CDM Sr. in artifacts

This thank you note, which politely rejects a gift from someone doing business with the Interstate Commerce Commission.¹⁾Harvey Couch, who send the gift basket, ran one of the South’s largest railways. Charles’ note represents his measured, highly ethical ways as a Federal official. I am not certain the rules at the time. Today a government staffer cannot accept such a gift–but Charles had his own set of ethics in any case. He would not be played by anyone.

Through his extensive correspondence, his personal and professional ethics shine through. He is measured, cautious, clear, and polite in, routinely, indicating things that he can and cannot do. He is willing and able to write letters of recommendation for people, and, in a sense, use his influence that way, but he is scrupulous in most matters, especially financial ones.

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

On February 10, 1932, Charles met at the White House with President Herbert Hoover. It was not his only meeting with a President, but it’s one for which we have an artifact—his handwritten notes, taken down immediately after the meeting. (The full text of his notes is here.)

Charles played at high levels of government and if you needed the American expert on railroad finance and economics, you got Charles D. Mahaffie. Even President Hoover knew that. And in those times, the railroads were a huge factor in the health and strength of the economy, which of course, in the early 1930s, stilled wallowed in the effects of the Great Depression. So Charles’ work was of central economic and policy importance.

To me, the notes have an excited quality. It looks as though Charles hurried back to his office to write down what had happened with Hoover. He didn’t wait for a secretary to give it to, or dictate it to. Then, he kept the hand notes, even if, possibly, they were also typed up for the files or for distribution to his colleagues.

I have the sense that the moments when he was with presidents were momentous for him, even though he worked for, and likely met with Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

Charles got, and saw fit to save, a number of  job offers in the 1920s before, I think, it became clear that he had found his place and calling when he became a commissioner of interstate commerce.

This example is the most surprising to me:

People who got to know Charles or know his reputation came to seek to hire him. In his archives are a series of letters and telegrams with offers of employment. The one above is the most striking to me because it’s for an unexpected job; it’s not a law job, a job related to reforming municipal government or a job related to railroad finance. Instead, it appears to be a job helping run a medical school. If I am interpreting the telegram correctly, he was being asked to be president of the University of Oregon Medical School.

Other offers included an impassioned push by William Donovan, who had been an assistant attorney general in Washington for antitrust and had resigned to set up a private law practice in New York City in 1929. Donovan worked then, intently, to convince Charles to join his law practice. He advanced Charles $50,000 against what would be their partnership earnings. Donovan almost convinced Charles, but ultimately, the draw of Federal work kept him in Washington.

Another offer Charles got was a year’s work in China as part of a consulting team. It was all about modernizing state finance for the government of China. That was in a January 1929 telegram, which read, “Could you name a salary which together with your personal traveling and living expenses one year inclusive time of travel would make China position attractive to you.”

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

I remember this drawing my Grandmother, Isabel Cooper, made from my childhood. It was in one of the scrapbooks she put together to chart the life and career of her husband, Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr.

Long before I delved into the government memoranda and correspondence from his career in his archives, I had a sense, through her, of my Grandfather the traveling bureaucrat.

But his archives and explorations of news stories from his time in government sharpen that view. He was a powerful government investigator, commissioner, and policy-shaper. American railroads were heavily regulated, and that regulation was built and administered by the Interstate Commerce Commission where first he directed the Bureau of Finance, and the he was a Commissioner.

When I knew him, he was a taciturn old man, retired from that work. What emerges from his archives and news stories of the times show a man with a quick wit, unafraid to use it. I wish I’d known him then.

His “stand no non sense” manner (see below) comes through too. It is one more familiar to me because his son, my father, inherited it.

(Please note that at this stage in his story, I cannot any longer bring my self to refer to him as “Charlie” — he had by the 1920s and forward, at least to many, strictly a Charles.)

A newspaper profile¹⁾The Sooner Magazine, June 1930, pp. 313-314, reprinting an article from the San Francisco Chronicle. of Charles from 1930 gives a somewhat over-the-top sense of him at work. Here are some excerpts:

Rat-ta-tat-tat!
“Gentlemen,” admonishes a quiet, determined looking young man, from the depths of a big chair on the raised platform, “I cannot and will not listen to these exchanges between counsel! This is a quasi-judicial hearing; not a bickering pit nor a debating society!”. . .

