Born: Friday, July 8th, 1859
Died: Saturday, January 31st, 1942
Birthplace: Sullivan County, Missouri
Religion: Episcopalian
Education: Whitman College
Career: Pomeroy City Attorney
Pomeroy Mayor and Member of City Council (1898-1904)
President, Washington State Bar Association (1915)
Served: Monday, January 11th, 1909 to Monday, January 11th, 1915
Political Party: Republican
Appointing Governor: Mead (Republican)
John M. and Hannah J. (McQuown) Gose, Mack F. Gose’s parents, left Missouri for the West, first stopping at Boise, Idaho, then moving on to Walla Walla in Washington Territory. They arrived but a few days after their son’s sixth birthday. Mack was one of four children, all of whom achieved prominence in professional and public life. Their father, trained as a physician, became a farmer and successful orchardist. Mack attended Walla Walla public schools and then enrolled in Whitman Seminary, later known as Whitman College. He studied law with John B. Allen and B. J. Crowley, both legal and political leaders of their time. The Washington bar admitted him in 1883, and he immediately associated with the firm of Allen, Crowley, and Gose. He soon moved to the southeastern farming community of Pomeroy, where he joined E. V. Kuykendall in the practice of law.Gose became active in Republican politics, was elected mayor of Pomeroy in 1898, served as a member of the city council for several terms, and also as acting city attorney. He also was vice president of the First National Bank of Pomeroy.
According to Ewart M. Baldwin’s history of Garfield County,
The first and most absolute political boss of Garfield County was Samuel Goodlove Cosgrove who was later elected governor. Cosgrove was a man of strong opinions given to political maneuvering and who had never learned the art of compromise. He was soon joined in 1896 by an ex-Democrat named M. F. (Mack) Gose. With Cosgrove’s death in 1909, Gose inherited the mantle as political boss, which he exercised with more finesse until his death. While Cosgrove was alive, he was the one who called the tune. He was combative and heavy handed. He demanded loyalty and could be vindictive. Gose was much smoother. He may not have been much less determined than Cosgrove, but he worked his will with wit and a generally unruffled exterior. Although he may not have been Irish, he had kissed the Blarney stone and was a gallant with the ladies, very much at home in southeastern Washington society and later in Olympia.
When Cosgrove won his election as governor in 1908 he was unable to take office because of ill health. His one official act was to urge Governor Albert E. Mead to appoint his old friend Mack Gose to the vacancy created by Judge Milo Root’s refusal to serve his elected position in 1909. In 1910 Gose easily defeated two opponents for the remaining four years of Root’s term. He lost in the 1914 primary and was forced to retire from the high bench. According to a close observer of elections during that year, Gose “had spent nearly all of his time in the little town of Pomeroy, had very little acquaintance in the large cities and was not boosted by any political or semi-political organization or special interest.” The Republican party label had assured Gose’s election in 1910, but the new nonpartisan election system in 1914 made him vulnerable.
During his term on the court Judge Gose tended to view the law from a slightly broader perspective than many of his contemporaries. Although not an extremist, he willingly considered the nature of the society in which the law played such an important role. For example, in State v. Somerville, he asserted a sociological perspective:
Courts in passing upon the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a statute, and deciding whether the legislature has exceeded its authority power to such an extent as to render the act invalid, must look at the terms of the act itself, and bring to their assistance such scientific, economic, physical, and other pertinent facts as are common knowledge and of which they can take judicial notice.
However, Gose cautiously exercised judicial review: “Courts are not concerned with questions of the propriety, advisability or wisdom of any statute.” Actually, the judge expressed the views of progressives of the period. He would have them scrutinize law cautiously, although from a broad social perspective.
Gose had been active in professional affairs, and almost immediately upon his retirement from the supreme court the Washington State Bar Association elected him president. After his term as president he continued to take part in important state bar matters.
During World War I Gose chaired the Coal Miners Price Control Board appointed by the federal fuel administrator. He also served as chairman of Liberty Loan committees and helped other volunteer organizations, such as the Red Cross. He chaired the board of overseers of Whitman College for many years and actively participated in Kiwanis Clubs in Pomeroy and Olympia, the Masons, and Knights of Pythias. Judge Gose married Lelah B. Seeley of Illinois and they had one daughter, Lelah.
In his 1915 presidential address to the Washington State Bar Association, Judge Gose reflected upon his times and, thereby, provided clues about his thinking on important public matters:
There are those who spend much time in deploring the tendency of the times in the direction of a purer democracy and who decry every measure which tends to a breaking away from the old order of things … There are those who believe that all initiatives, the referendum and the recall … are the panaceas for all our political and economic ills. The practical worth or lack of worth of the more democratic remedies must be tried under modern conditions in the scales of experience … All of these changes speak a desire for growth, for the attainment of better things. I have great faith in the integrity and common sense of our people. An informed electorate is, generally speaking, a trustworthy one. The growth and development of our country along political, judicial, industrial and educational lines abundantly attests the truth of this statement. The man who wrote the lines: “Just bristle up and grit your teeth and keep on keepin’ on,” was a sane and wholesome counselor. We as lawyers may profit by his words if we will put the thought into action. Let us not be content in reflecting upon the great names in our profession in the past, and the service they rendered to our country and to humanity, but rather let us adopt the slogan “Keep on keepin’ on.”
Selected References
Julian Hawthorne, History of Washington, vol. 1 (1893), p. 585; Lloyd Spencer and Lancaster Pollard, A History of the State of Washington, vol. 3 (1937), p. 217; Washington State Bar Association Proceedings (1915-1916), pp. 120-130.
The preceding biography is from Charles Sheldon's The Washington High Bench: A Biographical History of the State Supreme Court, 1889-1991, © 1992 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. Reprinted here with permission and licensed to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by The Temple of Justice Project.
