Lewis Williams Douglas

Lewis Williams Douglas

Lewis Williams Douglas (born July 2, 1894 in Bisbee , Arizona , † March 7, 1974 in Tucson , Arizona) was an American politician . Between 1927 and 1933 he represented the first constituency of the state of Arizona in the US House of Representatives . From 1947 to 1950 he was Ambassador of the United States in the United Kingdom .

Early years

Lewis Douglas attended Montclair Academy in New Jersey after elementary school and then Amherst College in Massachusetts until 1916 . He also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 1916 and 1917 . Between August 15, 1917 and February 18, 1919 he was an officer in the US Army , in whose ranks he took part in the First World War . After the war he taught history at Amherst College until 1920.

Political career

After 1920 he returned to his native Arizona and got involved in mining, an industry in which his father and grandfather had already worked. Politically, he became a member of the Democratic Party . Between 1923 and 1925 he was a member of the House of Representatives from Arizona . In the 1926 congressional election, he was elected as a member of the US House of Representatives. There he completed three legislative terms between March 4, 1927 and March 3, 1933. He was also re-elected in the 1932 elections, but did not take up his new mandate in the 73rd  Congress . Instead, he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to head the budget department within the federal government ( Director of the Budget ). He held this office between March 7, 1933 and August 31, 1934. That day he resigned because he did not agree with Roosevelt's New Deal policy.

Another résumé

From 1934 to 1938 Lewis Douglas was vice president and board member of a chemical company. Between 1938 and 1939 he was on the board of directors of McGill University in Montreal . From 1940 to 1947 he ran an insurance company. During World War II he served on the board of the War Shipping Administration , an agency that recruited civilian ships for military use. After the war he was appointed US Ambassador to Great Britain by President Harry S. Truman . He held this office from 1947 to 1950. From 1944 to 1965 he was a director at General Motors and also chairman of the Southern Arizona Bank & Trust Company . In 1953 he headed a government commission to investigate international economic problems. In 1966 and 1967 he was also a member of a commission that dealt with the situation of the American Indians , belonged to the Council for Foreign Relations. Lewis Douglas spent the last years of his life on his ranch in Arizona. Since 1942 he was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society . He died in Tucson in March 1974.

Web links

• Lewis Williams Douglas in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Lewis Williams Douglas in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Newspaper article about Lewis Williams Douglas in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member History: Lewis W. Douglas. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 20, 2018 .