Pompous attorneys representing some of the mightiest millions in America-the great “vested interests” which keep the wheels of our railroads rolling round-grin sheepishly and return to order. A Kansas farm “kid” of yesteryear has brought them to their legal senses-and compelled their admiration in the doing!. . .

Mahaffie, in his official capacity, tells men representing billions of dollars “where to head in” when they overstep the bounds of parliamentary propriety.. . .

There is little doubt that an intriguing poise and a sense of humor which seems forever bubbling just underneath the surface of his otherwise serious physiognomy have been important factors in his rise to what is considered, by the giants of the transportation world, one of the most important assignments in the entire structure of the federal government.

Mahaffie is not a light thinker-far from it–but his judgment of the genus homo (sometimes sapiens) is so keen that an occasional inward chuckle over the valiant efforts of the witnesses appearing before him, to paint a roseate picture with pigments of gray or ultramarine, cannot be escaped. His rapier-mind is usually several jumps ahead of the testimony given; and he enjoys himself accordingly.

To an even greater extent than he permits himself to “take pity” upon a struggling witness or floundering lawyer, Mahaffie strikes sternly at any effort to hoodwink or confuse him. The oily charlatan, the bluffing bully and the belligerent barrister are not halfway down to first base before a curt admonition to “come to order” or “dispense with those tactics” clicks from the lips of the examiner.

And a word from Mahaffie is sufficient. His reputation as an arbiter who will “stand no non sense” is Nation-wide.

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

This photo counts as the strangest in my grandfather, Charles D. Mahaffie’s archive. It took some sleuthing to make sense of it. The back of the photo says it’s “Thorkildsen’s Studios, Hollywood,” and pictured are Stephen T. Mather, Director of the National Park Service, Harry Chandler, editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Charlie (on right, blurred). Charlie was then the Solicitor of the Interior Department.

I Googled my way to Thomas Thorkildsen who was named in the photo. I found his connections to Stephen Mather, and worked out through other documents and newspaper archives what this was about. The photo is, in fact, of Thomas Thorkildsen’s home in the Hollywood Hills, Briarcliff Manor. It was New Year’s Eve, 1919.

Charlie, then Solicitor of the Interior Department and a close friend of Stephen Mather, the Director of the National Park Service, traveled west and visited several places in California at the end of 1919 into January 1920.

Being the Solicitor of the Interior Department meant traveling the country with Mather and helping the Park Service director work out, at was in the 1910s and 1920s almost a fevered pace, what places could or would be national parks and monuments, and how the parks could be developed and improved. And it meant meeting with men with money and power, boosters and enablers of that process.

Central to their goals for this trip were new enhancements at Yosemite National Park. But that meant also visiting men of power, money, and influence around the state.

Harry Chandler was then the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Chandler was also a huge real estate developer in 1920s Los Angeles. He developed Mullholland Drive and was in the real estate syndicate that put up the Hollywoodland sign in 1923.

Stephen T. Mather had been in the borax business with Thomas Thorkildsen before becoming the founding director of the National Park Service. They produced (and Mather named), 20-Mule Team Borax, which is still marketed under that name). Both had become wealthy through the borax business. Mather used a lot of his money to improve the national parks.

My sense of these trips is that they would have been interesting, and lots of fun. They would have done most of the travel by train. I imagine Mather may have supplemented their expense accounts, if such was needed. Stephen Mather and Charlie close friends through their work together.

 

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

This is a press photo taken in the Fall of 1916. Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. is in downtown Washington, D.C. It appeared in newspapers around the country, and Charlie kept a copy in his files. He was 31 years old. He had just moved to Washington, rather suddenly, to take a job in the Federal government.

Earlier in 1916 Charlie had visited Washington to argue a case before the Interstate Commerce Commission. He stopped in to see the Secretary of the Interior, Franklin Lane, who was “his good friend” according to a later profile.

Lane mentioned he was going to see President Wilson, that afternoon. He said, “why not come along?”

They went to see Woodrow Wilson at the White House. Charlie knew the President from his time as an instructor in jurisprudence at Princeton (1908 and 1909). Wilson had been president of the college then.

