Harry Hopkins was born in Sioux City, Iowa, the fourth child
of David Aldona and Anna Pickett Hopkins. Hopkins attended
Grinnell College and soon after his graduation in 1912,
he took a job with Christodora House, a social settlement
in New York City's Lower East Side ghetto. In the spring
of 1913 he accepted a position with the New York Association
for Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) as "friendly
visitor" and superintendent of the Employment Bureau. In
October 1913, Harry Hopkins married Ethel Gross and the
couple eventually had three sons: David (1914-1980), Robert
(1921-) and Stephen (1925-1944).
In 1915, New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed
Hopkins executive secretary of the Bureau of Child Welfare,
which administered pensions to mothers with dependent children.
With America's entrance into
World War I, Hopkins moved his family to New Orleans
where he worked for the American Red Cross as director of
Civilian Relief, Gulf Division. Eventually, the Gulf Division
of the Red Cross merged with the Southwestern Division and
Hopkins, headquartered now in Atlanta, was appointed general
manager in 1921. Hopkins helped draft a charter for the
American Association of Social Workers (AASW) and was elected
its president in 1923.
In 1922, Hopkins returned to New York City where he became
general director of the New York Tuberculosis Association.
During his tenure there, the agency grew enormously and
absorbed the New York Heart Association.
When the Great Depression
hit, New York State Governor Franklin Roosevelt called on
Hopkins to run the first state relief organization in the
nation – the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration
(TERA). Hopkins met Eleanor Roosevelt only after he had
accepted the job as head of the TERA. She reported, "I never
heard of Mr. Hopkins until long after he had been working
for my husband in New York State, so that whole paragraph
on my having discovered him is untrue."(1)
In Albany, Hopkins and ER began an enduring friendship,
which had significant impact on New Deal policy.
Soon after Roosevelt's inauguration as president in 1933,
he summoned Hopkins to Washington as federal relief administrator.
Convinced that work should be the chief antidote to poverty,
Hopkins used his influence with FDR to push for federal
programs to provide government-sponsored jobs for the unemployed.
Reinforced by ER and Lorena
Hickok's reports from the field, Hopkins worked to alleviate
the suffering of the unemployed by creating work and relief
programs for the unemployed. His particular contributions
to the New Deal included the Federal Emergency Relief Administration
(FERA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), and the Works
Progress Administration (WPA). He supported ER's call for
a National Youth Administration and
the Federal One Programs, and the two worked closely together
to promote and defend New Deal relief programs.
During the war years, Hopkins acted as FDR's unofficial
emissary to Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, as administrator
of Lend-Lease, and as the shadowy figure behind Roosevelt
at the Big Three conferences.
Hopkins died in early 1946, succumbing to a long and debilitating
illness.
Notes:
- Eleanor Roosevelt to Drew Pearson,
August 14, 1943, Hopkins I, 19:1, Georgetown University
Lauinger Library,
Special Collections, Washington, D.C.
Sources:
Hopkins, June. Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. passim.
McJimsey, George. Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor,
Defender of Democracy. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1987. passim.
Sherwood, Robert. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate
History. New York: Random House, 1948. passim.