Businessman in the Statehouse: Six Years as Governor of North Carolina (Enduring Editions)
(This is the story of Governor Hodges's years in the state...)
This is the story of Governor Hodges's years in the statehouse, told in his own words. It is lively, forceful, and honest--like the man himself. It is particularly relevant to the concept that states' rights should be regarded as a challenge to make state government honest, responsible, and forward looking.
Originally published in 1962.
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(Excerpt from The Business Conscience
I hope the reader w...)
Excerpt from The Business Conscience
I hope the reader will understand that I do not think I have said the best word or the last word on business eth ics.
I gratefully acknowledge advice and assistance from numerous persons, including several of my associates in the Department of Commerce, without whose aid the manuscript could not have been finished within the time limits requested by the publisher.
This volume is offered to the reader with the hope that it will be of some help, particularly to young businessmen who believe in our American system and to whom we must look for its improvement and preservation.
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Messages, Addresses, and Public Papers of Luther Hartwell Hodges, Governor of North Carolina 1954-1961: Volume II 1957-1958
(Hardback book, comes with book jacket, book is complete w...)
Hardback book, comes with book jacket, book is complete with all pages, cover in GREAT shape, back of book in GREAT shape, ships IMMEDIATELY! Library discard. No cheaper bargain! View our various books, media, and products! Your GAIN is our FAME here at BargainHunter366!
Luther Hartwell Hodges was an American businessman and politician. After a career in textile manufacturing, he entered public service, served as the 64th Governor of the state of North Carolina 1954 to 1961. In 1961 he was appointed as United States Secretary of Commerce under President John F. Kennedy, serving until 1965.
Background
Luther Hartwell Hodges was born on March 9, 1898, in Cascade, Virginia, United States, the next to youngest of nine children of John James Hodges, a tenant farmer of modest means, and Lovicia Gammon. His family moved to what is now Eden, North Carolina, when Hodges was two years old.
Education
While attending public school, Hodges worked as an office helper and mill laborer in a local cotton mill. Using the money he saved from these and other jobs, he left home to enter the University of North Carolina in 1915 and received an undergraduate degree in 1919.
Career
Hodges served briefly in the U. S. Army near the end of World War I, never leaving the country. He then returned to Rockingham County, where he assumed responsibility for training personnel at a mill owned by Marshall Field and Company, the large Chicago-based retailer. By 1935, Hodges was production manager of fifteen textile mills. Within four years, Hodges became general manager of all Marshall Field's domestic and international mills. The company moved him to New York City in 1940, and he assumed the position of vice-president in charge of manufacturing in 1943. He returned to North Carolina in 1947.
During the 1930's and 1940's, Hodges had become interested in politics, serving as an advocate for the textile industry and as a member of various governmental advisory committees or commissions in North Carolina. Hodges's appointment in 1944 to head the textile-pricing program of the Office of Price Administration (OPA) during World War II, and his selection as a special consultant to the secretary of agriculture, reflected his growing influence on the national level.
By this time he also had expanded his involvement at the local and national levels of Rotary International, the men's business organization. Beyond government, his role as a national Rotary representative frequently provided him access to decision makers on both domestic and international issues, such as the formation of the United Nations and the postwar recovery of Europe.
In 1950, Hodges ended his long career with Marshall Field and Company to devote more time to government service. That same year, he took charge of the industry division of the Economic Cooperation Administration, part of the Marshall Plan for the restoration of the European capitalist economy. During his years with Marshall Field, Hodges had become familiar with many of these issues through his service on various state boards and commissions.
Seeking to advance the private sector while promoting the proper role of government, he decided to run for lieutenant governor on an openly antipolitician platform. Many seasoned politicians expressed surprise when he won the Democratic primary in spring 1952, virtually assuring his election that fall in the overwhelmingly Democratic state. Hodges became governor when Governor William B. Umstead died on November 7, 1952. Hodges ran for his own four-year term in 1956, winning every county in the state.
While he continued to emphasize economic development, the major issue with which Hodges was forced to contend during his governorship was imposed from elsewhere. In a series of court decisions, the most notable being Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the United States Supreme Court overturned decades-old laws racially segregating publicly supported schools. The potential implications of the court ruling for the entire system of racial segregation were not lost on whites in the South. Southern politicians divided into several camps in responding to the Brown ruling. One faction promoted individual, group, and state governmental resistance; this included closing all public schools and establishing privately run, segregated white schools.
Such extreme views might have led to racial violence and a major confrontation between state and national governments. Hodges recognized that interracial violence or closing down the public education system might discourage investment. Nonetheless, as with many other moderates, Hodges recognized the strength of the segregationist tradition, including its impact in his own life. He tried to convince people that public money spent on education and other development efforts was not wasted and that alienating the federal government would prove counterproductive. Occasionally he called upon examples from his years in the textile industry to show that North Carolina needed to change.
He hoped the Research Triangle Park, a public-private high-technology initiative he had founded in the region surrounding Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, would prove to be his greatest legacy. However, with the civil rights movement emerging in both the courts and on the streets of the South, and white resistance becoming increasingly militant, Hodges had to deal with implementing Brown.
