was an assistant state attorney general attached to the Illinois Commerce Commission as a traction attorney. He served in the United States Navy during World War II, assigned as an attorney for the Bureau of Ships in Washington, DC. Career in Congress From 1949 to 1963 and 1965 to 1999, Yates served in the House of Representatives as a Democrat. Although the boundaries of his district changed over the years, it was always anchored in the Chicago lakefront. From the 1970s onward, Chicago's declining population resulted in the district spilling into the northern suburbs. By the time he retired, his district also included Evanston, Des Plaines, Glenview, Rosemont and Skokie. Yates was one of the first congressmen to speak out against age discrimination, arguing in 1951 that mandatory retirement of workers was wrong and deprived older people of their right to lead a proud, productive and independent life. During the late 1950s, after a series of lurid magazine articles and Hollywood films helped to sensationalize youth gangs and violence, Yates called for legislation to ban automatic-opening or switchblade knives, melodramatically proclaiming that "Vicious fantasies of omnipotence, idolatry...barbaric and sadistic atrocities, and monstrous violations of accepted values spring from the cult of the weapon, and the switchblade knife is included in this. Minus switchblade knives and the distorted feeling of power they beget—power that is swaggering, reckless, and itching to express itself in violence—our delinquent adolescents would be shorn of one of their most potent means of incitement to crime." The ban on switchblade knives was eventually enacted into law as the Switchblade Knife Act of 1958. Rep. Yates and other congressmen supporting the Switchblade Knife Act believed that by stopping the importation and interstate sales of automatic knives (effectively halting sales of new switchblades), the law would reduce youth gang violence by blocking access to what had become a symbolic weapon. However, while switchblade imports, domestic production, and sales to lawful owners soon ended, later legislative research demonstrated that youth gang violence rates had in fact rapidly increased, as gang members began using firearms instead of knives. Yates was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Senate in 1962 against Republican incumbent and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. He briefly served at the United Nations before returning to the House after the 1964 election. Fellow Democrat Edward Finnegan won Yates' old seat after his former district was merged with the