“That legal luminary, Western Starr, has again peeped above the horizon of the Civil Service Commission, this time in an attempt to throw some light on certain proceedings in the house of correction.”—-The Chicago Eagle, October 5, 1901

While he may have refrained from running for public office, Western Starr was by no means politically naive, and a search of Google Books shows that between 1883 and 1920 Western Starr lent the tip of his pen to numerous periodicals centering on hot-button political issues of the day, including giving advice on crime (“A Radical Cure for Crime“, published in the Liberal Review in 1906), and was a fervent advocate of the establishment of a single tax. While a frequent contributor to newsletters like the “Single Tax Review” and the “Public: A Journal for Democracy“, Starr gained further prominence on the lecture circuit, traveling throughout Illinois and elsewhere speaking on such topics as “The Ethics of Conservatism“. During the 1900 election year, Starr was described by the Chicago Daily Herald as hitting the campaign trail, “doing considerable platform work for the Democratic National Committee” and stumped for the party in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

“This is a case where the nomination sought the man and not the man the nomination. In response to the urgent solicitations of the eminent gentlemen who are the representatives of all political parties, and shades of political thought in this district, I consented to accept this nomination with the hope that I might be able to crystallize in this campaign all of those political forces which are tending toward the elevation of political standards, and the character of public service and public life. In the strictest sense the campaign in which I am engaged cannot be regarded as a political or partisan campaign.”

Running against Starr in that year’s campaign was one John Humphrey (1838-1916), a native-born Englishman who had first been elected to the state senate in 1886. As the incumbent Republican, Humphrey’s decades-long career in state politics was targeted by Western Starr in the November 1, 1902 edition of the Chicago Daily Herald, noting:

“I oppose Senator Humphrey because he has for 30 years been a personal representative of a political philosophy, which I do not agree and which, I am convinced the people of this district will not support, once its true inwardness is once understood.”

Rallying against “Humphreyism”, Starr stumped throughout his district in support of votes in the latter part of 1902, and, as in years past, newspapers picked up on his peculiar name, with the Chicago Eagle using some very clever wordplay to describe the contest between John Humphrey and Starr, noting:

“His opponent is one Western Starr, and if Humphrey’s sun is to suddenly set now in the declining days of his life, it is a question if the new luminary is one which will shed a more beautiful light on the political horizon of the Seventh district. Mr. Humphrey’s opponent is not a “Starr” of the first magnitude, as everybody who knows him is aware, but there is a large and young element of the community in the Seventh Senatorial district composed of bright people who are sick and tired of ‘Old John’ and his ways and who would put up with anything for a change.”

Western Starr’s political platform touted “equal rights for all, special privileges for none, Municipal Home Rule, public ownership of public utilities and honest assessment and equal taxation“, and he was widely considered to be a shoo-in at the polls. However, on election day 1902, John Humphrey eked out a win over Starr, besting him by a vote of 7,013 to 5,834. Despite a loss margin of nearly 1200 votes, Starr was not one to let a loss get the best of him. Between 1903 and 1908 he continued to be a forceful voice on the lecture circuit and in political newsletters, and in 1908 re-entered the political area, announcing his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois. His opponent was George Edmund Foss (1863-1936), a six-term Republican incumbent who, like Starr, had been a graduate of Columbia University. Starr’s congressional candidacy received a write-up in the Single Tax Review that year, which touted his longstanding membership in the Single Tax movement and his willingness to be a “force in the war for economic righteousness.”
Unfortunately, when the votes were tallied in November 1908, Starr was dealt another loss, losing to Foss, 31,130 votes to 14,840. An electoral result from that contest was published in the 1910 Tribune Almanac and Political Register and is shown below.

A few years following his congressional loss, Western Starr removed with his family to Baltimore, Maryland, where he was active in both agriculture and the Farmer-Labor Party. In 1918 he gave a statement in front of Congress in connection with the Revenue Act of 1918, and during his testimony gave examples of land monopoly and the effects of taxation on farm owners. Starr later appeared in front of Congress once again in July 1921 on behalf of the Farmer-Labor Party, speaking to the Joint-Commission of Agricultural Inquiry.
Around 1919 Starr relocated once again, this time to Washington, D.C. During his residence here he was a contributing writer to The Searchlight, a journal on Washington politics and congressional proceedings. In addition to being a contributor to this journal, Starr also served as Treasurer of the Searchlight Publishing Company for a time, resigning this office in 1921. Starr continued to be active in public service well into his seventh decade, with notice being given as to his service as a “special investigator in the investigation of contributions and expenditures of senatorial candidates” in August of 1930.
The remaining years of Western Starr’s life post-1931 are largely a mystery, as is his burial location. He is recorded in the 1940 census as being an 85-year-old patient at the Washington Home for Incurables in Washington, D.C., and per his 1940 obituary, was stricken blind sometime in the mid-1930s. Starr died in Washington, D.C. in May 1940, aged 85. His wife Edith Hammond Starr lived on for nearly three more decades, being a resident of Wilmington, Delaware, and died there at age 97 in 1968.

From the Davenport Daily Times, May 18, 1940.