Charlie had favored Wilson for reelection to the presidency in 1912 with an editorial in the Oregon Daily Journal. He wrote of how Wilson at Princeton worked against considerable opposition to instill more social equality among the students. Wilson eliminated fraternities and raised academic standards, in the face of strong pressures against such reforms.

He agreed with Wilson that social advancement had replaced academic achievement, to the detriment of those unable by lack of privilege to climb the social status ladder. As he put it in his editorial, “So all-pervading has the craze for social honors become that the public itself wants to know of the recent graduate, not if he led his class or was a high honor man, but what fraternity or club he ‘made’.”

Now at the White House, Wilson and Charlie renewed their acquaintance. And shortly thereafter, Interior Secretary Franklin Lane got the notion to have the President appoint Charlie as Solicitor of the Department of the Interior. The President agreed to do so.

When Charlie got back home to Portland, there was a telegram waiting for him. Franklin Lane was asking if he would accept the job if the President offered it to him. “He would and President Wilson did.” ¹⁾February 16, 1936 profile in the Daily Oklahoman.

And so in September 1916, Charlie boarded a train for Washington, DC. He figured he’d be in the job until the end of Wilson’s second term, and then would return to his law practice and life in Portland.

That notion stuck with him for years in Washington. He kept his membership in the University Club of Portland, and referred to himself as an Oregonian until the decades of work in DC unfolded and the pattern became clear. Then as now, more come to Washington than leave.

But Oregon didn’t let go easily. He retained a fondness for Portland and Oregon. And though he had worked and lived in Washington since the Fall of 1916, when he visited Portland, Oregon in the Spring of 1919, the newspaper reported on him as “Portland Attorney.”

On that Spring visit Portland suffering a bad head cold, and had been a notable enough citizen of Portland that his head cold made the papers. The Oregon Sunday Journal of April 20, 1919 noted that he had lots of people to see, but his visit was hampered by the severe cold.²⁾Oregon Sunday Journal, April 20, 1919.

The piece also noted that Mahaffie had said that he planned to remain in Washington only for another year or so. “He will return here and resume his practice of law after quitting his present position.”

Had he not dropped in on Interior Secretary Lane that day in 1916, he might have stayed in Portland and made his life there. And with his city connections and active life in the city’s affairs, he might well have entered politics or taken other directions in his life.

 

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.</em

I knew when I read Democracy and the Suffrage [see previous post, here] that there was more to know about Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr.’s politics and his time in Portland.

In the family archives, there are multiple Portland, Oregon news clips and other documents from Charlie’s starting out years there. These got me intrigued. What did he do there? In later life, he reminisced about Portland and it took him some years after taking a job in Washington, DC to let go of the idea he would be going back. It clearly meant a lot to him.

I pulled the Portland materials together and used on-line newspaper archives to dig further. What I found was astonishing. Charlie was connected to all sorts of municipal matters; seemed to know everyone, served on all sorts of committees, all the while living a busy social life and competing at a serious level in tennis.

It is the breadth and spread of his activities in Portland that is the “artifact” in this post. The city was young in the 1910, growing fast, and full of opportunity. Charlie was young, energized and thrilled at that opportunity.

His first moves and involvements could have led him in different directions; working for the city, city politics, state-wide politics, and an array of different sorts of law practice.

As it was, he got involved in land use, agricultural development, developing recreational and cultural opportunities for the citizens, suffrage, fighting predatory lending, legal aid, and tennis. He helped orchestrate a change in the form of city government to a commission basis, then managed his friend and law partner William Brewster’s successful election to the Commission.

The list of his activities is long and exhausting. I suggest you read through briskly–he clearly lived his years in Portland that way.

Here goes:

December 28, 1911. Dinner party—the first newspaper mention of Charlie in Portland
June 1912. Suffrage meeting: Civic Progress Circles—he reads his paper, “Democracy and the Suffrage”
September 5, 1912. Publishes article in favor of presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson, focusing on his politically brave reforms when President of Princeton.²⁾The Oregon Daily Journal [Portland], September 5, 1912.

