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]
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.
In 1919, Douglas took a job teaching economics at the University 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 at Smith College, in Massachusetts, she persuaded her husband to move the family there. He would then start teaching at Amherst College. In 1930 the couple divorced; Dorothy Wolff Douglas began a romantic relationship with Katharine DuPre Lumpkin.[4] Dorothy took custody of their four children, and Douglas returned to Chicago. The following year, Douglas met and married Emily Taft Douglas, daughter of sculptor Lorado Taft and a distant cousin of former president William 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."[5] In 1939, he coauthored with five other notable economists a draft proposal titled A Program for Monetary Reform. The Chicago plan and A Program for Monetary Reform generated much interest and discussion among lawmakers, but the suggested reforms did not result in any new legislation.
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.[citation needed] 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."[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 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. He would go on to lose in the general election to incumbent Republican senator C. Wayland Brooks.
Military service
As alderman, Douglas had worked with Chicago Daily News publisher Frank Knox in fighting corruption in Chicago. Knox, who had been Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1936, had become Secretary 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 the United States Marine Corps on May 15, 1942, at the age of 50,[6] becoming the oldest recruit in the history of Parris Island.[7] Entering service as a private, Douglas was placed in an ordinary platoon and received no waivers aside from his teeth and eyesight.[8] 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.[9] Initially, Douglas was kept stateside, writing training manuals and giving inspirational speeches to troops, and quickly rose to the rank of staff sergeant.[10] With the aid of Knox and his assistant Adlai Stevenson, Douglas was commissioned as a captain on November 24, 1942.[11] Requesting combat duty, he was subsequently sent to the Pacific theater of operations with the 1st Marine Division.
During the Battle of Peleliu, Douglas initially served as an adjutant in the 1st Marine Division headquarters before being assigned R-1 (personnel officer) of the 5th Marine Regiment.[12] 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.[13] He earned a Bronze Star for carrying ammunition to the front lines under enemy fire and earned his first Purple Heart when he was grazed by shrapnel while carrying flamethrower ammunition to the front lines.[14] 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 the University of Tokyo.[15]
A few months later, during the Battle of Okinawa, Douglas earned his second Purple Heart. A volunteer rifleman in an infantry platoon, he was helping to carry wounded from 3rd Battalion 5th Marines along the Naha-Shuri line when a burst of machine gun fire tore through his left arm, severing the main nerve and leaving it permanently disabled.[14]
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.
While Douglas had been serving in the Marines, his wife, Emily, had been nominated to run against isolationist Republican Congressman Stephen 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 of Governor of Illinois in 1948. Cook County machine boss Jacob 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 and Adlai Stevenson for governor.
Douglas, however, proved to be a tenacious campaigner. He stumped across the state in a Jeep station wagon for the Marshall Plan, civil rights, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, more public housing, and more social security programs. During six months of non-stop campaigning, he traveled more than 40,000 miles (64,000km) 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.
On Election 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 the race for governor by a wide margin, but there was no coattails effect from president to senator to governor, as President Truman, campaigning for re-election, won the state by a slim 33,600 votes.
Senator
Douglas (3rd from left) in the Oval Office (1949)
As senator, Douglas soon earned a reputation as an unconventional liberal, concerned as much with fiscal discipline as with passing the Fair Deal. He was also a passionate crusader for civil rights (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described him as "the greatest of all the Senators"[20]). At the opening of the 85th United States Congress in January 1957, a session that would see the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 in September, Douglas was the only senator to defy custom and vote against the confirmation of racist James Eastland as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.[21]
Douglas also earned fame as an opponent of pork 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's Owen Brewster objected and pointed out the millions of dollars in pork going to Illinois, Douglas offered to cut his state's share by 40%.
Appointed to chair the Joint Economic Committee, Douglas led a series of hard-hitting investigations into fiscal mismanagement in government and appeared on the cover of Time for January 22, 1951. A profile of him in that issue was entitled "The Making of a Maverick."[22] In 1952 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.[23]
As the 1952 presidential election approached, a groundswell of support arose for a Douglas candidacy for president. The National 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 Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, a folksy, coonskin cap-wearing populist who had become famous for his televised investigations into organized crime. Douglas stumped across the country for Kefauver and stood next to him at the 1952 Democratic National Convention when Kefauver was defeated by Illinois Governor Adlai 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, and truth in lending laws. He opposed real estate redlining 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 in Georgist economics, Douglas regretting not being able to do more to advance land value tax while in the Senate. Douglas told Mason Gaffney that he even regretted leaving local politics, where he saw more opportunity to implement Georgist ideas.[24] In his memoirs, Douglas perhaps jokingly asked Saint Paul to forgive him for his silence in the Senate on what he considered to be the important land values problem.[25]
Douglas was an ardent supporter of the disproven cancer drug Krebiozen, and in the early 1960s sponsored senate hearings in support of the discredited treatment.[26]
Defeat and retirement
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 suffered 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.
Graduating from Parris 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.
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.
Awards and Honors
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
↑ "School Trustee Walker Denies Douglas Charge". Chicago Daily Tribune. May 15, 1942. p.15.
↑ Manson, Shane (April 2, 2021). "Oldest Recruit in the History of Parris Island". The United States Marine Corps. Retrieved November 13, 2021. 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.
The 1948 United States presidential election was the 41st quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. In one of the greatest election upsets in American history, incumbent President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic nominee, defeated heavily-favored Republican Governor Thomas E. Dewey, winning re-election in a four-way contest.
The 1952 United States presidential election was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election and was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson II, which ended 20 years of Democratic rule that stretched back to 1932.
