Jerry Voorhis

Jerry Voorhis (1939)

Jerry Voorhis (born April 6, 1901 in Ottawa , Franklin County , Kansas , † September 11, 1984 in Claremont , California ) was an American politician of the Democratic Party . As a member of the House of Representatives , he represented the twelfth congressional electoral district of the state of California from January 3, 1937 to January 3, 1947 (75th to 79th Congress). In the Voorhis Act of 1940, he enforced that certain organizations controlled by foreign forces had to register. In the 1946 congressional elections , he was defeated by his Republican rival Richard Nixon .

Life

Jerry Voorhis was born on April 6, 1901 in Ottawa, Kansas to Charles Brown Voorhis (born March 13, 1870, † September 16, 1961) and Ella Ward (née Smith). Voorhis' father owned a hardware store in Ottawa but then worked for the Kingman Plow Corporation in Oklahoma City , selling farm equipment to the growing number of farmers in Kansas and Oklahoma . In 1911, the father took over the management of a subsidiary in Kansas City , Missouri , then rose to the position of deputy head of Kingman Plow Corp. and the Voorhis family had to move to Peoria , Illinois .

Charles B. Voorhis switched to the auto industry, which was just beginning to rise, began to work at Oakland Motors in Pontiac , Michigan (a subsidiary of General Motors / GM), where he was first sales manager, then vice president. Another change came after the Nash Motors Corporation was founded in Kenosha , Wisconsin in 1916/1917 and Jerry Voorhis' father again became first sales manager, then vice president.

In 1925 Charles Voorhis retired from work and the family settled in Pasadena . Due to the numerous professional changes his father made and the resulting local changes, Jerry Voorhis had to change schools frequently, and attended public schools in Ottawa, Oklahoma City, Peoria and Pontiac. After completing school he began studying at Yale University , graduating with honors in 1923 with a thesis on the British labor movement. During his studies he was active for the YMCA and other Christian organizations, taught immigrants and traveled to Germany , England and Czechoslovakia as a representative of the American Christian Social Gospel Movement . After completing his studies, however, he did not embark on the academic career that had actually been laid out, but instead began working in factories. Among other things, he stood on the assembly line of the Ford Motor Company in Charlotte , North Carolina for two years .

During these years his sensitivity to social problems developed, including his never tiring solidarity with the country's poor. In 1924 he married Alice Louise Livingston from Washington , Iowa . The following year he became a teacher at the Allendale School for Homeless Boys for orphaned and disadvantaged youth in Lake Villa , Illinois , teaching there for about a year. At the request of a friend of the family, he then went to Laramie , Wyoming , to take over the management of an orphanage with an attached school for about 30 young people - the Dray Cottage Home for Boys - with his wife .

Just a year later, however, he accepted his father's suggestion to found an orphanage with a school in California together with him and so they set up the Voorhis School for Boys in San Dimas . At the same time he completed postgraduate studies at the Claremont Graduate School , graduating in 1928 with the thesis The Education of the Institution Boy and was awarded the MA title. Then Jerry Voorhis headed the newly founded school from 1928 to 1938, and also taught from 1930 to 1935 at Pomona College in Claremont.

Works

• The education of the institution boy (MA thesis) 1928
• The story of Voorhis school for boys . 1932
• The morale of democracy . 1941
• Out of debt, out of danger. Proposals for war finance and tomorrow's money . 1943
• Beyond victory . 1944
• Confessions of a congressman . Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1970 (Repr. Of the Garden City, NY 1947)
• The christian in politics . 1951
• American cooperatives. Where they come from, what they do, where they are going . 1961 (Reprint 1973)
• Credit unions. Basic cooperatives . 1965
• The strange case of Richard Milhous Nixon . 1972 (Reprint 1973)
• Cooperative enterprise. The little people's chance in a world of bigness . 1975
• The life and times of Aurelius Lyman Voorhis . 1976
• Confession of Faith. 1978

literature

• John T. Balch: Richard M. Nixon vs. H. Jerry Voorhis for Congress . 1946 (Reprint 1971)
• Paul Bullock: Jerry Voorhis, the Idealist as Politician . Vantage Press, New York Vantage 1978, ISBN 0-533-03120-6 .
• Arthur Calderwood: The Careers of Jerry Voorhis . 1969

Web links

Commons : Jerry Voorhis  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Jerry Voorhis in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)