Harry Hopkins

American public administrator

• Born: August 17, 1890
• Birthplace: Sioux City, Iowa
• Died: January 29, 1946
• Place of death: New York, New York

A superb administrator, Hopkins led the United States in combating unemployment during the Great Depression in the 1930’s and the menace of fascism during World War II.

Early Life

Harry Hopkins was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, where, after several moves, his family settled in 1901. His father, David Aldona Hopkins, was a moderately successful traveling salesman and merchant who imparted to Harry his competitive, good-natured character and his loyalty to the Democratic Party, while his strictly religious mother, née Anna Pickett, impressed on him values of honesty and moral rectitude. Two other early influences were Grinnell College, from which he was graduated in 1912 and which emphasized Social Gospel Christianity, stressing one’s responsibility to help the underprivileged, and his sister Adah, who preceded him at Grinnell College and entered professional social work.

On graduating from college, Hopkins went to were chosen, where he became a social worker and rose rapidly in the Association for Improving the Poor. From 1915 to 1930, he held various high positions in social work in which he was responsible for instituting new programs: pensions for widows with children, relief for the families of servicemen during World War I, and coordination of health services in a major “demonstration” project. He helped to organize the American Association of Social Workers, his profession’s first national society, and served a term as its president. In 1924, he became director of the New York Tuberculosis and Health Association, which he developed into the major health agency in New York City.

In these years of early achievement, Hopkins was a handsome man, six feet tall with features that in different moods varied from sharp to boyishly rounded. In his later years, ill health caused him to become gaunt, hollow-cheeked, and round-shouldered. Consistently, however, people were drawn by his large, dark brown eyes, which conveyed sympathy, eagerness to learn, and a merry delight in life.

In 1913, Hopkins married Ethel Gross, who shared his interest in social reform. They had three sons. In 1931, the marriage ended in divorce when Hopkins fell in love with Barbara Duncan, a secretary at the Tuberculosis and Health Association. They were married shortly after his divorce became final and had one daughter.

Life’s Work

Although Hopkins achieved notable success as a social worker, his greatest accomplishments came as a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Hopkins became known to Roosevelt during the early years of the Great Depression when, as governor of New York, Roosevelt appointed him to manage and then to direct the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration to help New York State’s unemployed. When Roosevelt became president in 1933, he brought Hopkins to Washington to head the Federal Emergency Relief Administration , which granted money to states for unemployment relief. Hopkins set to work rapidly, stressing the duty of the states to set up professionally competent relief organizations and to appropriate funds that matched the federal contribution. The prospect of an unemployment crisis for the winter of 1933-1934 caused Hopkins to recommend that the federal government establish its own relief program. Roosevelt followed his advice and created the Civil Works Administration, which Hopkins administered until it was ended in the spring of 1934. The persistence of unemployment caused Roosevelt to recommend a large federal program that Congress approved and later developed into the Works Progress Administration (WPA) under Hopkins’s supervision. By 1936, the WPA had become the administration’s major effort to combat the Depression.

Roosevelt appointed Hopkins to these positions because Hopkins demonstrated a genius for emergency administration. Drawing on his years of experience in developing innovative social work programs, Hopkins appointed an able staff (which included Aubrey Williams, Jacob Baker, and Ellen Woodward) and gave them inspiring leadership that emphasized the need for creative ideas, hard work, and practical results. One new idea that fit the practical realities of the Depression was work relief that the unemployed should earn government support by doing socially useful work. This approach rejected the belief common to American society at large and to many social workers that persons on relief suffered from character defects that caused them to fail as useful workers. Hopkins emphasized instead that the unemployed were simply victims of economic circumstances that were beyond their control.

Politically popular because it relieved local officials from having to cope with unemployment, the WPA enriched American society by building thousands of miles of streets, roads, bridges, and grade separations; laying out parks and playgrounds; and constructing schools, airports, and other public buildings. The WPA also provided jobs for artists, who decorated buildings with murals, and for musicians and actors, who formed local orchestras, choirs, and theatrical groups. One of the WPA’s most notable contributions was the American Guide series. Produced by a program for unemployed writers, the series contained volumes that combined state and local history and culture with tourist information.

