PAUL H. DOUGLAS: UNITED
STATES SENATOR
1892-1976
Paul Douglas, who identified himself twice in his autobiography
as both a Unitarian and a Quaker, served as a trustee of the
Abraham Lincoln Center (Unitarian) in Chicago. He was active
in both All Souls Church (Unitarian) in Washington, DC and the
Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda, MD. The following celebration
of his life is drawn from an article in the Illinois Historical
Journal (Volume 83, Summer 1990) written by Edward L. Schapsmeier,
Distinguished Professor of History at Illinois State University.
 Paul
Douglas was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1892,
but the contours of his character were formed in the backwoods
of Maine, where he was raised by a kindly stepmother. Young
Douglas was forced by circumstances of poverty to work his way
through Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 1913 with
a Phi Beta Kappa key. After securing a master's degree at Columbia
University in 1915, he did a year of postgraduate work at Harvard
University and then earned the Ph.D. in economics at Columbia
in 1921. Meanwhile, he taught at the University of Illinois,
Reed College, and the University of Washington before accepting
an appointment at the University of Chicago. He soon gained
a professional reputation as an excellent teacher, a productive
scholar, a humanitarian, and a civic activist. In 1927 Douglas
became intrigued with the communist experiment going on in the
Soviet Union. But after visiting Russia on a trade union mission
and observing the aftermath of Lenin's dictatorial powers, he
rejected Marxist economic theory. Instead, he turned to socialism
tempered by the pacifism and humanism of the Quaker faith he
had espoused since 1920.
Douglas campaigned for Norman Thomas in the 1932 presidential
election but gradually became a supporter of the New Deal as
Roosevelt began to implement genuine social reforms.
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With
daughter Jean in 1934
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Through the influence of Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes,
a fellow civic reformer from Chicago, and Labor Secretary Frances
Perkins, who knew him as a professional economist, Douglas was
appointed in 1933 to the Consumers' Advisory Board of the short-lived
National Recovery Administration. All the while, he was generating
ideas and agitating for enactment of such New Deal legislation
as the Social Security Act, Wagner Act, and Fair Labor Standards
Act. He published Wages and the Family (1925), Real
Wages in the United States, 1890-1926 (1930), Standards
of Unemployment Insurance (1933), Theory of Wages
(1934), Controlling Depressions (1935), and Social
Security in the United States (1936). Long a friend of organized
labor, he served from 1925 to 1942 as chairman of the board
of arbitrators for the newspaper industry.
In Chicago, Douglas
moved in both socialist and Democratic party circles. He served
as vice-chairman of the League for Independent Political Action,
was a member of the national committee of the Farmer-Labor Political
Federation, and was treasurer for the American Commonwealth Political
Federation (all socialist in orientation). In 1935 his friends
urged him to run against Democratic Mayor Edward J. Kelly. When
the Republicans refused to endorse him as their nominee, Douglas
withdrew his candidacy. He ran in 1939 for the Chicago City Council
as an Independent Democrat. He won, as it turned out, primarily
due to Mayor Kelly's endorsement of him and served as an alderman
until 1942.
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With
John F. Kennedy, St. Charles, Illinois, 1960: the end of
a strenous day of campaigning.
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Paul Douglas's gradual
gravitation towards true membership in the Democratic party was
hastened by his participation in Chicago politics, but it was
his own conversion from pacifism to interventionism that propelled
him to join the ranks of Franklin Roosevelt's supporters. In conscientious
compliance with his Quaker faith, Douglas previously had opposed
military preparation on the part of the United States. In 1935,
however, after hearing Benito Mussolini announce Italy's invasion
of hapless Ethiopia from the Piazza Venezia in Rome, Douglas had
been shocked into the conclusion that "isolationism was impossible
and pacifism self-defeating against dictators." The Spanish Civil
War and the sellout of Czechoslovakia at Munich fortified Douglas's
belief that the Neutrality Acts only benefited aggressor nations
and that the United States and other democracies must resist totalitarian
aggression, with military force if necessary.
Douglas, who had once opposed the Reserve Officers' Training Corps,
began to drill regularly with the volunteer Home Defense Unit
at the University of Chicago. At the time, he was approaching
his fiftieth birthday. He also became an active member of the
Committee to Defend America by Aid to the Allies, known as the
William Allen White Committee. In a debate with Norman Thomas—still
a pacifist, isolationist, and the perennial socialist candidate
for President—Douglas criticized both pacifists and isolationists
for trying to avoid an unpleasant happening by burying their heads
in the sand. He concluded: "Personal pacifism is impossible for
any nation to follow." He also acknowledged that aid to the Soviet
Union was necessary to insure Hitler's defeat, but added, "It
is no merit on Stalin's part that Hitler finally double-crossed
his ally."
