James J. Davis - Misplaced Pages

(Redirected from James J. Davies) American politician (1873–1947) For the Irish-American bishop, see James J. Davis (bishop).

James Davis


United States Senator from Pennsylvania
In office December 2, 1930 – January 3, 1945
Preceded by	Joe Grundy
Succeeded by	Francis Myers
2nd United States Secretary of Labor
In office March 5, 1921 – November 30, 1930
President	Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover
Preceded by	William Wilson
Succeeded by	William Doak

Personal details
Born	James John Davies (1873-10-27)October 27, 1873 Tredegar, Wales
Died	November 22, 1947(1947-11-22) (aged 74) Takoma Park, Maryland, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Jean Rodenbaugh
Children	5
Education	Sharon Business School

James John Davis (October 27, 1873 – November 22, 1947) was a Welsh-born American businessman, author and Republican Party politician in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served as U.S. Secretary of Labor and represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate. He was also known by the nicknames of the "Iron Puddler" and "Puddler Jim."

Early life and career

Born as James John Davies on October 27, 1873, at 47 Fifth Row, Georgetown, Tredegar, Monmouthshire, Wales. He emigrated with his parents, David James Davies and Esther Ford Davies (née Nichols), to the United States in 1881 at the age of eight.

They settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later in Sharon, Pennsylvania. He was apprenticed as a puddler's assistant in a steel mill, and as a result, acquired his nickname. In 1893, he moved to Elwood, Indiana, and served as city clerk from 1898 to 1902. From 1903 to 1907, he served as Recorder of Madison County, Indiana, before returning to Pittsburgh. He personally signed his name as James J. Davies even though his surname had been changed on immigration to Davis and he became well known with the surname Davis. He married Jean Rodenbaugh and had five children.

Davis joined the Loyal Order of Moose in 1906 as its 247th member and staged a successful reorganization. He rose to become the Director-General and took the Order internationally to Bermuda, Britain and Canada. He was instrumental as a leader in building Mooseheart, the fraternity's "Child City". In 1926, he founded the Grand Lodge of Britain at his birthplace in Tredegar, South Wales.

Political views

Eugenics Movement
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Pamphlets and manifestos Hereditary Genius (1869) Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883) Degeneration (1892–1893) Gallia (1895) "The Blood of the Nation" (1901/1910) The Training of the Human Plant (1907) Essays in Eugenics (1909) Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911) Mankind at the Crossroads (1923) Daedalus; or, Science and the Future (1924) La raza cósmica (1925) Marriage and Morals (1929) The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930) Man, the Unknown (1935) After Us (1936) Eugenics manifesto (1939) New Bottles for New Wine (1950) The Marching Morons (1951) The Dance with the Devil (1958) Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins (1973) Beyondism (1987) Dysgenics (1996) Rules for the Human Park (1999) Eugenics: A Reassessment (2001) Jewish Eugenics (2011) Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy (2023)
OrganizationsWithout significant post-war activity ABCL Alberta Eugenics Board AASPIM AES Carnegie Institution for Science CSHL Co-operative Women's Guild EBNC ERO Carrel Foundation Galton Laboratory German Society for Racial Hygiene Heredity Commission HBF Human Betterment League Immigration Restriction League INED IAAEE International Eugenics Conference IFEO Kaiser Wilhelm Institute Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry PAA Race Betterment Foundation RHA Rockefeller Foundation State Institute for Racial Biology With significant post-war activity Annals of Eugenics (Renamed "Annals of Human Genetics" 1954) CIS The Eugenics Review (Renamed "Journal of Biosocial Science" 1968) FREED HDF J. Soc. Political Econ. Stud. LCI Mankind Quarterly OpenPsych Project Prevention Repository for Germinal Choice Ulster Institute for Social Research
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v t e

Davis advocated for immigration policy that was explicitly racist, hoping "that America may not be a conglomeration of racial groups, each advocating a different set of ideas and ideals according to their bringing up, but a homogeneous race."

