Paul Douglas (Illinois politician)
Paul Howard Douglas (March 26, 1892 – September 24, 1976) was an American politician and Georgist economist.[1] A member of the Democratic 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 the liberal coalition.[2]
Paul Douglas
James J. Cusack Jr.
Bertram B. Moss
September 24, 1976 (aged 84)
Washington, D.C., U.S
-
Dorothy Wolff(m. 1915; div. 1930)
4
- Politician
- economist
United States
1942–1945
Lieutenant colonel
Born in Massachusetts and raised in Maine, Douglas graduated from Bowdoin College and Columbia University. He served as a professor of economics at several schools, most notably the University of Chicago, and earned a reputation as a reformer while a member of the Chicago 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 married Emily Taft Douglas, a U.S. representative from Illinois's At-large district (1945–1947).
Early years[edit]
Douglas was born on March 26, 1892, in Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Annie (Smith) and James Howard Douglas.[3] 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 to Onawa, Maine, in Piscataquis County, where her brother and uncle had built a resort in the woods.
Government service and city politics[edit]
As the 1920s drew to a close, Douglas got more involved in politics. He served as an economic advisor to Republican Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania and Democratic Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. Along with Chicago lawyer Harold L. Ickes, he launched a campaign against public utility tycoon Samuel Insull's stock market manipulations. Working with the state legislature, he helped draft laws regulating utilities and establishing old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. By the early 1930s, he was vice chairman of the League for Independent Political Action, a member of the Farmer-Labor Party's national committee, and treasurer of the American Commonwealth Political Federation.
A registered Independent, 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 the British Labour Party. That year, he supported Socialist candidate Norman 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 the National 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 the city 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 that drafted Douglas. During the municipal election cycle, Mayor Edward 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 a runoff 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."
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 Congressman Raymond S. McKeough for the nomination. On the day of the primary, 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 senator C. Wayland Brooks.
Return to civilian life[edit]
After Douglas left the service he returned to teach at the University of Chicago around 1946.[17] In 1947 he was awarded the highest honor in the economics profession when he was elected president of the American Economic Association.[18] But soon Douglas found himself at odds with the faculty 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."[19] Unhappy with the situation at the university, Paul turned his attention to Illinois politics.
Defeat and retirement[edit]
During the 1966 election, Douglas, then 74, ran for a fourth term in office against Republican Charles 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 at the 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. On September 24, 1976, he died at his home. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in Jackson Park near the University of Chicago.