In 1942 Paul Douglas
tried to win the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate
but failed to gain the support of the Cook County Democratic machine.
In the primary election he carried ninety-nine out of 102 counties
but lost Cook County and the primary election to Congressman Raymond
S. McKeough (who was subsequently defeated by Senator Brooks,
an unrepentant Republican isolationist).
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Receiving
the Bronze Star for service
on Peleliu during World War II.
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He insisted, "We cannot let the isolationist minority treat
F.D.R. after this war as they treated Woodrow Wilson after the
first World War." Douglas thereafter prevailed upon Navy Secretary
Frank Knox (a former Chicago publisher) to permit him to enlist
in the Marine Corps as a private. When discharged from service
in 1946, Douglas was a wounded and decorated lieutenant colonel
who had served heroically in the First Marine Division at Okinawa
and Peleliu, where he was awarded the Purple Heart. He underwent
five operations on his injured left arm, but its functional
use was never restored.
In his first postwar speech, having resumed his professorship
at the University of Chicago, Douglas assumed the stance of
an anti-Communist activist. He strongly opposed the expansionism
of the Soviet Union and its ironclad control over Eastern Europe:
"If the experience of the thirties with fascism has taught us
anything," he declared, "it was that it is a mistake to make
great sacrifices of principle in order to appease aggression."
He stoutly defended the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine,
and the formation of a strong military alliance with Western
European nations. When Henry A. Wallace became the presidential
candidate of the Progressive party, Douglas denounced him for
espousing an appeasement policy that "would permit Russia to
take over all of Europe and much of Asia as well."
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in Chicago during the last week of the 1966 campaign. |
By 1948 Colonel Jacob M. Arvey had succeeded Mayor Kelly as
chairman of the Cook County Democratic organization and was
willing to slate Professor Paul Douglas as the party's senatorial
candidate. This time, he defeated Senator Brooks. Thus, he began
his eighteen-year Senate career as a true, regular Democrat.
He spoke out forcefully for Truman's containment policy and
fought for the Fair Deal as he had for the New Deal.
When the United States became involved in the Korean War in
1950, Douglas applauded America's military efforts on behalf
of South Korea's right of self-determination against the communist
invaders from the north.
During Douglas's three-term career—which spanned the presidential
administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson—he
was a forceful champion of civil rights, social welfare programs,
public housing, extension of Social Security (including Medicare),
federal aid to education, concern for the environment, and legislation
beneficial to labor unions. Known as an uncompromising idealist,
Douglas marched to his own drumbeat.
In the
Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas (New York:
Harcourt, 1972).
Courageous Liberal: Paul H. Douglas of Illinois by Roger
Biles (Chicago: Northen Illinois University Press, 2002)
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Years
of Service: 1949-1967
Party:
Democrat
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| USIA photo |
DOUGLAS, Paul Howard,
(husband
of Emily Taft Douglas), a Senator from Illinois; born
in Salem, Essex County, Mass., March 26, 1892; attended
the public schools of Newport, Maine; graduated from Bowdoin
College in 1913, Columbia University in 1915; studied
at Harvard University in 1915 and 1916; economist, author
and college professor; taught economics at University
of Illinois 1916-1917, Reed College, Portland, Oreg.,
1917-1918; engaged in industrial relations work with Emergency
Fleet Corporation 1918-1919; resumed teaching at University
of Washington 1919-1920; professor of industrial relations,
University of Chicago 1920-1949; between 1930 and 1939
served on many state and national commissions and committees;
alderman, Chicago city council 1939-1942; unsuccessful
candidate for nomination in 1942 to the United States
Senate; during the Second World War served in the United
States Marine Corps 1942-1945; enlisted as a private and
rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel; elected as a Democrat
to the United States Senate in 1948; reelected in 1954
and again in 1960, serving from January 3, 1949, to January
3, 1967; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1966;
chairman, Joint Committee on the Economic Report (Eighty-fourth
Congress), Joint Economic Committee (Eighty-sixth and
Eighty-eighth Congresses); chairman of the President’s
Committee on Urban Affairs 1967-1968; chairman, Committee
on Tax Reform 1969; resided in Washington, D.C., until
his death there September 24, 1976; cremated; ashes scattered
in the wooded area in Jackson Park, Chicago, Ill.
Bibliography
American
National Biography; Anderson, Jerry M. ‘Paul H.
Douglas: Insurgent Senate Spokesman for Humane Causes, 1949-1963.’
Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1964; Douglas,
Paul H. In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul
H. Douglas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.
Courtesy
of the U.S. Senate Historical Office
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