George Henry Dern was born on September 8, 1872, near Scribner, Dodge County, Nebraska. He was the older of two sons and the second of five children of John and Elizabeth (Dern) Dern. Both parents were of German birth. The elder Dern was a prosperous rancher and business man.
George was given a good education. He attended public schools in Hooper, Nebraska, graduated from the Fremont Normal College (1888), and attended the University of Nebraska from 1893 to 1894, where he achieved marked success in mathematics and engineering and was captain of the football team.
The Derns moved in December 1894 to Utah, where George immediately entered the mining profession. In the Mercur Gold Mining and Milling Company, in which his father had acquired extensive interests, he rose rapidly from bookkeeper to treasurer, and in 1901, when still only twenty-nine, he was chosen general manager of a new merger, the Consolidated Mercur Gold Mines Company. From 1915 to 1919 he served as general manager of the Tintic Mining Company in Silver City, Utah. While at the Mercur company he became associated with George Moore, inventor of the vacuum slime filtration process for separating good ores from impurities, and largely through Dern's assistance this method was developed and marketed successfully.
In 1913, when the Mercur properties were abandoned, Dern became associated with Theodore P. Holt and Neils C. Christensen in the development of the Holt-Christensen chloridizing roasting process for the treatment of low-grade silver ores. Later, with Holt, he invented and patented the Holt-Dern roaster, a furnace for carrying out this process, which has since been used extensively in mining work.
In the course of his business career Dern also served as an executive or director of a wide variety of corporations, including several banks, a power company, a creamery, and a canning company.
Dern's political career began in 1914, when he was elected state senator from Salt Lake County on the Democratic and Progressive tickets, an office which he held continuously until 1923. During these years he sponsored much forward-looking legislation, including a workmen's compensation act, a corrupt practices act, an absentee voters law, a securities commission act, and a mineral leasing act. The last measure, which revealed his concern for the preservation of the state's mineral resources, provided for the lease, rather than sale, of state-owned mineral deposits upon a royalty basis.
In 1924 the Democrats nominated Dern for governor. At a time when the state and the nation generally were predominantly Republican, he was elected by a majority of nine thousand votes. Four years later he was reelected by a majority of some thirty thousand, although sizeable Republican majorities were recorded for all other state offices. Dern's two terms as governor were marked by activity and achievement and by amicable relations with an overwhelmingly Republican legislature. Probably his most significant accomplishment was his tax revision program, which earned for him his reputation as a progressive. He brought about the enactment of a state income tax, a corporation franchise tax, and the establishment of a school equalization fund, and he set up a commission to administer the tax program. One of the principal issues during Dern's administrations was a long dispute over the disposition and control of the Colorado River waters after the construction of a proposed great dam at Boulder Canyon.
Dern took a state-rights position, arguing that except for navigation the natural resources of a state belong entirely to the state and cannot be interfered with by the federal or other state governments. With Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as intermediary, the seven states involved in the controversy finally agreed to a pact (1928), later approved by Congress, establishing the equitable distribution of the Colorado River's flow in the drainage basin and implicitly recognizing the principle of the states' rights to waters within their boundaries. As president, Hoover continued his state-rights policy toward natural resources, but he did not go far enough for Governor Dern. When the Hoover administration offered to grant to the states surface rights to all federal public lands, but retaining under federal control all mineral and other rights, Dern took a lead in the successful opposition, pointing out that in return for the meager revenue the states might obtain from leasing or selling surface rights to their citizens they would have to bear the expense of maintaining, developing, and building roads through the lands.
As chairman of the National Governors' Conference in 1930 Dern became acquainted with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, who was so impressed with Dern's leadership qualities that when he became president in 1933 he appointed Dern Secretary of War. As a member of the cabinet Dern was well liked, but he took little part in the determination of the administration's policies and was generally reckoned among the conservatives.
Dern died in Washington, District of Columbia, of a cardiac and kidney complication following a severe attack of influenza. His funeral service, one of the most largely attended in the history of Utah, was held in the famed Salt Lake Tabernacle, with President Roosevelt and Dern's cabinet colleagues in attendance. He was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, Salt Lake City.
George Dern is best remembered for co-inventing the Holt–Dern ore roasting process, as well as for his tenure as United States Secretary of War, serving from 1933 to his death in 1936. Under Dern the War Department made rapid strides in enlarging the military establishment, undertook the administration of the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps, and inaugurated projects for the dredging of the Mississippi River and improving water transportation facilities of the Mississippi and Missouri river systems.
Dern was a devout and active member of the Congregational Church.
Dern was Grand Master of the Masonic Order in Utah.
A dynamic executive and a man of great energy, Dern combined the forthright qualities of a business man with the charm and tact of a diplomat.
On June 7, 1899, Dern married Lottie Brown, by whom he had seven children: Mary Joanna, John, Louise, William Brown, Margaret, Elizabeth Ida, and James George.
