Paul Douglas | |
|---|---|
_Crop.jpg) Douglasc. 1965 | |
| United States Senator fromIllinois | |
| In office January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1967 | |
| Preceded by | Charles W. Brooks |
| Succeeded by | Charles H. Percy |
| Member of theChicago City Council from the5th ward | |
| In office 1939–1942 | |
| Preceded by | James J. Cusack Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Bertram B. Moss |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Paul Howard Douglas (1892-03-26)March 26, 1892 Salem, Massachusetts, U.S |
| Died | September 24, 1976(1976-09-24) (aged 84) Washington, D.C., U.S |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 4 |
| Alma mater | Bowdoin College Columbia University Harvard University |
| Profession |
|
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service |  United States Marine Corps |
| Years of service | 1942–1945 |
| Rank |  Lieutenant colonel |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards |  Bronze Star Purple Heart (2) |
| Academic background | |
| Doctoral advisor | Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman |
| Academic work | |
| Doctoral students | Martin Bronfenbrenner |
Paul Howard Douglas (March 26, 1892 – September 24, 1976) was an American politician andGeorgist economist.[1] A member of theDemocratic Party, he served as a U.S. senator from Illinois for eighteen years, from 1949 to 1967. During his Senate career, he was a prominent member of theliberal coalition.[2]
Born in Massachusetts and raised in Maine, Douglas graduated fromBowdoin College andColumbia University. He served as a professor of economics at several schools, most notably theUniversity of Chicago, and earned a reputation as a reformer while a member of theChicago City Council (1939–1942). During World War II, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and becoming known as a war hero.
He first married Dorothy Wolff in 1915. They had four children. He divorced her in 1930 and a year later marriedEmily Taft Douglas, daughter of sculptorLorado Taft[3] and aU.S. representative from Illinois'sAt-large district (1945–1947).
Douglas was born on March 26, 1892, inSalem, Massachusetts, the son of Annie (Smith) and James Howard Douglas.[4] When he was four, his mother died of natural causes and his father remarried. His father was an abusive husband and his stepmother, unable to obtain a divorce, left her husband and took Douglas and his older brother toOnawa, Maine, inPiscataquis County, where her brother and uncle had built a resort in the woods. He graduated from Newport High School in 1909, the precursor toNokomis Regional High School.[5]
In 1913, Douglas graduated from Bowdoin College, where he was elected toPhi Beta Kappa and was aCharles Carroll Everett Scholar.[6] He then moved on toColumbia University, where he earned amaster's degree in 1915 and a PhD ineconomics in 1921.
In 1915, he married Dorothy Wolff, a graduate ofBryn Mawr College who also earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University.
From 1915 to 1920, the Douglases moved six times. He studied atHarvard University; taught at theUniversity of Illinois and at Oregon'sReed College; served as a mediator oflabor disputes for theEmergency Fleet Corporation of Pennsylvania; and taught at theUniversity of Washington. When working for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, he readJohn Woolman's journals. When teaching in Seattle, he joined theReligious Society of Friends.
In 1919, Douglas took a job teaching economics at theUniversity of Chicago. Although Douglas enjoyed his job, his wife was unable to obtain a job at the university due to anti-nepotism rules. When she obtained a job atSmith College, in Massachusetts, she persuaded her husband to move the family there. He would then start teaching atAmherst College. In 1930 the couple divorced; Dorothy Wolff Douglas began a romantic relationship withKatharine DuPre Lumpkin.[7] Dorothy took custody of their four children, and Douglas returned to Chicago. The following year, Douglas met and marriedEmily Taft Douglas, daughter of sculptorLorado Taft and a distant cousin of former presidentWilliam Howard Taft. Emily was a political activist, former actress, and subsequent one-term congresswoman at-large from Illinois (1945–47).
Douglas was listed as a supporter of banking reforms suggested by University of Chicago economists in 1933 that were later referred to as the "Chicago plan."[8] In 1939, he coauthored with five other notable economists a draft proposal titledA Program for Monetary Reform. The Chicago plan andA Program for Monetary Reform generated much interest and discussion among lawmakers, but the suggested reforms did not result in any new legislation.
Douglas is probably best known to economics students as the co-author of the 1928 article withCharles Cobb that first laid out theCobb-Douglas production function.