As Hodges's tenure as governor drew to a close in 1960, he found himself courted by various candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. He eventually endorsed John F. Kennedy, a candidate Hodges believed would commit himself to economic development and moderation on racial matters. He helped Kennedy round up delegates prior to the 1960 convention and then campaigned actively throughout the South for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
Following the election, Hodges seemed guaranteed of a major appointment in the administration for several reasons. His regional background would solidify Kennedy's marginal standing in the South, his lengthy experience in industry would assist Kennedy in reassuring the business community that he would promote economic development, and his reputation as a consensus-builder on racial issues would demonstrate that he could navigate between increasingly alienated racial groups. When Kennedy took office in January 1961, Hodges became his secretary of commerce.
But within the early months of the administration, Hodges already found himself frustrated; the president made business and economic decisions without involving his secretary of commerce.
Hodges had no influence with Kennedy on race relations, either, but he was able to pursue his own position. He carried his background as a moderate segregationist into the cabinet, where he encouraged both caution in confronting segregationists and vigor in denouncing violation of the law by civil rights activists. At one point he refused to testify before a Senate committee considering a civil rights bill. Counter to Kennedy's administration policy, Hodges spoke to an all-white segregated meeting in the South.
As a businessman who had been used to controlling things, Hodges found himself powerless following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. He agreed to finish his four years as secretary of commerce, resigning in January 1965.
As if to get his bearings after more than a decade in public life, Hodges retreated to some of his old interests, reestablishing his ties with the business community. He joined the board of Research Triangle Park, and devoted his time to many voluntary associations. In 1967, Rotary International selected him as president, a role in which he could travel promoting his strong belief in the work ethic and economic development without the burdens of governmental compromises and the criticisms of political adversaries. In 1968, he retired to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he lived the rest of his life.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Hodges had become interested in politics, serving as an advocate for the textile industry and as a member of various governmental advisory committees or commissions in North Carolina.
In his OPA position Hodges played an important role in establishing prices for his entire industry during a time of great inflationary pressure. As a result, he secured the gratitude of many significant business leaders, some beyond the textile industry, for whom he had the authority to grant or withhold favors as part of the wartime price-control system.
In 1950 he affiliated himself at the state level with the progressive wing of the Democratic party in North Carolina, which promoted economic development through transportation, improved education, and incentives for industry but held strongly to racial segregation.
In his years as Governor of North Carolina he continued to emphasize economic development. In relation to segregation, he portrayed himself as a moderate, able to convince both blacks and whites of the need for compromise and to avoid the sort of agitation and strife experienced elsewhere. He accomplished this by privately drawing many potential antagonists into the problem-solving process, making it difficult for them to dissociate themselves from any action that became public.
Behind the scenes Hodges exerted pressure on black leaders to agree to what was being worked out, threatening to blame them for any failure to reach a settlement. While he occasionally took symbolic steps such as publicly meeting with prominent blacks, he also warned blacks against following the influence of militant groups such as the NAACP. Mostly, he prevented the sort of state-federal confrontations that were occurring elsewhere in the South and that he believed could damage North Carolina's progressive reputation.
When Kennedy took office in January 1961, Hodges became his secretary of commerce, at age sixty-two the oldest member of the president's cabinet. From the start, more than age distinguished Hodges from the Kennedy inner circle. Although politically shrewd and persuasive, his style was much more like that of a promoter or a booster of the kind with whom he had rubbed shoulders for decades at innumerable Rotary conventions and luncheons. One of his first public statements came in the form of a how-to piece on personal business-selling in the Sunday supplement to the New York Herald Tribune (June 18, 1961). He stood out as a publicist among the many intellectuals and would-be scholars among Kennedy's confidants.
Within the early months of the administration, Hodges already found himself frustrated; the president made business and economic decisions without involving his secretary of commerce. Hodges unsuccessfully sought full discussion at cabinet meetings and tried to increase his access to the Oval Office.
In 1961, he attempted to reduce the influence of the long-standing Business Advisory Council (BAC), an informal group of leaders of large industries that boasted of having veto power over major governmental decisions affecting the economy. While functioning outside the usual pattern of congressional and executive oversight, the BAC appeared unaccountable and potentially damaging to any economic initiative taken by the administration. Hodges gained part of what he wanted in decreasing the autonomy of the BAC, but in working out the settlement, the president put Hodges in his place.
Views
Quotations:
"Businessmen ought to come into government because of their experience in business--government, after all, is big business. I feel that many of them, instead of sitting on the Sidelines, sniping and quarreling about what the government is doing, should come in and help. That's what I did at the age of 52. It's a bit frustrating at times, but I've never regretted it. "
Personality
Hodges's deep-set eyes and intense stare were among his most obvious personal characteristics, and his sincerity and public image of political fairness served him well in North Carolina during a turbulent political era.
Connections
On June 24, 1922, Hodges married Martha Elizabeth Blakeney; they had three children. After his first wife died in 1969 in a fire at their home in Chapel Hill, he married Louisa Finlayson, his former secretary, on February 28, 1970. His son, Luther Hartwell Jr. , became an executive in North Carolina National Bank and served in the administration of President Jimmy Carter.