Tague was a son of Peter and Mary Tague, immigrants from Ireland. His father was a cooper. Tague attended Frothingham Grammar school and English High School in Boston. He then entered business, supplying blacksmiths and building contractors. Tague married Josephine T. Fitzgerald on January 31, 1900; they had two sons.
Business career
Tague was a bookkeeper and Northeast representative of Never Slip Manufacturing Company. He later became a manufacturing chemist and a supplier of chemicals to business.
In 1918, Tague was faced with a major challenge from former Boston mayor John F. Fitzgerald. Tague lost the primary to Fitzgerald by 50 votes. He contested his loss in the primary and appealed to the election commissioners, but he lost that appeal and Fitzgerald was declared the nominee of the Democratic Party. Tague contested the general election as a sticker and write-in candidate and initially he narrowly lost the general election to Fitzgerald, by 238 votes. Tague contested the election result. After the House of Representatives election committee canvassed over 1,300 votes Fitzgerald's plurality went down to 10 votes. After determining that one-third of the votes in three precincts of Boston's Ward 5 were fraudulent, the committee threw out the votes of those precincts. The committee determined that the election had been tainted by illegal registrations and fraud. They determined that Tague won the election by 525 votes. On October 2, 1919, by a vote of 5 to 2, the committee voted to unseat Fitzgerald and to seat Tague. On October 23, 1919, the full House of Representatives unseated Fitzgerald and seated Tague. Tague was reelected to the Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth Congresses, serving from October 23, 1919, to March 3, 1925. Tague is noted for having introduced a bill in Congress in 1921 to investigate the KKK, which then was becoming a powerful force nationwide. He was defeated for reelection in 1924.
Following his defeat for Congress in 1924, Tague resumed his business career. He was appointed assessor of Boston in 1930 and chairman of the election commission of Boston the same year. In 1936, he was appointed postmaster and served until his death. Tague died in Boston on September 17, 1941, at the age of 70. He was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts.
