Harley M. Kilgore
Harley Martin Kilgore | |
---|---|
William R. Laird III | |
Personal details | |
Born | National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland | January 11, 1893
Political party | Democratic |
Profession | Lawyer, Judge, Military |
Harley Martin Kilgore (January 11, 1893 – February 28, 1956) was a
Biography
He was born on January 11, 1893, in Brown, West Virginia. He was born to Quimby Hugh Kilgore and Laura Jo Kilgore.[1] His father worked as an oil driller and contractor.[1] He attended the public schools and graduated from the law department of West Virginia University at Morgantown in 1914 and was admitted to the bar the same year.
He taught school in
He was judge of the Raleigh County criminal court from 1933 to 1940, and was elected as a
Senator Kilgore was West Virginia's favorite-son candidate in 1948 Democratic presidential primaries and won his home state unopposed.
In 1950 Kilgore joined a small group of liberals, including
Kilgore died on February 28, 1956, aged 63 and was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
National Science Foundation
In 1942, American manufacturing expert
In 1943, government scientists, most notably Vannevar Bush, voiced agreement with the spirit of Kilgore's proposal, but opposed the bill's aim to involve government administration of science funding and patent sharing. As the war neared its end, many prominent scientists feared a peacetime Kilgore plan. The Kilgore Committee, in an effort to mollify scientists concerned with a government-run funding agency, proposed calling the proposed organization a Foundation, to give the superficial impression of a private, philanthropic funding body like the Rockefeller Foundation. The scientists running the war-time Office of Scientific Research and Development sought to bypass the Kilgore Committee in forming a postwar science policy. While ostensibly working with Kilgore to plan for a science administration, Vannevar Bush privately obtained an invitation from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to write his own plan for a government-funded science foundation. Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington introduced a proposal based on Bush's report, Science, the Endless Frontier, in July 1945. The report contradicted much of Kilgore's vision of a science-funding organization accountable to the government.[2]: 29–31 Kilgore felt betrayed by Bush's failure to mention this alternate bill, and remained on hostile terms with Bush for years afterwards.
After many months of negotiations with interest groups of scientists and manufacturers, Kilgore and Magnuson introduced a modified bill to fund the National Science Foundation in 1946, which did not pass. At the same time, Republican Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey introduced a bill for an agency more similar to Bush's vision. The Smith bill passed both houses of United States Congress. Kilgore encouraged his former colleague, now President Harry S. Truman to veto the Smith bill, in large part because of the potential it made for the military to dominate scientific research. Truman followed Kilgore's advice and let the bill expire through a pocket veto. Kilgore also encouraged Truman to establish a Presidential Research Board to be led by John Steelman, former Director of the War Mobilization and Reconversion, which Truman then did in October 1946.[2]: 35
By 1948, other agencies like the
Investigations by the Sub-committee on Antitrust and Monopolies
While serving as Chairman of United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Kilgore spearheaded an investigation into corporate antitrust and monopoly.
The Kilgore Subcommittee investigations were based on the 1954 Subcommittee's recommendation for a full investigation of monopolies and concentrations of economic power.[8]
Following its recommendations based on 1954 hearings, the Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee undertook in 1955 a full-scale inquiry into antitrust policies and monopolies. Harley M. Kilgore (D W. Va.) headed the Subcommittee for which the Senate March 18 voted $200,000 for investigations."[8]
In its 1954 report the Subcommittee warned that the United States was in the “third great merger movement” in U. S. history and that previous movements had been followed by “devastating business collapse".[8]
After Kilgore's death, the investigations were put on hold until Estes Kefauver was appointed to the Chairmanship of the sub-committee in 1957. The investigations continued until Kefauver's death in 1963.
See also
- List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–99)
Notes
- ^ a b c Maddox, Robert. "Harley Kilgore". e-WV. West Virginia Humanities Council. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
- ^ a b c d e Maddox, Robert F., "The Politics of World War II Science: Senator Harley M. Kilgore and the Legislative Origins of the National Science Foundation", West Virginia History, Volume 41 (1979), p 22.
- ^ Maddox, Robert F., "Senator Harley M Kilgore and Japan's World War II Business Practices", West Virginia History, Volume 55 (1996), pp 127-142, on-line at http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh55-6.html, paragraphs 2 & 6, retrieved 05 Nov 2011
- ^ Trussel, C.P. (September 24, 1950). "Red Bill Veto Beaten, 57-10, By Senators" (PDF). New York Times.
- ^ Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (University Press of Kentucky, 1970) pp 117–122.
- ^ Michael J. Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt (2004) pp 517–533.online
- ^ "Senate – March 12, 1956" (PDF). Congressional Record. 102 (4). U.S. Government Printing Office: 4459–4461. Retrieved April 12, 2023.
- ^ a b c "An article from CQ Almanac 1955". Retrieved 28 October 2020.
External links
- West Virginia & Regional History Center at West Virginia University, Harley Martin Kilgore, Senator, Papers
References
- United States Congress. "Harley M. Kilgore (id: K000176)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.