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When Franklin Roosevelt began looking for a Director of the Budget after the 1932 elections, Lew Douglas was a natural choice. He became a White House favorite. Said Eleanor Roosevelt at the Douglas, Ariz. airport dedication in 1933: "That name of Douglas is familiar to me. I see a man by that name having breakfast with my husband almost every day."
Douglas took the Roosevelt economy pledge at its face value and set to work paring the budget 25%. He slashed Government workers' pay 15%, sliced $400 million out of veterans' appropriations. When someone once protested that the District of Columbia Commissioners would be "very shocked" by a 25% appropriations cut, Lew replied: "These are shocking times."
"Marching Men." Lew lasted as Budget Director for just 18 months. When New Deal public works and pump-priming began, Lew Douglas knew he was licked. He went up to Hyde Park to protest. Replied Roosevelt: "But if we don't continue there will be revolutions and marching men." Lew disagreed. That day he handed in his resignation.
Disillusioned, he took over as vice president and board member of American Cyanamid and devoted himself to blasting the New Deal. He wrote a book, The Liberal Tradition, attacking New Deal reforms as "roads leading away from free enterprise." In 1936 he said: "I will go to the polls to express my opposition to the New Deal by voting for Mr. Landon."
In 1937 came the offer from McGill University. Douglas accepted. He found his grandfather still remembered at McGill, where Douglas Hall was named after him. Now Lew is remembered, too, as a man who balanced the university budget by such stringent economies as yanking out phones and urging his aides to scribble memos on the back of old envelopes.
"Come to See Me." The war, and a job as president of Mutual Life, brought him back to the U.S. and to Government work. Franklin Roosevelt had never forgiven him for his political switch (Douglas also supported Willkie in 1940). Lew's mind, said Roosevelt, runs "more to dollars than humanity." But when Harry Hopkins urged Roosevelt to overlook past political differences, Roosevelt relented: "Have him come to see me."
As deputy Lend-Lease expediter, Douglas hustled off to London, in a few weeks discovered where the bottleneck was. For lack of shipping, war material was piling up at ports and warehouses in the U.S. Douglas came back to Washington as economic adviser to the War Shipping Administration, later as deputy. He worked out a system of cargo allocations and ship routings that soon cracked the bottleneck. In 1944, with the plaudits of shipping men and the "warm regards" of Franklin Roosevelt, Douglas decided the job was done.