Although the WPA involved the federal government more heavily than ever before in unemployment relief, Hopkins operated it in a decentralized fashion. State and local governments proposed and supervised projects that WPA approved and funded, making it possible for localities to define their own needs and giving local politicians the chance to claim some credit for local improvements. This latter feature of the WPA involved Hopkins in Democratic Party politics, especially with such big-city bosses as Edward J. Kelly of Chicago and Frank Hague of Jersey City.

Hopkins’s alliance with state and local politicians and the national prominence of the WPA led him to develop the ambition to succeed Roosevelt in 1940, an ambition that Roosevelt encouraged. However, Hopkins’s dreams soon turned to ashes. In 1937, he underwent surgery for cancer of the stomach. The surgery cured his cancer but left him with a digestive disorder that condemned him to a weakened state. In 1939, Roosevelt appointed him secretary of commerce, but Hopkins was not strong enough to work effectively in the job and, in 1940, he resigned, apparently to return to private life. He did so facing a bleak personal future, because, in the meantime, his wife had died of cancer.

By the time Hopkins resigned, however, the aggressive actions of the fascist powers Germany and Italy had brought war to Europe, and the Nazi Blitzkrieg had isolated Great Britain. Committed to aiding the British, Roosevelt responded to a plea from Prime MinisterWinston Churchill by sending Hopkins as his personal representative to London while he pressed Congress for legislation to expand American aid by a method he called lend-lease. When Congress passed the legislation, Roosevelt appointed Hopkins to supervise the program. Operating as he had during his relief days, Hopkins recruited an able staff that included General James H. Burns, William Averell Harriman, and Edward R. Stettinius. He also became familiar with all aspects of defense mobilization, deepened his warm personal friendship with Churchill, whom he had impressed on his visit to London, and won the respect of Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, whom he boosted with President Roosevelt. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Roosevelt sent Hopkins to Moscow to confer with Joseph Stalin to begin aid to that country. When the United States entered the war in December, Hopkins was the one American best informed about the details of his country’s war-making capability.

World War II marked the high point of Hopkins’s service. Soon after United States entry, he emerged as and remained the point at which domestic and allied interests converged. Hopkins balanced and harmonized these interests by winning the personal confidence of various war leaders, to get them to state their objectives clearly and then to bring them to a compromise with their competitors in the war establishment. Through it all, he emphasized that everyone should be devoted to the single task of winning the war.

A strong supporter of General Marshall, Hopkins pushed hard for the chief of staff’s plan to invade France in 1942. When the British opposed the plan, he played a key role in arranging for agreement on an invasion of North Africa. Later, however, he suspected that the British would never approve a cross-channel attack and advocated closer cooperation with the Soviet Union to counter British influence. Indeed, he and many others in the Roosevelt administration believed that the United States’ interests would be best advanced during and after the war if the United States and not Britain was the Soviet Union’s most trusted ally.

As the war progressed, Hopkins’s role in diplomacy increased. At the Casablanca Conference in January of 1943, he managed an agreement that strengthened ties between the United States and the Free French forces under General Charles de Gaulle. At Tehran in December, he acted in place of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Early in 1944, his health seriously declined, and he was out of Washington until July. After he returned, he helped the new secretary of state, Stettinius, to reorganize the department and to form a team for the upcoming Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin. Because of his efforts, Yalta was the best planned and best organized of the wartime conferences. At the meeting, Hopkins supported the United States’ objectives of organizing a postwar United Nations to keep the peace and on other issues, putting the United States in the mediator’s role between Great Britain and the Soviet Union. He continued to work for these objectives after President Roosevelt’s death, when President Harry S. Truman sent him to Moscow to resolve issues that had postponed the formation of the United Nations and were creating mistrust between the Americans and Soviets over the postwar government of Poland , where the Soviets were installing a puppet regime. Hopkins’s discussions on the Polish issue revealed the tension that existed between his desire for the wartime allies to continue their cooperation and the American desire that the people of liberated nations choose their own government. Still, his efforts resolved the issues over establishing the United Nations and, for the moment, eased tensions on the Polish question, and President Truman hailed Hopkins’s mission as a success.

When Hopkins returned from Moscow, his health was bad, and although Truman asked him to remain in the government, he decided to retire to private life. In 1942, he had married for the third time, to Louise Macy, and they moved to New York, where he planned to write his memoirs. His health failed rapidly, however, and, on January 29, 1946, little more than six months after leaving government service, he died.

