James Davis
Portrait of Davis byHarris & Ewing
United States Senator fromPennsylvania
In office December 2, 1930 – January 3, 1945
Preceded by	Joe Grundy
Succeeded by	Francis Myers
2ndUnited States Secretary of Labor
In office March 5, 1921 – November 30, 1930
President	Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover
Preceded by	William Wilson
Succeeded by	William Doak
Personal details
Born	James John Davies (1873-10-27)October 27, 1873 Tredegar,Wales
Died	November 22, 1947(1947-11-22) (aged 74) Takoma Park,Maryland, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Jean Rodenbaugh
Children	5
Education	Sharon Business School

James John Davis (October 27, 1873 – November 22, 1947) was aWelsh-born American businessman, author andRepublican Party politician inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served asU.S. Secretary of Labor and representedPennsylvania in theUnited States Senate. He was also known by the nicknames of the "Iron Puddler" and "Puddler Jim."

Born asJames John Davies on October 27, 1873, at 47 Fifth Row, Georgetown,Tredegar,Monmouthshire,Wales. He emigrated with his parents, David James Davies and Esther Ford Davies (née Nichols), to theUnited States in 1881 at the age of eight.

They settled inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later inSharon, Pennsylvania. He was apprenticed as a puddler's assistant in asteel mill, and as a result, acquired his nickname. In 1893, he moved toElwood, Indiana, and served as city clerk from 1898 to 1902. From 1903 to 1907, he served as Recorder ofMadison County, Indiana, before returning to Pittsburgh. He personally signed his name asJames J. Davies even though his surname had been changed on immigration toDavis and he became well known with the surnameDavis. He married Jean Rodenbaugh and had five children.

Davis joined theLoyal Order of Moose in 1906 as its 247th member and staged a successful reorganization. He rose to become theDirector-General and took the Order internationally toBermuda,Britain andCanada. He was instrumental as a leader in buildingMooseheart, the fraternity's "Child City". In 1926, he founded theGrand Lodge of Britain at his birthplace inTredegar,South Wales.

Davis advocated for immigration policy that was explicitlyracist, hoping "that America may not be a conglomeration of racial groups, each advocating a different set of ideas and ideals according to their bringing up, but a homogeneous race."^[1]

Davis supported theeugenics movement.^[2] Historian Hans P. Vought argues that Davis lamented the influx of cheap labor from Southern and Eastern Europe. Vought writes that Davis believed that Americans had, thanks to the eugenics movement, learned to discern between "bad stock and good stock, weak blood and strong blood, sound heredity and sickly human stuff."^[3]

Davis supported the rights of workers to strike, but only to a certain extent; he asked unions to "be slow to use the strike weapon." He was against the 14-hour workday that predominated in the American steel industry during the early 1920s.^[4]

In 1922, Davis published his autobiography,The Iron Puddler, which was ghostwritten byC. L. Edson, who had previously worked for Davis as an editor of a Loyal Order of Moose publication.^[5] He served asUnited States Secretary of Labor from 1921 to 1930 under PresidentsWarren G. Harding,Calvin Coolidge, andHerbert Hoover. He is one of only three Cabinet officers in U.S. history to hold the same post under three consecutive Presidents. The other two Cabinet officers to accomplish this were Secretary of AgricultureJames Wilson and Secretary of the TreasuryAndrew Mellon. During his tenure, he focused onimmigration, then a Labor Department responsibility, and established theUnited States Border Patrol and proposed restrictions in immigration quotas. At the urging of the iron and steel workers union, he successfully urgedU.S. Steel to abandon the 12-hour workday.

He resigned as Secretary of Labor upon his election to the United States Senate fromPennsylvania, accepting the seat denied toWilliam Vare. During his tenure in the Senate, he co-sponsored theDavis–Bacon Act withNew York CongressmanRobert Bacon.

In April 1943 a confidential analysis byIsaiah Berlin of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee for theBritish Foreign Office described Davis as:

defeated for the governorship of his State in 1942. Commonly known as "puddler Jim" since he started his career as a steel worker. He was born in South Wales, became a Labour politician during the last war and Secretary of Labour shortly afterward. He is violently hated by organised labour, since he is regarded as having prostituted his labour connexion only in order to betray his fellow-workers over and over again. He is a pure opportunist, put into the Senate by the powerfulSun Oil interest in Pennsylvania, declares that he is not an Isolationist. This is true only in so far as he appears to have no convictions of any kind, and will vote in whatever direction is required by the interest which is running him at any given moment. Hisbête noire is his fellow Pennsylvanian in the Senate,Joseph F. Guffey.^[6]

Davis was narrowly defeated for re-election in 1944, and subsequently resumed his work with theLoyal Order of Moose until his death.

Davis died inTakoma Park, Maryland in 1947, following aheart attack at the age of 74. He is buried atUnion Dale Cemetery in Pittsburgh.

• List of foreign-born United States Cabinet members
• List of United States senators born outside the United States

• The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1922. (ghostwritten by C. L. Edson)

• John Bruce Dudley,James J. Davis: Secretary of Labor Under Three Presidents. PhD dissertation. Ball State University, 1972.

Wikimedia Commons has media related toJames J. Davis (politician).

United States Congress."DAVIS, James John (id: D000111)".Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

• U.S. Department of Labor Biography
• Moose international in the United States
• Moose International in the United Kingdom
• Works by James J. Davis atProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about James J. Davis at theInternet Archive

• 1873 births
• 1947 deaths
• 20th-century Pennsylvania politicians
• American eugenicists
• American trade unionists of Welsh descent
• American white nationalists
• Coolidge administration cabinet members
• Harding administration cabinet members
• Hoover administration cabinet members
• Indiana Republicans
• Ironworkers
• Pennsylvania Republicans
• People from Elwood, Indiana
• People from Sharon, Pennsylvania
• People from Tredegar
• Politicians from Mercer County, Pennsylvania
• Politicians from Pittsburgh
• Republican Party United States senators from Pennsylvania
• Trade unionists from Indiana
• Trade unionists from Pennsylvania
• United States secretaries of labor
• Welsh emigrants to the United States
• 20th-century United States senators

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