October 1912. On committee for promoting and orchestrating legal aid work
February 12, 1913. Helps form group to work to end loan sharking
February 14 and 16, 1913. Part of group assembled to improve Portland city government
April 14, 1913. Continues work to overhaul the city government – they were successful
May 8, 1913. Presides over meeting of people evaluating interested candidates for office under Commission government.
May 16, 1913. Letter to the editor to push back on charter opponents
May 18, 1913. Backs William L. Brewster for commissioner
July 6, 1913. Mahaffie joins Kingman Brewster in law partnership
August 9, 1913. Fighting onerous court fees
August 23, 1913. In Long Beach for tennis
October 2, 1913. Continues work on reforming and refining municipal government
October 16, 1913. Joins a Recreation League to promote recreation across the city
November 13, 1913. Further work on legal aid, joins the effort as a paid attorney to do the work
May 16, 1914. Mahaffie prevails in singles tennis
May 17, 1914. Continues work in Recreation League
May 1914. Continues to win at tennis
May 1914. Director, Douglas County Fire Patrol Association
May 24, 1914. Attends, and speaks at the Commonwealth Conference, Eugene
May 28, 1914. Reaches finals of tennis tournament
May 29, 1914. Speaks on municipal reform
May 30, 1914. Goes down to Dick Jones in the tennis final
June 1914. Travels to inspect new Umatilla lands agricultural development
July 5, 1914. Helps organize the state tennis tournament
July 8, 1914. Comments in the newspaper about a court ruling related to lands under and (islands) in stream beds.
July 18, 1914. Mahaffie works with The Taxpayer’s League
July 18, 1914. Investigates fraudulent purchasing of “bed bug juice” by the city
August 12, 1914. Joins delegation inspecting new highway. The committee also investigated the construction of courthouse.
November 13, 1914. Asked by Taxpayer’s League to assess schools
November 19, 1914. Gains membership in the State Bar Association and is elected treasurer for the ensuing year.
December 15, 1914. Mahaffie and others entertained by Miss Ruth Teal as guests for the Multnomah Club Show, a benefit.
December 20, 1914. Assistant Secretary of the Oregon Conservation Commission
January 1, 1915. Delegate to the Irrigation Congress
September 9, 1915. Advisory Budget Committee, Portland Chamber of Commerce

September 19, 1915. Opens law office with William L. Brewster
September 15, 1915. Asked to a meeting on the University of Oregon by the university’s president.
November 4, 1915. Chairman of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee on the city budget
March 9,1916. Engaged to help Hood River Lumbermen
November 22, 1916. Completes the work under contract to codify the Portland Penal Codes

 

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

 

Democracy and the Suffrage is a 4 by 5-inch booklet containing a long, scholarly essay by Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. on women’s suffrage. It was published in Portland, Oregon in 1912. Multiple copies in the family archives caught my eye. It was published in Portland, where he had moved to start his professional life as an attorney.

I wondered why my grandfather had written such a thing at all. He was new in Portland, Oregon. He was no longer an academic, having left his teaching job at Princeton after the 1908-09 academic year. He moved to Portland in 1911 to start a law practice.

And then, it’s a progressive, pro-suffrage essay. Just what were his politics? Was he actually involved in progressive issues? [The full text is here Democracy and the Suffrage_1912]

Growing up, we knew our granddad to be a prairie-raised Democrat, one of the old kind; when Democrats were conservative, Republicans more progressive. He later (in 1928), to the shock and dismay of his family, married a New York City Republican, but again, the old-school kind. His wife Isabel was progressive, worldly, even a bit of a bohemian.

In 1912 when Charlie wrote and presented this essay, American women could only vote in a few U.S. states. The women’s suffrage movement was growing and gaining its voice, but the changes needed hadn’t happened yet.

But Charlie thought women’s suffrage was overdue. At the end of his exploration of the topic, he let the words of someone else summarize his views:

“I cannot close this paper better than by a quotation from one of the keenest of political thinkers of the past century, John Stuart Mill.

“In speaking of the extension of the franchise to women, he says: ‘Let us hope that as the work proceeds of pulling down, one after another, the remains of the mouldering fabric of monopoly and tyranny, this one will no be the last to disappear, that the opinion of Bentham, of Mr. Samuel Bailey, of Mr. Hare and of many other of he mos powerful political thinkers of the age and country (not to speak of others) will make its way to all minds not rendered obdurate by selfishness or inveterate prejudice; and that before the lapse of another generation the accident of sex, no more than the accident of skin, will be deemed a sufficient justification for depriving the possessor of he just privileges of a citizen.’”