Significance

Hopkins was one of the truly important individuals of twentieth century American history; few have better served their country in critical times. Hopkins’s career in social work and his experience in establishing innovative programs enabled him to act creatively during the Great Depression. His work projects gave hope, dignity, and a measure of security to millions of Americans and in the process bolstered their faith in representative government at a time when fascism and communism seemed to be the waves of the future. Hopkins instinctively realized that administrative leadership depended less on well-established channels of authority and systematic procedures than on recruiting and supporting hardworking, imaginative people and having the courage to make controversial decisions. A democratic leader, Hopkins sought agreement and common effort and operated by persuasion rather than assertions of authority. His years in Washington were characterized by many friendships and, amazingly for one so highly placed, few long-lasting enmities.

Hopkins’s wartime service was the pinnacle of his career. His ability to win others’ confidence was vital in holding together the wartime alliance and making the American war machine function effectively. His ability to understand others was vital both to this end and to his task of carrying out President Roosevelt’s policies. Although Hopkins revered Roosevelt, he recognized that the president was a temperamental executive, given occasionally to snap decisions or to periods of inactivity. Hopkins was able to compensate for Roosevelt’s shortcomings, calming the anger and frustration of those affected by them. His sensitivity to others also enabled him to understand what others most desired in a particular conference and to follow a discussion carefully enough to pinpoint the essential issues. His ability to do this, which inspired Churchill to propose naming him “Lord Root of the Matter,” made him especially valuable at wartime conferences, when so many vital decisions had to be made in a short time. After the war, General Marshall expressed the opinion that Hopkins had personally shortened the conflict by two or three years. That Hopkins was able to perform such service while chronically ill serves as powerful testimony to his courage as well as his ability.

Bibliography

Adams, Henry H. Harry Hopkins: A Biography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977. A well-written biography that follows the outline of Sherwood’s volume, cited below, but more successfully clarifies events. Primarily a narrative account that fails to discuss Hopkins’s historical importance. Its most serious shortcoming is the failure to utilize the wealth of primary source material that was available.

Burns, James M. Roosevelt. 2 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956,1970. These two volumes by Burns constitute the best political biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Indispensable for understanding the political and personal circumstances in which Hopkins operated.

Charles, Searle F. Minister of Relief: Harry Hopkins and the Depression. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1963. A brief but insightful account of Hopkins’s administration of federal relief. Strong in outlining the problems Hopkins faced and in evaluating his success. Less detailed than one might expect in showing Hopkins’s day-to-day activities and the larger context of New Deal policies.

Hopkins, Harry. Spending to Save: The Complete Story of Relief. New York: W. W. Norton, 1936. Written to explain and to justify federal relief policies during President Roosevelt’s reelection campaign. Contrasts the accomplishments of Roosevelt’s policies with the failures of Republican efforts under President Herbert Hoover. Still, the book provides valuable insights into how Hopkins perceived his job and his sense of the risks he took in performing it.

Hopkins, June. Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Hopkins’s granddaughter traces his life and career, focusing on his experiences as a social worker and his efforts to improve social welfare and alleviate unemployment.

Kurzman, Paul A. Harry Hopkins and the New Deal. Fair Lawn, N.J.: R. E. Burdick, 1974. A brief account of Hopkins’s role in unemployment relief, stressing how the policy of work relief rejected previous assumptions that the unemployed suffered from character defects that made them poor workers. Inadequately researched and less comprehensive than the Charles volume.

Leighton, Richard M., and Robert W. Coakley. Global Logistics and Strategy. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1955, 1959. A comprehensive account of military supply activities during World War II. Although written to evaluate the Army’s administrative performance, the volumes contain numerous references to Hopkins and provide necessary detail for understanding his wartime role.

Schwartz, Bonnie Fox. The Civil Works Administration, 1933-1934: The Business of Emergency Employment in the New Deal. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. An excellent study of a brief experiment that goes beyond its subject’s limited historical importance to explore fundamental issues of federal work relief. Shows the administrative development of the program, judiciously assesses its accomplishments, and compares it to the larger and more significant Works Progress Administration.

Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948. A prizewinning study that remains a classic in the history of the Roosevelt era. Sherwood wrote shortly after Hopkins’s death, had access to his voluminous papers, and was able to interview dozens of persons who had worked with Hopkins. Partially a memoir Sherwood knew Hopkins personally the book emphasizes the war period, follows a chronological format, and is the standard source for understanding Hopkins.