(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 Excerpt: ...about unexpected circumstances would cause slight delay. Slight delay--nothing! Old Man Winterton went into receiver's hands yesterday. That pious crook Snickfield got the job. Graham figures he can fix up a deal with Snickfield and get the Winterton corner for fifty per cent less than our price, leaving a large margin of profit to divide with Snickfield. 1 know him and I told him so." "Perhaps you suggested the idea to him?" I said. "Suggested a steal to Graham, that he hadn't thought of before?" shouted Marsh. "You compliment me too highly--or else it's an insult--I can't quite tell which." "Then our deal has gone up the flue," I said, reluctantly, for the Graham deal had involved the clearing up of a badly involved title and finally making a sale to Graham on terms which included a commission and attorney's fee combined that totaled a very pleasing amount of money. "Of course, Graham pretends not, talks about brief delay," replied Marsh, scornfully, "but I know him. That contract you have on your desk will never be signed as long as he has a chance to stick his hands in a Snick. field receivership. By George! I had forgotten--The Scarborough Company." "Did they deal with Winterton?" I asked, anticipating his thoughts. "Of course, they did. Don't you remember a year ago we had trouble over that delayed shipment. Winterton tried to force us to accept it after our people had bought elsewhere. The Scarborough Company is always easy on accounts. I'll bet that they are creditors to a neat little amount. If they are I'll talk Turkey to that crook of a Snickfield." Turning to the telephone I told the operator to call up the Scarborough Company, while Marsh paced the floor outlin...
Donald Randall Richberg was an American lawyer and government official who was one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's key aides.
Background
Donald Randall Richberg was born on July 10, 1881 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of John Carl Richberg, a German-born attorney of some prominence, and Eloise Olivia Randall, who came from old Vermont Yankee stock. A Chicago school principal, she later became a homeopathic physician. Richberg grew up in Chicago in a substantial and highly achieving family. But it was not without its tensions. His parents separated for a number of years because of his mother's decision to study medicine. And Richberg's "strong ambitions and convictions" made his early married life unstable.
Education
As a student at the University of Chicago, from which he received the B. A. in 1901, Richberg exercised his always strong, though never distinguished, literary bent, writing plays and poetry. He received the LL. B. in 1904 from Harvard Law School.
Career
He entered his father's law firm. Discussing "The Lawyer's Function" in the October 1909 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Richberg held that the proper role of the attorney was to be a "harmonizer" rather than a "parasite" or "a mere businessman. "
Like so many educated young men of his generation, Richberg found the Progressive movement an apt vehicle for his social moralism - and his personal ambition.
In 1912 he served as counsel for the Illinois Progressive party, the beginning of his "role as one of the leading technicians in the service of reform for the next several decades. "
In 1913 and 1914 he directed the party's National Legislative Reference Bureau. Richberg found in the work "that combination of law and politics and social science which is rapidly creating a new professsion, which might be termed that of social counselor. "
In 1915 Richberg was engaged to represent Chicago in its litigation against the People's Gas Light and Coke Company. Until 1927 he worked with some success to lower the gas rates charged the people of the city. In the same spirit he dealt with railroad problems during the 1920's. He was general counsel of the National Conference on Valuation of American Railroads, which sought to reduce the valuations on which railroad rates were based.
From 1922 he was counsel for the shop craft and other railroad unions. He successfully argued the legality of the shopmen's strike of 1922, and played an important role in the drafting and passage of the Railway Labor Act of 1926. He served as counsel for the Railway Labor Executives' Association from 1926 to 1933. This was congenial work, for Richberg deeply believed that the ideal industrial commonwealth was one where labor and management bargained collectively, with a minimum of government intervention. As a prominent railroad labor lawyer and executive chairman of the pro-FDR National Progressive League in 1932, Richberg had a strong claim on a place in the early New Deal. He assisted in the drafting of the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act in 1933 and worked with Hugh S. Johnson and Raymond Moley on the National Industrial Recovery Act.
He was appointed general counsel of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) created under that act; supposedly, he was to be organized labor's spokesman in the NRA. But Richberg was not content to speak for one interest group, nor did he accept a subordinate position to NRA head Hugh Johnson.
In July 1934 President Roosevelt appointed him director of the Industrial Emergency Committee and of the National Emergency Council, which were designed to coordinate the New Deal's relief and recovery programs. With the appointment came Richberg's greatest public renown; the press spoke of him as "assistant President. " But in fact Richberg's powers were minimal: policy remained firmly in Roosevelt's hands. He defended the NRA in the Schechter case, calling it a valid use of the government's power "to encourage and to organize cooperation in doing good. "
In 1935, when the Supreme Court found the NRA unconstitutional, Richberg's prominence came to an end. He supported Roosevelt in 1936 and assisted in the administration's attempt to limit the powers of the Supreme Court. But like Moley and other early New Dealers (and former Progressives), Richberg became increasingly critical of the widening range of the New Deal's social programs and its antibusiness, pro-labor tone. He returned to the practice of law, representing a number of corporate clients.
From the late 1930's until his death he lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, teaching constitutional law at the University of Virginia Law School, working for restrictions on the power of labor unions of the sort that were incorporated into the Taft-Hartley Act, strongly criticizing the Truman administration, and opposing civil rights legislation.
Achievements
Richberg's significance lies first in his career as a lawyer applying his technical expertise to the problems of a complex industrial society. Beyond this, he was representative of a distinct strand in twentieth-century American liberalism.
Richberg's career exemplifies both the continuities of function (for example, the lawyer as social technician) and the discontinuities of ideology that have characterized the American response to socioeconomic change in the twentieth century.
Richberg was also a widely published essayist, novelist, poet, and non-fiction author.
He believed that government's primary role was to assure that the conflicting units of society - management and labor, public utilities and consumers - dealt with one another on reasonably equal terms. But the growth of the welfare state beginning in the 1930's alienated him, as it did a number of other old Progressives.
Connections
In 1903 he married Elizabeth Herrick, sister of the novelist Robert Herrick. They separated in 1915 and were divorced in 1917. Richberg married Lynette Mulvey Hamlin in 1918 and was divorced again in 1924. On December 24, 1924, he married Florence Weed. They had one daughter and were together until his death.
