The Building of an Army: A Detailed Account of Legislation, Administration and Opinion in the United States, 1915-1920 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Building of an Army: A Detailed Account ...)
Excerpt from The Building of an Army: A Detailed Account of Legislation, Administration and Opinion in the United States, 1915-1920
Hearings on Army Reorganization held by the Senate and House Committees on Military Affairs during the autumn of 1920, from which most of Chapter IX has been taken.
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John Dickinson was an American educator, jurist, and public official. He served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce from 1933 to 1935.
Background
John Dickinson was born on February 24, 1894, in Greensboro, Maryland. He was the son of Willard and Caroline Schnauffer Dickinson. He spent his early years at Croisiadore, since 1659 the family seat in eastern Maryland, where his namesake, the famous revolutionary hero and author of Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer, was born.
Education
John attended private schools, receiving the B. A. from Johns Hopkins in 1913 and the M. A. from Princeton in 1915. He spent two additional years as a graduate fellow at Princeton before World War I interrupted his education. He then resumed graduate work at Princeton, completing the Ph. D. in 1919. He received the Bachelor of Laws degree in 1921.
Career
During the World War I John worked briefly as an economist for the United States War Trade Board, and after enlisting he was attached to the general staff of the army. Following his discharge Dickinson taught history at Amherst College. Beginning in the fall of 1919 he spent the next two years at Harvard, serving as a tutor in economics, government, and history while pursuing a law degree. During this time he also finished his first book, The Building of an Army (1922), a detailed account of the wartime draft and its administration.
In 1921 Dickinson entered private practice with the firm of William Gibbs McAdoo, a Democratic presidential aspirant, and remained there until after McAdoo's ill-fated attempt to win the 1924 Democratic nomination. The following autumn he accepted a three-year lectureship on government at Harvard and Radcliffe. In 1925 he served as an economist for the governor's advisory commission on the cloak-and-suit industry of New York City and edited the commission's report.
During his tenure at Harvard and Radcliffe, Dickinson completed Administrative Justice and the Supremacy of Law (1927) and translated and edited The Statesman's Book of John of Salisbury (1927). He returned to Princeton in 1927 as an assistant professor of politics, specializing in law and political theory. In 1929 Dickinson turned exclusively to law, accepting a professorship at the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. During the next three years he established a substantial reputation as a specialist in antitrust law, and his counsel was frequently sought by corporations threatened by antitrust prosecutions. He also achieved considerable recognition in 1932 after he published, in the American Bar Association Journal, an article advocating a relaxation of antitrust laws as a means of stimulating industrial recovery through effective corporate reorganization and planning.
In 1933 Daniel C. Roper, the newly appointed Secretary of Commerce and a longtime McAdoo associate, selected Dickinson for the post of Assistant Secretary of Commerce. In this office Dickinson quickly assumed the leadership of one of several groups within the Roosevelt administration preparing measures to promote industrial recovery. His draft, incorporating the ideas in his earlier article but containing modifications to allow for public involvement in the process of industrial planning, provided the initial outline for the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. In addition to his duties in the Department of Commerce, Dickinson also served as chairman of the General Statistical Board in 1934 and 1935.
In 1935 Dickinson was transferred to the Department of Justice as assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. Few antitrust suits were instituted under his direction, but in 1937 the division undertook a major investigation into collusive bidding practices in the steel, lumber, sugar, and cement industries. He attracted particular attention in 1936 for his brilliant but unsuccessful defense of the Bituminous Coal Act in Carter v. The Carter Coal Company.
While with the Department of Justice, Dickinson emerged as the New Deal's principal spokesman to the business community. In a series of articles and speeches he defended New Deal measures against the censure of the Liberty League and other right-wing critics, arguing that the New Deal was good for American business.
In 1937, as the Roosevelt administration was turning increasingly toward trust-busting, Dickinson left the Department of Justice to return to teaching and the law. From 1937 until 1948 he again served on the faculty of the law school of the University of Pennsylvania. He also accepted a position in 1937 as general solicitor for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was elevated to general counsel in 1941 and vicepresident in 1946, serving in both posts until his death.