be used in peaceful zones and release the steel vessels for the service of Europe. The wooden vessels were to be constructed of sufficient power and size to send them as a last resort to Europe if the sinkings by the German submarines continued with the intensity displayed in the beginning of the war. A violent controversy arose over the building of wooden ships, but Mr. Denman’s position was vindicated a year after he had accepted Goethal’s recommendation, by a demand from the inter-allied shipping control for a greater number of contracts for the construction of such wooden vessels. Because of the temporary and emergency character of these vessels, Denman gave the company, formed by the Shipping Board to construct them, the title of “Emergency Fleet Corporation.”
After his retirement from the Shipping Board, Mr. Denman became federal receiver for the Coos Bay Lumber Company and for five years administered its operations in Oregon and California, having freed it from its receivership obligations.
In San Francisco, on April 4th, 1905, he was married to Leslie Van Ness of this city. His family home is at 3399 Pacific avenue.
For many years, Mr. Denman has taken an active part in the work of the San Francisco Bar Association. He was a trustee from 1904 to 1906, and governor from 1911 to 1919.
Although a democrat in national politics, Mr. Denman has actively participated in the so-called progressive movement in California, and was identified with the legislation for limiting the hours of women’s labor, the industrial accident and workmen’s compensation laws and similar enactments. He is a member of the Commonwealth, Commercial and Pacific Union Clubs.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Byington, Lewis Francis, “History of
San Francisco 3 Vols”, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.,
Chicago, 1931. Vol. 2 Pages 202-204.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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