Charlie’s mother, Mollie Mahaffie, before long staged a near coup in Hobart, Oklahoma, and got herself on the all-male school board. She would have approved of his essay and his advocacy. I hope he sent her a copy of this pamphlet. If he did, she would have kept it close and showed it off.

And so too would have his Aunt Ella. She was a fiercely-independent, accomplished woman, an educator, who also served on a school board, in Kansas. She was fond of, and kept a close watch on Charlie’s progress in life. I hope she got a copy of Democracy and the Suffrage.

Surely both of these women were on Charlie’s mind as he built his argument for suffrage. And yes, Charlie did get involved in progressive politics and issues in Portland. More on that in the next post, here.

 

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

Thrifty Charlie carried this pocket address book, dated 1911, a giveaway from the Chickasha Abstract Co., to note down not just addresses, but expenses, money owed and paid, and other notes. The family archive has a series of these little books, each with remarkably small hand writing in them. He didn’t use the address pages to log his contacts alphabetically, but inserted notes among addresses and other jottings wherever he saw fit in the moment.

What jumped out to me was the page pictured below, which lists the noted liberal defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, who was most famous, later, for his work on the Scopes trial, defending Tennessee public school teacher John Scopes, who was prosecuted for teaching evolution in 1925.

The Clarence Darrow connection was a family story proved true. In his first paid job as an attorney for hire, Charlie joined the defense team for the McNamara brothers, accused of bombing the Los Angeles Times building in 1910. Because they were working men and labor organizers, the U.S. labor movement, convinced they were framed, paid for a vigorous defense, led by the already-famous Clarence Darrow.

Later stories said that, hearing Clarence Darrow was to lead the defense, Charlie went to Chicago to see Darrow and asked to be on the team. It’s not clear if he had any connection to Clarence, Darrow, before that, but he got the job. Maybe he was just that convincing.

One account noted, “During his connection with the case he received $20 a day, and later it caused the labor element to throw much legal business his way.” ¹⁾November 23, 1930, The Daily Oklahoman

Like John Scopes, who was found guilty, the McNamara brothers were also found guilty. It didn’t seem to taint Darrow’s reputation, nor affect Charlie in any negative way.

 

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.

Kingfisher 3/3/05

Dear Home Folks;

I just got a telegram from Boyd that I passed in that exam alright. Prexy* is still having fits. I’m feeling pretty good myself you bet. Feel like celebrating. Don’t know but I’ll get drunk. I’ve got away from shaking hands and being tossed and am locked in my happy home to write a little.

I’ve got to have a certificate of birth right away to take to Norman and present with myself when the committee meets. I suppose I’ll have to go to Norman again, at least I have to go wherever they meet to be inspected.

About that birth certif. Can you get it from the County Clerk or Coroner or whoever keeps the record of Johnson County? Or the Doctor? I don’t know much about it except that it says there must be one.

I’m about out of money and am going to require a good deal this spring, cause the last year is a lot more expensive than other years and then of course this scholarship business will add somewhat to what I’ll be out. Now I reckon its about time for Papa to quit just giving me money and the best thing for me to do is to borrow about $50.

I guess I could get it here but if Papa is not too much afraid of the security—that’s a joke—has it to spare I mean, I’d rather get it from home.

Of course I don’t know yet how much I’m going to need but have got to have a new outfit of clothes before long and then by the time I pay my debts and take a trip to Norman there will be quite a hole in 50.

I’m feeling most too good to sit still and just write so will close with lots of love to all from your son and brother.

Charlie M.

P.S. Just happened to think maybe you won’t get this till Monday but hope you do anyhow.

________

In early March, on receiving the news, Charles wrote his family the letter above. He’d worked intently to prepare with Julius Temple House, the head of Kingfisher Collage. He was the first in Oklahoma to ever do so. it was a big enough deal that the papers in Oklahoma covered it and stuck with the story as he traveled to Europe and started at Oxford. The Hobart, Oklahoma papers, his home town, even published series of his “Yank at Oxford” letters home.

But it is this letter that carries so much of his excitement, combined with his very business-like approach to getting ready for his overseas adventure. He was ready for this.

*”Prexy” was Kingfisher College President Julius Temple House, who had coached Charlie for the Rhodes Scholarship examination.

 

This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.