Davis supported the eugenics movement. Historian Hans P. Vought argues that Davis lamented the influx of cheap labor from Southern and Eastern Europe. Vought writes that Davis believed that Americans had, thanks to the eugenics movement, learned to discern between "bad stock and good stock, weak blood and strong blood, sound heredity and sickly human stuff."

Davis supported the rights of workers to strike, but only to a certain extent; he asked unions to "be slow to use the strike weapon." He was against the 14-hour workday that predominated in the American steel industry during the early 1920s.

Later career

In 1922, Davis published his autobiography, The Iron Puddler, which was ghostwritten by C. L. Edson, who had previously worked for Davis as an editor of a Loyal Order of Moose publication. He served as United States Secretary of Labor from 1921 to 1930 under Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. He is one of only three Cabinet officers in U.S. history to hold the same post under three consecutive Presidents. The other two Cabinet officers to accomplish this were Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. During his tenure, he focused on immigration, then a Labor Department responsibility, and established the United States Border Patrol and proposed restrictions in immigration quotas. At the urging of the iron and steel workers union, he successfully urged U.S. Steel to abandon the 12-hour workday.

He resigned as Secretary of Labor upon his election to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania, accepting the seat denied to William Vare. During his tenure in the Senate, he co-sponsored the Davis–Bacon Act with New York Congressman Robert Bacon.

In April 1943 a confidential analysis by Isaiah Berlin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the British Foreign Office described Davis as:

defeated for the governorship of his State in 1942. Commonly known as "puddler Jim" since he started his career as a steel worker. He was born in South Wales, became a Labour politician during the last war and Secretary of Labour shortly afterward. He is violently hated by organised labour, since he is regarded as having prostituted his labour connexion only in order to betray his fellow-workers over and over again. He is a pure opportunist, put into the Senate by the powerful Sun Oil interest in Pennsylvania, declares that he is not an Isolationist. This is true only in so far as he appears to have no convictions of any kind, and will vote in whatever direction is required by the interest which is running him at any given moment. His bête noire is his fellow Pennsylvanian in the Senate, Joseph F. Guffey.

Davis was narrowly defeated for re-election in 1944, and subsequently resumed his work with the Loyal Order of Moose until his death.

Death

Davis died in Takoma Park, Maryland in 1947, following a heart attack at the age of 74. He is buried at Union Dale Cemetery in Pittsburgh.

Bibliography

The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1922. (ghostwritten by C. L. Edson)

References

Porter, Eduardo (May 15, 2024). "How America tried and failed to stay White". The Washington Post.
Vought, Hans P. (2004). The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot: American Presidents and the Immigrant, 1897-1933. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press. p. 176. ISBN 0-86554-887-0.
Vought, 176
"Davis Reaffirms His Belief In Unions; Secretary Says the 12-Hour Day Must Go, but Warns Labor to Be 'Slow in Striking.'", The New York Times. April 6, 1943. Retrieved March 14, 2011. Page 18.
Bell, Jonathan Wesley (1976). The Kansas Art Reader. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas. p. 388. ISBN 0936352027.
Hachey, Thomas E. (Winter 1973–1974). "American Profiles on Capitol Hill: A Confidential Study for the British Foreign Office in 1943" (PDF). Wisconsin Magazine of History. 57 (2): 141–153. JSTOR 4634869. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 21, 2013.

Sources

John Bruce Dudley, James J. Davis: Secretary of Labor Under Three Presidents. PhD dissertation. Ball State University, 1972.

