Back in 1991 I was in a mess. My software business was losing money. I was deep in debt, working all hours, thrashing around like a drowning swimmer. Then a friend gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever received. “You’re doing yourself no good;” she said, “each week you need to take some time off work. But if you decide to do this, every week there will be some good reason why you can’t. You need to find something that forces you to take time out, whatever else is going on.”

Just then my local college (West London Institute of Higher Education as was) was running ads in my local paper, “Study for a degree, two evenings a week.” Without thinking too hard, I signed up, subject ‘Business and Computer Studies’. Unlike my first degree, this was a modular degree, made up of 18 modules each taking half a year. Full time students would take three at a time, three years; part time students, two, so four and a half years.

An extra twist was that first-year students had to take two non-cognate modules to broaden their education. I chose ‘Islam and Judaism’ and ‘American History 101’. Having really been engaged by the latter, I signed up for a further American Studies module ‘Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal’ even though this would not count towards my degree. One of my better calls.

Righteous Pilgrim

Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) served as US president from 1933-1945. He died in office on April 12th 1945, just months after winning his fourth election [the two-term limit came into force in 1951]. His presidency brought many new people to the fore. One, my focus here, was Harold LeClaire Ickes, Interior Secretary, one of two cabinet members to serve through FDR’s entire term (the other being Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary). T.H.Watkins’ biography runs to 864 pages (+86 pages of footnotes) so I can only pull out a few points of interest.

Ickes’ personal life was worthy of a soap opera. He was born in Pennsylvania, 1874, had a somewhat challenging childhood. On his mother’s death, he, aged 16, moved to Chicago to live with an aunt while he worked his way through university. As an initially impecunious journalist he went to live with James and Anna Wilmarth Thompson. He had an affair with Anna and after her marriage to James broke up, married her. It was not a happy union; were his multiple affairs a cause of the unhappiness or a response to it? In 1935 Anna was killed in a car crash. Her wealth passed to Harold, leaving her children with nothing. On stepson Wilmarth’s suicide a year later, Ickes pulled strings to get the police to destroy an incriminating suicide note. All rather unsavoury.

And then, now in his sixties, he fell for the attractive Jane Dahlman, younger sister of Wilmarth’s wife and 39 years his junior. In 1938 the two of them travelled separately to Dublin, Ickes using a false name, where they were married. Finally this man, who had lived such a rollercoaster life, found security and true happiness. He died in 1952, aged 77. Jane died of heart failure in 1972, aged just 59.

Roosevelt’s Warrior

Politically, Ickes was initially a Republican, moving to support Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose campaign. During WW1, 1917-18, he served with the YMCA in France. Subsequently he was actively involved in Chicago politics, but was unknown nationally until 1933.

The 1932 presidential election took place during the depths of the great depression. On being elected and knowing the huge challenges ahead, FDR was keen to assemble a cabinet drawn from across the political spectrum, one that could get things done. The post of Secretary of the Interior was offered to several possibles including Hiram Johnson, a Republican Senator who had switched his support to FDR, but Johnson was uninterested. He, however, recommended an old ally, Ickes. At an age when many would be thinking of retirement, Ickes’ time had come.

Ickes had never even met Roosevelt when summoned to New York. His autobiography records FDR’s words after their first meeting:

“Mr Ickes, you and I have been speaking the same language for the last 20 years and we have the same outlook. I’m having difficulty finding the Secretary of the Interior. I want a man who can stand on his own feet. I particularly want a western man. Above all things I want a man who is honest and I have about come to the conclusion that the man I want is Harold L. Ickes of Chicago.”

The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon

History records Ickes as someone who could be difficult to work with, in his own words, a curmudgeon. In the foreword of his autobiography he notes: “If, in these pages, I have hurled an insult at anyone, be it known that such was my deliberate intent, and I may as well state flatly now that it will be useless and a waste of time to ask me to say that I am sorry.”

During his early years in office Ickes was best known to the public for his work as the director of the Public Works Administration, a New Deal agency. Billions of dollars were spent on building much-needed infrastructure whilst providing employment. Schemes like this had a long history of rorts, but under Ickes’ watch, corruption was all but eliminated.

One of Interior’s responsibilities of particular interest to Ickes were the USA’s National Parks. During his secretaryship parks were improved, extended and new ones added.

Ickes was a strong supporter of both civil rights and civil liberties. He had been the president of the Chicago National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Under his watch the Interior Department HQ’s rest rooms and canteen were desegregated as were facilities in National Parks. [Native American] Indian affairs were given a new importance.

Ickes’ finest moment came in 1939. African American contralto Marian Anderson wanted to perform at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall but the DAR refused; only white performers were acceptable. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was outraged and resigned from the DAR: “I am in complete disagreement with the attitude taken in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist … You had an opportunity to lead in an enlightened way and it seems to me that your organization has failed.”

What to do? Anderson’s manager, Sol Hurok, persuaded Ickes to make the Lincoln Memorial available for an open-air concert. It took place on Easter Sunday, April 9, with Ickes as MC. He spoke for two minutes making “the best speech I have ever made.” In introducing the lady who needed no introduction, he told the 75,000-strong audience:

“Genius, like justice, is blind. For Genius with the tip of her wings has touched this woman, who, if it had not been for the great mind of Jefferson, if it had not been for the great heart of Lincoln, would not be able to stand here among us, a free individual in a free land. Genius draws no color line. She has endowed Marian Anderson with such a voice as lifts any individual above his fellows and is a matter of exultant pride to any race.”

Space does not allow me any consideration of Ickes’ secretaryship during WW2. Notably he banned the supply of helium to the Hitler government, effectively bringing German airship development to a halt. At the height of WW2 Ickes held down 16 major jobs, e.g., Solid Fuels Administrator, Coordinator of Fisheries, Petroleum Administrator etc.

Following FDR’s death in office, Harry Truman, the new president, reappointed Ickes as Interior Secretary. In early 1946 a suggestion was made to Ickes that Truman’s campaign funds could benefit by $300,000 if Interior dropped its opposition to an offshore oil prospecting proposal. Ickes, “Honest Harold”, of course refused to be bought. When a Senate confirmation hearing asked about this, Ickes confirmed it was true. Truman’s response was to suggest that Ickes’ memory might have been faulty. This brought a fiercely worded resignation letter:

“… I don’t care to stay in an Administration where I am expected to commit perjury for the sake of the party…. I do not have a reputation for dealing recklessly with the truth …”

And with that Ickes’ time in government came to an end. He lived out his last six years at the farm he and Jane had bought, Headwaters Farm, near Olney, Maryland.

The books:

• Autobiography of a Curmudgeon: by the man himself, 1943
• Righteous Pilgrim: T.H.Watkins, 1990, ISBN 0-8050-0917-5 – the definitive biography
• Roosevelt’s Warrior: Harold L. Ickes and the New Deal: Jeanne Nienaber Clarke, 1996, 0-8018-5094-0 – mainly covers 1933-1939 period