UNDERWOOD, OSCAR WILDER ( ,1__2-1929), Ameri can politician, was born at Louisville, Ky., on May 6, 1862. He studied at the University of Virginia (1881-84), was admitted to the bar in 1884, and practised law thereafter in Birmingham, Ala. From 1895 to 1915 he was a member from Alabama of the National House of Representatives, and during his last two years chairman of the committee on ways and means. After the Dem ocrats came into power in 1913 he had a large share in framing the tariff bill passed the same year. In 1914 he opposed the Panama Canal Tolls Repeal bill, but supported the resolution authorising the President to use armed force in Mexico. He was opposed to the woman suffrage amendment to the Federal Con stitution, holding that the question was a state issue. He also opposed the national prohibition amendment. In 1914 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and in 192o re-elected. In 1919 he favoured the anti-strike clause of the Cummins railway bill. A
strong supporter of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, in Dec. 1919 he offered a resolution in the Senate providing that the president of the Senate should appoint a committee of io senators to work out some acceptable plan for adopting the Peace Treaty; but this was blocked by Senator Lodge. In April 192o he was chosen Dem ocratic leader in the Senate. He was a U.S. delegate at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments which assembled in Nov. 1921. At the Democratic National Convention held in New York city, June 1924, Senator Underwood was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidential nomination. In 1927 he was made a member of the American delegation to the Pan American Congress. He published Changing Sands of Party Politics (1927). He died at Woodlawn, Va., on Jan. 25, 1929.