As the 1920s drew to a close, Douglas got more involved in politics. He served as an economic advisor toRepublican governorGifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania andDemocratic governorFranklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Along with Chicago lawyerHarold L. Ickes, he launched a campaign against public utility tycoonSamuel Insull's stock market manipulations.[citation needed] Working with the state legislature, he helped draft laws regulating utilities and establishingold-age pensions and unemployment insurance. By the early 1930s, he was vice chairman of theLeague for Independent Political Action, a member of theFarmer-Labor Party's national committee, and treasurer of theAmerican Commonwealth Political Federation.
A registeredIndependent, Douglas felt that the Democratic Party was too corrupt and the Republican Party was too reactionary, views that he expressed in a 1932 book,The Coming of a New Party, in which he supported the creation of a party similar to theBritish Labour Party.[citation needed] That year, he supportedSocialist candidateNorman Thomas for President of the United States.
After Roosevelt's victory in the election, Douglas, at the recommendation of his friend Harold Ickes, was appointed to serve on the Consumers' Advisory Board of theNational Recovery Administration. In 1935, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the Administration was unconstitutional, and it was abolished.
That year, Douglas made his first foray into electoral politics, campaigning for the endorsement of the local Republican Party for mayor of Chicago. Although the party endorsed someone else, Douglas continued to work with them to get their candidate elected to thecity council from the 5th Ward. A strong Socialist candidate split the reform vote, however, and Democratic Party candidate James Cusack was elected.
Four years later, in 1939, Cusack came up for re-election, and Douglas joined a group of reform-minded Independents thatdrafted Douglas. During the municipal election cycle, MayorEdward Joseph Kelly was challenged for re-election and attempted to shore up his reputation by lending his support to Douglas' campaign. With Kelly's help and his own dogged campaigning, Douglas managed a narrow victory over Cusack in arunoff election.
Douglas usually found himself in the minority in the Chicago City Council. His attempts to reform the public education system and lower public transportation fares were met with derision and he typically ended up on the losing end of 49–1 votes. "I have three degrees," Douglas once said after a particularly hard-fought rout. "I have been associated with intelligent and intellectual people for many years. Some of these aldermen haven't gone through the fifth grade. But they're the smartest bunch of bastards I ever saw grouped together."[citation needed]
In 1942, Douglas joined the Democratic Party and ran for its nomination for the United States Senate. He had the support of a cadre of left-wing activists, but the machine supported the state's at-large CongressmanRaymond S. McKeough for the nomination. On the day of theprimary, Douglas carried 99 of the state's 102 counties, but McKeough's strong support in Cook County allowed him to win a slim majority. McKeough would go on to lose in the general election to incumbent Republican senatorC. Wayland Brooks.
As alderman, Douglas had worked withChicago Daily News publisherFrank Knox in fighting corruption in Chicago. Knox, who had been Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1936, had becomeSecretary of the Navy, thus responsible for both the navy and the Marine Corps.
Shortly after losing the primary, Douglas resigned from the Chicago City Council. With the aid of Knox, Douglas enlisted in theUnited States Marine Corps on May 15, 1942, at the age of 50,[9] becoming the oldest recruit in the history ofParris Island.[10] Entering service as a private, Douglas was placed in an ordinary platoon and received no waivers aside from his teeth and eyesight.[11] As a member of the 57th Street Meeting of the Quakers, Douglas recognized that joining the Marines was contrary to the traditional testimony of that group against war and offered to resign his membership; the meeting refused to release him.[12] Initially, Douglas was kept stateside, writing training manuals and giving inspirational speeches to troops, and quickly rose to the rank ofstaff sergeant.[13] With the aid of Knox and his assistantAdlai Stevenson, Douglas was commissioned as a captain on November 24, 1942.[14] Requesting combat duty, he was subsequently sent to the Pacific theater of operations with the1st Marine Division.
During theBattle of Peleliu, Douglas initially served as anadjutant in the 1st Marine Division headquarters before being assignedR-1 (personnel officer) of the5th Marine Regiment.[15] On the second day of the battle, Captain Douglas received permission to head to the front where he found work as a mobile regimental troubleshooter.[16] He earned aBronze Star for carrying ammunition to the front lines under enemy fire and earned his firstPurple Heart when he was grazed byshrapnel while carryingflamethrower ammunition to the front lines.[17] In that six-week battle, while investigating some random fire shootings, Douglas was shot at as he uncovered a two-foot-wide cave. He then killed the Japanese soldier inside at which point he wondered whether his enemy might be an economics professor from theUniversity of Tokyo.[18]
Shortly after returning toPavuvu, Douglas received notice that his wife, Emily Taft Douglas, had won the election forIllinois's at-large congressional district.[19]
A few months later, during theBattle of Okinawa, Douglas earned his secondPurple Heart. A volunteer rifleman in an infantry platoon, he was helping to carry wounded from3rd Battalion 5th Marines along theNaha-Shuri line when a burst of machine gun fire tore through his left arm, severing the main nerve and leaving it permanently disabled.[17]
After a thirteen-month stay in theNational Naval Medical Center atBethesda, Maryland, Douglas was given an honorable discharge as a lieutenant colonel with full disability pay.
