Between 1909 and 1933, Smith was regarded as a fairly effective senator, though admittedly not of the first rank. During this time Smith's policies were "a curious mixture of conservatism and liberalism". He was a loyal supporter of President
Woodrow Wilson and his
New Freedom agenda especially regarding agriculture supporting the
Smith–Lever Act of 1914,
Smith–Hughes Act, the
Warehouse Act of 1916,
Federal Farm Loan Act, and
Federal Aid Road Act of 1916. He also supported the
Clayton Act, the
Federal Trade Commission, the
Underwood tariff, and the
Adamson Act. He opposed the
Keating–Owen Act which prohibited child labor. Smith, reflecting the xenophobic views of constituents, sponsored numerous bills restricting immigration culminating in the
Immigration Act of 1917 that passed over President Wilson's veto. During the
First World War he supported most of the war time actions of President Wilson but prevented attempts by the President to impose price controls on cotton. After the war he supported the
League of Nations and the
Treaty of Versailles. Smith stormed into the office of the author of the directive,
Alger Hiss, and shouted: "Young fella, you can't do this to my niggers, paying checks to them. They don't know what to do with the money. The money should come to me. I'll take care of them". Shepard's response to the incident was to say "it was just a sign the good brother needs more prayer." Smith opposed a Federal minimum wage; he filibustered it in the 1938
Fair Labor Standards Act, saying “South Carolinians are willing to work for less than 50 cents/hour.” In common with other Southern senators, Smith was vigorously opposed to the Fair Labor Standards Act, believing that a national minimum wage of 40 cents/per hour would undermine the Southern economy, which was based upon having lower wages than could be found anywhere else in the nation. During a campaign speech, Roosevelt announced that "no man can live on 50 cents a day" and appealed to the people of South Carolina to replace Smith with Johnston. Smith called Roosevelt a "Yankee carpetbagger" and ran a campaign depicting himself as the defender of traditional Southern values. Standing under a statue of the Confederate general
Wade Hampton, Smith declared "No man dares to come into South Carolina and try to dictate to the sons of those men who held high the hands of
Lee and Hampton". Byrnes, however, despised Smith and only endorsed him because he was opposed to Johnston's strong support for Roosevelt's new push for vast labor reform, which was evident in the Fair Labor Standards Act. While the 1938 election would mark the first time since 1914 where “Cotton Ed” faced no runoff, it was also believed that the vast majority of the people in South Carolina at this point in time were fed up with Smith, who would probably have easily lost the primary if Roosevelt had not interfered. During
World War II, Smith opposed the
national war mobilization efforts, During this time, the aged senator would violently criticize Americans for supporting both the war effort and the New Deal, and even supported Republican
Thomas E. Dewey in the
1944 presidential election., a supporter of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's labor reforms, unseated Smith in 1944 shortly before Smith's death in office.
1944 election defeat In 1944,
Olin D. Johnston again challenged Smith in the Democratic primary. During the campaign, Johnston, once again governor of South Carolina, was strongly supportive of Roosevelt's foreign policy, Johnston would go on to win the primary with over 55 percent of the vote, thus achieving the majority needed to avoid a run-off, and Smith would only receive just over 35 percent of the vote. After hearing word of his defeat on his 2,500-acre farm near Lynchburg, Smith stood up in frustration and said "Well, I guess I better go out and look at the pigs." == Personal life and death ==