External links

United States Congress. "DAVIS, James John (id: D000111)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

Political offices
Preceded byWilliam Wilson	United States Secretary of Labor 1921–1930	Succeeded byWilliam Doak
Party political offices
Preceded byWilliam Vare	Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania (Class 3) 1930, 1932, 1938, 1944	Succeeded byJim Duff
U.S. Senate
Preceded byJoe Grundy	U.S. Senator (Class 3) from Pennsylvania 1930–1945 Served alongside: David Reed, Joe Guffey	Succeeded byFrancis Myers

v t e United States secretaries of labor
Secretaries of commerce and labor	Cortelyou Metcalf Straus Nagel
Secretaries of labor	Wilson Davis Doak Perkins Schwellenbach Tobin Durkin Mitchell Goldberg Wirtz Shultz Hodgson Brennan Dunlop Usery Marshall Donovan Brock McLaughlin Dole Martin Reich Herman Chao Solis Perez Acosta Scalia Walsh Su (acting)

v t e United States senators from Pennsylvania
Class 1	W. Maclay Gallatin Ross S. Maclay Leib Roberts Findlay Barnard Dallas McKean Sturgeon Brodhead S. Cameron Wilmot Buckalew J. Scott Wallace Mitchell Quay Knox Oliver Knox Crow Reed Guffey Martin H. Scott Heinz Wofford Santorum Casey McCormick (elect)
Class 3	Morris Bingham Muhlenberg Logan Gregg Lacock Lowrie Marks Wilkins Buchanan S. Cameron Cooper Bigler Cowan S. Cameron J. Cameron Penrose Pepper Vare Grundy Davis Myers Duff Clark Schweiker Specter Toomey Fetterman
Notes	Never officially seated

v t e Cabinet of President Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)
Vice President	Calvin Coolidge (1921–1923)
Secretary of State	Charles Evans Hughes (1921–1923)
Secretary of the Treasury	Andrew Mellon (1921–1923)
Secretary of War	John W. Weeks (1921–1923)
Attorney General	Harry M. Daugherty (1921–1923)
Postmaster General	Will H. Hays (1921–1922) Hubert Work (1922–1923) Harry S. New (1923)
Secretary of the Navy	Edwin Denby (1921–1923)
Secretary of the Interior	Albert B. Fall (1921–1923) Hubert Work (1923)
Secretary of Agriculture	Henry Cantwell Wallace (1921–1923)
Secretary of Commerce	Herbert Hoover (1921–1923)
Secretary of Labor	James J. Davis (1921–1923)

v t e Cabinet of President Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929)
Vice President	None (1923–1925) Charles G. Dawes (1925–1929)
Secretary of State	Charles Evans Hughes (1923–1925) Frank B. Kellogg (1925–1929)
Secretary of the Treasury	Andrew Mellon (1923–1929)
Secretary of War	John W. Weeks (1923–1925) Dwight F. Davis (1925–1929)
Attorney General	Harry M. Daugherty (1923–1924) Harlan F. Stone (1924–1925) John G. Sargent (1925–1929)
Postmaster General	Harry S. New (1923–1929)
Secretary of the Navy	Edwin Denby (1923–1924) Curtis D. Wilbur (1924–1929)
Secretary of the Interior	Hubert Work (1923–1928) Roy Owen West (1928–1929)
Secretary of Agriculture	Henry Cantwell Wallace (1923–1924) Howard Mason Gore (1924–1925) William Marion Jardine (1925–1929)
Secretary of Commerce	Herbert Hoover (1923–1928) William F. Whiting (1928–1929)
Secretary of Labor	James J. Davis (1923–1929)

v t e Cabinet of President Herbert Hoover (1929–1933)
Vice President	Charles Curtis (1929–1933)
Secretary of State	Frank B. Kellogg (1929) Henry L. Stimson (1929–1933)
Secretary of the Treasury	Andrew Mellon (1929–1932) Ogden L. Mills (1932–1933)
Secretary of War	James William Good (1929) Patrick J. Hurley (1929–1933)
Attorney General	William D. Mitchell (1929–1933)
Postmaster General	Walter Folger Brown (1929–1933)
Secretary of the Navy	Charles Francis Adams III (1929–1933)
Secretary of the Interior	Ray Lyman Wilbur (1929–1933)
Secretary of Agriculture	Arthur M. Hyde (1929–1933)
Secretary of Commerce	Robert P. Lamont (1929–1932) Roy D. Chapin (1932–1933)
Secretary of Labor	James J. Davis (1929–1930) William N. Doak (1930–1933)

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