After Douglas left the service he returned to teach at the University of Chicago around 1946.[20] In 1947 he was awarded the highest honor in the economics profession when he was elected president of the American Economic Association.[21] But soon Douglas found himself at odds with thefaculty at Chicago, stating, "... I was disconcerted to find that the economic and political conservatives had acquired almost complete dominance over my department and taught that market decisions were always right and profit values the supreme ones ... If I stayed, it would be in an unfriendly environment."[22] Unhappy with the situation at the university, Paul turned his attention to Illinois politics.
While Douglas had been serving in the Marines, his wife,Emily, had been nominated to run againstisolationist Republican CongressmanStephen A. Day, who had succeeded McKeough. Although she had defeated Day in the 1944 election, a Republican upsurge had unseated her in 1946, the same year that Douglas left the Marines.
Deciding to enter politics once again, Douglas let it be generally known that he wished to seek the office ofGovernor of Illinois in 1948. Cook County machine bossJacob Arvey, however, had a different plan. At the time, several scandals had broken out over the machine's activities, and Arvey decided that Douglas, a scholar and war hero with a reputation for incorruptibility, would be the perfect nominee to run against Senator Brooks. Since Brooks was hugely popular in the state and had a large campaign warchest, Arvey decided that there was no danger of Douglas winning.[citation needed] The top two thirds of the Illinois Democratic slate for the 1948 election then became Paul Douglas for senator andAdlai Stevenson for governor.
At the outset of the campaign, Douglas' chances looked slim. As a delegate to the1948 Democratic National Convention, he had tried to draft GeneralDwight D. Eisenhower for president, calling PresidentHarry S. Truman "incompetent."[citation needed]
Douglas, however, proved to be a tenacious campaigner. He stumped across the state in a Jeep station wagon for theMarshall Plan, civil rights, repeal of theTaft-Hartley Act, more public housing, and more social security programs. During six months of non-stop campaigning, he traveled more than 40,000 miles (64,000 km) around the state and delivered more than 1,100 speeches. When Senator Brooks refused to debate him, Douglas debated an empty chair, switching from seat to seat as he provided both his and Brooks' answers.
OnElection Day, Douglas won an upset victory, taking 55 percent of the vote and defeating the incumbent by a margin of more than 407,000 votes. Stevenson won therace for governor by a wide margin, but there was nocoattails effect from president to senator to governor, as President Truman, campaigning for re-election,won the state by a slim 33,600 votes.
As senator, Douglas soon earned a reputation as an unconventional liberal, concerned as much with fiscal discipline as with passing theFair Deal. He was also a passionate crusader for civil rights (Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. described him as "the greatest of all the Senators"[23]). At the opening of the85th United States Congress in January 1957, a session that would see the passing of theCivil Rights Act of 1957 in September, Douglas was the only senator to defy custom and vote against the confirmation of segregationistJames Eastland as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.[24]
Douglas also earned fame as an opponent ofpork barrel spending. Early in his first term, he grabbed headlines when, magnifying glass and atlas in hand, he strode to the Senate floor and, referring to a pork barrel project for the dredging of the Josias river in Maine, defied anyone to find the river in the atlas. When Maine'sOwen Brewster objected and pointed out the millions of dollars in pork going to Illinois, Douglas offered to cut his state's share by 40%.
Upon joining the Senate, Douglas was appointed a member of theJoint Economic Committee. In that capacity, in the late-1940s and the early-1950s, he emerged as the central figure in the famous accord between the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury which provided the Federal Reserve with its independence from the Treasury, an independence that has lasted until the present day. Prior to the accord, the Federal Reserve's policy rates were determined by the Treasury. His criticisms of the dependency of the Federal Reserve on the Treasury led to his picture appearing on the cover of Time magazine on January 22, 1951. A profile of him in that issue was entitled “The Making of a Maverick.” Subsequently, as chair of the Joint Economic Committee, he led a series of hard-hitting investigations into fiscal mismanagement in government.[25][26] In 1952 he was elected as aFellow of the American Statistical Association.[27]
As the1952 presidential election approached, a groundswell of support arose for a Douglas candidacy for president. TheNational Editorial Association ranked him the second-most-qualified man, after Truman, to receive the Democratic presidential nomination, and a poll of 46 Democratic insiders revealed him to be a favorite for the nomination if Truman stepped aside.