The 1956 United States presidential election was the 43rd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1956. President Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully ran for reelection against Adlai Stevenson II, the former Illinois governor whom he had defeated four years earlier. This election saw the sixth and most recent rematch in presidential history, and the second where the winner was the same both times.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II was an American politician and diplomat who was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1961 until his death in 1965. Previously the 31st governor of Illinois, he was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1952 and 1956, losing both elections to Dwight Eisenhower. Stevenson was the grandson of Adlai Stevenson I, the 23rd vice president of the United States.
Carey Estes Kefauver was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1949 and in the Senate from 1949 until his death in 1963.
The 1952 Republican National Convention was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois from July 7 to 11, 1952, and nominated the popular general and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower of New York, nicknamed "Ike," for president and the anti-communist crusading Senator from California, Richard M. Nixon, for vice president.
The 1948 United States Senate elections were elections which coincided with the election of Democratic President Harry S. Truman for a full term. Truman had campaigned against an "obstructionist" Congress that had blocked many of his initiatives, and in addition the U.S. economy recovered from the postwar recession of 1946–47 by election day. Thus Truman was rewarded with a Democratic gain of nine seats in the Senate, enough to give them control of the chamber. This was the last time until 2020 that Democrats flipped a chamber of Congress in a presidential election cycle.
The 1956 Democratic National Convention nominated former Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois for president and Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee for vice president. It was held in the International Amphitheatre on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois August 13–August 17, 1956. Unsuccessful candidates for the presidential nomination included Governor W. Averell Harriman of New York, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri.
The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois from July 21 to July 26, 1952, which was the same arena the Republicans had gathered in a few weeks earlier for their national convention from July 7 to July 11, 1952. Four major candidates sought the presidential nomination: U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Governor Adlai Stevenson II of Illinois, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia and Averell Harriman of New York.
Emily Taft Douglas was a Democratic Party politician from the U.S. state of Illinois. She served as a U.S. Representative at-large from 1945 until 1947 and was married to U.S. Senator Paul Douglas from 1931 until his death in 1976. She was the first female Democrat elected to Congress from Illinois, and her election made Illinois one of the first two states to have been represented by female House members from both parties.
From March 11 to June 3, 1952, delegates were elected to the 1952 Republican National Convention.
From March 11 to June 3, 1952, voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for president in the 1952 United States presidential election. Although the popular vote proved conclusive, the 1952 Democratic National Convention held from July 21 to July 26, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois, was forced to go multiballot.
From March 11 to June 5, 1956, voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for president in the 1956 United States presidential election. Former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 1956 Democratic National Convention held from August 13 to August 17, 1956, in Chicago, Illinois. This was the party's second consecutive nomination of Stevenson.
This is the electoral history of Adlai Stevenson II, who served as Governor of Illinois (1949–1953) and 5th United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1961–1965), and was twice the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States, losing both the 1952 and 1956 presidential general elections to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Jacob M. Arvey was an influential Chicago political leader from the Depression era until the mid-1950s. He may be best known for his efforts to end corruption in the Chicago Democratic organization, and for promoting the candidacies of liberal Democratic politicians such as Adlai Stevenson and Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois. He was known as "Jake" and "Jack" at different times in his career.
The 1952 United States elections were held on November 4, 1952. The Republicans took control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress for the first time since the Great Depression. The election took place during the Korean War.
This article lists those who were potential candidates for the Republican nomination for Vice President of the United States in the 1952 election. After defeating Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft for the Republican presidential nomination at the 1952 Republican National Convention, General Dwight D. Eisenhower needed to choose a running mate. Taft recommended Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, but Eisenhower rejected the suggestion. Eisenhower and his advisers put together a list of prominent Republicans who were acceptable to both the conservative Taft and liberal Dewey wings of the party, anti-Communist, talented at campaigning, relatively young, and who contributed to Eisenhower's nomination victory. After conferring with Republican Party leaders, Eisenhower decided to ask California Senator Richard Nixon to be his running mate; Nixon accepted the offer. Nixon had carefully campaigned for the post of vice president since meeting Eisenhower in 1951, and Nixon helped deliver the California delegation to Eisenhower in the presidential ballot. The Republican convention ratified Eisenhower's choice of Nixon. Months after the convention, Eisenhower considered asking Nixon to step down as running mate due to controversy surrounding campaign expenses, but Nixon rallied public opinion with his Checkers speech and remained on the ticket. The Eisenhower–Nixon ticket won the 1952 election, as well as the 1956 election, defeating the Stevenson–Sparkman and Stevenson–Kefauver tickets, respectively.
The 1956 United States presidential election in South Carolina took place on November 6, 1956, as part of the 1956 United States presidential election. South Carolina voters chose 8 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
The 1952 United States presidential election in Illinois took place on November 4, 1952, as part of the 1952 United States presidential election. State voters chose 27 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
The 1948 Illinois gubernatorial election took place on November 2, 1948. Incumbent Governor Dwight H. Green, a Republican seeking a third term, lost reelection to Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson II.
References
Biles, Roger. Crusading Liberal: Paul H. Douglas of Illinois (2002), the standard scholarly biography
Biles, Roger. "Paul H Douglas, McCarthyism and the Senatorial Election of 1954," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 95#1 2002. pp 52+.
Sledge, Eugene B. (1990). With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-506714-2.
Hartley, Robert E. Battleground 1948: Truman, Stevenson, Douglas, and the Most Surprising Election in Illinois History (Southern Illinois University Press; 2013)
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United States
United States Marine Corps 
Lieutenant colonel 
Bronze Star 
Purple Heart (2)
