Background
James Joseph McEntee was born on 19 September 1884 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was the son of James Lawrence McEntee and Mary Sullivan.
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James Joseph McEntee
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Education
After attending parochial schools, he became an apprentice machinist at the Blair Tool Works in New York City.
Career
After completing his term he remained with Blair, becoming very involved with the activities of the International Association of Machinists at the local and district levels. In 1911 he was made a full-time officer of the association. McEntee quickly gained a reputation as an effective conciliator and in 1917 was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to the three-man New York Arbitration Board. His special areas of expertise were the munitions and maritime labor industries. It was in this latter connection that he first met Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy. During the 1920's he continued his work with both the Machinists' Association and the Arbitration Board and was particularly prominent in the settlement of several newspaper strikes and in railway contract negotiations. In March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The first measure of the new administration to be aimed specifically at the plight of unemployed youth, its function was to employ young men on conservation work throughout the country. Simple in operation and administration, the CCC worked through four federal departments: Labor, which selected the men from relief rolls; War, which administered the camps where they lived; Agriculture and Interior, which supervised the work projects. Coordinating the activities were an advisory council of representatives of the departments and a small central office headed by a director. For the latter position, largely as a placatory gesture toward organized labor, Roosevelt chose Robert Fechner, a member of the General Executive Board of the International Association of Machinists and a vice-president of the American Federation of Labor. Fechner and McEntee had been associates since 1911; had worked closely on conciliation activities during and after World War I; and had become firm friends. At Fechner's request Roosevelt offered McEntee the post of assistant director of the CCC, which he accepted. He went to Washington in April 1933, remained as assistant director until Fechner's death in 1940, and then succeeded him as director, a position he held until abolition of the CCC in June 1942.
McEntee and Fechner quickly developed a harmonious working relationship. Indeed, Fechner was content to leave much of the business of day-to-day administration to McEntee, preferring to spend as much time as possible visiting individual camps. Less harmonious were McEntee's relationships with representatives of the cooperating federal departments. He soon became convinced that the administrative machinery of the CCC was far too loose and unwieldy. In particular, he wanted to strengthen the role of the central office at the expense of the cooperating departments and in time persuaded Fechner to accept this point of view. The administrative history of the CCC from about 1937 was, increasingly, one of tension, as Fechner and McEntee attempted, generally unsuccessfully, to effect centralization. McEntee's appointment as director in 1940 was bitterly opposed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes for precisely this reason. McEntee's term of office as CCC director was far from tranquil. He continued to advocate centralization and to be opposed. But, increasingly, his time was occupied with preventing abolition of the agency. With the approach of war, the Congress, spearheaded by the Joint Committee on the Reduction of Non-essential Federal Expenditures, began to question the need for its existence in a situation that demanded general financial stringency and in which unemployment was becoming much less of a national problem, as defense industries began to boom. In response, McEntee broadened selection and work policies and stressed the importance of the CCC as an adjunct to the war effort, particularly in the areas of fire prevention and the maintenance of military reservations. Roosevelt vigorously supported his efforts, but to no avail. Soon after termination of the CCC, McEntee returned to the Machinists' Association as vice-president of the New Jersey Council of Machinists and a delegate to the New Jersey Federation of Labor. In 1952, President Harry S. Truman appointed him to the National Production Authority, on which he served until 1954. He died in Jersey City, New Jersey.
