George Howard was born on December 5, 1890 in Devon, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of George Howard Earle and Catherine Hansell French. His father's self-made fortune was the basis for his wealthy style of living, with houses and estate holdings in the Philadelphia Main Line suburbs.
George graduated from the Delancey School in Philadelphia. He then spent two years at Harvard.
In 1916 George volunteered for the army expedition to the Mexican border. In 1917, he entered the navy and commanded a motor patrol boat, built with family funds, which patrolled the mouth of the Delaware Bay. When the boat caught fire he led the effort to save the ship and crew, for which he was awarded the Navy Cross. After World War I, Earle founded Flamingo Sugar Mills in Philadelphia.
Although previously a Republican, in 1932 Earle met Franklin D. Roosevelt through William C. Bullitt and contributed to Roosevelt's campaign. In 1933 and 1934, he was United States minister to Austria, where he reported home incidents of anti-Semitism and fascist activities. He resigned to become Democratic candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, with the backing of Joseph F. Guffey and David L. Lawrence, Pittsburgh Democratic leaders. The old Philadelphia Democratic organization was toppled by new leadership, which supported Earle.
Earle's campaign was linked to Guffey's campaign for the United States Senate, and both won decisively. The first Democratic governor of Pennsylvania in forty-four years, Earle was favored with a majority in the house of representatives. But Republicans held thirty-one of the fifty senate seats, thwarting his major reforms for the first two years of his term. Lawrence, appointed secretary of the commonwealth, manipulated all the administration's operations in the general assembly. Eight Republican senators bolted their leadership and agreed to give Earle a majority for one year to appropriate $5 million per month, an amount the Federal Emergency Relief Administration required Pennsylvania to contribute if federal relief was to continue. Higher state taxes accompanied the combined federal-state relief program. The rest of what was now being called the Little New Deal, however, was blocked in the senate until the November 1936 elections created overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses.
The 1937 legislative session truly produced a New Deal at the state level. Laws favorable to labor proliferated, including a Little Wagner Act; abolition of employer funding of police and sheriffs' deputies; minimum wage, maximum hour, and working conditions measures; a labor relations board; occupational disease compensation; and machinery for an unemployment compensation system. Public works projects and centralized control of all welfare disbursements were instituted. The General State Authority was created to finance public works outside the government's mandatory debt limits. Cutthroat competition was curtailed through milk control, the Fair Trade Practices Act, and bank reforms. The Public Utilities Commission replaced the Public Service Commission and was given enlarged power to protect consumers.
Earle's plan for a graduated personal income tax was held unconstitutional, however, and the electorate rejected his pleas for constitutional reform. Earle was his own spokesman, augmenting traditional speech making with frequent radio talks. He learned to pilot small planes in order to move quickly about the state, but he had several accidents.
Both he and the public assumed he would be the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in 1938, and he had some hopes for the presidency.
In 1938, Earle ran for the United States Senate. It was his downfall. Lawrence and Guffey made brief attempts at the gubernatorial candidacy, but both withdrew, alienating each other in the process. Claiming Works Progress Administration patronage, Guffey advanced the CIO's favorite, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Kennedy, who was also the secretary-treasurer of the UMW.
Lawrence, with Earle's approval, chose the little-known Charles A. Jones of Pittsburgh, who prevailed in the primary. Earle's attorney general, Charles J. Margiotti, a former Republican who had been rejected as a gubernatorial candidate in the Democratic primary, charged key members of the Earle administration, including Lawrence, with many corrupt acts including contract kickbacks and acceptance of bribes. Although Margiotti was not able to give many specifics supporting his grandiose charges, his actions nonetheless led to investigations by a county grand jury and by the state house of representatives.
Earle was so angry that he briefly considered martial law in order to terminate both investigative processes, but instead defended his administration through public addresses. He had to explain a $95, 000 loan from Matthew H. McCloskey, Jr. , director of the General State Authority and an associate. Earle's reputation was also damaged by affinity with his own appointees and party supporters who were under investigation. Furthermore, it appeared that the house investigation and other moves by Earle to thwart the grand jury were a cover-up. The state supreme court ruled that the legislative inquiry did not vitiate the powers of the grand jury. Both investigations were left pending through election day, giving voters an unfavorable impression.
Earle and Jones both lost, and the Republican party won control. Three weeks later, the house dismissed all the corruption charges, but grand-jury indictment trials began in March 1939. Most of the accused parties, including Lawrence, were acquitted. Three officials were found guilty of relatively minor matters. The major programs of the Little New Deal, however, remained as permanent components of Pennsylvania state government.
Earle never became an elder statesman. He was appointed United States minister to Bulgaria in 1940, then was commissioned in the navy, rising to commander. He served as a naval attache in Turkey in 1943 and in 1945 as assistant governor of Samoa.
He eventually resumed his Pennsylvania residency and died in Bryn Mawr.
Earle held a belief that the Depression's economic imbalance stemmed from the expanded efficiency of machinery. Welfare measures were necessary until consumption could catch up with the scale of production that was now possible.
Catastrophic floods in March 1936 were handled efficiently by the state, and the labor unrest of that year was accompanied by little violence. Hunger marchers received sympathy from the governor. It was Earle's policy to minimize intervention by either the National Guard or the state police in labor disputes. In refusing to allow state police to stop bootleg coal-mining, he alienated legitimate mine operators as well as the miners they employed.
In 1949, he returned to the Republican party. In the first administration of President Truman, Earle broke with the Democratic party and supported Thomas E. Dewey's candidacy in 1948. Moving to Boca Raton, Florida, he served as the finance chairman of Floridians for Eisenhower. Later he supported Richard M. Nixon and other Republican candidates, although he endorsed David Lawrence's Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign in 1958.
Quotes from others about the person
Earle's lasting influence as governor was summed up in 1968 by Pennsylvania state historian S. K. Stevens, who wrote, "The true worth of the Earle administration rest upon its social and welfare legislation and bringing a 'little New Deal' to Pennsylvania. "
On January 20, 1916 he married Huberta Frances Potter and they had three children.
In 1945 he obtained a divorce and married Jacqueline Germaine M. Sacre of Belgium. They had two children.
