Harold Dewey Smith was an American public administrator and editor.
Background
He was born on June 6, 1898 on his family's farm near Haven, Kansas, United States, the eldest of five children of James William Smith and Miranda (Ebling) Smith. His father was of Scots-Irish ancestry, his mother of "Pennsylvania Dutch" (German); they met in Indiana before settling in Kansas.
Education
After high school, Smith entered the University of Kansas, where in 1922 he earned a B. S. degree in electrical engineering. He soon decided instead on a career in public administration and began graduate study at the University of Michigan, from which he received the M. A. degree in 1925.
Career
He served in the navy during World War I. Over the next decade Smith developed a special interest in the field of budgetary and fiscal management. As a graduate student he had worked on the staff of the Detroit Bureau of Municipal Research, and after a similar position with the League of Kansas Municipalities (1925 - 1928), he became director of the Michigan Municipal League (1928 - 1937). There he worked with city administrators to increase efficiency and effect economies.
He edited the Michigan Municipal Review (1928 - 1937) and headed the Bureau of Government at the University of Michigan (1934 - 1937). In 1937 Gov. Frank Murphy of Michigan selected Smith as state budget director. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1939 named Smith director of the federal Bureau of the Budget, an agency that had been created in 1921 within the Treasury Department. Smith took over just as the federal establishment was undergoing a profound administrative transformation, one in which the Bureau of the Budget would figure heavily.
Congress in April 1939 granted the president limited power to reorganize the government. That summer, with Europe moving inexorably toward war, several of Roosevelt's advisors - including Smith, Louis Brownlow, Charles E. Merriam, and Luther Gulick - sought some means to enhance the president's administrative authority. The plan they drafted, approved by Roosevelt in September, created the Executive Office of the President. The new office housed several agencies, but by far the most important was the Bureau of the Budget, which, transferred out of the Treasury Department, in effect became the president's administrative arm. The bureau examined each department's proposed annual budget; it supervised departmental spending with a view toward eliminating waste; and it analyzed every bill and proclamation submitted for the president's signature and recommended a source of action to him.
As the first chief of the renovated bureau, Smith did much to set its tone and direction. His role derived not only from his formal powers, but also from the informal powers Roosevelt entrusted to him, particularly during World War II. After 1941, as foreign affairs came to dominate Roosevelt's mind, he gave Smith broad latitude in making budgetary decisions. On June 14, 1943, his picture made the cover of Time magazine over the caption: "Czars may come and czars may go, but he goes on forever. "
After Roosevelt's death in 1945, he continued to serve for a time under President Truman. In February 1946, however, he complained to Truman that "while you, yourself, are an orderly person, there is disorder all around you and it is becoming worse. " He also found federal salaries inadequate, and four months later he resigned to become vice-president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank. He became acting head of the bank in December 1946 on the resignation of Eugene Meyer.
Early in 1947, at the age of forty-eight, he died of a heart attack at his farm in Culpepper, Virginia.
Smith did his best to steer clear of partisan politics, but he believed that the budgetary process could never be divorced from broad social concerns. In 1942 he urged Roosevelt to accept a "drastic" wartime anti-inflation program involving compulsory savings, firm wage-price controls, and a stiff excess profits tax.
In 1944 Smith sided with those who challenged the army's position on reconversion. He reasoned that a gradual reduction in military output along with an expansion in civilian production would minimize dislocations in the return to a peacetime economy. Smith, while himself a forceful advocate, always insisted that he attempted to give the president "all the facts and both sides of the story. "
Personality
A deliberate, methodical man, Smith possessed an impressive knowledge of administrative structure that more than compensated for his lack of economic expertise.
Interests
Smith enjoyed the hobbies of carpentry and farming.
Connections
On April 18, 1926, he married Lillian Mayer, daughter of a Kansas farmer. They had five children: James Winston, Lawrence Byron, Mary Ann, Sally Jane, and Virginia Lee.