politician statesman business executive
Guffey was born on December 29, 1870, in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, the son of John Guffey, a farmer, and Barbaretta Hough. Guffey's uncles, James M. and Wesley Guffey, were prosperous oil speculators and influential in the Democratic party. A sister, Emma Guffey Miller, was a member of the Democratic National Committee in the 1920's and 1930's. Politics and his various enterprises occupied Guffey's life.
Guffey attended Princeton University for two years (1890-1892), and, while there, became a lifelong admirer of Woodrow Wilson.
Self-conscious as a public speaker, Guffey spent most of his political life in back rooms, where loyalty and connections advance careers. His first political assignment was as clerk of the Democratic City Committee of Pittsburgh, and at the age of twenty-four he became superintendent of city delivery in the Pittsburgh post office, both jobs being a tribute to an uncle's political influence. In 1899, through Judge James Hay Reed, a Republican family friend, Guffey joined the Philadelphia Company, a utilities' holding company, where he became general manager in 1901. As a sideline Guffey invested in coal and oil leases, amassing enough wealth to strike out on his own in 1908. He concurrently broadened his Pennsylvania Democratic contacts, teaming with A. Mitchell Palmer and Vance McCormick to put together a slate of delegates supporting Woodrow Wilson at the Democratic Convention. His allies moved to Washington during the Wilson administration and left Guffey as chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee. During World War I he worked for the petroleum service division of the War Industries Board before becoming sales director of the Alien Property Custodian's Office. Through a technicality in the law, he was able to pocket the interest on alien property seized during the war. In 1922 he was indicted for misuse of government funds, but the charges were dropped in 1930 after Guffey repaid more than $400, 000 to the government. The indictment hit Guffey at a low point in his business fortunes. His Guffey-Gillespie Oil Corporation and its subsidiary, the Atlantic Gulf Company, speculating in oil leases in the south-western United States, Mexico, and Colombia, went bankrupt in 1921 and Guffey lost a considerable fortune. Yet within a few years, using funds borrowed from his sisters, he was again on his way to becoming a wealthy man through investments in East Texas oil fields. At the same time he built political alliances within the Pennsylvania and national Democratic parties, both of which, having come upon hard times, needed Guffey's organizational and fund-raising skills. He became an early Roosevelt-for-President booster and the state's most prominent Democrat in the early 1930's, although he failed to "deliver" Pennsylvania to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. But the New Deal's patronage power and the restlessness of union and black voters loomed as potential sources of victory. Guffey swiftly established himself as the principal conduit for federal patronage in Pennsylvania. In 1934, with the help of steelworker and mine-worker votes, Guffey became the first Democrat to be elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania since 1881. At a time when liberalism was synonymous with New Deal idealism, Guffey stood out as a liberal who preached and practiced a tough brand of organization and patronage politics. He was an unswerving New Deal supporter, a friend of organized labor, and a staunch advocate of civil rights for blacks. He courted the South's hostility with his outspoken opposition to poll taxes and support of federal antilynching legislation. One major law bore his name, the Guffey-Vinson Act of 1937, which followed NRA price-fixing in the bituminous coal industry to the benefit of producers and workers; it also set a price-fixing precedent useful for the oil industry, which suffered from overproduction following the boom in East Texas fields where Guffey had speculated so successfully. Guffey was one of the first to suggest that Roosevelt seek a third term. At the 1944 Democratic Convention, Guffey led the losing fight to retain Henry Wallace as the party's vice-presidential nominee. His political eclipse probably was foreshadowed by his unremitting support of Wallace in a time of increasing anti-New Deal feeling. Ironically, although known as a political boss, Guffey could not deliver the Pennsylvania delegation or the industrial-state Democratic bosses, who flocked to the candidacy of Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri. Ever loyal to Roosevelt, Guffey campaigned vigorously for the ticket in 1944. But, when Roosevelt nominated six conservatives for State Department positions that December, Guffey unsuccessfully opposed their nominations. Younger Democrats eroded Guffey's base of support in Pennsylvania while, on the national scene, Truman privately labeled him a synthetic liberal. In 1946 Guffey lost a third-term bid by more than 600, 000 votes. He retired in Washington, where he died on March 6, 1959.
Member of the War Industries Board, Director of the Bureau of Sales in the Alien Property Custodian's office
Guffey never married.
