Amos
Pinchot was born in 1863. The son of a wealthy businessman, Pinchot
studied law in New York City. In 1900
he married Gertrude Minturn. The couple had two children, Rosamund
and Gifford. Pinchot held left-wing views and in 1911 helped establish
the radical journal The
Masses.
In 1912 Pinchot helped
formed the Progressive Party. Later
that year Theodore Roosevelt and Hiram
Johnson became the party's candidates for the presidential election.
The proposed program included women's suffrage,
direct election of senators, anti-trust legislation and the prohibition
of child labour. In winning 4,126,020 votes
Roosevelt defeated William H. Taft, the
official candidate of the Republican Party.
However, he received less votes than the Democratic
Party candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
Pinchot
believed
that the First
World War had been caused by the imperialist competitive system.
This was the point of view expressed by The
Masses.
In
July, 1917, it was claimed by the authorities that articles by Floyd
Dell and Max Eastman and cartoons by
Art Young, Boardman
Robinson and H. J. Glintenkamp
had violated the Espionage Act. Under
this act it was an offence to publish material that undermined the
war effort. The legal action that followed forced the journal
to cease publication. In April, 1918, after three days of deliberation,
the jury failed to agree on the guilt of the men.
The second trial was held in September, 1918. John
Reed, who had recently returned from Russia, was also arrested
and charged with the original defendants. This time eight of the twelve
jurors voted for acquittal and the defendants walked free on October
5, 1918.
Pinchot
divorced his first wife and married Ruth
Pickering in 1919. The couple had two children, Mary
Pinchot and
Antoinette Pinchot. Regular
visitors to the home included Mabel Dodge,
Crystal
Eastman,
Max
Eastman,
Louis Brandeis and Harold
Ickes.
In 1920 two Italian immigrants,
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, were accused of murdering a shoe factory payroll clerk
in Braintree, Massachusetts. Pinchot and his wife were convinced that
the two men were innocent and spent a great deal of time and effort
trying to get them released.
Pinchot supported his friend,
Robert La Follette, the the candidate
of the Progressive Party in the 1924
presidential election. Although La Follette and his running partner,
Burton K. Wheeler, gained support from
trade unions, the Socialist
Party and the Scripps-Howard newspaper
chain, La Follette only won one-sixth of the votes.
Pinchot worked for several
years on two books, Big Business in America
and The History of the Progressive Party.
However, the books were not published in his lifetime.
Initially he supported
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New
Deal. However, he was opposed his attempt to control the Supreme
Court. In April, 1937, Pinchot had a letter published in the New
York Times where he criticised Roosevelt's style of government
"which places the fate of labor, industry and agriculture in
a bureaucracy controlled by one man... I am forced to conclude that...
you desire the power of a dictator without the liability of the name."
Pinchot's daughter from
his first marriage, Rosamund Pinchot, became an actress. Although
she only appeared in one Hollywood movie, she did get parts in several
French films. However, she suffered from depression and in 1938 she
committed suicide. Pinchot was devastated and never fully recovered
from this tragedy.
Pinchot
retained his pacifist views and in
September, 1940, helped to establish the America
First Committee (AFC). The America First National Committee included
Robert E. Wood, John
T. Flynn and Charles A. Lindbergh.
Supporters of the organization included Burton
K. Wheeler, Hugh Johnson, Robert
LaFollette Jr.,
Hamilton Fish and Gerald Nye.
The
AFC soon became the most powerful isolationist group in the United
States. The AFC had four main principles: (1) The United States
must build an impregnable defense for America; (2) No foreign power,
nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America; (3)
American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European
War; (4) "Aid short of war" weakens national defense at
home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.
The
AFC influenced public opinion through publications and speeches and
within a year the organization had 450 local chapters and over 800,000
members. The AFC was dissolved four days after the Japanese
Air Force attacked
Pearl Harbor on 7th December, 1941.
Pinchot
grew increasing depressed by the progress of the Second
World War and in the summer of 1942 he slit his wrists. He survived
this suicide attempt but his health never recovered and spent the
rest of his life in hospital.
Amos Pinchot
died of pneumonia in February, 1944.
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