Douglas, however, refused to be considered as a candidate for president, instead backing the candidacy of SenatorEstes Kefauver of Tennessee, a folksy,coonskin cap-wearingpopulist who had become famous for his televised investigations intoorganized crime. Douglas stumped across the country for Kefauver and stood next to him at the1952 Democratic National Convention when Kefauver was defeated by Illinois GovernorAdlai Stevenson II. Four years later, in 1956, he remained publicly neutral, feeling that openly opposing Stevenson's drive for the nomination and supporting Kefauver would damage his standing with his state party.[citation needed]
In addition to his battles for equal rights for African Americans and less pork barrel spending, Douglas was also known for his fights for environmental protection, public housing, andtruth in lending laws. He opposed real estateredlining but was forced to allow a 1949 provision in a public housing bill making it possible for suburbs to reject low-income housing. He also authored the Consumer Credit Protection Act, a bill that forced lenders to state the terms of a loan in plain language and restricted the ability of lenders to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, or income. Although the bill was not passed during his term of office, it became law in 1968.
As a believer inGeorgist economics, Douglas regretting not being able to do more to advanceland value tax while in the Senate. Douglas toldMason Gaffney that he even regretted leaving local politics, where he saw more opportunity to implement Georgist ideas.[28] In his memoirs, Douglas perhaps jokingly askedSaint Paul to forgive him for his silence in the Senate on what he considered to be the important land values problem.[29]
Unlike some other liberals, Douglas was an opponent of anational health insurance program, claiming theWagner-Murray-Dingell bill supported by PresidentHarry Truman went too far.[30]
Douglas was an ardent supporter of the disproven cancer drugKrebiozen, and in the early 1960s sponsored senate hearings in support of the discredited treatment.[31]
During the1966 election, Douglas, then 74, ran for a fourth term in office against RepublicanCharles H. Percy, a wealthy businessman and former student of his. A confluence of events, including Douglas's age and sympathy for Percy over the then-recent and presently still unsolved murder of his daughter, Valerie, caused Douglas to lose the election in an upset.
After losing his seat in the Senate, Douglas taught atthe New School, chaired a commission on housing, and wrote books, including an autobiography,In the Fullness of Time.
In the early 1970s, he had a stroke and withdrew from public life.[citation needed] On September 24, 1976, he died at his home. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered inJackson Park near the University of Chicago.
A memorial marker at theMarine Corps training base at Parris Island reads:
DOUGLAS VISITORS CENTERin Memory ofSENATOR PAUL H. DOUGLAS1892 ~ 1976
Graduating fromParris Island in 1942 as a 50-year-old Private, Mr. Douglas was an inspiration to all. He rose to the rank of Major while serving in the Pacific Theater where he was wounded at Peleliu and Okinawa. Retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. The former economics professor later served as a U.S. Senator from Illinois. By his personal courage, fortitude and leadership, the Honorable Paul H. Douglas demonstrated the personal traits characteristic of Marine leaders.[1]
From 1986 to 1997, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the Paul Douglas Teacher Scholarship in Douglas's honor.
In 1992 the University of Illinois, Institute of Government and Public Affairs established the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government as part of the celebration of the senator's 100th birthday, and in recognition of his outstanding service to the nation.
The Paul Douglas Forest Preserve in Hoffman Estates, Illinois is named for him.
Douglas was entitled to campaign participation credit ("battle stars") for Capture and Occupation of the Southern Palau Islands (Peleliu), and Assault and Occupation of Okinawa Gunto
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| Bronze Star withCombat V | Purple Heart with Gold Star | Presidential Unit Citation with 1star |
| American Campaign Medal | Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two campaign stars | World War II Victory Medal |
Douglas was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950 and theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1952.[32][33]
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Even though thousands of visitors have walked the halls of the Douglas Visitor Center, very few know the story of the man behind the namesake, who became the oldest recruit in the history of Parris Island.
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Democratic nominee forU.S. senator fromIllinois (Class 2) 1948,1954,1960,1966 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. senator (Class 2) from Illinois 1949–1967 Served alongside:Scott W. Lucas.Everett M. Dirksen | Succeeded by |
| Class 2 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 3 | ||
