Henry Styles Bridges was born on September 9, 1898 in West Pembroke, Maine, the son of Earl Leopold Bridges, a farmer, and Alina Roxana Fisher. Bridges' father died when Bridges was nine, and his mother, to provide for her young family, taught in the local school.
After his father died, Bridges assumed responsibility for the family farm and continued his schooling. He graduated from Pembroke High School in 1914 and from the University of Maine, where he majored in agriculture, in 1918. After graduation Bridges became an agriculture instructor at Sanderson Academy in Ashfield, Massachussets.
Bridges returned to Maine as Hancock County agricultural agent in 1920 and the next year moved to the University of New Hampshire as a member of the agricultural extension staff. He became executive secretary of the New Hampshire Farm Bureau Federation in 1922.
From 1924 to 1926 he edited Granite Monthly, and from 1924 until 1929 he also served as director and secretary of the New Hampshire Investment Company.
In 1934, Bridges was elected governor and during his two years in office, Bridges balanced the state budget, initiated a new agricultural standards act, and sponsored state unemployment compensation and old age benefits. Under his leadership, New Hampshire became the first state to qualify for the new federal Social Security Act.
He represented New Hampshire in the Senate until his death--easily winning reelections in 1942, 1948, 1954, and 1960.
In the Senate, Bridges served on the Appropriations and Military Affairs committees, and in 1945 was appointed to the Foreign Relations Committee.
In 1937 he denounced President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Supreme Court reorganization plan and voted against all the later New Deal measures. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, he supported efforts to extend aid to victims of Nazi aggression.
After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, he opposed President Dwight D. Eisenhower's willingness to negotiate with the Soviet Union and Communist China. Toward the end of Senator Joseph McCarthy's vitriolic anti-Communist career, Bridges led a move to save his colleague from a Senate censure vote.
He claimed partial victory when the word "censure" was dropped from the Senate action condemning the Wisconsin Republican.
In the Republican-controlled Eightieth Congress, Bridges became chairman of the Appropriations Committee (1947). He immediately pressed for a $6 billion cut in the budget, with a hefty part of the reduction to be in foreign aid.
After Eisenhower was elected in 1952, Bridges again headed the Appropriations Committee. This time he found an ally in the White House who supported his attempt to balance the budget. As part of this effort he again opposed extensive foreign aid, particularly to Communist countries. For example, he denounced a $75 million item that would provide surplus commodities and loans for farm machinery to Poland.
He also attempted to restrict aid to Yugoslavia. Consistency marked Bridges's Senate career. Anti-New Deal, anti-Communist, and fiscal and political conservative are labels that fit him throughout his tenure. Elected to a fifth term in 1960, he had seniority that made him a potentially powerful figure in the Eighty-seventh Congress (he had already served as Republican floor leader in 1952-1953 and had been president pro tem in 1953-1955).
He died of a heart attack at age 63 at Concord, New Hampsshire.
Henry Styles Bridges was elected as a Republican the 63rd Governor of New Hampshire in 1935, serving until 1936. At the time of the election he was just thirty-six, and so he became the youngest chief executive in the history of New Hampshire and the youngest in the nation at the time. During his administration he achieved some quite remarkable results, such as initiation of a new agricultural standards act, sponsoring state unemployment compensation and old age benefits, balancing the state budget, etc. Under his leadership, New Hampshire became the first state to qualify for the new federal Social Security Act. He successfully won reelection three more times in 1942, 1948, 1954, and 1960.
Bridges entered politics in 1930, when Republican Governor Charles W. Tobey appointed him to the New Hampshire Public Service Commission. After a bitter Republican primary campaign against former Senator George H. Moses, Bridges was elected to the United States Senate in 1936. During the long years of Democratic control of the Congress, he consistently criticized Democratic acts and administration policies.
Known as the Gray Eminence of the Republican Party, he was sometimes referred to as an authentic American Tory. He used his influence in the party in an attempt to preserve it as he had known it earlier--before, in his terms, it became dominated by "liberals, moderates and moderns. " Anti-New Deal, anti-Communist, and fiscal and political conservative are labels that fit him throughout his tenure.
Bridges wanted everyone to recognize his conservatism. He even stopped using his first name, it was said, when the left-leaning West Coast union leader Harry Bridges became a controversial figure in the late 1930's. He wanted no public confusion about which Bridges was which.
After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, he supported efforts to extend aid to victims of Nazi aggression. He supported Wendell Willkie for president in 1940, particularly backing his refusal to take an isolationist position. Yet Bridges cannot be classified as either an interventionist or an internationalist.
In the postwar period he did not support bipartisanship in foreign policy. Bridges was strongly anti-Communist. His strong stand against Communism was in part related to his fiscal conservatism. He railed against postwar continuation of lend-lease to Russia, and in March 1950 he attacked Secretary of State Dean Acheson's defense of Alger Hiss.
He also was a leading supporter of General Douglas MacArthur at the congressional hearings after President Harry S. Truman dismissed the general in 1951.
Quotations: In 1955, when the Yalta papers were released to the public, Bridges called the agreements "one of the sad lessons of history. "
Bridges had married early but that marriage, a well-kept secret, ended in divorce. In 1928 he married Sally Clement; they had three sons. Sally Bridges died in 1938, and in 1944 Bridges married Doloris Thauwald.
