He served four years on the Scranton School Board. He was a member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1891, 1893, 1895, 1897, and 1899, serving as speaker of the 1899 session. As a state legislator he introduced bills to make public education compulsory, and to provide free textbooks to public schools; both measures passed.[1]
Farr was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1908, but was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-second and to the three succeeding Congresses. He successfully contested the election of Patrick McLane to the Sixty-sixth Congress, though his success came almost at the end of McLane's term.[1] He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1920, 1930, and 1932.
He resumed the real estate business in Scranton, where he died, aged 76, after suffering a heart attack.[1] Interred in Shady Lane Cemetery in Chinchilla, Pennsylvania.