He also served as a commissioner of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and was the Democratic nominee for Governor of California in 1902, losing a narrow race in what was then a heavily Republican state.

Lane was born July 15, 1864, near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in what was then a British colony but is now part of Canada, and in 1871, his family moved to California.

After attending the University of California while working part-time as a reporter, Lane became a New York correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, and later became editor and part owner of a newspaper.

The following month, Lane accepted President-elect Woodrow Wilson's nomination to become Secretary of the Interior, a position in which he served almost seven years until his resignation in early 1920.

Because of two decades of poorly paid government service, and the expenses of his final illness, he left no estate, and a public fund was established to support his widow.

He was successful in driving a corrupt chief of police into exile in Alaska, but the business venture as a whole was unsuccessful, and the paper declared bankruptcy in 1894,[10] a victim of the poor economy and Lane's espousal of Democratic and Populist Party causes.

[11] Even before the mayoral election, there was support for Lane as a potential Democratic candidate for vice president, though since he was born in what was by then a Canadian province he was ineligible under the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

[13] While returning to California from a trip to Washington, D.C., as an advocate for the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir project, he stopped in Austin, Texas, to confer with Democratic leaders and address the legislature.

[19] The railroad companies, which were loosely regulated by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), exercised great power in California because of the lack of alternate means of shipping freight.

However, Republican Congressman William Peters Hepburn proposed legislation which, though its primary purpose was increased railroad regulation, would expand the Commission by two members.

Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz immediately appointed him to the Committee of Fifty to deal with the devastation of the earthquake and subsequent fire, and plan the rebuilding of the city.

In late April, the commissioner-designate took the train east to Washington, where he unsuccessfully fought to obtain Federal money to help the city's recovery.

In October, Lane determined that the Southern Pacific Railroad, one of Harriman's lines, was engaged in rebating, a practice of effectively giving special rates to favored shippers that had been outlawed by the Hepburn Act.

[28] Lane was reappointed as commissioner by President William Howard Taft on December 7, 1909, this time to a full seven-year term, and was confirmed by the Senate three days later.

"[36] The Commission held that oil pipelines were common carriers, and ordered the companies owning them to file rate schedules and otherwise comply with the Interstate Commerce Act.

Colonel House did not immediately recommend Lane for the job, but went on to consider other candidates, such as former San Francisco mayor James D. Phelan and Wilson friend Walter Page.

[41] Wilson continued to keep his Cabinet intentions quiet, and Lane noted in January 1913 of those who met with the President-elect in New Jersey, "nobody comes back from Trenton knowing anything more than when he went".

[43] As Wilson adjusted his lineup of potential Cabinet appointees, he and House considered Lane for the positions of Attorney General and Secretary of War.

San Francisco had long sought to dam the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park to create a reservoir that would assure a steady flow of water to the city.

[52] The Interior Secretary advocated leasing, rather than selling, public lands with possible mineral deposits, and Senator Walsh pursued legislation in this area.

[54] In July 1913, Lane left on a long inspection tour of National Parks, Indian reservations, and other areas under the Interior Department's jurisdiction.

Fearful that local employees would control what he was allowed to see, he sent an assistant to visit each site and provide him with a complete report on it two weeks in advance of his arrival.

[55] Following the death of Justice Horace Harmon Lurton, Lane was considered a possibility for elevation to the Supreme Court;[56] however, Wilson chose another member of his cabinet, James Clark McReynolds.

[51] Mather, a self-made millionaire and member of the Sierra Club, had written Lane a bitter letter in late 1914, complaining that the national parks were being exploited for private profit.

[61] In 1916, Wilson appointed Lane to lead the American delegation and meet with the Mexican commissioners at Atlantic City, New Jersey about the unstable military situation in Mexico.

He defused a difficult situation for the CND when it decided to merge its male-dominated state and local organizations with the separate Women's Committee into a unified Field Division.

[62] In a letter to Democratic presidential candidate and Ohio Governor James M. Cox in July 1920, Lane set forth his vision for America: We want our unused lands put to use.

We are to know other people better and make them all more and more our friends, working with them as mutually dependent factors in the growth of the world's life[71] By early 1921, Lane's health was failing, and he sought treatment at the Mayo Clinic.

[9] In 1939, after Mrs. Lane's death, the corpus of the trust (just over $100,000) was transferred to the former Secretary's alma mater, the University of California, to promote the understanding and improvement of the American system of democratic government.

Other tributes to Lane included a World War II Liberty ship, a New York City high school, and a California redwood grove.