Ferdinand Augustus Silcox was an American forester, labor relations counsel, and conservationist.
Background
Ferdinand Augustus Silcox was born on December 25, 1882 in Columbus, Georgia. His father, for whom he was named, was a South Carolinian of English descent who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and at its close married Caroline Olivia Spear and embarked on a career in which he became a successful cotton broker.
Education
Young Ferdinand Augustus, their first son and the second of their five children, grew up in Charleston, where he attended local public schools and received a degree of B. S. from the College of Charleston in 1903. He next enrolled in the Yale School of Forestry, receiving the degree of Master of Forestry in 1905.
Career
Entering the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture on July 1, 1905, Silcox spent the next six years on duty in Colorado, though he returned to Charleston.
In 1911 he was transferred to Missoula, Montana, where he served for six years as district forester in charge of the Northern Rocky Mountain region. When the United States entered World War I Silcox resigned from the Forest Service and joined the 20th Forest Engineers with the rank of captain. Because of his experience in dealing with I. W. W. labor in the forests of the Northwest, however, he was soon called to other duty.
By joint appointment of the Labor Department and the United States Shipping Board, he was placed in charge of a bureau to handle labor problems arising among some 25, 000 shipyard workers on Puget Sound and on the Columbia River. After the war Silcox continued in labor work, serving as director of industrial relations for several important employers' organizations in the printing industry over a span of nearly fifteen years.
During this period he conducted wage negotiations in many printing centers of the United States and Canada and organized schools for printing apprentices jointly financed by the employers and the unions.
In October 1933, with the sudden death of Robert Y. Stuart, the post of chief of the U. S. Forest Service became vacant. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford G. Tugwell called Silcox to Washington to confer with President Franklin D. Roosevelt about a successor to Stuart, and on November 15 Silcox was himself appointed.
While he was in office Congress passed both the National Flood Control Act of June 22, 1936, and the Norris-Doxey Act of May 18, 1937, which inaugurated the program of federal assistance in the management and harvesting of privately owned forests. He successfully opposed a campaign for the transfer of the national forests from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Interior. Silcox died at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, of a coronary thrombosis.
Following private services his body was cremated and the ashes deposited in the Ivy Hill Cemetery, Alexandria.
Achievements
Personality
Combining idealism, technical competence, wit, personal charm, and physical stamina, Silcox administered the Forest Service vigorously during the next six years and made it the spearhead of President Roosevelt's conservation program.
Connections
He married Marie Louise Thatcher on March 4, 1908. He had no children.